*squeals of delight from the peanut gallery*

Goody - apparently some wicked weather is brewing up in the Panhandle and poised to serve us up a good dollop of something nasty on Monday - my favorite!!!

I hope my table in the junk store in Quanah will be ok - I'm going to fetch it sometime soon.

Made some beads this weekend. Took long walks with Miss Buns. Good time had by me and my doglet.

Wow. Can you believe a full third of this year is already gone? Enjoy the last of April.

I had to go visit a wholesaler in Rockwall on Saturday, and LouLou was full of gas and the day was beautiful, so the time was right to go pathfinding. I decided to head off to the north and drive long enough to see nothing man-made, other than the road.

I drove up through the old town part of Rockwall and then up to Nevada. In Nevada is an art-deco gymnasium (currently a church) with a marvelous bas-relief rendering of Mercury - lovely. Though he was in profile, he was plumb nekkid and I'm amazed he survived the last century intact, libertine as he was. I'll try to post a photo from my phone tomorrow.

I drove around on successively smaller roads until I found myself on a goatpath with newly mown hay stewn along the roadside (I suppose having fallen from trucks) and sprigs of grass growing up in the middle of the dirt road ahead. I went over a little rise, and here I had my little fit of utter isolation, and it was glorious. Fields stretched out on either side and I couldn't see anything beyond, so for a moment I pretended I'd gone much further afield than a mere 30 minute drive from town.

Of the several dirt roads I drove down, something seemed very off to me. And then it hit me: where my family is from (Northeast Ozarks in Arkansas), all the dirt roads are made of iron-rich red soil, and these in Rockwall and Hunt counties were a soft, low-dust black soil. I kept catching myself thinking "they must have hauled this dirt in for these dirt roads." Silly me.

Anyway, one little road north of Caddo Mills took me by a historical marker of the Clinton Cemetery in Hunt county. Here legend said a cowboy was buried about 160 years ago or so, and in 1859 a local settler gave that land for a town (Massayville) burial place. He also donated a huge tract of land to the railroad for a right-of-way. This was called Massay Cemetery, but along with the town was later renamed for a railroad official named Clinton. How's that for gratitude? I'll bet the Massay family were none too pleased.

Anyway, I looped back around to Nevada and then over to Lavon and down by the dam. I had the sunroof and windows open, and the natural basin where the north fork of the Trinity River is dammed to form Lake Lavon is a verdant, densely treed area. There was some tree or plant which I could smell that also grows around the springs at Mammoth Spring, Arkansas. I'm going to wear more suitable shoes sometime soon and ferret out what that tree is - must have one of those, someday - it smells like home, smells like family times.

Maybe it'll be easier to go to the spring next month when I'm in Arkansas, though. I'm going to go to the farm of a friend whose grandfather was a famous Texas Ranger, and I'll muck about and get more cow photos. I also want to talk my mom into going over to the Strawberry River where we used to go and swim and picnic with her folks. It'll be sweet, and I'll tell you all about it.

I hope you enjoyed this beautiful weekend as much as I enjoyed mine. Cheers!

Remember when your library card had a little metal tab with numbers on it, and they'd put it on a little machine and insert the card from your book selection into a little muncher slot, and it would munch off the bottom side edge of the card a bit? I want one of those machines. I've been searching for years on ebay and in junk stores, and I can't even find out what they were called. Do you know what they are called & where I can find one? I don't know what I'll do with it. I just know I want one.

To JOHN

Cheers, and we're all sending warm thoughts and prayers your way. I'm proud to bursting of you and the men and women who serve alongside you-- you are the very best of what we stand for, and you give me hope for America, and you bring hope to all the other nations you touch. Bless you!

The inimitable Paolo Conte, Italian lawyer, composer, song stylist extraordinaire. Adorable.

He says "I whisper I love you." I'm so relieved, because for about 12 or 13 years, I thought he said "I whisper all of you."

It's embarrassing but I just have to share this with you, folks. This ranks right up there with "Olive, the other reindeer."

The night was mine: I owned it.

I meant to take the dog for walkies before dark, but I farted around listening to Amy Winehouse songs on youtube and just didn't make it out.

Just as I was raving two days ago about how much I adore nasty violent weather, nature served up a spring day on Wednesday that was so heart-breakingly lovely that for an instant I considered re-canting my prior curmudgeonly statements. Pulling into the alley late in the afternoon, I looked straight ahead but was dazzled by the come-hither aroma of honeysuckle nearby, wafting through the open windows.

I finally hooked the doglet up to the lead at about 9pm, and we set out down the street. The night was cool but not cold, and as quiet as I suppose it gets in a city. There was curiously little traffic as we walked and turned along the greenbelt that crosses our street. Doglet rubber-banded in and out the full length of her 16' retractable leash, sniffing the ground, marking a few spots and occasionally catching the trail of something fierce.

The bank of trees at the back of the greenbelt wends far from and near the footpath, and as it reached its nearest point, that scent was there again: the glorious heady sweetness of honeysuckle. I stopped and plucked a blossom, and tried to remember the mechanics of extracting the drop of nectar. How long has it been-- 30-some years? I made a hash of the first bloom, then tried another with no success. It was too dark for the delicate operation, so I grabbed a handful of blossoms and vowed to try them in better light.

In the yellow cone cast by the streetlamp at the corner, I pulled the bottom off a bloom, tugging the slender stamen back through the tube of the flower, a single teeny drop of nectar hastening along its shaft. One taste and my mouth filled with sweetness, reminding me of the flavor of summers of yore. I remember running through clover and how my bare feet always seemed to find the bee in the path, and oh, how I'd cry as a little caldera arose around the sting.

I turned for home along the sidewalk littered with the lacy black cutouts of tree shadows in the moonlight. I didn't sing at the Met. I didn't win the lottery. I had something better: this night was mine.

The wine which through the eyes is drunk
At night the moon pours down in floods.

Moon-drunk from Pierrot Lunaire

Gloriously brooding skies all day gave way in the late afternoon to an outbreak of violent storms: my favorite weather. Nice. Great reading weather. I always sleep well when it's like this. I hope there's more of this good stuff on the way.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? ... Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. ...As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-- Marianne Williamson

If you're like me, you adored Lisa Gerrard's soundtracks for The Insider, Gladiator and other films. She's an Aussie who grew up in a Turkish/Irish community which heavily influenced her compositions and her style of singing. Many of her songs feature made-up words, because she speaks of the "prisons of language," and the idea she advances there is the way our communications separate rather than unite us. Her music is innovative and strikes some impeccable balance between the modern and ancient. The stringed instrument she plays with the long hammers is a Chinese dulcimer.

Lisa's very able partner as writer/performer is Brendan Perry, and their group was called Dead Can Dance. I fell in love with the grandiose orchestration and sweeping lyricism of their music in the mid-80s, and I was utterly besotted with Perry's rich baritone voice. He remains one of my favorite voices ever, and I wish they would record some more music together.

The video below was recorded during their 1996 tour. A few weeks after this recording was made in San Francisco, I saw them at the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, and this endures as one of the finest musical performances I've been privileged to see. This song, Rakim, is a particular favorite of mine. I hope you like it.

And yes, that bouncy guy playing the drums bounced through the entire show. This performance is available on a DVD called Toward The Within. SO worth it.

Favored son
Turn in the garden
Shades of one
Sins forgotten
Favored signs
to find hope
In the rounds of life
Favored rhymes to find hope
In the sands of life
Favored son
Fence in your heart
Savored son
Sins forgotten

Something FatHairyBastard said reminded me of one of my favorite things from the post office. I may have mentioned this here some years back, so pardon if this is a repeat.

At the post office, the facilities that process bulk mail and 3rd class parcels are full of huge machinery, and to be sorted, packages travel along series of conveyor belts and are fed onto large slides which funnel them to sorting stations. Invariably, things will break open due to the weight of all the packages above them, or insufficient glue or tape on the box.

Once a box of big floppy books made of brown paper( like grocery store bag paper) broke open, and I had to gather them up, pack them back into the box and then re-tape the lid. Turns out these were magazines in braille, and on the cover of each was printed in black letters the magazine name and the date, issue & volume numbers. What blew my mind was that some of the magazines were Playboys, and one of the cliches of the day was that some guys really did read Playboy for the articles. I decided that was true, but mostly, the guys who read it for the articles were blind.

Christian Lacroix has done it again: I feel tingly all over.

Yummy.




I finished reading Dead Man's Walk, and now I'm on to Comanche Moon, the final volume of the Lonesome Dove series. I'm going to be sad when I finish this book. LD was a bit of a slow-starter for me, but then it sort of clicked after about 400 pages and I couldn't get enough of it. I sorta boo-hooed my way through the last two chapters, not wanting it to be over. Yeah, it's THAT good.

I've gone through some drawers and I've filled the garbage trolley more than half-full of old magazines and other crap that should never have tarried on its way to the dustbin. I've decided to be more ruthless about throwing things out. I re-discovered part of my barf-bag collection (Polish Airlines and defunct Sabena, thrills!). I'm proud of myself for actually culling 3 shoe pairs from the herd that has the run of the house, and they will be on their way to Goodwill as of tomorrow. Culling clothes is much easier. I'm also sending lots of books to Goodwill. However, a couple books went straight into the trash--most notably: The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth which no one should read, ever. What a load of crap. Meh. Where was that book when I needed kindling a couple weeks ago?

Did you know the first Hilton hotel happened when Conrad Hilton was traveling in the panhandle and purchased what is the Mobley Hotel in Cisco, 46 miles E of Abilene? Me neither, but what a surprise. Hilton decided he could make a sweet buck letting rooms out to oil field workers, and this was the first in his chain. It's apparently been restored and is now used as a community center for the town. No mention of whether Paris has ever brought her parasite collection to that locale.

Wow - did you know there are 412 Ghost Towns in Texas?

I didn't. Neat stuff!

This is a great site in general with lots of adventure stuff to discover in our own back yards -- for those of us who live here.

I don't know about you, but Bug Tussle is on my short list of day-trip places to check out in North Texas.

Click here to check it out!

Odd little video to a fantastic song. Dice by Finley Quaye, who is on permanent rotation in my fair weather music files.

Housekeeping post, chock-full of odds and ends
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A Crocodile in Taiwan bit a guy's hand off - click here for proof positive that a croc who has obviously never missed a meal can still take your arm off. GRISLY PHOTO ALERT!

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Isn't it ironic that a spoiled, whining, un-clever immature person with the social graces of the Star Wars Kid is at the fore of the news? Our local news' lead story Wednesday night was the broadcast of misfit's juvenile home-movie revenge fantasy-- WHY ON EARTH are they giving that air time??? Call it what you will, but I call it justifying the vanity of a deluded person, and something which will speak volumes to other unbalanced people who navel-gaze and [NEWSFLASH!:] feel the world just isn't fair. I had to turn it off after about 15 seconds - POINTLESS.

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"A gun-free zone is a murderer's paradise."
The Motor City Madman on a Dallas radio show on 4/18/2007

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Some people scoff at the bottled water thingie. I don't - I drink S. Pellegrino sparkling water from Italy all the time - ideally at least 2 25.3 oz bottles a day. It tastes wonderful, and I love the bubbles.

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Vaya con queso, Sanjaya.

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I'm meeting a realtor on Tuesday to discuss my brilliant career.

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Speaking of... My Brilliant Career endures as one of my favorite films. Well, anything with Judy Davis, pretty much. She is amazing. Loved Impromptu, though she and the other artists in the film are such essentially vile and mean people.

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Have a great Friday!

Between that photo from yesterday and Hammer's recent hilarious post on lawyer inanities, I thought of my own Grandpa.


My grandfather was in a pretty severe car accident about a dozen years ago, or so.

He was turning onto a 2 lane highway. Under normal circumstances, Grandpa would have had plenty of time to get across the road, but just about that time a teenager came flying up the hilly road in his truck doing about 100 miles per hour and t-boned Grandpa's pickup.

Now this didn't do Grandpa any good, but the teenager was in far worse shape behind the whole event, and I suppose that based on Grandpa's admittedly advanced years, the kid would take the opportunity to sue.

Grandpa's truck was totaled, but the engine was not completely trashed, so he sold it to someone else in town. In court, one particular exchange struck us all as quite funny when an asshat lawyer was unleashed upon Grandpa:

Asshat Lawyer: Now, I understand you sold the engine. What did you sell it for? [Asshat L. wanted to know the amount of the transaction]
Grandpa: Well, someone wanted to buy it, and so I sold it to him.

Yay, Grandpa.

Anyway, justice prevailed and I think Grandpa was found to be no more at fault than was the rocketing cub.
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A few years before, Grandpa was puttering around on the farm on the tractor, when the tractor stalled (same tractor from the ape-shit/bush hog event from a couple weeks ago) and died completely. He climbed off the tractor and got into its innards and directly the thing started back up, but he'd left it in gear when it stalled and it lurched forward, knocked him down and ran squarely over his pelvis. Naturally, the tractor was heading straight for the pond, and the much-abused man climbed to his feet, ran and stopped the tractor in time.

Grandpa was in the hospital after this event, but remarkably, no bones were broken. He was severely bruised and very sore. I'd say he was about 78 at the time.

So a female nurse came into the room to see how he was doing, and she started to pull back the covers while saying "let's see how you're doing here" and he said "but we hardly know each other."

He got so tickled telling that story, that it makes me laugh to remember it. Grandpa is one of those people who has this nasal sort of snort-wheeze thing going on when he laughs, and if the cornball joke he just told you doesn't get you, that laugh surely will.

One amazing moment to me was recently I was half-heartedly watching the 1956 John Wayne film The Searchers when a very familiar voice just jumped out at me. A minor character in that film - Charlie - is played by Ken Curtis, whose accent and phonation sound identical to the diction and sound of my grandfather's voice. The funny thing is that I saw that film a long time ago and I never noticed the similarity. But the point of departure is that Charlie in the film sounds like a slow-witted hick, and Grandpa speaks deliberately with impeccable grammar.

Grandpa didn't go to school past elementary grades, but his is an incredibly keen mind, and he's one of those rare people who can add or subtract huge sums in rows of numbers in his head faster than you can punch the numbers into a calculator.

Grandpa is salty, a bit ornery, and incredibly stubborn. Most everyone in my clan is mule-headed, and I sometimes wonder how we stand each other. Then again, we all have our little quirks that keep the rest laughing, so I guess we'll just go on loving each other and thinking that for all its flaws, our family was a pretty nice one in which to land. We're not fancy or rich in the worldly sense, but we have a good time.