So, who is the husband of Reese Witherspoon, this J. Toth or this one?
I’m just glad I live in a world in my thoughts and that none of these intersections of similar last names is real.
Having the Internet at slow connection speeds sure is fun!
Paddling upstream, against the current, giving gravity its grave moment of gravity, one wonders why the sky is blue.
Yet, one breathes oxygen, a component of the sky, so should one first question why one breathes first?
Is the sky blue because I breathe?
Do I breathe because the sky is blue?
If the sky is not blue, then do I not breathe?
I do not hold blue in my hand when I feel blue and I cannot feel the blueness of the blue I see in blues.
The muse, she is just a geeky kid, is she not?
When she feels blue, should I feel blue?
When she sees red, should I not breathe?
A long time ago, when centuries were counted in units of A.D. and B.C., a man was born.
1931 on the west side of Huntsville.
His father bought a house in 1936, the son attending every school that existed in Huntsville at the time, back when the town was less than 10K in population, long before 10K races became popular pasttime weekend sports.
Huntsville Elementary, West Clinton, East Clinton and ending with Huntsville High School, one of them where the old Masonic Lodge is, he seems to remember.
His father, a construction man, helped build Redstone Arsenal and then moved to Denver to build a military base out there, the boy attending Ebert school in fifth and sixth grade.
The boy fished where Big Spring Park now entertains lovers arm-in-arm walking down tree-lined paths, the downtown buildings elevated above blocked-off caves.
“Did you ever see the old courthouse before they built this giant block building? It was a beaut’. Too bad they had to tear it down.”
Sitting beside the 81-year old was “Cookie” Moore, has lived in Big Cove for 69 or 70 years.
Mr. Burritt used to drive down the mountain to get water from Cookie’s father’s well. “Best damn water God put on this planet,” Cookie’s father quoted Burritt as saying, his father reminding Cookie that must be a good thing since Burritt didn’t believe in God.
The well was capped off a couple of years ago because it was unsafe, the walls collapsing in.
“Do you remember Jerry Moore? Well, he goes for dialysis three times a week now.”
When one’s red hair has naturally bleached white, one is ageless in a way that people from their 20s to their 100s seem to relate.
When one agrees it’s not the doctrine that dictates behaviour, it’s the way one treats others regardless of inconsistent, dogmatic interpretation which rules the airwaves that makes the difference for infinite optimistic practitioners.
Lee sorted through the memory banks, unraveling tendrils.
No longer able to say, “this is my distinct memory,” Lee turned to Guinevere.
“What have we done?”
“What haven’t we done?”
“What, not, have we done?”
“What have we done not?”
“Done what have we?”
They tossed question after question at each other, varying the tone, pitch, inflection, word count, word order, sentence structure and chemical composition of the rhetoric without question.
Geekiness is an honour bestowed upon the few.
Chomping a cigar while driving a big rig on Mars is riskier though no less taxing on the intellect.
Latter-day saints like Hiromi Uehara and Chick Corea proved that intellect was simply a matter of spent energy, not a question or answer about questions and answers.
Thought experiments repeated themselves — “if you don’t do this, your life will not be complete” — stretched beyond the limit of limits, beyond derivatives, beyond boundaries, [sub]sets, and snapped back into boundless states of energy.
When two people communicate through the aether, either Eiger or the eigenvalue and the eigenvector value vectors on the inflective, jazz standards falling ‘way to speakeasy swing bands playing on the third floor of a cotton mill turned art factory factoring facts or rings or stings or dings or ING, that thing you do when you don’t know the influence of adverts from your father’s advice to remember two things, the first you forgot and the second hidden in the wisdom of old coaches’ wisecracks, having a craic of a good time back on the Cliffs of Moher.
Lee danced like a marionette, a feedback loop giving his partner the answer the performance art asked in realtime on the dance floor, too much information lost in eye contact, conversations whizzing by in the literal blink, the link, sink, the edge of the skating rink, riffing on the wordplay unspoken in bodies bounding between the imaginary ends of an invisible rubber band holding a planet together with its strange relationship of physics and chemistry, a giant toothpaste tube forming sparkling lines of thoughts in electronic ink.
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!
Top o’ the morning to ye!
Erin go bragh!
It be midnight.
Sweet dreams!
A school bus with tinted windows and white roof speeds down our country road.
A buzzard circles overhead while sparrows, wrens and chickadees chirp in the winterised forest.
What is your definition of the true meaning of Valentine’s Day?
For me, it is no different than any other day — greeting others with loving kindness, knowing the universe is full of unkind, unloving, seemingly-random actions about to surprise us at any moment.
For my wife, this morning I cut down a redbud tree precariously overhanging our driveway and this afternoon dug a drainage well for our clothes washing machine wastewater discharge.
We ate lunch together at a local cafe co-owned by Margaret Hale Baggett, the daughter of a childhood friend of my wife, sharing with Margaret an old newspaper photo documenting the dedication of a flagpole honouring the Hale family, showing Margaret as a happy, young girl in a summer dress, waving a tiny American flag along with her family.
St. Valentine and St. Patrick share with us their fame and their legends grown large with time, stories embellished to fit the times.
Earlier today, I enjoyed a brief interview with Bryan Curtin from Aerotek about an embedded software engineer position, serendipitously occurring after my wife and I said goodbye to her hometown this past weekend, both of us ready for new adventures.
As the sun sets over Little Mountain, I look out the window at our place in the woods and wonder what [extra]ordinary tales wait to be told about our place in the universe…
We shall see!
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
Thanks to Molly and Mr. Jacobs at Amis Mill Eatery; Matt, Chris, Kim and Dana at Lowe’s; Natasha and Elizabeth at Beauregard’s; Jenn, Harold and Joe at KCDC; Otis “Eddie” Munsey III and Charlotte Fairchild; John Jerdon; Melinda Miller; Mayfield Dairy tour guides; Maggie at Little Dutch Restaurant; Publix; Walmart; people who smile back for no reason.
Have you ever ridden on an old passenger train?
I and my friends, Ricky (standing behind me), Kevin (in glasses and checkered glasses), along with other classmates did, way back in 1969:
Some passenger train services, like the Alaska Railroad, offer the thrill of a nice, slow ride on railroad tracks.
Maybe a bullet/maglev train is in your future, instead?
Now I know why my house keeps shaking — the power of F-1 (no, not that F1), the one with real explosive power under your feet!
First of all, thanks to Ramsee Miller, Roberto Diaz, Alex, Matthew and the team in the repair/maintenance department at Bill Penney Toyota; Jason, Danielle, Lindsay, Huy and the rest of the instructors/volunteers of My Lindy Kraze dance workshop; Low Down Sires; Rainy, Penny, Rich and the other beautiful people at Thai Garden; Chris at Chick-Fil-A; everyone else who passed in and out of my life while I was half-asleep the past few weeks.
Twenty-five years ago, on a weekend like this — daytime temp around 60 deg F, nighttime temp around freezing — my wife and I would jump in a car and either drive to a great campsite, pop up the tent and roll out the sleeping bags or stay at a B&B seven-hours drive away, hosted by eccentric owners and their secret breakfast recipes.
Neither driving long distances for a romantic getaway nor sleeping on the ground figures into our middle years, our whole grain and fruit salad days.
Not too long ago, we’d travel by plane but got tired of the long lines and harassing security checkpoints that made us feel like poor citizens waiting for our weekly allotment of bread while we were patted down and our papers verified by state security police.
Instead, our staycations are more relaxing.
We might drive a few hours to bigger cities to see friends and family but we tend to find local attractions more…attractive.
This weekend, while U.S. citizens celebrate the re-election of the chief executive of the political system we call the government of the United States of America, enjoying an extended weekend because of a holiday dedicated to Robert E. Lee or Martin Luther King, Jr., my wife and I have dedicated Saturday and Sunday to the celebration of a dancing style called Lindy Hop, with workshops focused on Charleston and other dancing styles.
People about half our age, many of them college students, join us in this aerobic conditioning, drinking water during brief breaks between fun classes taught by enthusiastic instructors.
There’s Nick, for instance. He served our country as a Marine for five years before working by December to complete his mechanical engineering degree in three years at Tennessee Tech.
There’s the young man from Nashville who dressed as Hercules on Friday night and a 1920s-era speakeasy gangster tonight.
There’s Victoria who’s getting her college degree from Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee.
The stories are as varied as our Lindy Kraze classmates.
Familiar faces like Jennifer, Catherine, Dana and Rob, avid supporters of the Huntsville Swing Dance Society, sweep their feet on the old cotton mill wood floors.
Who says that kids today can’t have good, clean fun?
And the energy they burn on the dance floor — wow!
From beginners to intermediate/continuing students to the advanced/master dancers, the goal is there is no goal.
Have fun and learn a little in the process.
When I was in my 20s, it was the rock-n-roll and punk rock dance clubs that drew the crowds, pulling my friends and me in for a thrashing, mashing good time.
Twenty-five years later, a hopping beat of bands like the Low Down Sires rocks the house these days, when my older and heavier body finds mosh pits less appealing and swing dancing with my wife more to my taste and partner preference.
We enjoy just as much, if not more, watching the kids combine Lindy Hop, Balboa, Charleston and other styles into fun you won’t find in exercise classes or gymnasiums.
Tonight, we retire to bed early, leaving the band and the kids to their “Jack and Jill” dance contests, saving our energy for tomorrow’s workshops while we drift off to sleep in our comfortable bed at home, the dreamlike visions of new car owner’s manuals informing us of safety features and the value of heated/ventilated seats.