Friday, January 27, 2006

the annual Kumquat Festival

This weekend we are running up to Uncle David's new house. One of the highlights of the visit will be the annual Kumquat Festival in Dade City. I'm not making that up - you can check it out here: http://www.kumquatfestival.com/

The kumquat is a small, bland piece of citrus fruit that looks much better than it tastes. I'm surprised their web site doesn't have recipes because you can make pies and other goodies if you add a lot of sugar and other ingredients to give it flavor. But, they have a link to a site which has recipes: http://kumquatgrowers.com/

They'll have a Kumquat Court and a Pagaent Queen, young ladies who look much better than the lowly kumquat. The point of the whole affair seems to be to give you an excuse to get out and traipse around downtown Dade City, a quaint place which is looking better to me as my hometown looks worse and worse.

living in a town with no soul

Some time ago I posted a photo of the beautiful, historic Calvary Baptist Church building in what used to be called "downtown" Clearwater (before the merchants defected to the outlying malls). The property was sold by the Baptists for an enormous "mess of pottage" ($15 million worth) and the City, which does not have an historic preservation ordinance, is allowing the site to be developed as high-rise condos. The ugly follow-up to that story is that the building has been destroyed. The demolition of this building is further evidence that everybody has decided what our city council is, and that what passes for "government" is merely haggling over the price.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

feels like Spring already

It's feeling like Spring here in central Florida for several reasons: Our weather has been absurdly warm; the days are getting longer; whatever bug I've had is releasing its death grip on my back, allowing me to sleep and my energy level to rise; and the sap is rising in the punk trees we call "politicians" at the national, state, and local levels.

Florida actually grows "punk" trees, also called Melaleuca trees. They are invasive, noxious, pest trees, crowding out native trees in the Everglades and coastal areas. Their trunk unfolds like sheets of coarse paper but don't try to make a punk bark canoe out of one. At the age of 28 to 30 years, they sprout business suits and wing-tip shoes and join the Republican Party. Then they run for office and get elected in surprising numbers because of their pro-life, anti-gun, anti-axe, anti-chainsaw policies. They view the eradication of pest trees as an expansion of government and they are against that, too.

Some join the military. I heard one on TV the other night, explaining how the Bush phone-tapping program might have prevented September 11 because, if they had been tapping phones then, they could have discovered several of the participants. Obviously, he's never read Senator Bob Graham's book. (They don't read anything made of paper.) In his book, which has drawn a rather muted response from Bush apologists, Graham demonstrated that the feds had, in fact, without benefit of phone taps, identified several of the participants in time to keep them out or ship them out, but the feds didn't know what to do with them. Imagine how much more confused they would have been after sorting through all those phone messages.

The more I hear from our elected punk trees and their brass-hat counterparts, the greater my energy level rises.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

spammers should be dragged out and shot

It's a Sunday morning and I'm not going to church today because my "virus" has settled into my latissimus dorsi (in this case, dorsus?) running down my right side, feeling like a pulled muscle. I've had to sleep in the recliner in the living room two nights in a row because, lying down, there is no comfortable position. The last time this happened to me I felt like I'd been stabbed in the middle of the back with a hot ice pick and a doctor told me it was a virus. May this never happen to you.

I mention this to explain why I'm sitting in front of a computer instead of attacking a long list of overdue projects. In checking e-mail, I see that I'll never feel alone as long as there are spammers out there sending me tons of solicitations for drugs and worse. What amazes me is how stupid the spammers are - and, by extension, how stupid some people must be because they wouldn't waste their time if they weren't selling stuff.

For example, I keep getting spam from "Doctor." Because Gmail lets me see the first few lines of the message without opening it, I see that "Doctor" is selling vliqagra, vloagra, vleagra, vitagra, and vlfagra, apparently in an (unsuccessful) attempt to defeat spam filters by misspelling "viagra." I also have spam from Overheard E. Supperannuat and Christmas Anderson, both selling misspelled pharmaceuticals (a word which is always misspelled, too) and Amandi Tomlin (whose subject line is "albumin, may wiretapping"). Just what kind of fools do they think we are?

This has me steamed up to the point that I've forgotten my sore back. Maybe I should put up the ladder and install that motion-detecting outdoor light. Or, finish copying songs from a stack of music CD's and return them to the library before the fines start racking up. That's a tough choice. Maybe I should ask my old buddy, Overheard E. Supperannuat, for his advice.

.

Friday, January 20, 2006

behold the noble pig

Our good friends in St. Petersburg hold a pig roast in January every year, usually on what seems like the coldest day of the year but not this year. Below, the two main characters are Joe the Pigmeister and Mary P., daughter of the hosts. This year's pig weighed 135 pounds, bigger than last year, although he didn't weigh that much by the time he came off the fire. Once he goes on, sombody sits up all night (not the same somebodys) turning a boat steering wheel attached to the end of the stainless steel pole to which the pig is firmly attached. They keep a bottle of Mezcal on hand to keep the pig driver warm. This little piggy was over the fire for nearly 18 hours. It is good to have good friends.


new computer!

Where I work, they replace computers every three years. We depend on computers a lot here. I'm now looking at a 19-inch monitor, which is spectacular. I could roll my chair back a foot or two and read documents without glasses. Did I say spectacular? It is amazing. I'll have to upload a photo to see how it looks. My old monitor at home is due for replacement!

coming down with - - something

If there's anything I hate worse than coming down with some bug, it's coming down with some bug at the beginning of a weekend. The only sympton has been getting chilled. It started last night. I thought two aspirins had cured it this morning but right now I feel like a cold compress is covering my back and my energy level is about 50 percent. This will settle into my chest and stay there for a week. Meanwhile we have two children and a daughter-in-law who will be skiing in Colorado this weekend. Jealousy!

poll update: 2 yea, 0 nay

So, two of my children like his hat. I think they have good taste. This confirms all of my suspicions, considering how long the "poll" has been here. Ah, well.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Poll results: 0 yea, 0 nay

My poll on Jack Abramoff's hat (see below) has drawn zilch for results so far. This tells me that (a) my readership base is closer to zero than I suspected, (b) my readers don't give squat about the hat one way or the other, (c) they don't know how to post comments, or (d) they have better things to do with their lives. I hope the answer is (d) and not (a)!

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

the law and common sense sometimes coincide

Does an unborn fetus count as a passenger, when the mom-to-be is driving in a lane reserved for car pools during rush hour? Here's one definitive answer:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/01/11/fetus.carpool.ap/index.html

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

sunlight: a reminder

For our friends in Colorado, and Boston, and faraway Scotland, who are apparently suffering from sunlight deprivation, here's a reminder of what it looks like when viewed at sunset. And for our special friend who doesn't even like putting her toes in the water when she goes to the beach, contemplate that this was taken from a sailboat about 20 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico, west of Naples, Florida, when the wind was barely strong enough to budge the boat and the water was as smooth as a baby's bottom.

I broke the rule about horizons (upper third, lower third, but never across the center) but in this case I like the result. Don't ask me what was breaking the surface in the foreground. If it was a sea critter, we didn't catch it despite our best efforts.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

The return of the hat - or not? A poll.


This has become a famous photo of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, seen walking away from a federal courthouse after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. He was wearing what some journalists have called a clownish black fedora and a guilty look.

I'm not so sure about the guilty look, but I definitely do not think this hat is "clownish." I think it is an elegant hat of a style that deserves to be resurrected in men's fashions.

I'm taking a poll. What do you think? Is this a clown's hat, a costume from a Mafia movie, or a seriously good-looking hat that real men should wear more often? Leave a comment and let me know.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Epiphany Day in Tarpon Springs

Up the road from where we live is Tarpon Springs, Florida. This is where we moved when we came down from Kentucky when I was a kid. Tarpon Springs has a Greek-American population (they always include the "-American" part when referring to themselves) descended from divers brought over from Greece a hundred years ago to work the Gulf of Mexico for sponges. The sponge industry was a big deal in Tarpon Springs until the "red tide" killed most of the sponge beds in the 1940's. They made some valiant attempts to revive the sponge industry but now the old docks are lined with shrimp boats, not the classic old Greek sponge boats.

They have a beautiful Greek ("Eastern") Orthodox church in the city, and every year on January 6 they celebrate Epiphany, the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. This year is the 100th year that they are doing this in Tarpon Springs, and the patriarch of the Church flew in from Istanbul to lead the ritual.

My fondness for Tarpon Springs and the Greeks stems from my parents. As school teachers, they were immediately accepted into the community. Back in Kentucky, you could move to a new town and still be referred to as the "new kid in town" after living there for ten or twenty years. They fell in love with Greek food, the people, and the traditions and trappings of the Greek Orthodox Church. Keep in mind that they were Southern Baptists, so this was a major cultural event in their lives.

Our local paper has a nice section dedicated to Epiphany. Check it out. Scroll down to the gallery, which has some great old photos and a narration:

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/webspecials06/epiphany100/index.shtml

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Uncle Bob turns 80


Here's our Uncle Bob at the old and decrepit age of 80 years, with his new wife, Pam.

We should all look so good and be so healthy and vibrant when we are 70!

Obviously, life in the Marine Corps followed by a second career in the Sheriff's Office agreed with him.

Sunday, January 01, 2006

somewhere near Dade City

Uncle D. and Denise are ready to leave the traffic and the hassles of life in Naples, FL, behind them. They've bought some acreage with a house on it just off State Road 50, an hour's drive from our house. The house actually faces the woods, to the right and behind me in this picture.

This is a serious move for Uncle D., who was born in Naples and has lived there all his life. Ask him why and he'll tell you: Too much traffic, too much development, too many obnoxious Yankees.

Christmas cactus

We've had this Christmas cactus around the house for years, not knowing what to do with it, but it has found a place it likes and is blooming like crazy.