Hurricane season is knocking at the door, dang it:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/204525.shtml?5day#contents
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
75 weeks to go
Yesterday, Karl Rove announced his retirement as of the end of August. Rove is credited with transforming Texas into Republican territory and with engineering George Dubya Bush's election in 2000, and his re-election in 2004. Do you remember the phrase, "compassionate conservative?" Rove is credited with that phrase. (Have you ever met a compassionate conservative?)
Upon Rove's announcement, Bush said, "I'll be on the road behind you in a bit."
Yesterday, we had 525 days left in the Bush regime. That's a mere 75 weeks before Bush hits the road.
Upon Rove's announcement, Bush said, "I'll be on the road behind you in a bit."
Yesterday, we had 525 days left in the Bush regime. That's a mere 75 weeks before Bush hits the road.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Grammar Rules, or How to Write Good
You've probably seen most of these, but not all in one place:
Grammar Rules for the Unenlightened; Or, How to Write Good
Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.
Don’t use no double negatives. Don’t never use no triple negatives.
No sentence fragments.
Corollary: Complete sentences: important.
Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.
Avoid clichés like the plague.
All generalizations are bad.
Take care that your verb and subject is in agreement.
A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.
Avoid those run-on sentences that just go on, and on, they never stop, they just keep rambling, and you really wish the person would just shut up, but no, they just keep going, they’re worse than the Energizer Bunny, they babble incessantly, and these sentences, they just never stop, they go on forever …
You should never use the second person.
The passive voice should never be used.
Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at only one point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the 6th Century, an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what we now know as Poland…
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations.”
Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!!!
Don’t use question marks inappropriately?
Don’t obfuscate your theses with extraneous verbiage.
Never use that totally cool, radically groovy out-of-date slang.
Avoid tumbling off the cliff of triteness into the black abyss of overused metaphors.
Keep your ear to the grindstone, your nose to the ground, take the bull by the horns of dilemma, and stop mixing your metaphors.
Avoid those abysmally horrible, outrageously repellent exaggerations.
Grammar Rules for the Unenlightened; Or, How to Write Good
Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.
Don’t use no double negatives. Don’t never use no triple negatives.
No sentence fragments.
Corollary: Complete sentences: important.
Stamp out and eliminate redundancy.
Avoid clichés like the plague.
All generalizations are bad.
Take care that your verb and subject is in agreement.
A preposition is a bad thing to end a sentence with.
Avoid those run-on sentences that just go on, and on, they never stop, they just keep rambling, and you really wish the person would just shut up, but no, they just keep going, they’re worse than the Energizer Bunny, they babble incessantly, and these sentences, they just never stop, they go on forever …
You should never use the second person.
The passive voice should never be used.
Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at only one point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the 6th Century, an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what we now know as Poland…
As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations.”
Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!!!
Don’t use question marks inappropriately?
Don’t obfuscate your theses with extraneous verbiage.
Never use that totally cool, radically groovy out-of-date slang.
Avoid tumbling off the cliff of triteness into the black abyss of overused metaphors.
Keep your ear to the grindstone, your nose to the ground, take the bull by the horns of dilemma, and stop mixing your metaphors.
Avoid those abysmally horrible, outrageously repellent exaggerations.
I've told you 100,000 times not to exaggerate.
Avoid awful anachronistic aggravating antediluvian alliterations.
This sentence no verb.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Happy Fourth of July
It isn't a Fourth of July without fireworks. History note: The rockets' red glare and the bombs bursting in air over Fort McHenry didn't occur on the Fourth of July or during the American Revolutionary War, but in 1814. Fireworks on the Fourth date back to 1777 in Philadelphia, thirty-seven years before Francis Scott Key wrote what became the National Anthem to the tune of an old British drinking song.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Gay Pride, St. Petersburg, Florida
Whatever San Francisco can do, St. Petersburg can do. . . maybe not better, but enthusiastically.
I'm a confirmed hetero and as straight as can be, but we had to go check it out. What we found was a mellow crowd having fun on a hellishly hot day. A few protestors drove down from Georgia, if you can believe it, but we didn't see them.
I'm a confirmed hetero and as straight as can be, but we had to go check it out. What we found was a mellow crowd having fun on a hellishly hot day. A few protestors drove down from Georgia, if you can believe it, but we didn't see them.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
why people hate lawyers; old guys rule
Credit to the International Municipal Lawyers Association for these stories:
The $54 million (originally $64 million) pants suit has been ruled on by a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Roy Pearson, an administrative law judge [who represented himself - remind me to tell you about lawyers who represent themselves], sued the owners of his neighborhood dry-cleaners after they allegedly lost a pair of pants he had brought in for alterations, claiming they tried to pass off another pair of pants as his.
The defendants insisted that the pants they attempted to return to him, which he refused to accept, were the pants that he brought in to be altered. Among other things, the plaintiff argued that a "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign displayed in the dry-cleaners was an unconditional warranty that required the defendants to honor any claim by any customer, without limitation.
The court disagreed: "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands or to accede to demands that the merchant has reasonable grounds to dispute." The court also ruled that the plaintiff had not proved that the pants the defendants attempted to return to him were not the pants he brought in for alterations. The plaintiff was entitled to nothing in the way of damages (one headline: "Loses Pants, Now Suit"). See it here: http://www.dccourts.gov/dccourts/superior/index.jsp
Meanwhile:
According to a recent news report, 65-year-old Bob Hayden, a former police chief, and a gray-haired retired US Marine Corps captain, age not specified, subdued a passenger on an aircraft after the passenger's behavior became alarming. The stewardess looked around for help but the young guys were averting their eyes. Mr. Hayden's wife of 42 years barely looked up from her book while the struggle occurred. "Bob's been shot at. He's been stabbed. He's taken knives away. He knows how to handle those situations. I figured he would go up there and step on somebody's neck, and that would be the end of it. I knew how that situation would end. I didn't know how the book would end." (Source: Boston Globe, June 5, 2007. See it here: http://tinyurl.com/2n8bqc).
The $54 million (originally $64 million) pants suit has been ruled on by a judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Roy Pearson, an administrative law judge [who represented himself - remind me to tell you about lawyers who represent themselves], sued the owners of his neighborhood dry-cleaners after they allegedly lost a pair of pants he had brought in for alterations, claiming they tried to pass off another pair of pants as his.
The defendants insisted that the pants they attempted to return to him, which he refused to accept, were the pants that he brought in to be altered. Among other things, the plaintiff argued that a "Satisfaction Guaranteed" sign displayed in the dry-cleaners was an unconditional warranty that required the defendants to honor any claim by any customer, without limitation.
The court disagreed: "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands or to accede to demands that the merchant has reasonable grounds to dispute." The court also ruled that the plaintiff had not proved that the pants the defendants attempted to return to him were not the pants he brought in for alterations. The plaintiff was entitled to nothing in the way of damages (one headline: "Loses Pants, Now Suit"). See it here: http://www.dccourts.gov/dccourts/superior/index.jsp
Meanwhile:
According to a recent news report, 65-year-old Bob Hayden, a former police chief, and a gray-haired retired US Marine Corps captain, age not specified, subdued a passenger on an aircraft after the passenger's behavior became alarming. The stewardess looked around for help but the young guys were averting their eyes. Mr. Hayden's wife of 42 years barely looked up from her book while the struggle occurred. "Bob's been shot at. He's been stabbed. He's taken knives away. He knows how to handle those situations. I figured he would go up there and step on somebody's neck, and that would be the end of it. I knew how that situation would end. I didn't know how the book would end." (Source: Boston Globe, June 5, 2007. See it here: http://tinyurl.com/2n8bqc).
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
old baby photos
I like old baby photos. . .not photos of old babies, but old photos. This one I found on Flickr, and he had my last name although we might not have had a common ancestor since the last Ice Age. Cute kid, though.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
little pockets
I made an interesting observation this morning while waiting for the elevator, an event which consumes more of my time than it should each week.
When I was a boy we lived in Louisville and Dad worked for the Veterans Administration. He wore a suit and tie to work every day. This was in 1950, give or take a year, and you can visualize the suit. At the end of the day, we developed this little ritual to celebrate "Daddy's home!" He would pick up a gumball on the way home and drop it into the little pocket inside the bigger pocket on the side of his jacket. When he got home, I'd run up and check the little pocket to see what he had for me. It was always a gumball and I was always happy. (I was easily entertained at that age.)
When my kids came along I didn't pass that ritual on to them. We didn't have a gumball machine where I worked, I didn't always wear a suit every day, and not all of them had those little pockets. The only "Daddy's home" surprise I gave them was on a day when we had a new swimming pool, it was hotter than blue blazes outside, and I was wearing a wash-and-wear Palm Beach suit. I came in the front door and heard everybody in the pool, so I took off my shoes, emptied my pockets, took off my tie, and jumped in with them.
Back to this morning. I discovered that my suit pocket has one of those little pockets. I seldom poke my fingers in one of those little pockets without thinking of Dad's gumballs but today I discovered that the little pocket is the perfect size for my cell phone, and a perfectly secure place to put it. I'm not sure my father ever saw a cell phone in his life but I'm sure he'd be amazed.
When I was a boy we lived in Louisville and Dad worked for the Veterans Administration. He wore a suit and tie to work every day. This was in 1950, give or take a year, and you can visualize the suit. At the end of the day, we developed this little ritual to celebrate "Daddy's home!" He would pick up a gumball on the way home and drop it into the little pocket inside the bigger pocket on the side of his jacket. When he got home, I'd run up and check the little pocket to see what he had for me. It was always a gumball and I was always happy. (I was easily entertained at that age.)
When my kids came along I didn't pass that ritual on to them. We didn't have a gumball machine where I worked, I didn't always wear a suit every day, and not all of them had those little pockets. The only "Daddy's home" surprise I gave them was on a day when we had a new swimming pool, it was hotter than blue blazes outside, and I was wearing a wash-and-wear Palm Beach suit. I came in the front door and heard everybody in the pool, so I took off my shoes, emptied my pockets, took off my tie, and jumped in with them.
Back to this morning. I discovered that my suit pocket has one of those little pockets. I seldom poke my fingers in one of those little pockets without thinking of Dad's gumballs but today I discovered that the little pocket is the perfect size for my cell phone, and a perfectly secure place to put it. I'm not sure my father ever saw a cell phone in his life but I'm sure he'd be amazed.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
596 days
As I type this, there are 596 days and about 2 hours to go before the presidency of George W. Bush ends. And then, without a revolution, without bullets or blood in the streets, without the need for a military coup, the s.o.b. will pack up and go back to Texas.
596 more days. If you read this tomorrow it will be 595 days. That's not a day too early for me. I don't even have to decide who I will vote for when I say I cannot wait for the term of office of George W. Bush to end.
Thanks to my daughter, Laurel, for giving me a card with a computer chip that is counting down to January 20, 2009. My children know me well.
596 more days. If you read this tomorrow it will be 595 days. That's not a day too early for me. I don't even have to decide who I will vote for when I say I cannot wait for the term of office of George W. Bush to end.
Thanks to my daughter, Laurel, for giving me a card with a computer chip that is counting down to January 20, 2009. My children know me well.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
megan and conor
She: sippin' a margarita, watching him cook the day's catch
He: relaxed and cookin'
Catch of the day: "holy mackerel" (caught on a Sunday)
Catch of a lifetime: each other
He: relaxed and cookin'
Catch of the day: "holy mackerel" (caught on a Sunday)
Catch of a lifetime: each other
Friday, May 18, 2007
my grandfather, fishing
I have a project going, scanning old family photos with my whiz-bang scanner and sharing them with relatives. This is one of my favorite photos of my grandfather, Frazier Casey. When he wasn't conducting railroad trains he loved to fish. This was probably in eastern Kentucky, date unknown.
Friday, May 11, 2007
does somebody know how to do the rain dance?
On a normal day, from the windows of our tenth floor offices, I can see the dome of Tropicana Field, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and St. Petersburg's Pier. On a good day I can see western Hillborough County on the other side of Tampa Bay.
Today, the visibility is about three blocks. I can't even see the Pier.
To understand why, take a look at this:
http://www.fl-dof.com/wildfire2007/wildfire_map.html
Today, the visibility is about three blocks. I can't even see the Pier.
To understand why, take a look at this:
http://www.fl-dof.com/wildfire2007/wildfire_map.html
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
on the death of Boris Yeltsin
If the words Boris Yeltsin, Russia, freedom, democracy, Bill Clinton, and Christianity appear to you to be an unlikely combination of words, consider the following email I received today from the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (another seemingly unlikely combination of words, not associated with the Southern Baptist Convention), abbreviated to save some space:
April 24, 2007
A reflection on Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton and religious liberty
By Carolyn Staley*
I have just read the news about the death today of Boris Yeltsin. It brought to mind a conversation that Bill Clinton related to me about a meeting he had with Yeltsin in 1994 -- a meeting during which he shared his faith with Yeltsin.
I was in Russia in January 1994 when President Clinton's mother, Virgina Clinton Kelley, died. [Staley was a soprano soloist for the Verdi "Requiem Mass." Detailed summary of how she got to Russia omitted. ]
About a week later, the president traveled to Russia, . . . Sarah Caldwell took a chamber orchestra to Moscow to perform for Clinton. . ., and I sang a group of American hymns with them to honor Clinton's visit and his mother's memory.
After the concert, Clinton asked me to please come by the hotel where his staff was staying in Moscow, so that we might visit for a while about his mother's funeral after an official trip to Yeltsin's dacha for dinner earlier that evening. . . Clinton told me that Yeltsin asked him many questions about how a democratic society worked. . . .
When I met with Clinton, he shared with me an account from dinner that evening. . . . He said that during dinner, Yeltsin leaned over to him and asked, "You're a Christian, aren't you?"
"Yes," President Clinton answered. "My faith is the most important thing in my life."
"Well, I have to do something about all these Christians coming to Russia. They are ruining our country [because the Russian Orthodox Church was threatened with demise]. Everyone is becoming a new Christian, a born-again Christian, and they are being rebaptized and putting crosses around their necks. It is ruining our country's culture."
President Clinton told me he looked at Yeltsin and said, "Democracy doesn't work that way. Either you're free or you're not. You can't have it both ways. You need to allow Christians the freedom to come into your country and preach and teach, and you have to allow the Russian people the freedom to choose their faith."
I thought to myself, "what a remarkable exchange. . . Clinton may very well have helped keep the doors to Russia open for Christians and the spread of Christianity beyond Russian Orthodoxy. President and also advocate for religious liberty." . . .
I have often wondered what might have been if Clinton and Yeltsin hadn't formed a warm friendship that allowed Yeltsin to ask such questions of Clinton as he did about his faith. . .
" The Rev. Carolyn Staley is an advocate of religious liberty, a longtime Baptist Joint Committee supporter and the minister of education at Pulaski Heights Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.
April 24, 2007
A reflection on Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton and religious liberty
By Carolyn Staley*
I have just read the news about the death today of Boris Yeltsin. It brought to mind a conversation that Bill Clinton related to me about a meeting he had with Yeltsin in 1994 -- a meeting during which he shared his faith with Yeltsin.
I was in Russia in January 1994 when President Clinton's mother, Virgina Clinton Kelley, died. [Staley was a soprano soloist for the Verdi "Requiem Mass." Detailed summary of how she got to Russia omitted. ]
About a week later, the president traveled to Russia, . . . Sarah Caldwell took a chamber orchestra to Moscow to perform for Clinton. . ., and I sang a group of American hymns with them to honor Clinton's visit and his mother's memory.
After the concert, Clinton asked me to please come by the hotel where his staff was staying in Moscow, so that we might visit for a while about his mother's funeral after an official trip to Yeltsin's dacha for dinner earlier that evening. . . Clinton told me that Yeltsin asked him many questions about how a democratic society worked. . . .
When I met with Clinton, he shared with me an account from dinner that evening. . . . He said that during dinner, Yeltsin leaned over to him and asked, "You're a Christian, aren't you?"
"Yes," President Clinton answered. "My faith is the most important thing in my life."
"Well, I have to do something about all these Christians coming to Russia. They are ruining our country [because the Russian Orthodox Church was threatened with demise]. Everyone is becoming a new Christian, a born-again Christian, and they are being rebaptized and putting crosses around their necks. It is ruining our country's culture."
President Clinton told me he looked at Yeltsin and said, "Democracy doesn't work that way. Either you're free or you're not. You can't have it both ways. You need to allow Christians the freedom to come into your country and preach and teach, and you have to allow the Russian people the freedom to choose their faith."
I thought to myself, "what a remarkable exchange. . . Clinton may very well have helped keep the doors to Russia open for Christians and the spread of Christianity beyond Russian Orthodoxy. President and also advocate for religious liberty." . . .
I have often wondered what might have been if Clinton and Yeltsin hadn't formed a warm friendship that allowed Yeltsin to ask such questions of Clinton as he did about his faith. . .
" The Rev. Carolyn Staley is an advocate of religious liberty, a longtime Baptist Joint Committee supporter and the minister of education at Pulaski Heights Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
making up for lost time
It's been nearly three weeks since I last blogged. Jogging and blogging have this in common: Get out of the habit and it is easy not to do it again. But, blogging is much less painful.
Clearing the desk of a few items that deserved more space in a blog entry of their own:
I am now, without a doubt, a member of the bourgeoisie, the class my generation tried to rebel against in the Sixties. The earmarks were there all along but the final indicator, the litmus test, the ultimate badge, is that I am going to have a sprinkler system in my front yard with a new lawn to go with it. I've never had a sprinkler system before and my lawn really took a beating with the prolonged droughts that Florida has experienced over the years. The city finally came through with reclaimed water in our neighborhood and I ran out of excuses not to install a sprinkler system. It will be operational whenever the city gets around to inspecting it. My back yard will continue to have "native Florida groundcover," meaning an amazing variety of weeds that are impervious to drought. I'm going to chop some of that out and plant some actual plants, but more about that later.
I am sick to death of CNN, again. This time the cause of illness is the steady diet of Don Imus' ugly face and uglier voice apologizing for talking like a fool, his critics who want his ugly head on a pole, and now [news flash] the sperm donor for Anna Nicole Smith's baby has been identified. He is grinning and waving his arms like he's done something commendable, and this will keep CNN running full speed for the rest of the month.
The good news must be that there's nothing going on in Iraq or Afghanistan worth mentioning. Surely CNN would tell us, wouldn't they?
One of my motivations for getting the sprinkler system and new lawn installed is that we are having guests from out of town over Memorial Day weekend and I want to make our house look a little spiffier. The women will be here for a bridal shower for our daughter. The men, including her fiance, are going fishing. The story is that he has never caught a fish. I've spent many hours with the same result, but this trip promises to change our luck and I'm looking forward to it. Six hours of trolling with a little bottom fishing thrown in ought to give us something for dinner besides pizza.
We went to Savannah the end of March for our anniversary. My souvenir of the trip is a book of ghost stories written by a former journalist (I don't believe this is why she is a former journalist). They are like the better UFO stories in the sense that the people telling them don't really want to talk about them or gain any publicity from them. There's an amazing number of ghost stories out of Savannah, and if only ten percent have any truth to them, Savannah is one spooky city.
Not all ghost stories should be dismissed out of hand. My father, never the kind to make up such a story, once had an encounter with the "presence" (for lack of a better word) of a young man who had a reputation for being a roughneck, but he had been killed in an accident a year or two earlier. Dad was a teenager at the time. He was walking home - a hike for some distance along a country road - when he felt or detected this young man's presence. "Don't be afraid," the young man said. So Dad walked on home, not afraid but not willing to hang around either.
This has turned out longer than I expected, and it is past time to get that book and pick up where I left off, a perfect thing to do on a rainy evening.
Clearing the desk of a few items that deserved more space in a blog entry of their own:
I am now, without a doubt, a member of the bourgeoisie, the class my generation tried to rebel against in the Sixties. The earmarks were there all along but the final indicator, the litmus test, the ultimate badge, is that I am going to have a sprinkler system in my front yard with a new lawn to go with it. I've never had a sprinkler system before and my lawn really took a beating with the prolonged droughts that Florida has experienced over the years. The city finally came through with reclaimed water in our neighborhood and I ran out of excuses not to install a sprinkler system. It will be operational whenever the city gets around to inspecting it. My back yard will continue to have "native Florida groundcover," meaning an amazing variety of weeds that are impervious to drought. I'm going to chop some of that out and plant some actual plants, but more about that later.
I am sick to death of CNN, again. This time the cause of illness is the steady diet of Don Imus' ugly face and uglier voice apologizing for talking like a fool, his critics who want his ugly head on a pole, and now [news flash] the sperm donor for Anna Nicole Smith's baby has been identified. He is grinning and waving his arms like he's done something commendable, and this will keep CNN running full speed for the rest of the month.
The good news must be that there's nothing going on in Iraq or Afghanistan worth mentioning. Surely CNN would tell us, wouldn't they?
One of my motivations for getting the sprinkler system and new lawn installed is that we are having guests from out of town over Memorial Day weekend and I want to make our house look a little spiffier. The women will be here for a bridal shower for our daughter. The men, including her fiance, are going fishing. The story is that he has never caught a fish. I've spent many hours with the same result, but this trip promises to change our luck and I'm looking forward to it. Six hours of trolling with a little bottom fishing thrown in ought to give us something for dinner besides pizza.
We went to Savannah the end of March for our anniversary. My souvenir of the trip is a book of ghost stories written by a former journalist (I don't believe this is why she is a former journalist). They are like the better UFO stories in the sense that the people telling them don't really want to talk about them or gain any publicity from them. There's an amazing number of ghost stories out of Savannah, and if only ten percent have any truth to them, Savannah is one spooky city.
Not all ghost stories should be dismissed out of hand. My father, never the kind to make up such a story, once had an encounter with the "presence" (for lack of a better word) of a young man who had a reputation for being a roughneck, but he had been killed in an accident a year or two earlier. Dad was a teenager at the time. He was walking home - a hike for some distance along a country road - when he felt or detected this young man's presence. "Don't be afraid," the young man said. So Dad walked on home, not afraid but not willing to hang around either.
This has turned out longer than I expected, and it is past time to get that book and pick up where I left off, a perfect thing to do on a rainy evening.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
driving down life's highways
I've come close to "buying the farm" on the highway more than once and I'm proud to tell you about it, mainly because I'm still here to tell you about it.
That thought occurred to me few days ago on my way to work after a truck veered from the center lane to the outside lane right in front of me, slowing down on his way to pulling off the road onto the shoulder. I've got to assume he was having mechanical problems.
I'd looked down for a second and looked up just in time to see the butt end of this truck dead ahead of me. I thought he was stopping. I hit the brake and pulled to the left, hearing my rear tires squeal, vaguely aware that there was a car in my blind spot on the left. There was no car there or I had more room than I thought, or that driver saw what was about to happen and moved left himself, and there was no collision.
I have come closer to checking out. Once, driving north on I-75 en route to Gainesville, I saw a car pulled over on the south-bound side. Looking ahead again, I saw a damned fool stopped dead on the highway in my lane to get a better look at the other car. There was a car in my blind spot and I was going too fast to stop in time so I ran off the road, shot past the moron parked on the highway, and came to a stop on the shoulder. I sat there and literally shuddered at the closeness of the call. The imbecile awakened and drove on up the road. Society should be happy I do not carry a gun in my car.
An even closer call came one evening when I was driving home from Lake Worth. State Road 70 is a good two-lane country road but they had a bridge under reconstruction and they'd built a temporary bridge next to it. I had to go left, then right, to get onto the temporary bridge. As I came around and looked ahead, I saw the headlights of one fool passing another on the bridge. I had maybe a foot of clearance on my right, and all I could do was jam on the brakes and hope - there was no time for a prayer. The driver being passed must have done the same thing, giving the lunatic room to complete his suicidal passing maneuver just barely in time.
I can think of a couple of other close calls, all of which demonstrate that (1) you can never, ever, take your eyes off of the traffic in front of you, and (2) you can believe that God does watch over fools including me and the brain-dead cretins I've met on the highway.
That thought occurred to me few days ago on my way to work after a truck veered from the center lane to the outside lane right in front of me, slowing down on his way to pulling off the road onto the shoulder. I've got to assume he was having mechanical problems.
I'd looked down for a second and looked up just in time to see the butt end of this truck dead ahead of me. I thought he was stopping. I hit the brake and pulled to the left, hearing my rear tires squeal, vaguely aware that there was a car in my blind spot on the left. There was no car there or I had more room than I thought, or that driver saw what was about to happen and moved left himself, and there was no collision.
I have come closer to checking out. Once, driving north on I-75 en route to Gainesville, I saw a car pulled over on the south-bound side. Looking ahead again, I saw a damned fool stopped dead on the highway in my lane to get a better look at the other car. There was a car in my blind spot and I was going too fast to stop in time so I ran off the road, shot past the moron parked on the highway, and came to a stop on the shoulder. I sat there and literally shuddered at the closeness of the call. The imbecile awakened and drove on up the road. Society should be happy I do not carry a gun in my car.
An even closer call came one evening when I was driving home from Lake Worth. State Road 70 is a good two-lane country road but they had a bridge under reconstruction and they'd built a temporary bridge next to it. I had to go left, then right, to get onto the temporary bridge. As I came around and looked ahead, I saw the headlights of one fool passing another on the bridge. I had maybe a foot of clearance on my right, and all I could do was jam on the brakes and hope - there was no time for a prayer. The driver being passed must have done the same thing, giving the lunatic room to complete his suicidal passing maneuver just barely in time.
I can think of a couple of other close calls, all of which demonstrate that (1) you can never, ever, take your eyes off of the traffic in front of you, and (2) you can believe that God does watch over fools including me and the brain-dead cretins I've met on the highway.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
old family photos
I stayed home for two days earlier this week with a hacking cough [hack hack]. I was in the in-between stage that I hate: Too sick to go share my "bug" at the office, too well to go to the emergency room. Too sick to mow my lawn (you folks up North can just be jealous), too well to be comatose.
That gave me time for a project that I've put off for a rainy weekend, which is to organize family photos. I have a ton of them. The first priority is the really, really old ones but they are all important, or at least the non-blurry photos that include people we know. Blurry photos of scenic shots just don't have any lasting appeal.
My main motive is to have them where I can grab and go if we have to evacuate due to a tornado or a hurricane. On Sunday I realized I didn't know where they were. After hours of searching I discovered I did a decent job a few years back of putting many of them in ring binders with those plastic (but "archival") sheet protectors. Problem was, I'd put them in a safe place, which in this house is a great way to lose all track until you stumble across them by accident. I'm still looking for the rest of them, including two I scanned last summer and then put in a safe place.
Here's one I found, fortunately. Taken about 1915 or 1916, it shows my dad (on the right) and his brother. You'd have to love it even if you didn't know who they were.
That gave me time for a project that I've put off for a rainy weekend, which is to organize family photos. I have a ton of them. The first priority is the really, really old ones but they are all important, or at least the non-blurry photos that include people we know. Blurry photos of scenic shots just don't have any lasting appeal.
My main motive is to have them where I can grab and go if we have to evacuate due to a tornado or a hurricane. On Sunday I realized I didn't know where they were. After hours of searching I discovered I did a decent job a few years back of putting many of them in ring binders with those plastic (but "archival") sheet protectors. Problem was, I'd put them in a safe place, which in this house is a great way to lose all track until you stumble across them by accident. I'm still looking for the rest of them, including two I scanned last summer and then put in a safe place.
Here's one I found, fortunately. Taken about 1915 or 1916, it shows my dad (on the right) and his brother. You'd have to love it even if you didn't know who they were.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
ancestors, cont'd
Now that you've met my great-grandfather, meet my grandfather. Known to the family as "Pa," he travelled Kentucky in a mule-drawn wagon selling home products made by the Raleigh Company to farm families. This was before the days of the mail-order catalog, and the business was good enough to let him support a family with five children. He died before I was born but I've met little old ladies from Kentucky who remembered him as the "Raleigh Man."
Pa was also known in his small town as an expert on horses. They had a farmer's market in town on Saturdays, and if a buyer questioned the age of a horse they'd call him in. He could tell the age of a horse by looking at its teeth and, as the saying goes, his word was law on that subject.
He was also a loving family man, and a teetotaler. While I was getting this photo ready to post I spilled some red wine on my keyboard. It doesn't seem to have fried the keyboard but I hope that wasn't Pa's way of telling me he disapproved of my drinking.
Pa was also known in his small town as an expert on horses. They had a farmer's market in town on Saturdays, and if a buyer questioned the age of a horse they'd call him in. He could tell the age of a horse by looking at its teeth and, as the saying goes, his word was law on that subject.
He was also a loving family man, and a teetotaler. While I was getting this photo ready to post I spilled some red wine on my keyboard. It doesn't seem to have fried the keyboard but I hope that wasn't Pa's way of telling me he disapproved of my drinking.
I'm not suddenly into ancestor worship, here. I'm just amazed to have learned within the past couple of days that this photo and the one below exist, and that I was able to get digital copies over the Internet just by asking. Cool!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
ancestors
Let me introduce you to my great-grandfather. Born in 1832, he died when my father was two years old. He was a Kentucky man. I wish I could tell you his life story was a series of heroic deeds of pioneer days, but the best I can tell you is that he and his wife had eleven children over a span of 20 years and he supported his family by running a store. Considering the time and place, that's sounds heroic to me.
I didn't know this photo existed until yesterday. The original is in the possession of a distant cousin in Maryland. It was copied and distributed thanks to the magic of scanners and the Internet.
When I look at this photo on my monitor, enlarged to fill the screen, there seems to be a light in his eyes and he's looking directly at me. Click on the photo to enlarge it and tell me what you think.
I didn't know this photo existed until yesterday. The original is in the possession of a distant cousin in Maryland. It was copied and distributed thanks to the magic of scanners and the Internet.
When I look at this photo on my monitor, enlarged to fill the screen, there seems to be a light in his eyes and he's looking directly at me. Click on the photo to enlarge it and tell me what you think.
Monday, February 05, 2007
lunacy on Clearwater Beach, cont'd
Our local newspaper, which cannot stop fawning over bloated redevelopment projects, has done it again:
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/04/Northpinellas/Short_term_pain__for_.shtml
This seems to have been written with my earlier (unpublished) letter to the editor in front of the writer, for which I ought to be flattered.
Read it carefully. It is an admission of failure. Despite plans that have not borne fruit, they advocate plowing ahead (literally) by plowing up most of the existing parking on South Beach in hopes of what might be built two years from now.
We have friends with a business on the beach. Over the past two years they have lost money, big time. They are not likely to hold out for two more years.
Just because our city has planned to act like lunatics for several years does not mean that they must act like lunatics now.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/04/Northpinellas/Short_term_pain__for_.shtml
This seems to have been written with my earlier (unpublished) letter to the editor in front of the writer, for which I ought to be flattered.
Read it carefully. It is an admission of failure. Despite plans that have not borne fruit, they advocate plowing ahead (literally) by plowing up most of the existing parking on South Beach in hopes of what might be built two years from now.
We have friends with a business on the beach. Over the past two years they have lost money, big time. They are not likely to hold out for two more years.
Just because our city has planned to act like lunatics for several years does not mean that they must act like lunatics now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
