Safe Thoughts

     From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country's battles on the land and on the sea.  The first time I heard it sung, I was unaware of its tie to Marines.  The war was over and the song made me feel pride.  Marines were mythical to me.  Like warriors who stayed in a battle, somewhere, never coming home.  Living to die. I'd never seen one.
     Now, sixty-six years later, I know the irony is killing Pentagonians.  They've been financing a new beach lander that has sucked up money like a vacuum cleaner, for years, and can't pass any tests for a fast, firing, armored machine to bring troops out of the water and onto land with occupying power.
     The very idea was from WWII.  So no design could improve on a contraption few could foresee a use for.
     Just as well.  The shores of Tripoli are coming to the water.  Evacuees headed into the Mediterranean.  The United States should have some Marines offshore, assisting .  Room and board on a cruiser, free, while they sort out the next move via high tech communications.  Some probably would be willing to kick down on the costs.  Others just don't want to live to die a violent death at home.
     We could empty Gheddafi of his followers and haters to the point of no populace. Imagine an entire Diaspora returning to start their country over after spending time connected and discussing in a peaceful setting.

May 22, Sunday, '11

     I remember back when we were afraid of the Russians.  They had ICBM's that could reach and target us, the United States of  America.  But the joke was that our town was so backwoods it wasn't even on their maps to bomb.  Even during WW11, I heard adults say Hitler had no reason to hit us; nothing here.  Probably lots of small burgs felt the same sort of "safety."

     However, speaking in terms of natural disasters and extreme climate, I consider this town to be one of the safest places on the planet.  The worst weather is downpours of rain in lightning and thunder and lots of ephemeral blizzards.  The seasons are all obvious, lasting about three months.  The only foreign invasion is natives returning.  When I first returned, kinda to stay, Bette said, "There's nothing here anymore, just people coming back to die."   Now, that sounds very safe, to me.

    Drugs are an evolutionary step.  Today, anywhere, at every social level, drugs are available to cope with the speed of evolution.  All drugs are  means to temporarily escape the race.
     In earliest times, the purveyor of the most expansive drugs was the shaman.  No shaman ever had access to the drugs on todays's legal and illegal markets.  It's just that in our earliest beginnings as ignorant cave dwellers, a bowlful of herbs could cause hallucinations of religious intensity.  Plus he provided the only entertainment ritual.
     Everybody is on some drug and probably suffering unhealthy side-effects.  We evolve in a fog.

     His dad was a fascist and he suckled at the steroid tit.  Women as objects from the git-go.

     Some things should come back
     Just because they're such treats;
     Vine-ripe tomatoes
     And line-dried sheets.

    Commercial red and plump
    With no taste close,
     And scent in a dryer
     Overpowering our nose

     Can't match the past
     For a memory to beat
     Like vine-ripe tomatoes
     And line-dried sheets.

     19May11 = Who...shall I say...is calling?  Leonard Cohen, Below The Salt.  Life is good.

     Yesterday was my fifty-fifth high school grad party in Glenroy.  I ten-speed to make it by 6:00.  Never did the route before on a bike and thought I knew it well enough to ride with traffic.  No bike space!  Had to ride the white line for most of the 3-4 miles on a state highway.  With a double-bowl buzz and two Blue Ribbons in me.  And one twisted in my wallet in case I get the opportunity to kick the high at the party.
     All I did was run around red-eyed touting my blog.  No target audience in that group of olders.  Of course, the black-on-tan Jimi Hendrix embossed commemorative t-shirt was just as foreign to them.  Especially, Carol.  A chick I traded class rings with and proposed to while in the Air Force,  wasn't even friendly.  Would five and a half decades make that much difference in memories?  Next question.
      There was a small huddle which offered comments about my doc.  The question of my thick hair growth brought this from Jerry, "It's that marijuana that makes it grow."  I wish weed grew like hair.  Rodney told me his grandson had a bong for him to ease his pains. "Have you ever seen a bong?"  Yeah, he brought it to my house.  "I had a metal one that was two-feet long."  I offered to do the joint with Terry but he looked way far off and softly said, "No."
     Had a conversation with my only college roommate, Sturge.  Four years after that, we were both in Tiffin.  He'd graduated and I was returning to school with a family.  He recalled the time he took Judy to Chicago to catch a train to visit her parents in Wisconsin, driving the '55 Olds he'd purchased after getting a coaching gig in Bucyrus.  Didn't register with me.  The story he told about bringing three people up to the second floor apartment bedroom after I'd given him the key but hadn't left town yet, I'd forgotten.  


30May - A chick ugly as a gunfight comes charging me, screaming, "If you make the deal, make it real!"  I'm stunned but backing up.
     What can a man do in all this mayhem?  I was trying to think and reason and rationalize.  I felt like an oak leaf on lake ice, absorbing sun rays to keep a tiny area around it free from freezing.
     Let me stay in your air, in a sweat-free free-breathing space.  Let me stay here, don't send me back to my heavy-heated place.
     She was city crazy and ignorant enough to believe chickens had to be milked to get chicken broth.  My voice was cracking and jumping to high notes as I was speaking so fast my tongue was loose at both ends, trying to talk her down.
     Then her gaze appeared as a multiple-mirror image on a face ready to crash.
      Someone has written lyrics that will be for you, personally, and the song will always be your memory.
     Nothing fills up a tense space like a good melody.

Last day of May '11 -
   
     Gonna grow up and get into a saddle
     And look the world over for the treat
     Where I can ride my horse in the middle
     Of that famous Pony Street

     Wanna ride my horse down Pony Street
     Where every house is a stall
     And park wherever I see
     A nice place to lie in the straw

Maybe the best stuff ever written is yet to come and all we've read and heard is just leading to words to be heard by all, all in the world, all on God's earth.  That's what I want to put down, what I want to say.  But each has to pray.

     The day she gave me a crystal and taught me to whistle was the last best thing she did for me.

Been singing the best ever prayer
Alone, never bothered to share
Waiting for you to be there

     We had serious issues in Mogadishu
     But were mostly out of the plot
     When a bomb meant for another
     Blew our plans asunder
     And you got the worst of the lot.

     I'll always remember the way we
     Were tethered to each other and to the ploy,
     Pulling our way plus the weight of the mission,
     I still wonder that we did it somehow.

1jun 11 - objet d'art.  objet d'Perk.  The Sunbeam toaster, circa 1955, is disassembled, probably for the last time.  Of course, it didn't work when I got it, so I took it apart and sanded the contacts.  Worked for years.  A real unique way to show off toast.  Put in the slices, they retract automatically and brown bread to infinite increments of done.  Then it rises from the slots to be slathered with butter.
     It is a beautiful machine with real chrome that still can be buffed to gleaming.  But, alas, the contacts are too thin to allow for the automatic features and it sits in sections.  The chrome panels are removed and I use a broken clothes pin to manually close the contacts.  Waiting for toast, by hand, is like watching for a pot to boil.  I do less toast than before.

2jun11 -
     Did I mention the natural birth control going on at the lake?  Last year, six pair of Canada geese had
six goslings.  This year, three pair nested and two had 3 chicks and one had 4.  The mallard I saw, today, had nine ducklings paddle-crowding behind her.
     Last week I see a mother-daughter pair ahead of me doing exaggerated arm swings while walking in flip-flops. "I like the stride but the footwear leaves something to be desired."  The older lady said her feet were killing her. About ten yards later, I hear this sound behind me and gaining.  Ten yards later, the younger of the two is running in flip-flops and about to pass me.  I had to speed up to stay even and she quit when I dropped down to the beach. Couldn't have been more than eight or nine.  Shocked me to a kick.  In flip-flops!
     Another time, last week, I see a mom and three kids trying to fly kites on the first beach, while on my first turn.  Boy, about eleven, two girls, younger.  They were running in an attempt to get the toys in the air.  On me second turn, all except the youngest was still trying to fly a kite while mom and the older kids were sitting on the dock.  I stopped and explained that there was enough breeze coming across the lake to get the kite up without running.
     The tail was tangled into the main string, so I re-hooked it and told her to let out some string.  More.  The Kite went airborne in a second.  More string.  Once it was up about twenty-feet, I handed her the handle and continued running.

6jun11 -
     Star went by me at the lake, today, just as I'd changed into the bike lane for oncoming traffic. Athletic and attractive.  Come to think of it, athletic is attractive.  On my second turn, I stopped her and told her I'm here every other day all year long and want to know everyone I'm running with, or running away from ... you're way too fast for me.  Lori.

I want to travel lightly
Like a feather on your street.
I want to travel lightly
You'll never hear my footstep's beat.

I'm carrying little baggage
Barely have enough to eat.
I'm carrying little baggage
Just flying by my seat.

No illusions of claims to fame.
Watched the stop of an oldest flame.
Still hiding never told acts of shame.
Way past being able to tame.

No thanks to the latest video game
Little doubt in my mind, they can drive one insane.
How long to remain is a question others ask?
How much more pain to continue the task?

Pretty much every new thing looks the same,
The place I'm in is like the one from which I just came.
I'm making do with an ancient brain and legs half lame.

16jun11 -
     I want to be just good enough to be discovered, just long enough to rise like a star-show, just soon enough to make some money, just time enough to save for tomorrow.

    I'm not averse to sex.
    I'm not a verse to anything.
     I'm not even a poem
     Or a paean to home
     Or a rhyme about time
     Or lyrics to sing.

     I want to wake up to a Maui morning, get into an ocean breeze for a run.
     I want to wake up to a Maui morning, with a blue sky filling up with sun.
     Dreaming is better if you've lived the dream
     If you've experienced the reason you long
     For places you've been to and seen
     Where once you believed you belong.

     Two rabbits came out of that greenhouse nest and have found hiding places around the yard.  Then Dij brought two more his girlfriend had kept in a small cage.  All four are loose, somewhere.  I see bunnies every day but can't tell one from the four.  Robin built a nest an arm's length from my kitchen window.  Three nestlings.  They're scattered about the area, peeping for the parents to deliver worms.  Cardinal nest in the privet arch and doves in the pine next door.  Pair of bluebirds flew through, last week. Starlings chased a pileated woodpecker from near their purloined nest cavities. Chipping sparrows feeding offspring on seeds from driveway weeds.  Deer have decimated my sunflower plants, so the Castor bean plants will blanket the area where they both grow.

27Jun11-
     There was a bar in Gary, Indiana where Bro' Braz and I got high in the ladies restroom.  His wife had to wait in the car when she indicated she wanted to come in and take a whiz.  "It's where we get high!"
     After toasting one with another dude, we got a beer and took a booth.  Braz talked to three grizzled acquaintances at the bar.  One said he was from Missouri, so far back in the woods you could tell how tight a mule's collar was by the way it farted.
     There was a lean licorice lady sitting a stool away from the Missourian.  I suggested to Braz I'd like to dance with her.  He didn't think it was a good idea, since she was Missouri's.  The song was familiar rock (more than likely a band I'd seen live) and when I approached her, she declined because she "can't dance."
     I gently got her off the stool and guided her to the floor.  She could dance.  At least well enough to allow me to bust the moves I wanted.  I walked her to her stool with a "thank you."
     "Man, we're leaving after this beer."
     "Yeah, M A is still waiting in the 'chine."
     "That's the second reason we're outta here."

      GUT BUCKET BLUES

The blues slid up and hugged me.
Said I want to be your friend,
I'll be there for you always.
Even to the very end.

Been too long since anyone
Even tried to soothe my mood.
It's been so long darling,
Since I kissed someone new.

It's serious, sinewy chewing
On loneliness and being way down.
I believe I'm desperate enough
To stick my head in a full bucket and drown.

Damn, is it July already? -
     One July day, I was walking into the plant with a co-worker lugging a huge cooler filled with iced Sprite, sugared juice and assorted colas.  Instead of giving him a hand, I bantered about his efforts to provide drinks I avoid.
     Much later, after six or so hours of shirt-soaking labor, I began hearing sounds which tickled my subconscious, from inside that deep, lidded, single-handled cooler.  Subtle bumps and clinking and muffled sploshes, as ice and cold plastic bottles jockey for a floating position.
     I had been to the water fountain and lunch, where I quaffed two glasses of half lemonade and half Mountain Dew.  I had replaced lots of perspiration, but those sounds I'd heard in the parking lot kept gnawing at my thirst glands.
    The dude came to within earshot and I asked him what he'd charge for one of whatever he had left.  He said if I wanted one, to walk down to the machine he was working on and help myself.  I thanked him and continued unstacking.  You have to realize how out of character it was for me to ask after a sugar fix to fight thirst.  I mean people be chugging all manner of canned colas and bottled fizz syrup, while I hit the fountain like a camel, loading my stomach to last until the next drink.
    Next thing I know, a 20-ounce Sprite is handed person-to-person from three presses away to press #3, into my hands, and the dude motions that I should shake it a little first.  I turned it end-for-end a couple times and set it on the ledge at the end of my machine.
     It had a cool, green glow and it was beginning to form beads of moisture on the sides.  At the next lull, I snatched it up, twisted the cap off and tipped it up to swallow three big drafts.  It was sheer heaven in the hubs of hell.

2Jul11 -
     My health began failing a couple weeks back.  Low energy.  Drowsy during awake hours.  Movements mushy. Eating as habit, no enjoyment.  Bagged a run.  Then bagged lifting.  I wondered if it wasn't the beginning of something really serious.
    Yesterday, while visiting a recuperating Paleo, I met a hippie dude and we were discussing beans and greens.  When I mentioned polk greens, he cautioned me they could be toxic.  Flash!  Dude, you may have just saved my life.  Check the net, bro'.
     Whoa, I've been poisoning myself from backyard plants.  Polk greens need to be boiled and drained to be edible.  Only new shoots (under 8-inches) should be consumed.  I have plants four-feet tall and have been stir frying leaves longer than shoots.  I'd kept them out of my diet for the day before yesterday and now, after two days free, the difference is obvious.

3Jul11 -
          HAPPY

Birthday's just another day
On the way to an age
Plus one more year,
Sans another peer
Turn the page
And give them
One more thing to hear.
I'm living with a cheer!


          FROM BITTER SEARCHING OF THE HEART...

Tell them goodbye one last time, you know they will not answer.
Wish them well, as before, your daughters are forever gone, sir.
You need not remind them to remember before it turned sour.
They know as well as you, they lived there too, every hour.

But they see desertion where we see travel.
We look for some loyalty and get ire.
Growing apart can only gap so far,
Then the chasm is a wall of barbed wire.

Kids kinda turn out like early classmates
Who decades later we can't name
Until we are reminded of a bit
Of the past which brightens our brain.    

 8Jul11-
Last time I was here, I remember typing 4Jul11 but nothing else.  Been Flip'n around.  Google changed the look of  the blog and I couldn't find my dashboard.  Still haven't, but found a way to edit this post.
  12Jul11 -
      A wild rabbit doesn't sit around trying to avoid a fright flight for life.  A feral hare must practice, with stretches, sprints and zig-zag cuts for a few seconds every day.  Then, when th dash tof safety arises, brer bunny will be prepared to circle back to home base.  If a predator is swift and cunning and closing for a meal, a 90-degree cut on a dime will leave jaws snapping in the breeze and a stomach empty still.


3Aug11 -

    Take away the pops stars, celebrities and dignitaries, remove the politicians and patricians, you're left with patriots and the proletariat poor; the largest mob force or voting voice in America.  I feel like America.
    Feet on the ground and head in the clouds, I'm bad as I want to be and totally proud.



         ONE HORSE HARNESSED

    I'm going to pull my happy wagon
    Up to your doorstep like a sleigh.
    You'll know immediately, baby,
    I've come to haul your blues away.

    My wagon use is used to weed
    As I toke into still free air,
    But I always recognize the need
    To pick you up and banish a care.

    My wagon rides high, for sure,
    Sometimes it's a glide over grass.
    Other times it's all full-bore,
    Hang on, you just ride, I got the gas.

20Aug-
    
                    OLD AS EVOLUTION

     Evolution can happen in a lifetime and the longer the life, the more obvious it becomes.
     Old people have evolved in their own right, by slowing to think prior to reacting to the ignorance of the young.
     Patience is an evolving trait.  The difficulty is the time spent mastering it.  Then it becomes more clear, year after year, that some years were wasted.



  ...OR A WINDOW TO TOSS IT OUT OF!


That poor genius, do you suppose he doesn't know?
The things he could do with that brain, the places he could go?

I know if I had his mind, I'd spend time studying something to make money
Instead of sitting sans a pot...proud of what he hasn't got and thinking it's funny.


               GOOD DUE BEE

I'm a sweet bee, only sting when I feel the need,
I'll haul your necter from all over, buzzing with my flying speed.

Ain't no hornet, darlin', ain't no bumblebee.
Won't bury my dagger in anger or accidentily.

I don' have a queen that I drone for and work to satisfy,
Just need me a pretty knees bee to trade bee sugar on the fly.

I can take it or leave it, I'm a bee that's free
To pick my own hive and back my own jive
And to do what is right for me.

13Sep11 -

     Took a date to an arts theatre to hear a musician friend of mine.  He's off the 'skey slope after a decade and I been knowing the cat since a decade prior to that and don't remember hearing much from a clean tongue. He sounded great and did a Hendrix (Manic Depression) for me.  I invited him to my crib and we had a great visit.  I explained to him that I've been anxious to get together and see about singing some of my verses.  He tuned my guitar and I read Good Due Bee to him.  He bent over my shoulder, hit some Muddy Waters type gut-bucket licks and  sang it.  He took a copy with him and said he was doing it at his next gig.   He took a printout of this entire post.
     Actually, my date drove me.  I have an exhibition, an air show and a concert lined up for us to attend.  She stopped by tonight for some wine and weed.  Before she went home, I suggested marriage and with comments about how "fast"  the idea seemed, she refused.  Just like the ones that ended up saying yes.

22Sep11 -

     Lotsa folks toked at the Mill's.  On the way to work.  At lunch break.  On the ride home.  Carman rode with me, so you know we were high.  She was so hot, and knew all the lyrics to what was being played at the time...it was a joy to go to work.  Come to think of it, the way her live nosedived into major sorrow and just as major degeneracy, she'd gladly take that drive back into time.
     Anyway, our foreman, who was as hip as anyone I ever worked for, warned her about coming into work with "those Chinese eyes."

                                       
                                                          CHINA-IZE

The souls of those who sin to hasten extinction are as thin as the skin in the shark's fin soup they slurp.


Trying to get comfortable in one's own, may last until the end
When there is far less comfort and too much skin.

2Oct11 -

     President Obama, color the gray, right now.  It is old in everyone's eye. Respect for the elderly is measured by the amount of gray in their hair.  It also is a guage of weakness and deference to ones near their end.  The only lie everyone sanctions is THE BIG DYE LIE.

    Dij brought a pinch of stuff from the same "Stupid" I have a clone from and spoke of returning after I had finished my run.  I have fourteen sheets of 3/8 drywall to put upstairs.  He returned with a big yellow handle and began checking the blades.  He was ready to start putting it up, horizontally, and cutting out the three windows.  Whoa!
     I took him up to show the four sheets I have in place on each side of two windows.  The 2x12x14ft boards spanning the room limit the 8ft height of the sheetrock by 1-inch, but on the ends of the room, I slid it behind the 2x12's.  The two on each side of another window had to be trimmed.  I'd tried to use a razor knife on one and cut the other with a battery reciprocating saw. The are standing sans any screws.
    "Oh no, baby, ain't gonna be no cuttin' out windows.  Except for the spaces at the top and bottom, of course. The seams will be in the corners of the room.  As far as hanging crossways instead of up...it may be the way you do it but if I've seen it, I didn't recognize it."
     Dij just smiled when I told him that everything that's up is freestanding.  "OK, X, it's your gig."  He left the Lutz 357 lying on my kitchen chair.

12Oct11 -

     The only way to see the subtle changes natives may miss is to leave for a few decades and then return.  "Nothing ever changes here," is a statement by those who stay near, year after year. 
     Reverend Bob recently returned for a revival, eighteen years after leaving. We first met when I was helping the Steel Breeze do some work in the Prebyterian church.  We were replacing fluorescent tubes and I handed one down.  When he grabbed it with one hand, I said, "May the force be with you, Rev."
     At the time, I was jobless, homeless, penniless and had been a vagabond for a dozen years. We had conversations which lasted for hours or for a few minutes over a beer, but never about the practice of religion.
     Since then, he's lived across the country and outside of it, got the top degree and has another son.  I got a job, bought a house and have a monthly retirement check.  If not for a brief reunion, neither of us could have covered nearly two decades in two minutes and filed the changes.

Nothing I've posted here seems to stick since the 12Oct11.
It's like I can't throw any scribbled notes away after posting them here.  I've lost' a lot of shit already.
     Perhaps it's a lesson, or a sign to stop the high ramblings of an old t'ic.
It's nov 10 and everything since the 12th is gone when I return next day.

Naw, take another toke to make sure it's the smoke and not another old stroke of temporarily losing it.

    Your leaving feels like icy rain, the same cold pain on my neck, the same wet chills to drain.

What you did for him was boring, what you did for me was freeing.

     Why is ignorance so persistant?  That's the way it stays ignorant.

Can't justify the rush to capture her
With big talk and money spent on her
But bottom line is "She couldn't stand
In the plans I made for her."

11-11-11 -

     I'm a vet, four years United States Air Force.  Four years of peace in the entire world. No shooting war for US to go win.  Seems they landed a planeload of Marines in Lebanon and that was it. My basic training lasted one month in Texas. Tech training lasted 16-weeks in Mississippi. First base, Youngstown Ohio.  Next and last base, Madison Wisconsin.  Four years of chasing, chugging and chowing down.  Zero plans past the next hangover. But fate stopped the haste to self-waste at the end of my enlistment.
     Today, I planned to run early enough to cross the island bridge.  An assault in honor of real warriors. But the full moon on the western side was being faded by early cloud  cover and the sun was about to floodlight everything.  I was dressed to blend, dark from  cap to shoes, and the north side of the island was still in shadow. 
     Jump the barrier, run the north side, then finish on south.  The chances of being seen by any state worker was minimal.  Do the donut, one turn around the lake, one around the island, home. No, just check out the steps to get around the fence, now, and maybe do it on the next turn.  I stepped from the side fence post to the side of the bridge and looked over.  Easy beans.  I stepped back and began my run and the first vehicle I saw was a state pickup with safety lights and all, in the approaching lane, on a straight stretch which allowed full vision of the bridge and me.
     On my second pass, the truck was sitting on the downside of the highway dam, with a view of the bridge up above.  I waved.

12Nov11-

     Joe Frazier broke two male hearts in Toledo.  Mick and I adored Cassius Clay.  We supported everything he did, all the way to Muhammed Ali.  We took the white-side of The Greatest and enjoyed the insults to black Joe.  SI wrote he was soaking his head in buckets of salt water to toughen his skin against cuts which might stop a fight.  Mick thought it was "illegal!"
     Mick drove the fifty-miles for us to watch the fight on a huge screen.  It was quiet all the way home.
     When Joe smoked that blow which toppled our tower, we never recovered from the shock.  We knew the belt was lost to the one piece of  arsenal that Joe Frazier unleashed until it hit the button: a short, sharp hook with a boom attached.
      A decade earlier, I'd heard lighter skins sound on darker ones.  It was while I was in the Air Force.  I was stationed on a small installation that was close to fifty-percent black.  Both my barracks roomies were black.  Except, back then, no negro ever used the word.  They would speak the word as "b-mother...."  Like Speedy was telling me about a breakout at a negro party off base.  "Everybody started calling each other b-mother...."
     Anyway, Gene Washington approached me in the personnel office, while processing an airman onto the base.  Smiling and whispering in my ear, he said, "Jones, this is the ugliest mother... in the Air Defense Command," as he opened a records cabinet.
     The object of his derision was behind me and I turned to be looking at blue-tined shades on a human go-rilla.  This negro was filling up the largest military uniform I'd ever seen.  His weight was a guess because no floor scale could record it.  And he was stareing at me from invisible eyes as if he'd heard Wash.  I had to act like I hadn't turned to look, while my smile went to fear.

15Nov11 -

     Did the donut run in the rain: climbed around the seven foot fence and went across the bridge.  It was a rush after years of being banned from it.  The beavers are happy, two major poplar trees felled across the path.  They're stripping the bark and hauling material to extend the lodge.  Lots of other trees and limbs to negotiate, plus the heartbeat of jogging on forbidden ground.  I really missed it, even though I have been running the longer two-turns-around-the-lake route.  I'll probably start running earlier and avoid the presence of staters.
     On the south bank, I noticed a tree being chewed down.  The top limbs were tangled, so when it was cut through, it simply slipped like a spear into the ground.  The beaver re-cut and the same thing happened. 
     I'm aware that if man attempts to help a beaver with a tree, the beaver abandons the site.  But I couldn't stand it and after a series of attempts, I'd quit and continued running.  Finally, I got a digging stick and began the task of getting the tree loose enough to come down.  With some major straining, I moved the pointed base about a foot down the bank slope.  The top branches came free but I had to get under the path of the fall for the final pull, then get out of the way. It's been over a month and I see the bark is finally being stripped, or eaten.
     I went to visit Bart and then he visited me.  He's been reading this on a palm screen and I ask him about an entry and he wasn't familiar with it, so in defense he tells me I should be on facebook.  To expose my blog?  Yeah, man, you'll get tons of feedback.  He set a page up for me.  I don't think I get it, yet.

23Nov11 -

     I have BOOGIE HALL in draft.  As I point out, my rendition of those days is one of at least four others from the original five.  The last one I had any contact with told me to forget Boogie Hall and accept Jesus Christ as your....  I can't help but think it was an important part of all our lives.  Guess I'll find out.

28Nov -

     Bart asks me the name of my house.  I had no idea for an answer or where his queries come from. 
She's Proteus.  From the outside, a facade.  Inside, she has taken many forms and continues to evolve.  In the interest of getting her into a leaner state, after 125 years of layering, hundreds of buckets of plaster and bunches of bundles of lath have been eliminated.  I tore it down and carried it out.  I should do an entire post on THIS OLD CRIB.

     Or DOOR TO DOOR, about my jogs.  Saw a pair of bluebirds, yesterday.  The black ducks have established a small flock.  I asked Tina if she's ever seen any black ducks at the lake and she answered, "Daffy?" 
     Or FROM THE PERCH.  Starlings must be the furthest evolved of all birds.   Their flocks are close-knit communities with constant conversations.

In any case, The Colonel is dead, with a lot of bloodshed that suggestions in the beginning of this post may have averted.

    
    

4/20

     Had an oscar delivered this morning.  Been bowled up all day.  Bagged a run.  Baked bread.  Planted Kohllrabi and beets.  Took the wind-torn door off my greenhouse and used boards for raised-bed borders.  Walked to PO, mailed some letters and stopped by to buy a classic lotto on the way back.  No, I guess I got the ticket first.
     That's when I talked to the City Auditor about the political scene. Said I don't trust old people politicians, need new blood to do something before they get muddied up and on the take or senile and led around.
     Found a carrot in my garden that had wintered over (kept growing.)  Measured six-inches long and four-inches at widest girth.  The flavor is delicate but the consistency is like soft ice which crumbles and melts as you chew it.
     My greenhouse is a seven-foot cube of a variety of windows.  Cookie said it's a work of art.  Paleo said it is constructed on the perfect angle the ancients chose for a habitable cave, with the opening slightly to the east of south to catch maximum sunlight.  Five days ago, maybe six, I notice a rabbit gathering clumps of dry grass to resemble big walrus whiskers and carrying them to the southwest corner of the greenhouse.  The sense of urgency was necessary as it has rained every day since.
     I've heard stories of females finding ways to return at night to feed nestlings even if something falls in the way.  And about males eating young.  And that a rabbit will abandoned the nest if human scent is detected.
     I checked on the nest every day and I've seen an adult rabbit on the outside and I'm certain it stays under the platform porch of the glass house but never saw one go inside until two days ago.
     After sunset, the rabbit circled around the structure, hesitating often, before going inside to the nest.  The next morning the nest looked the same, still covered with the grass, but with lots of moisture around it.
     Yesterday, there were rabbits in every direction.  The first one I noticed was sitting up and it looked huge.  It was outside the corner where the nest is.  The temperature was in the low seventies with intermittent showers and the grass was removed to reveal a clump of newborns.
     For the next few hours before dark, as wet as it was, rabbits were all around, across the street, next door, two doors down.  They would run at one another and begin a high speed zig-zag chase.  Then another would run towards the other two.  A couple times I saw the second jump straight up to avoid the rush of the first. They were concentrated in a view from my stool perch window.  More than one made the trip into the greenhouse and checked the view as they traveled around the edge towards the nest.
     The bobtail cat was in the neighbor's high grass, watching the action.  I let the dog out and a rabbit watched her go around the greenhouse, reluctant to move until Zimba was within a few feet before jumping.
     I'm only guessing that they were turned on by the perfect nest location.  It was definitely more celebration than happenstance meetings.
      I have seen no rabbit or rabbits the entire day.  The grass is back over the top of the nest.
7May - On Easter Saturday, part of the nest was pulled back and a bunny was exposed.  The area was wet and water was dripping, and my first thought was it was attempting to leave the nest but it was still.  I called my neighbor who was in the middle of "just out of bed" breakfast with kids and grandkids.  She brought her son-in-law and two kids to see.  The next day, the nest was recovered, so no Easter bunnies jumping around.
      The mother was still going inside the greenhouse every evening and the nest was snug.  I kept watching, expecting the litter to stay around, but exactly two weeks from April 20th, the nest was vacated and no rabbits around. That evening, the mother came inside the greenhouse and the little ones followed.
     When young rabbits move, they scurry like other rodents.  This year's offspring may get less action than all the others since Zimba arrived.  Just say "rabbit" and she was headed for the door.  She stalked them to jump and was right behind them.  Then she learned to hot-track and forced them into the full circle escape route.  She still chases but just to get one out of the yard.  Still checks out all the past places they used to hide.

LAST QUACK

     Judith Anne held the duck in her lap and rolled down the window of the slowly moving automobile.  Her plan was working.
     Earlier, soon after her entry in the 4-H spring show had won a blue ribbon, the family discussed the impending move which would end their semi-country lifestyle.
     She'd raised the duck from a yellow duckling.  Ordinarily, she would take a winning animal home or it would have already been sold.  The farm was alive with chickens, geese, ducks, lambs and larger livestock to go with a variety of dogs and cats.
     That was all ending, fast and furiously as each of them dealt with this transfer to an urban setting.  When her father suggested having "roast duck" in jest, Judy asked if they could drive "a turn" around the lake before going home.
     Setting the duck on the edge of the open window, Judy whispered.
     "Petey, it is time to flee, time to be free."
     The name had always been derided, since the duck was a female.
     "Petey, don't be afraid.  You are a duck but we can't have a duck in Indianapolis. You'll be safe here...people feed ducks here...."
     Judith nudged the duck and it fell , flapped to a beak-first landing, stood and quacked.
     Petey had never seen a large body of water.  The next morning, she wasn't far from where she'd landed, sitting near the edge of the lake.  Her feathers were reflectively white and obviously trimmed to show.
     A jogger attempted to chase the duck, figuring it would go into the water.  Petey simply ran further along the bank.
     For two days and nights, Petey wandered only a short distance.  Two boys on bicycles stopped, dropped the bikes and chased after the duck.  When they changed tactics and approached from opposite directions, Petey was forced to go into the lake.  Within a second she was safely away.  Except for the stuff the boys began throwing, but she was out of their no-throwing arms range.
     Once she was paddling around on the lake, a flock of canada geese noticed.  Nineteen formed a semi-circle around the newcomer, twenty-feet from shore.  They watched from a few yards distance, doing goose-gurgle observations.  They soon lost interest and swam away.
     Petey still spent most time out of the water.  For a few more days she stayed closeby.  The jogger ran down towards her and she flew into the water.  "Good you're going into the lake with the getter-punks that rampage this place at night," he thought.
     When the smattering of mallards finally got hip to Petey, things changed fast.  First, all the drakes approached, while the hens kept their distance.  Eventually, Petey was a welcome member in the flock.  She was soon imitating the bobbing action needed to feed from underwater vegetation.
     The mallard flock inhabited all of the lake, the center island, under the connecting bridge, the steep banks on the south edge, the sand beaches on the north and everything in between. As the season progressed, the white duck kept regular company with seven mallards, four drakes and three hens.   They roosted together, fed together and swam togther, often with Petey in the back which resembled a white tug pushing gray barges.
     A migrating white egret saw Petey and perched on the limb of a large oak collapsed into the lake.  For some time, he watched.  From across the lake, she appeared as his reflection.  Many hours passed before the bird realized there was no way this one was going to leave the lake and fly away.
     "That white duck" was observed by many walkers, joggers and the circle of drivers and riders.  None knew where it came from but it was obviously having a good life at the lake.  A few worried for it, thinking of the coming winter season and the pack of coyotes which had managed to catch and devour an aged beaver two winters back.   
     Soon after the first snowfall, the geese began to leave.  The last to fly away were the three dozen yearlings from the six spring nests. 
     When the ice began to form, the mallards started their migration.  Petey's group was the last to leave.  As the space beneath the bridge became the last to freeze, she stayed there.  More snow fell and covered the lake and island.  Some farther north geese landed for awhile, on their way south.  Petey walked over to see them but they soon flew on.
     Tempratures dropped and ice closed the last area of open water.  Petey, weakened and thin moved onto the island and bedded under a small pine tree.
     A week later, the jogger noticed a single row of fox tracks crossing the lake, angling towards the bridge.  "Later on, white duck," he mumbled as he passed, figuring the worst but hoping for better.