One year ago today: July 14, 2015, visiting Peace River, FL.
Five years ago today: July 14, 2011, Atlantic Ocean, my foot.
Nine years ago today: July 14, 2007, oh, three to four million.
Random years ago today: July 14, 2009, the coconut mystery.
MORNING
On the way home I bought a booklet of America’s scenic highways and byways. Produced by National Geographic, the pictures are great but the accompanying literature rates somewhere between reading a cereal box and the reading the phone bill. It was to my surprise that unknowingly I’ve traveled a goodly number of these roadways already. That applies only to the areas I’ve been on the sidecar, not the entire countryside. But, I didn’t know most of the time I was on some historic trail.
At the same time, the book is helpful. I see these roads do sometimes have attractions just over the horizon, which I have missed. For example, on that extraordinary trip through Sonora in Hill Country in 2013, I drove past only 13 miles from the LBJ Ranch and didn’t know it. The guy was a floppy-eared jerk, but I would have stopped to see the ranch. What? Of course he was a jerk, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was written before, not after the incident. And he signed it anyway.
Well, here’s one of your last tales from the trailer court. There are other people doing some driving that should not be. My nurse from the clinic, a great lady but we are not each other’s types, drives a Hummer. Damn, huh? Last month one of the tire pressure sensors is acting up so she takes it to the dealership. They keep if for two days, but on the second day, the clinic wasn’t busy, and she shows up at the dealership early.
Her Hummer isn’t there. The manager gives her some song and dance about a test drive, but she wants to know where her $73,000 truck is. Can’t blindside this lady, she gets in her other Toyota and cruises around. Finds the manager’s son and the mechanic have it parked at the stripper bar. I’d say those boys are really going to get themselves screwed, no doubt about it.
“Controlled regurgitation.”
NOON
“Allow me to write a nation’s music, and I care not who makes its laws.” ~some French guy.
Here’s one of your last looks at the old place. This is the dining area which was never used for dining. The Florida room was always more comfortable and had better A/C. But you can see the microwave and the obligatory 20” room fan. I have five rooms and seven fans, it’s a Florida thing. And she was a hot one today, impossible to function outdoors for me. I think this photo is boring, but blog rules say the most important or biggest event of the day makes the grade.
It’s worth reading for historical reasons but Steve is solidly mired in a past that may not have existed. True, students got higher marks back then, but the test questions centered on the now-debunked theory that anything the school taught you was important. Hooey. I spent one valuable childhood summer actually reading the assigned books only to find the test questions were about the author’s names and where they grew up. I did very poorly on that test.
Well, today’s student is bombarded by this type of “knowledge”. He’s got to sift through more useless hype and take far more guesses on what angle the information takes. If I was in a room full of jocks and politicians, I’d be the stoopidest person there. Allen makes enough valid points to keep you reading, if only because his logic is actually pretty clear for an entertainer. He understands you cannot possibly get by a single day without making assumptions, yet people deride you for it.
I’m home in the easy chair after six hours of medical visits. One again, I got the frozen nitrogen treatment. Skin tags, I had skin tags, so off they go. Hey, they are included in my medical plan. It’s the fasting for blood tests; nobody likes either. But you put a pretty enough couple of gals on the other end of the needle and I’m your guinea pig. I never felt a thing. If that’s you reading this blog, thanks, that is the most painless needle ever.
Johan Pettersson: Chemistry, 2012. For his study of why people’s hair turned green in Sweden. The prize, I take it, was not for the discovery that it was the water, but that because some people needed to be told this.
NIGHT
I stayed home and did some research in old topics that get my attention. One was that mysterious blackout of the Berlin telephone system in March 1945. There is still not official explanation, but it went dead for sixty-one minutes. Also, that huge, and I mean huge, Buna plant. The fact is, it never produced any of the synthetic rubber the Allies claimed after the war.
Nor was it run by slave labor. The Germans often built sensitive factories near prisoner camps not for a labor supply, but because they correctly surmised the Allies were intentionally not bombing the camps. (The reason for this has never been made public, incidentally.) The Buna plant operated from 1939 to the end of the war, often using as much electricity as the entire city of Berlin, but there is no record of what they were producing. It sure wasn’t rubber. My guess—uranium isotopes.
Now, I did a foolish thing. I took all my musical equipment up to Lakeland last week. What was I thinking? Now I’m stuck here listening to music instead of playing it. I’m still having a go at memorizing the lyrics to “I’ve Been Everywhere”. This tune has little purpose in my repertoire except to show the crowd who’s boss.
Last Laugh
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