Famous country singer Merle Haggard died on April 6th, his 79th birthday. I'm not a great country fan but I like some of it sometimes. I don't listen to much music as a regular thing, and I hate any kind of music as background because it imposes its own atmosphere on everything, but I will sometimes binge-listen for many hours or even days to a particular musician or kind of music, and then not listen to anything again for months.
Since Merle Haggard's death I've listened to more of his music than I ever did before, even got interested enough to read his autobiography, My House of Memories. He's a riveting character, a true original according to most experts on country music, "the real deal" who sang honestly of emotional experiences most people would try to gloss over.
He also sang gospel songs as many country singers do, and claimed a Christian faith despite a lifetime of over-the-top sinfulness that as far as anyone could tell from the usual publicity about him he never repented of. I did have to read his autobiography to consider the possibility that maybe he did, maybe he did die a Christian in true faith and repentance. I hope so of course. I can't know for sure but there's more there than you could tell from the publicity about him in general.
Most of his autobiography is about his bad-boy days of running away from home beginning at age fourteen, riding the rails, car-stealing, burglary, escape from seventeen penal institutions, ending with time in San Quentin at the age of twenty, before he determined to turn his life around, gave up crime and became a successful singer. After that came the more standard noncriminal sins, four marriages that ended in divorce, adulteries, gambling, drunkenness and drugs.
As he says in his autobiography most men want to know about his music and his background, most women want to know about his music and his ex-wives. Well, I'm true to the portrait of the women, but it's not easy to find out about his ex-wives, just bits and pieces here and there. There's more about his second wife, Bonnie Owens, because she remained his backup singer and a friend until she died, but it took a while to find out about the others. There is a documentary about his life at You Tube, Learning to Live With Myself, that I didn't see until after I'd read his book, that does cover more of that information than other sources, and finally gives some sense of the women he married; also of other people in his life that he talks about in the book, including his sister.
But the most interesting one is his fifth and last wife, Theresa, who was in her early twenties when he met her in his late forties. There are pictures of them together at Google Image but you can't tell a lot about a person from such pictures. Still, the fact that they were married for twenty-three years (and had been together for a total of something like thirty-two years altogether) says a lot in the context of so many failed marriages. I had the thought that she must have dedicated herself to making him happy, and guess what, that comes through in the autobiography but even more so in the documentary Learning to Live With Myself. Of course he was a lot older by then, which may have something to do with his ability to stay married.
But a lot of credit has to go to Theresa I think in the end. In the You Tube video she even says that when she met him she saw him as a man who had everything but wasn't happy, and had the thought that she could make him happy. In his book he says of her that her every thought was to attend to and please her family. She comes across as a very sympathetic person and I'm glad I found out more about her. She sounds like a true Proverbs 31 wife, the kind scripture describes as more valuable than rubies.
In his book he describes a life of unusual happiness with his wife and family since he married Theresa, in a "homey" home of family life with her and their two children, in a house surrounded by "roses and wildflowers" where they homeschooled their children, fished together for bass in ponds he had dug on their land, and she grew a vegetable garden. A life without the stress of the other marriages, a place he wanted to be instead of always wanting to run.
It was also a life where they prayed every day and read the Bible together as a family.
And that part is most of what I wanted to know. He finally reveals that bit near the end of the book. He says God took away the drug addiction that had plagued both of them before they had their children, and I can only hope He also gave them repentance and faith to eternal life.
I am very glad he found such happiness in the last part of his life, and I wish a blessed eternity to Merle Haggard and all his loved ones.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Sunday, November 30, 2014
A trio of feathered characters
Photographer: Gregorio Borgia.
This picture accompanied the story of the attack by a seagull and a crow on two "peace doves" released from the Vatican last January. I did a blog post on the subject at the time. But here I'm not interested in the story but in the birds themselves, or the photograph itself.
I liked the picture so much I've had it as my desktop image ever since. I've continued to be fascinated with it and have come to appreciate it more and more as I look at it. It has come to seem to me that this couldn't be a more perfect artistic creation than if the photographer had personally posed all the elements in it, and yet it's one of the most spontaneous shots you'll ever see. Three birds in flight caught at a beautifully orchestrated moment.
I love everything about it, the composition itself, the way the colors and forms work together, and especially the character of the birds themselves. What amazing personalities those three birds are! I try to forget the fact that the aggressor birds are trying to kill the little doves, and in a series of pictures that also accompanied the story it looks like the seagull has seriously hurt or possibly already killed one of them. So here I'm looking at only the purely visual or abstract qualities in the picture. This dove is still alive and fleeing though the crow is in hot pursuit.
Isn't it beautiful how the whole picture is shades of gray from white to black? Isn't it beautiful how there is one pure white bird, one pure black bird and another that has both black and white and shades of gray in its feathers? Isn't it beautiful the way the scalloped flaring feathers of the dove and crow echo the fluting on the column behind them, and the seagull's fluted feathers too? The way the background seems to frame the action in front of it? The perfect spacing between the birds in flight? Surely this picture was planned! And yet it wasn't.
Then there are those magnificent personalities. What an innocent vulnerable little white bird the dove is. Its wings are held in a graceful position like a ballet dancer's, its tail feathers are a perfect scalloped arc. It has a pudgy belly though, a bird that likes the sedentary life.
Then that crow closing in on the dove with its beak open to bite it, all energy and purpose. Look at the lean mean torso on that creature in contrast with the dove's pudginess. He must have a crow's version of sculpted abs and pecs beneath those feathers. And the wings, not gracefully posed but pushing and pulling the air in the pursuit of his prey, working hard.
Then that magnificent thug of a seagull. He makes me laugh. Shoulders hunched, head down, a hoodlum, a gangster, up to no good, pumping his wings in pursuit of what must be the other dove off screen.
I love them all, and I love the photograph. Just wanted to share it. Enjoy.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
Three cooks is perfect
W toasted the English muffins, J shepherded the poached eggs and Canadian bacon, and I made the hollandaise.
I'd found a recipe online from a Name cook because I didn't want to rely on my usual winging-it proportions. This had to be Perfect for this summer brunch we were concocting for three adults and two children. Unsalted butter, more egg yolks than I usually use, and less lemon. I'll remember it because the proportions were perfect. W thought it needed more lemon, being used to my flight-by-seat-of-pants versions so I'll keep that in mind too, but J and I were happy with it as is. I also broke all eight eggs for poaching into a dish and dumped the entire collection into the poaching water without breaking a single yolk -- pat pat.
This all started with J wanting to know how to save a curdled hollandaise, which became the excuse to treat ourselves to Eggs Benedict. Of course, there being about a tenth of a degree of difference between Hot Enough to Thicken and Hot Enough to Curdle, it DID curdle, and I did have to scramble to save it, beating it madly while adding cream, but the point was demonstrated and we had velvety smooth thick hollandaise in the end.
That was fun. I think Collaborative Eggs Benedict will probably become a tradition for End of Summer brunch, rotating roles each time.
The reason all this is particularly a big deal for me is that before I had my hip replacement I couldn't stand at the stove long enough to make hollandaise sauce.
I'd found a recipe online from a Name cook because I didn't want to rely on my usual winging-it proportions. This had to be Perfect for this summer brunch we were concocting for three adults and two children. Unsalted butter, more egg yolks than I usually use, and less lemon. I'll remember it because the proportions were perfect. W thought it needed more lemon, being used to my flight-by-seat-of-pants versions so I'll keep that in mind too, but J and I were happy with it as is. I also broke all eight eggs for poaching into a dish and dumped the entire collection into the poaching water without breaking a single yolk -- pat pat.
This all started with J wanting to know how to save a curdled hollandaise, which became the excuse to treat ourselves to Eggs Benedict. Of course, there being about a tenth of a degree of difference between Hot Enough to Thicken and Hot Enough to Curdle, it DID curdle, and I did have to scramble to save it, beating it madly while adding cream, but the point was demonstrated and we had velvety smooth thick hollandaise in the end.
That was fun. I think Collaborative Eggs Benedict will probably become a tradition for End of Summer brunch, rotating roles each time.
The reason all this is particularly a big deal for me is that before I had my hip replacement I couldn't stand at the stove long enough to make hollandaise sauce.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Good Green Beef
I seem to be on a Foodie thing. Was recently remembering how, many many years ago, I went into a small neighborhood grocery store in the upscale part of town looking for a good steak from their butcher counter. It had to be a special occasion but I don't remember what. The butcher recommended a piece of steak in the display case that looked...green! Well, faintly greenish at least.
I expressed consternation.
He told me they are best that way and I'd never find one as good in the supermarket because people don't know about the finer points of aged beef and will only buy them when they are red. Hm. Well, I thought to myself, maybe he's right and why would he want to sell me something bad? This IS a really good part of town and wealthy people come in here all the time and see the meat in the case, so ... he's got to be right.
Long story short: I bought it, I cooked it, I ate it and it was the best steak I've ever had. Tender, juicy, tasty meat, seared on the outside, pink on the inside. I've always remembered that experience every time I've bought red steaks at the supermarket. But I never went looking for greenish steaks in spite of the fond memory of that one.
Fast forward some, oh, forty-five years or so. Thinking about it again recently reminded me that a friend had gone through a phase as a butcher many years ago, so I decided to tell him the story of my experience with the greenish steak and ask him what he thought. Well, there went a pleasant memory. He reminded me of all the training he'd gone through learning how to "break down" a carcass of beef (meaning divide it into all the familiar cuts), how to age the meat, how you have to use the best grade of meat to do it right, how his butcher shop had customers who would buy the whole animal and let the shop age it properly for them. They hang it at 33 degrees for a few weeks, sometimes wrapping it in linen cheesecloth. You have to remember, he said, that it's rotting, that's what aging is. Well, that kind of takes the glamor out of it right there. It does make for tender tasty beef though, he added.
BUT, he said, NO, you do not want green meat, that means it's gone bad, that's not just aging, that's bacteria. That butcher obviously just wanted to sell a bad piece of meat and I'm lucky I didn't get sick from it.
Oh dear. Well, I know he knows what he's talking about BUT. That steak was SO good I can't bring myself to believe him entirely. It spoiled a nice memory though and I probably won't ever have a greenish steak again.
I expressed consternation.
He told me they are best that way and I'd never find one as good in the supermarket because people don't know about the finer points of aged beef and will only buy them when they are red. Hm. Well, I thought to myself, maybe he's right and why would he want to sell me something bad? This IS a really good part of town and wealthy people come in here all the time and see the meat in the case, so ... he's got to be right.
Long story short: I bought it, I cooked it, I ate it and it was the best steak I've ever had. Tender, juicy, tasty meat, seared on the outside, pink on the inside. I've always remembered that experience every time I've bought red steaks at the supermarket. But I never went looking for greenish steaks in spite of the fond memory of that one.
Fast forward some, oh, forty-five years or so. Thinking about it again recently reminded me that a friend had gone through a phase as a butcher many years ago, so I decided to tell him the story of my experience with the greenish steak and ask him what he thought. Well, there went a pleasant memory. He reminded me of all the training he'd gone through learning how to "break down" a carcass of beef (meaning divide it into all the familiar cuts), how to age the meat, how you have to use the best grade of meat to do it right, how his butcher shop had customers who would buy the whole animal and let the shop age it properly for them. They hang it at 33 degrees for a few weeks, sometimes wrapping it in linen cheesecloth. You have to remember, he said, that it's rotting, that's what aging is. Well, that kind of takes the glamor out of it right there. It does make for tender tasty beef though, he added.
BUT, he said, NO, you do not want green meat, that means it's gone bad, that's not just aging, that's bacteria. That butcher obviously just wanted to sell a bad piece of meat and I'm lucky I didn't get sick from it.
Oh dear. Well, I know he knows what he's talking about BUT. That steak was SO good I can't bring myself to believe him entirely. It spoiled a nice memory though and I probably won't ever have a greenish steak again.
Ripe Fruit
I usually shop at Smith's, a habit that started when I was working in the neighborhood, and now find it hard to break just because learning the aisles of a new store is more than my lazy self wants to take on. Well, there is a bit more to it than that. Smith's has the biggest collection of electric carts for the handicapped of any store in town and I need it because of arthritic hips and knees. I can still push a basket, basically using it as a prop, but I can't really do a big shopping trip that way so I do appreciate having a cart. But of course all the people in town who need a cart go to Smith's for that reason, so if you don't get there early enough all the carts will be in service already, and all the handicap parking spaces will be gone too. I hardly ever get a handicap parking space though I do usually snag a cart. A few times I've had to wait for one.
Walmart has put many of the other local stores out of business, even the chain stores. Maybe that's a bad thing but I'm not entirely sure. Safeway went a couple years ago, before that Scolari's, Albertson's was replaced by Sak N Save. I'm not sure why Smith's has held on because they really aren't that good a store. Produce especially is low quality.
Despite having to push a basket at Walmart, and the fact that the store is ten times the size of Smith's, I'm usually glad for the occasional trip there just because their produce is GOOD. High turnover is the reason, they say, but honestly, if Smith's made the effort to have good produce they'd soon have the high turnover. I remember about five years ago when they happened to have a wonderful stock of ripe peaches. Wonderfully perfectly ripe, you could smell them from aisles away. The produce section was mobbed with people getting them in huge bags, and I was one of the mob. If they kept getting good produce they'd keep getting the mobs, I don't know why they don't know that. Good ripe peaches are a luxury around here. Too many stores, not just Smith's, get them too green and they just rot instead of ripening. But a ripe peach, yum! It will last a few days in the fridge and it's such a treat.
Because my car wouldn't start a few days ago I got a ride to Wal-Mart with someone who was going there, one of those rare trips, and again I was reminded that they have good produce and again I think how I should make the effort to go there more often, knowing I don't because it's too much of a hassle. But for that occasion I was happy. Yes, even peaches, not fully ripe yet but you could tell they were going to ripen instead of rotting because they were yellow, not green, in the stem well, and they SMELLED like ripe peaches. Oh joy. Then the strawberries -- red on the top of the container and red on the bottom too! They are often as much as 50% yellow or white at Smith's. But today no rotting ones either, smelled like... ripe strawberries! Oh joy and a half! Oh and then the asparagus! Smith's doesn't even get much asparagus any more and when they do nobody wants to buy it. And big fat red tomatoes! And ripe mangoes!
Why am I writing this? Maybe it's that small pleasures can make up for big bad moods. At least I can dare to eat a peach. As long as my fruit fly trap is working as well, this is Sheer Happiness.
Walmart has put many of the other local stores out of business, even the chain stores. Maybe that's a bad thing but I'm not entirely sure. Safeway went a couple years ago, before that Scolari's, Albertson's was replaced by Sak N Save. I'm not sure why Smith's has held on because they really aren't that good a store. Produce especially is low quality.
Despite having to push a basket at Walmart, and the fact that the store is ten times the size of Smith's, I'm usually glad for the occasional trip there just because their produce is GOOD. High turnover is the reason, they say, but honestly, if Smith's made the effort to have good produce they'd soon have the high turnover. I remember about five years ago when they happened to have a wonderful stock of ripe peaches. Wonderfully perfectly ripe, you could smell them from aisles away. The produce section was mobbed with people getting them in huge bags, and I was one of the mob. If they kept getting good produce they'd keep getting the mobs, I don't know why they don't know that. Good ripe peaches are a luxury around here. Too many stores, not just Smith's, get them too green and they just rot instead of ripening. But a ripe peach, yum! It will last a few days in the fridge and it's such a treat.
Because my car wouldn't start a few days ago I got a ride to Wal-Mart with someone who was going there, one of those rare trips, and again I was reminded that they have good produce and again I think how I should make the effort to go there more often, knowing I don't because it's too much of a hassle. But for that occasion I was happy. Yes, even peaches, not fully ripe yet but you could tell they were going to ripen instead of rotting because they were yellow, not green, in the stem well, and they SMELLED like ripe peaches. Oh joy. Then the strawberries -- red on the top of the container and red on the bottom too! They are often as much as 50% yellow or white at Smith's. But today no rotting ones either, smelled like... ripe strawberries! Oh joy and a half! Oh and then the asparagus! Smith's doesn't even get much asparagus any more and when they do nobody wants to buy it. And big fat red tomatoes! And ripe mangoes!
Why am I writing this? Maybe it's that small pleasures can make up for big bad moods. At least I can dare to eat a peach. As long as my fruit fly trap is working as well, this is Sheer Happiness.
Smarter Than the Average Fruit Fly
Every summer the little pests invade my kitchen. All it takes is an apple core in the trash or maybe even a lone piece of peel left in the sink. Or maybe they are misnamed and the asparagus ends, the avocado pit and the potato and carrot peelings are just as enticing to them. The summer heat does the rest and I soon have a cloud of them writhing over the sink.
You can off a few of them by clapping your wet hands in the middle of the cloud, but that's a pretty inefficient method. So every year I consult the wisdom of the internet for advice on how to get rid of them. I'm never very convinced of the advice -- vinegar? -- so my attempts to apply it are rather halfhearted and I don't stick it out very long. I usually end up just taking out the trash and subjecting the kitchen sink, garbage can and garbage disposal to extreme sterilization, which eventually works.
But this year I decided to give the internet advisors a better trial, and ended up combining a few of the suggestions into one. Burning incense and sucking them up into a hair dryer or a vacuum are methods of extermination mentioned but I decided to go with the baited trap instead. Rotting fruit and apple cider vinegar are the main lures suggested on the web but also wine and beer. So I started with a small bowl of water with a splash of apple cider vinegar in it, absurd though the idea of catching flies with vinegar strikes me. Not really believing it would work I added a pinch of sugar and a tiny piece of apple and felt more optimistic about it as a lure. It's not clear if the flies are to drown in the liquid or be killed by its toxicity or what, but I started with water assuming maybe the former and not wanting to waste my cider vinegar. The advisors also tell you that dish soap will kill them, and that they can't detect it, so I added a drop of that too. One suggests cutting off the corner of a plastic bag and rubber-banding it to a glass of your chosen lure, the idea being that the flies will be drawn down into the hole, attracted by their sense of smell, and not be able to find their way out, not being terribly bright. My adaptation of that advice was to cut a small hole, about a third of an inch or so, in the middle of a piece of clear clingy plastic wrap and stretch it tight over the rim of my little bowl. Left it on the counter near the sink.
Nothing happened the first day. The second day I had about four flies dead in the liquid. A couple days later there were a dozen, a few days after that over twenty and now after a couple of weeks the count is in the forties.
The method works.
What I'd like to know now is which elements of the method work. Does the vinegar really lure them? Could I dispense with the sugar and the apple piece? I'm pretty sure of the dish soap and I'd rather poison them than have them drown, perhaps a misguided mercy. Is the plastic wrap necessary or would they dive right into the lethal mix without it?
Later: It's now about a week after my last report and the liquid is so cloudy I can't see the flies at the bottom of the bowl. But one thing for sure is that they aren't writhing over the sink any more. I guess I could throw out the cloudy water and start over but why mess with a good thing? I think I'll wait to see if the kitchen remains free of them before making any changes. Not being up to conducting the scientific experiments necessary to finding out if there is a simplest most streamlined trap, since I know this combo works I'm going to keep this recipe for now.
You can off a few of them by clapping your wet hands in the middle of the cloud, but that's a pretty inefficient method. So every year I consult the wisdom of the internet for advice on how to get rid of them. I'm never very convinced of the advice -- vinegar? -- so my attempts to apply it are rather halfhearted and I don't stick it out very long. I usually end up just taking out the trash and subjecting the kitchen sink, garbage can and garbage disposal to extreme sterilization, which eventually works.
But this year I decided to give the internet advisors a better trial, and ended up combining a few of the suggestions into one. Burning incense and sucking them up into a hair dryer or a vacuum are methods of extermination mentioned but I decided to go with the baited trap instead. Rotting fruit and apple cider vinegar are the main lures suggested on the web but also wine and beer. So I started with a small bowl of water with a splash of apple cider vinegar in it, absurd though the idea of catching flies with vinegar strikes me. Not really believing it would work I added a pinch of sugar and a tiny piece of apple and felt more optimistic about it as a lure. It's not clear if the flies are to drown in the liquid or be killed by its toxicity or what, but I started with water assuming maybe the former and not wanting to waste my cider vinegar. The advisors also tell you that dish soap will kill them, and that they can't detect it, so I added a drop of that too. One suggests cutting off the corner of a plastic bag and rubber-banding it to a glass of your chosen lure, the idea being that the flies will be drawn down into the hole, attracted by their sense of smell, and not be able to find their way out, not being terribly bright. My adaptation of that advice was to cut a small hole, about a third of an inch or so, in the middle of a piece of clear clingy plastic wrap and stretch it tight over the rim of my little bowl. Left it on the counter near the sink.
Nothing happened the first day. The second day I had about four flies dead in the liquid. A couple days later there were a dozen, a few days after that over twenty and now after a couple of weeks the count is in the forties.
The method works.
What I'd like to know now is which elements of the method work. Does the vinegar really lure them? Could I dispense with the sugar and the apple piece? I'm pretty sure of the dish soap and I'd rather poison them than have them drown, perhaps a misguided mercy. Is the plastic wrap necessary or would they dive right into the lethal mix without it?
Later: It's now about a week after my last report and the liquid is so cloudy I can't see the flies at the bottom of the bowl. But one thing for sure is that they aren't writhing over the sink any more. I guess I could throw out the cloudy water and start over but why mess with a good thing? I think I'll wait to see if the kitchen remains free of them before making any changes. Not being up to conducting the scientific experiments necessary to finding out if there is a simplest most streamlined trap, since I know this combo works I'm going to keep this recipe for now.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Is there an easy way to quit smoking?
I heard about a book recently that is recommended for people who want to quit smoking, Allen Carr's The Easyway to stop smoking. It was a very low key recommendation:
Reading the intro and some reviews of the book at Amazon it seems to me that Allen Carr has really hit on something. Testimony after testimony of giving up smoking with an amazing ease. Although I quit years ago I am very curious about this method and would like to read the book, so I will when I can.
I used to be a heavy smoker and tried to quit time after time as smokers often do, as the intro to this book also affirms. When I was out of cigarettes I'd do the usual rummaging through the garbage to find a bit of a butt to smoke, I'd throw out partial packs, even drown them in water to make them unsmokeable, then find myself going down to the Seven Eleven at midnight to get another pack.
I did manage to quit for two years once and it was exactly as the author describes, a daily struggle that made going back to it inevitable when life got a little more stressful.
When I did quit it was at a Christian seminar where we were asked to pray about something we thought the Lord would want us to get out of our lives. I prayed to give up smoking. When I got in my car after the seminar I automatically lit up the half-smoked cigarette I'd left in the ashtray and smoked it down to the filter, thinking the whole time "Why am I doing this after praying to stop?"
I don't know what made it possible but that was the last cigarette I ever smoked. And the urge was gone gone gone, never had the slightest desire after that.
That was in August of 1989.
So I'm wondering if whatever happened to me psychologically that made it so easy for me to quit through prayer was similar to what happens to people who quit with such ease from this book. I'd like to find out.
I mean of course God changed my desire to smoke because I did pray, but I'm talking here about the psychological component of it, HOW He changed my desire, what mental change occurred that made it possible to simply put cigarettes absolutely out of mind as I did from then on.
=========================
Later: The above was my reaction to hearing about the Allen Carr book and I've been pondering the psychological aspect of it since then. I haven't read more of the book than the introduction but I think I've figured it out: What the book does is the same thing God did for me: gives you a clear unconflicted DESIRE to stop smoking. I still want to read the book when I can but as I was thinking over how easy it was for me to quit after so many years of frustrating struggle it seemed to me that what happened was that I absolutely simply no longer wanted to smoke.
When people talk about it taking "will power" to quit, it implies the struggle so many experience, and what that means in reality is a divided will, a will only partly dedicated to quitting, against another part of your will that doesn't want to quit at all. That's why it's such a struggle, you're in a fight with yourself. When I finally quit it wasn't that my will wasn't involved, it was that my will was 100% devoted to quitting for the first time ever. If the mere thought of a cigarette came to mind I shoved it out of my mind instantly with all the energy of my undivided will, without any struggle at all because I did not want anything to do with cigarettes. And it only very rarely came to mind even in the early days, and after that just about never. Desire to smoke was gone, "need" to smoke was gone. So I'm saying So in reality I HAD will power for the first time, and when you have it the whole thing is easy. NO struggle, NO edginess or nervousness, NO steeling yourself, NO crabbiness.
If this is what it's all about, the idea that smoking is an addiction to a drug is even called into question. Seems to me the addiction is to the whole psychological experience of smoking. You experience it in a positive way despite the unpleasant aspects that keep making you want to quit, and when you stop seeing anything positive about it, it's just gone without a fight.
So I'm not entirely sure how this book goes about it but I'd bet that's WHAT it does. Somehow or other by the time you're finished reading it you are 100% in favor of quitting for the first time ever. No struggle, just blessed freedom.
--------
Realized I never really said how I lost the desire to smoke, what turned my will so completely against it. I think it was a combination of wanting to please God, hating to be the only smoker in a Christian group, having to draw attention to myself by going outside to smoke; just wanting to be "normal" like all the nonsmokers; hating smelling like a smoker; being ashamed of it overall I suppose; but all the health reasons too. Not that any of that entered my mind at the time, I'm only trying to reconstruct it in retrospect and all those things NOW make me happy I don't smoke. Glad glad glad to be able to breathe again, glad not to be controlled by a habit that makes me spend money on something I really don't like doing; and that's a big part of it too: for all the liking of smoking, I really DIDN'T like smoking, it's unpleasant, it hurt my chest, I was always out of breath, it caused and aggravated a lump on my lip that sometimes hurt, and so on.
All those reasons I'm glad I no longer smoke I now think were behind my giving it up so easily even if I wasn't all that conscious of it at the time. Most of that was there in my previous efforts to quit too, however, so there may still be a question how it all came together all at once in such a total way.
So some time I'd like to read that book and see how my experience compares with their method.
Go to a book store and buy Allen Carr's "The Easyway to stop smoking". It's a slim volume and written in simple english (and other languages I gather). Read a couple of chapters a day, follow the simple instructions and in a couple of weeks you'll be a non-smoker. A happy non-smoker that is. He instructs you to continue smoking while you read - how easy can it be!
There is no willpower required nor trickery involved. Just the truth about cigarettes.Here are a few posts from iano, the guy who recommended the book I see he recommended it first a few years ago, and then again recently when the thread was revived. He emphasizes that the way is really EASY, that the usual struggle people have when they quit just doesn't happen with this method.
Reading the intro and some reviews of the book at Amazon it seems to me that Allen Carr has really hit on something. Testimony after testimony of giving up smoking with an amazing ease. Although I quit years ago I am very curious about this method and would like to read the book, so I will when I can.
I used to be a heavy smoker and tried to quit time after time as smokers often do, as the intro to this book also affirms. When I was out of cigarettes I'd do the usual rummaging through the garbage to find a bit of a butt to smoke, I'd throw out partial packs, even drown them in water to make them unsmokeable, then find myself going down to the Seven Eleven at midnight to get another pack.
I did manage to quit for two years once and it was exactly as the author describes, a daily struggle that made going back to it inevitable when life got a little more stressful.
When I did quit it was at a Christian seminar where we were asked to pray about something we thought the Lord would want us to get out of our lives. I prayed to give up smoking. When I got in my car after the seminar I automatically lit up the half-smoked cigarette I'd left in the ashtray and smoked it down to the filter, thinking the whole time "Why am I doing this after praying to stop?"
I don't know what made it possible but that was the last cigarette I ever smoked. And the urge was gone gone gone, never had the slightest desire after that.
That was in August of 1989.
So I'm wondering if whatever happened to me psychologically that made it so easy for me to quit through prayer was similar to what happens to people who quit with such ease from this book. I'd like to find out.
I mean of course God changed my desire to smoke because I did pray, but I'm talking here about the psychological component of it, HOW He changed my desire, what mental change occurred that made it possible to simply put cigarettes absolutely out of mind as I did from then on.
=========================
Later: The above was my reaction to hearing about the Allen Carr book and I've been pondering the psychological aspect of it since then. I haven't read more of the book than the introduction but I think I've figured it out: What the book does is the same thing God did for me: gives you a clear unconflicted DESIRE to stop smoking. I still want to read the book when I can but as I was thinking over how easy it was for me to quit after so many years of frustrating struggle it seemed to me that what happened was that I absolutely simply no longer wanted to smoke.
When people talk about it taking "will power" to quit, it implies the struggle so many experience, and what that means in reality is a divided will, a will only partly dedicated to quitting, against another part of your will that doesn't want to quit at all. That's why it's such a struggle, you're in a fight with yourself. When I finally quit it wasn't that my will wasn't involved, it was that my will was 100% devoted to quitting for the first time ever. If the mere thought of a cigarette came to mind I shoved it out of my mind instantly with all the energy of my undivided will, without any struggle at all because I did not want anything to do with cigarettes. And it only very rarely came to mind even in the early days, and after that just about never. Desire to smoke was gone, "need" to smoke was gone. So I'm saying So in reality I HAD will power for the first time, and when you have it the whole thing is easy. NO struggle, NO edginess or nervousness, NO steeling yourself, NO crabbiness.
If this is what it's all about, the idea that smoking is an addiction to a drug is even called into question. Seems to me the addiction is to the whole psychological experience of smoking. You experience it in a positive way despite the unpleasant aspects that keep making you want to quit, and when you stop seeing anything positive about it, it's just gone without a fight.
So I'm not entirely sure how this book goes about it but I'd bet that's WHAT it does. Somehow or other by the time you're finished reading it you are 100% in favor of quitting for the first time ever. No struggle, just blessed freedom.
--------
Realized I never really said how I lost the desire to smoke, what turned my will so completely against it. I think it was a combination of wanting to please God, hating to be the only smoker in a Christian group, having to draw attention to myself by going outside to smoke; just wanting to be "normal" like all the nonsmokers; hating smelling like a smoker; being ashamed of it overall I suppose; but all the health reasons too. Not that any of that entered my mind at the time, I'm only trying to reconstruct it in retrospect and all those things NOW make me happy I don't smoke. Glad glad glad to be able to breathe again, glad not to be controlled by a habit that makes me spend money on something I really don't like doing; and that's a big part of it too: for all the liking of smoking, I really DIDN'T like smoking, it's unpleasant, it hurt my chest, I was always out of breath, it caused and aggravated a lump on my lip that sometimes hurt, and so on.
All those reasons I'm glad I no longer smoke I now think were behind my giving it up so easily even if I wasn't all that conscious of it at the time. Most of that was there in my previous efforts to quit too, however, so there may still be a question how it all came together all at once in such a total way.
So some time I'd like to read that book and see how my experience compares with their method.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Unsaved "Christian" Country Singers Blues
(11/11 update below)
There's always a problem with watching performers I know aren't saved. I want them to be saved. I feel bad watching them after a while. These country singers I've been watching so much lately often sing gospel songs and hymns too, which just makes it worse. They may have some sentimental attachment to the songs, the music is a part of American culture after all, or in some cases they may even think they believe them. The biographies I've found don't make that clear.
Willie Nelson sings Amazing Grace and Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? and others in that vein and there's no hint that he believes any of it, it's just music, just Americana.
But Johnny Cash claimed to have some sort of conversion, speaks of believing, of trusting in God, of praying to God, of attributing his blessings to God. That sounds pretty Christian, but it isn't really. Where is Christ, where is His dying for his sins? Where is being born again? I would like to think he believed rightly but I don't see any evidence that he did.
Merle Haggard describes himself as a very religious man, but again there is no hint that he believes the true gospel message of salvation. He sings one called The Family Bible which is pure American sentimentality, nothing of the true gospel in it. Country singers often have such feelings. But there is no sign they are saved.
The movie Tender Mercies has the country singer marry the Christian girl and get baptized "on profession of belief in Jesus Christ" and, absurdly perhaps, it made me hope for Robert Duvall who played the part. But there's no hint that he's a believer in any of the biographical notes I found.
You've got to recognize half your life story is sin, guys, got to see it in the light of the cross of Christ, as an offense to God He can't forgive without the sacrifice of His Son. He has to give you the power to repent of it and receive His death for all of it. There is no sign of any of that with these guys.
Sad. There's something more poignant about those who THINK they are Christian than about those who don't have a clue. Watching them sing can be painful knowing they are not saved. Want to give them a good shake and preach the gospel to them. It would be nice to think they might listen. But I don't think that. Only thing that can be done is to pray for them and it's too late for Johnny Cash anyway.
===============
Update: Some of the best songs of four of the biggest country guys, Willie, Johnny, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson got played when they were all together as The Highwaymen. They talk to "the Lord" in some of them here too, especially in a song near the end where they sing how they "know what I am" but alas, they don't know how the gospel deals with what they are, what we all are. They don't know the gospel at all. The song goes on about maybe making up for their sins. No Good News there for sure. Nothing about how HE made up for their sins and their job is to thank Him by obeying Him from now on. How did the gospel get reduced to such empty uselessness?
But it's too late for Waylon Jennings anyway.
There's always a problem with watching performers I know aren't saved. I want them to be saved. I feel bad watching them after a while. These country singers I've been watching so much lately often sing gospel songs and hymns too, which just makes it worse. They may have some sentimental attachment to the songs, the music is a part of American culture after all, or in some cases they may even think they believe them. The biographies I've found don't make that clear.
Willie Nelson sings Amazing Grace and Were You There When They Crucified My Lord? and others in that vein and there's no hint that he believes any of it, it's just music, just Americana.
But Johnny Cash claimed to have some sort of conversion, speaks of believing, of trusting in God, of praying to God, of attributing his blessings to God. That sounds pretty Christian, but it isn't really. Where is Christ, where is His dying for his sins? Where is being born again? I would like to think he believed rightly but I don't see any evidence that he did.
Merle Haggard describes himself as a very religious man, but again there is no hint that he believes the true gospel message of salvation. He sings one called The Family Bible which is pure American sentimentality, nothing of the true gospel in it. Country singers often have such feelings. But there is no sign they are saved.
The movie Tender Mercies has the country singer marry the Christian girl and get baptized "on profession of belief in Jesus Christ" and, absurdly perhaps, it made me hope for Robert Duvall who played the part. But there's no hint that he's a believer in any of the biographical notes I found.
You've got to recognize half your life story is sin, guys, got to see it in the light of the cross of Christ, as an offense to God He can't forgive without the sacrifice of His Son. He has to give you the power to repent of it and receive His death for all of it. There is no sign of any of that with these guys.
Sad. There's something more poignant about those who THINK they are Christian than about those who don't have a clue. Watching them sing can be painful knowing they are not saved. Want to give them a good shake and preach the gospel to them. It would be nice to think they might listen. But I don't think that. Only thing that can be done is to pray for them and it's too late for Johnny Cash anyway.
===============
Update: Some of the best songs of four of the biggest country guys, Willie, Johnny, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson got played when they were all together as The Highwaymen. They talk to "the Lord" in some of them here too, especially in a song near the end where they sing how they "know what I am" but alas, they don't know how the gospel deals with what they are, what we all are. They don't know the gospel at all. The song goes on about maybe making up for their sins. No Good News there for sure. Nothing about how HE made up for their sins and their job is to thank Him by obeying Him from now on. How did the gospel get reduced to such empty uselessness?
But it's too late for Waylon Jennings anyway.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Some Voices I love
Update: I was wrong, I didn't add to it (see original post below). I don't listen to music much really, but now and then I go on music binges and listen for hours or days to a particular kind of music. I was into "crossover" music for a while when I started this post, Bocelli and Brightman and others, but more of that didn't make it to my list here. Over the last few days I've been listening to a lot of country western of the Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard generation. Love that stuff too, and many more other types of music as well. But in binges as I said, not as a regular diet, any of it. Music can be intrusive, I don't like it as background, I'm either in it completely or I don't want to hear it at all.
Don't know if I'll post anything from this country phase. But you can dig up plenty of it yourself on You Tube. Oh, and the movie "Tender Mercies" is really great in my opinion, see it if you haven't.
--- November 9, 2013
=============================================
Just started this list, I'm sure I'll add to it.
Kathleen Battle O Holy Night
Lynne Dawson Rejoice Greatly, Messiah
Andrea Bocelli, Romanza
Bocelli and Brightman Time to Say Goodbye
Don't know if I'll post anything from this country phase. But you can dig up plenty of it yourself on You Tube. Oh, and the movie "Tender Mercies" is really great in my opinion, see it if you haven't.
--- November 9, 2013
=============================================
Just started this list, I'm sure I'll add to it.
Kathleen Battle O Holy Night
Lynne Dawson Rejoice Greatly, Messiah
Andrea Bocelli, Romanza
Bocelli and Brightman Time to Say Goodbye
Friday, October 5, 2012
Videos of touching rescues of abused and abandoned dogs
I'm a cat person, not very familiar with dogs and never interested in having one as a pet, but someone sent me this touching story of the rescue of a couple of abandoned dogs trying to survive in a park in Southern California, and I fell in love with the dogs and got hooked on this rescue operation, Hope for Paws. I then watched other videos they'd put up on the web, mostly done by this one guy named Eldad Hagar who runs Hope for Paws with his wife Audrey. Awfully touching stories. I have certain videos I like to watch to settle me in the midst of irritating or disturbing experiences, such as a grueling battle in my blogging life for instance, and these have now joined the list for their happy endings.
This is the first one I saw, The rescue of Sky and Apollo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=basvgzCSNyk
(Blogger has new formatting which is driving me crazy. Getting the links to reduce to their titles is impossible for me so I'm leaving them in code)
This one is the rescue of blind Fiona, which is one of two I watch most frequently for its feel-good ending, the story of Edie being the other:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJkZXh9v_i4
This one is about Chase, a little abused dog that had been brought to the shelter that they were going to put down because she was so vicious. It's shorter than the others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4giaORFP5M
This is about Edie, a terrified little dog that would also have been euthanized if she hadn't been rescued:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LqSHfkLvHk
And here's the happy ending for Edie as she is adopted and turns out to be a delightful, pretty, obedient pet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOmDmSrW33w&feature=related
Story after story shows pathetically miserable, hungry, injured, flea-infested and mange-ridden, frightened, abused, neglected dogs that at first hit you as probably unredeemable, but patience and affection, food and medical care bring all of them around and transform them into great pets. It's SO touching.
And here's the happy ending for Edie as she is adopted and turns out to be a delightful, pretty, obedient pet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOmDmSrW33w&feature=related
Story after story shows pathetically miserable, hungry, injured, flea-infested and mange-ridden, frightened, abused, neglected dogs that at first hit you as probably unredeemable, but patience and affection, food and medical care bring all of them around and transform them into great pets. It's SO touching.
There are many other rescue stories at this link.
Don't know why I seem to have chosen only stories of little white fluffy dogs but that's what they are. There are plenty of other stories of big dogs, brown dogs, etc. etc., all touching stories. (Some of them were so cruelly abused it's too sad to post their stories even though they too have somewhat happy endings -- sometines the scars from the abuse can't be completely erased.)
Don't know why I seem to have chosen only stories of little white fluffy dogs but that's what they are. There are plenty of other stories of big dogs, brown dogs, etc. etc., all touching stories. (Some of them were so cruelly abused it's too sad to post their stories even though they too have somewhat happy endings -- sometines the scars from the abuse can't be completely erased.)
Friday, September 21, 2012
Henri, Le Chat Noir, a little film in French Existentialist style
Okay, I've been passing this little gem around by email and finally decided to post it. There are three in the series but this one, #2, is the best, a perfect expression of the genre. The visuals are perfect, the French narrator is perfect, the music is perfect (something called Nothing Has Changed by Vi Hart according to another You Tube video in tribute to Henri.)
P.S. For my friends who aren't familiar with the genre and dislike poor Henri for his self-pity and conceit, hey, it's supposed to be FUNNY!
P.S. For my friends who aren't familiar with the genre and dislike poor Henri for his self-pity and conceit, hey, it's supposed to be FUNNY!
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Another Susan Boyle moment on Britain's Got Talent
She's good but he's great, and you'd never have guessed it, and just as what happened with Susan Boyle, nobody did suspect any greatness at first, everybody groaning when they come out on stage, and Simon Cowell saying to the judge next to him, "just when you thought it couldn't get worse."
You see faces in the audience dying of embarrassment for them, until they start singing and then they are "gobsmacked" -- to use Susan Boyle's expression -- and beside themselves with admiration.
And it's always a joy to see Simon Cowell be impressed with a contestant, especially when he'd expected something dreadful instead.
Love this stuff.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Little ministry in India needs help
To Whom It May Concern:
I used to send money from time to time to the pastor of this little ministry in India who sent me the email I've quoted below. Some friends also help out from time to time and it was through them that I found out about him.
I think the letter speaks for the genuineness of this Indian pastor and his concerns for his people. He is working hard among the Dalits (sometimes known as the "untouchables"). As of a few months ago I had to stop working and no longer have the means to send money as I used to do, but I'm glad they still stay in touch with me.
So I'm putting up his most recent email hoping someone might like to help them out. A money order for $50 or $100 goes a very very long way in India. Anyone who is at all interested can email me and I can send you more information about them including pictures of the pastor and the people he works among.
Blessings in the Lord,
Connie
I used to send money from time to time to the pastor of this little ministry in India who sent me the email I've quoted below. Some friends also help out from time to time and it was through them that I found out about him.
I think the letter speaks for the genuineness of this Indian pastor and his concerns for his people. He is working hard among the Dalits (sometimes known as the "untouchables"). As of a few months ago I had to stop working and no longer have the means to send money as I used to do, but I'm glad they still stay in touch with me.
So I'm putting up his most recent email hoping someone might like to help them out. A money order for $50 or $100 goes a very very long way in India. Anyone who is at all interested can email me and I can send you more information about them including pictures of the pastor and the people he works among.
Blessings in the Lord,
Connie
Hello sister Connie, Greetings from India.
How are you doing sister? How is your health? We daily remember you all in our prayers.
By the grace of our great God we are all doing well and we hope this email finds you well there. Children in the school, orphan children, neglected and old aged widows, pastors and their families, my family and all the brethren with me are sending their heartiest greetings to you and all saints with you. By the grace of our great God We have been provided good education for hundreds of children and now we have 300 children in this year. We are promoting 30 more children to the High School this year. And many parents are coming to join their children in our school in this academic year. They are very interested to join their children. Some parents are very happy about our education. You know we are also teaching Bible and its stories and some do not like that. We are preaching the truths to the children. Our goal is to make them well and educated so that they can preach in later days. Yesterday we reopened our school and already 30 new children joined. We are inviting all dalit children and poor children to come and join in our school. Please pray for our school and children. We hope, we will make new generation with these children. Pro 22:6 ` Train up a child in the way he should go, when he is old he will not depart from it.` So we are doing our best to reach as many poor dalits as we can. Now we are struggling for the school needs. Please pray for these needs and Lord willing please stretch your blessed helping hand to reach these needs.
1. Books (text books and note books) , Slates and slate pencils.
2. Uniform for the children and Shoes, belt, tie for the poor children in the school.
3. We are planning to provide a `T- shirt for the children` we have already ordered 100 Tshirts. We need to buy 200 more T shirts. The cost of the 200 T`shirts are $ 450. Please pray for these needs of our school.
orphan Home is running well. We are providing good food and accommodation for them all. Now they are enjoying summer holidays and now we will join them in the schools. All are promoted to next classes. So we have to provide clothes, books, bags etc. And also we have to pay their term school fee.
I am planning to bring them to my village so that they can study in our school and live with us.
I have to finish the record work of this year and have to submit to the Educational office. I am doing that. Please pray for me, for my health too. My two daughters, my wife and I are praying for you, for your home and house hold and all the saints with you. Please show the Lord`s love and compassion upon us, our school and children.
We are waiting for your kind reply.
Servant, Samuel.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Implications of last words before death
At good ol EvC there's a thread now about Steve Jobs' supposedly saying "Wow wow wow" just before he died, and they're wondering if that proves anything about the afterlife.
Unbelievers are saying no, it could just be a chemical or physical effect of the dying process or of the drugs given him for pain. Believers in Christ are claiming yes, but get themselves all tangled up in the untenable implication that Steve Jobs must therefore have been saved at the very end.
My guess would be that Jobs WAS seeing into another realm just before he died, just because of how he's described as having a faraway look, and it must have been a pleasant other realm because the expression "Wow" does not sound unhappy.
I don't know what general condition his mind was in at the end but I do know that some kinds of illness affect the mind and produce hallucinations. A relative of mine saw long-dead family members in her room a day or two before she died, and kept talking about a "party going on downstairs" that she wished she could go to. Its being "downstairs" was disturbing to me as that's the wrong direction for a Christian's last wishes to be directed. It wasn't her last words, she became more or less comatose right before she died, but the point is that even a happy vision of another world isn't necessarily a sign of salvation. Since she was a Christian what she experienced (heard?) of a party going on "downstairs" (her apartment was on the ground floor) does bother me and I won't know until I see the Lord myself if that said anything about whether or not she was really saved, or was simply the toxins of the cancer in her liver affecting her brain.
If Jobs was fairly lucid when he exclaimed his "Wow" and it was RIGHT before he died, I'd guess he did see into the other world he was going to but that it was a counterfeit show put on by the demons waiting to receive him into their company, to convince him and the people with him that he was going to a good place. Anything to call the Bible into doubt.
Unbelievers are saying no, it could just be a chemical or physical effect of the dying process or of the drugs given him for pain. Believers in Christ are claiming yes, but get themselves all tangled up in the untenable implication that Steve Jobs must therefore have been saved at the very end.
My guess would be that Jobs WAS seeing into another realm just before he died, just because of how he's described as having a faraway look, and it must have been a pleasant other realm because the expression "Wow" does not sound unhappy.
I don't know what general condition his mind was in at the end but I do know that some kinds of illness affect the mind and produce hallucinations. A relative of mine saw long-dead family members in her room a day or two before she died, and kept talking about a "party going on downstairs" that she wished she could go to. Its being "downstairs" was disturbing to me as that's the wrong direction for a Christian's last wishes to be directed. It wasn't her last words, she became more or less comatose right before she died, but the point is that even a happy vision of another world isn't necessarily a sign of salvation. Since she was a Christian what she experienced (heard?) of a party going on "downstairs" (her apartment was on the ground floor) does bother me and I won't know until I see the Lord myself if that said anything about whether or not she was really saved, or was simply the toxins of the cancer in her liver affecting her brain.
If Jobs was fairly lucid when he exclaimed his "Wow" and it was RIGHT before he died, I'd guess he did see into the other world he was going to but that it was a counterfeit show put on by the demons waiting to receive him into their company, to convince him and the people with him that he was going to a good place. Anything to call the Bible into doubt.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Long warm Autumn
Trees out my window -- Chinese elms -- are still GREEN and we're already into November! What a strange long warm Fall we've been having. It's that way all over town, green green green with just the occasional blazing gold or red tree here and there. The trees normally start turning color by the middle of September and are completely bare by now.
The temperature is dropping, though, so it shouldn't be long now. I hope we still get some color before the snow or we'll have depressingly dead brown leaves on the trees all winter.
======================
Nov 3
Yep, lots of trees just fading and turning brown without turning bright colors and without dropping their leaves. Still a lot of green ones out there though, but it's freezing overnight now -- going down to 23F tonight, and we're also to get some snow. The wind is knocking the trees around outside my window, which often means something wet is coming over the mountains. All the leaves are still on those trees even in the wind. Weird.
Some are saying the strange weather seems to be part of an overall changed weather pattern but I don't see it. Just seems like we're having an unusual pattern this particular year. We've had every kind of winter over the last twenty years, from very cold to mild years, heavy snow and light snow years, a couple of years when it's rained in January -- huge flooding one of those years -- that's when the weather comes over from Hawaii. If it comes down from Alaska then it can get down to -10 or so with or without snow.
And everything in between. If there's a pattern here I guess I don't know what to look for.
====
Nov 6
Odd to see white roofs framed by green though fading leaves, skipping Fall this year.
====
Nov 18
Yesterday the trees around town were still mostly green although there were more yellow and red than before. Out my window the leaves were mostly green with a little yellowish among them, and one tree all withered though greenish still. At last leaves were falling but still a lot of green remained on the branches. Then this morning a big wind just about denuded them all. Now it looks the way it should look at this time of year. Almost. Oddly there are still a few green leaves clinging to branches. But most are on the ground where they should be.
What I don't get is how the green has held out so long considering how cold it has been for the last few weeks. My computer corner seems to collect the cold air. Been piling on the layers until I'm finally almost warm enough but the keyboard is cold and my hands are cold too.
====
January 14,2012 Not only a very strange Fall -- or a skipping of Fall altogether, but we've also been skipping Winter. No snow has fallen since Thanksgiving! Nor rain either. It goes down to the low 20s and 'teens at night and some days it's pretty cold as well but it's also been up around 60 way too often for winter. Finally we're to get some rain/snow this coming week, starting Wednesday.
===
April 15. But since then we've been having wintry weather, at least all through March, rain and snow and it's still very cold. There are blossoms out but the basic feel is more like winter than spring. Everything's out of order still.
The temperature is dropping, though, so it shouldn't be long now. I hope we still get some color before the snow or we'll have depressingly dead brown leaves on the trees all winter.
======================
Nov 3
Yep, lots of trees just fading and turning brown without turning bright colors and without dropping their leaves. Still a lot of green ones out there though, but it's freezing overnight now -- going down to 23F tonight, and we're also to get some snow. The wind is knocking the trees around outside my window, which often means something wet is coming over the mountains. All the leaves are still on those trees even in the wind. Weird.
Some are saying the strange weather seems to be part of an overall changed weather pattern but I don't see it. Just seems like we're having an unusual pattern this particular year. We've had every kind of winter over the last twenty years, from very cold to mild years, heavy snow and light snow years, a couple of years when it's rained in January -- huge flooding one of those years -- that's when the weather comes over from Hawaii. If it comes down from Alaska then it can get down to -10 or so with or without snow.
And everything in between. If there's a pattern here I guess I don't know what to look for.
====
Nov 6
Odd to see white roofs framed by green though fading leaves, skipping Fall this year.
====
Nov 18
Yesterday the trees around town were still mostly green although there were more yellow and red than before. Out my window the leaves were mostly green with a little yellowish among them, and one tree all withered though greenish still. At last leaves were falling but still a lot of green remained on the branches. Then this morning a big wind just about denuded them all. Now it looks the way it should look at this time of year. Almost. Oddly there are still a few green leaves clinging to branches. But most are on the ground where they should be.
What I don't get is how the green has held out so long considering how cold it has been for the last few weeks. My computer corner seems to collect the cold air. Been piling on the layers until I'm finally almost warm enough but the keyboard is cold and my hands are cold too.
====
January 14,2012 Not only a very strange Fall -- or a skipping of Fall altogether, but we've also been skipping Winter. No snow has fallen since Thanksgiving! Nor rain either. It goes down to the low 20s and 'teens at night and some days it's pretty cold as well but it's also been up around 60 way too often for winter. Finally we're to get some rain/snow this coming week, starting Wednesday.
===
April 15. But since then we've been having wintry weather, at least all through March, rain and snow and it's still very cold. There are blossoms out but the basic feel is more like winter than spring. Everything's out of order still.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Reno Air Races Crash + October 6 update
When Tom saw the news about the Air Races crash on Friday he called Gene on his cell phone, knowing that's where he'd be. Gene and his son Chris were already packing up to leave. They'd been about 75 yards from where the plane hit.
Normally they would have been in one of the VIP boxes down in front but Gene was doing a barbecue for the group he was with and they wouldn't let him do it in the box. So he'd brought his camp trailer and was doing the cooking up in the back. There wouldn't be much to do until the weekend as the box was empty on Friday anyway. Tom was going to join them on Saturday when a much bigger crowd would be there.
When the plane went out of control Gene said it looked like it was coming straight down at him and he had a split second to think of running, but even in that split second he knew he didn't have the time to run anywhere. If it was going to hit him it was going to hit him. Right afterward Chris ran down to the crash site. Gene started to follow a few minutes later but Chris was already on his way back and told him not to go down, body parts were everywhere, it was a mess.
People wandered by the trailer covered in blood and Gene helped them clean up. Everyone seemed to be in a daze. A woman from his group came up and asked for some water and he gave her a bottle from the ice chest. When she turned around he could see her back was covered in blood and bits of flesh. Later he got in a conversation with a man who had also been close to the wreck. Same thing -- he turned around and his back too was plastered with human debris.
It was a good thing it was Friday and not the weekend with the big crowds. It was a good thing the plane came down vertically; if it had come in horizontal at that speed it would have taken out most of the grandstand area. It was especially a good thing that the fuel didn't explode. And for Gene of course it was a good thing he was doing the barbecue that day.
Tom and Gene have known each other for thirty years or so. Both have loved airplanes for as long as they can remember. Tom always wanted to be a commercial pilot and when his sister became a flight attendant ("stewardess" in those days) she paid for his first flying lesson. His boss at the drugstore lent him the money to take the full training at the Reno-Stead school, a real bona fide aviation academy that turned out commercial pilots. He took the courses in the few spare hours between his job and family life with a wife and new baby, got in 160 of the required 200 hours of flying time and passed the licensing exam before the academy went bankrupt. Which left him short of the full training and owing on the loan.
Twenty years later his wife struck up a conversation with a flight instructor in the waiting room at her doctor's office and passed his card on to Tom. So he went for lessons at the local airport and got licensed as a private pilot. He says he is probably the most overqualified private pilot in the country what with all the training he'd had at the academy, even instrument rating, even a course in meteorology. I never heard of lenticular clouds until he told me about them. Apparently the Sierras are one of the few places they form. They look like stacks of pancakes, caused by the swirling air currents near mountains.
Gene got interested in taking lessons from the same flight instructor after hearing Tom's story. He too became a pilot, and over the years the two of them would get together on weekends and fly somewhere for breakfast, up to Quincy or Chester in California or out to Hawthorne or Winnemucca or Elko. The local casinos would send someone to the airport to pick them up if they let them know they were coming. They never gambled but usually had a big omelet before flying home. They joked that it wouldn't be the flying that killed them but the cholesterol. When Gene's son Chris grew up he too became a pilot, now flies a corporate jet.
I asked Tom if the air races attracted a lot of pilots and he said I ought to go watch the private planes take off from Reno airport after an air show. So many pilots come into town for the event it is an air show in itself to watch them leave. "Hundreds?" I asked. Oh yeah, hundreds, a continuous line of four-to-six-seat Cessnas and Pipers and the like from the parking areas to the runway. They line them up on the runway two abreast and send them off in pairs. Two or three minutes apart, he wasn't sure about the timing any more, he hasn't gone to watch in years. If the wind was cooperative they'd have both the north-south and east-west runways stacked up at the same time, and then a pair could take off from one and the next pair from the other in half the time from only one. His wife got him a radio so he could hear what the tower and the pilots were saying to each other.
The investigation of the crash has focused on mechanical failure, and there are pictures showing a piece of the tail had fallen off. Some have suggested the pilot must have controlled the plane to keep it from hitting where it would have done much more damage, but Gene is sure that isn't what happened. He thinks something had knocked out the pilot, maybe a heart attack or maybe the heavy G's from taking a fast turn around a pylon. He says you can see quite clearly in some of the pictures of the plane coming down that there is nobody in the cockpit. It's a canopy type windshield and he'd be quite visible if he were still sitting up as he should have been. Gene is also sure he wasn't conscious because the plane came down at full power and a pilot at all conscious would have instinctively pulled back on the power. It hit the ground still going full bore. There was not enough left of the pilot's body for an autopsy.
Two days after the wreck Gene still talks about it in a quivering voice.
Neither Tom nor Gene knew any of the ten who were killed, though another friend who was there told Tom he's sure one of them was someone he had met years ago, but Tom didn't remember her. A lady who leaves behind eight children. The friend is going to see if he can find the photo with the two of them in it.
===========
Got this email from Tom forwarded from someone who had the results of the investigation into the cause of the crash. I get the gist of it though some of the pilot jargon is over my head:
Normally they would have been in one of the VIP boxes down in front but Gene was doing a barbecue for the group he was with and they wouldn't let him do it in the box. So he'd brought his camp trailer and was doing the cooking up in the back. There wouldn't be much to do until the weekend as the box was empty on Friday anyway. Tom was going to join them on Saturday when a much bigger crowd would be there.
When the plane went out of control Gene said it looked like it was coming straight down at him and he had a split second to think of running, but even in that split second he knew he didn't have the time to run anywhere. If it was going to hit him it was going to hit him. Right afterward Chris ran down to the crash site. Gene started to follow a few minutes later but Chris was already on his way back and told him not to go down, body parts were everywhere, it was a mess.
People wandered by the trailer covered in blood and Gene helped them clean up. Everyone seemed to be in a daze. A woman from his group came up and asked for some water and he gave her a bottle from the ice chest. When she turned around he could see her back was covered in blood and bits of flesh. Later he got in a conversation with a man who had also been close to the wreck. Same thing -- he turned around and his back too was plastered with human debris.
It was a good thing it was Friday and not the weekend with the big crowds. It was a good thing the plane came down vertically; if it had come in horizontal at that speed it would have taken out most of the grandstand area. It was especially a good thing that the fuel didn't explode. And for Gene of course it was a good thing he was doing the barbecue that day.
Tom and Gene have known each other for thirty years or so. Both have loved airplanes for as long as they can remember. Tom always wanted to be a commercial pilot and when his sister became a flight attendant ("stewardess" in those days) she paid for his first flying lesson. His boss at the drugstore lent him the money to take the full training at the Reno-Stead school, a real bona fide aviation academy that turned out commercial pilots. He took the courses in the few spare hours between his job and family life with a wife and new baby, got in 160 of the required 200 hours of flying time and passed the licensing exam before the academy went bankrupt. Which left him short of the full training and owing on the loan.
Twenty years later his wife struck up a conversation with a flight instructor in the waiting room at her doctor's office and passed his card on to Tom. So he went for lessons at the local airport and got licensed as a private pilot. He says he is probably the most overqualified private pilot in the country what with all the training he'd had at the academy, even instrument rating, even a course in meteorology. I never heard of lenticular clouds until he told me about them. Apparently the Sierras are one of the few places they form. They look like stacks of pancakes, caused by the swirling air currents near mountains.
Gene got interested in taking lessons from the same flight instructor after hearing Tom's story. He too became a pilot, and over the years the two of them would get together on weekends and fly somewhere for breakfast, up to Quincy or Chester in California or out to Hawthorne or Winnemucca or Elko. The local casinos would send someone to the airport to pick them up if they let them know they were coming. They never gambled but usually had a big omelet before flying home. They joked that it wouldn't be the flying that killed them but the cholesterol. When Gene's son Chris grew up he too became a pilot, now flies a corporate jet.
I asked Tom if the air races attracted a lot of pilots and he said I ought to go watch the private planes take off from Reno airport after an air show. So many pilots come into town for the event it is an air show in itself to watch them leave. "Hundreds?" I asked. Oh yeah, hundreds, a continuous line of four-to-six-seat Cessnas and Pipers and the like from the parking areas to the runway. They line them up on the runway two abreast and send them off in pairs. Two or three minutes apart, he wasn't sure about the timing any more, he hasn't gone to watch in years. If the wind was cooperative they'd have both the north-south and east-west runways stacked up at the same time, and then a pair could take off from one and the next pair from the other in half the time from only one. His wife got him a radio so he could hear what the tower and the pilots were saying to each other.
The investigation of the crash has focused on mechanical failure, and there are pictures showing a piece of the tail had fallen off. Some have suggested the pilot must have controlled the plane to keep it from hitting where it would have done much more damage, but Gene is sure that isn't what happened. He thinks something had knocked out the pilot, maybe a heart attack or maybe the heavy G's from taking a fast turn around a pylon. He says you can see quite clearly in some of the pictures of the plane coming down that there is nobody in the cockpit. It's a canopy type windshield and he'd be quite visible if he were still sitting up as he should have been. Gene is also sure he wasn't conscious because the plane came down at full power and a pilot at all conscious would have instinctively pulled back on the power. It hit the ground still going full bore. There was not enough left of the pilot's body for an autopsy.
Two days after the wreck Gene still talks about it in a quivering voice.
Neither Tom nor Gene knew any of the ten who were killed, though another friend who was there told Tom he's sure one of them was someone he had met years ago, but Tom didn't remember her. A lady who leaves behind eight children. The friend is going to see if he can find the photo with the two of them in it.
===========
Got this email from Tom forwarded from someone who had the results of the investigation into the cause of the crash. I get the gist of it though some of the pilot jargon is over my head:
Galloping Ghost crash
Ok... here's the skinny on the accident.... A P-51 normally has two trim tabs.. one on each elevator... this one had one and other one was fixed in place.. He was warned about the forces being put on that one tab. It failed.. He had at least a 10G load when the plane pitched up from the loss of the trim tab and he went "nighty night" and probably never woke up.
The telemetry downloaded from Galloping Ghost revealed an 11g pull-up, fuel flow interrupted on the way up, and then the engine restarted when fuel flow resumed at the top of the arc. The aircraft was making 105 inches of Manifold Pressure on the way down.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .Here's another "theory" of the crash from experienced racers.
In 1989 this type of thing happened to another pilot but he lived to tell the story.
When flying a P-51 at 450+mph you need to have full nose down trim to keep the plane level.
The elevator trim tab broke off and the aircraft immediately went in to a 10G climb, confirmed by the G-meter.
The pilot came to, from the sudden blackout and realized he had slipped through the shoulder harness and was looking at the floor of the airplane.
He was able to reach the throttle and pull it back to slow down and was able to recover and land.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
A month of personal disasters
Well it's been quite a month for horrible experiences of many sorts for me, beginning with the smoke problem but including one disaster after another involving my computer, which meant I lost quite a bit of work and therefore income. I hope it's all over now but as they say time will tell.
If these are Satan's attacks I suppose I should be happy because I must be doing something right in that case. I do have a project I've begun working on that I think and hope is from the Lord, the kind of project that needs Him to guide me at every turn or I'll mess it up. Keeps me coming back to Him when I've hit a snag and want to give up, which happens frequently, but nevertheless when my computer won't do what it's supposed to do and my income falls to zero I'm prone to lose the solid faith I need at those times.
We're admonished in scripture to rejoice in ALL circumstances, because it's ALL good although we usually don't have the perspective to understand it. And I do try, at least ask the Lord to give me that spirit of rejoicing and resting in Him no matter what demonic interferences are going on around me. I even prayed for the ability to love my neighbor as my apartment and my lungs filled up with the smoke. "All things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose." I ran that one through my head frequently.
Thought I'd spend this post describing all those disasters, but maybe this is enough. Or as I have the habit of doing, I'll sign off with the idea that I may yet come back and add all that. You never know.
If these are Satan's attacks I suppose I should be happy because I must be doing something right in that case. I do have a project I've begun working on that I think and hope is from the Lord, the kind of project that needs Him to guide me at every turn or I'll mess it up. Keeps me coming back to Him when I've hit a snag and want to give up, which happens frequently, but nevertheless when my computer won't do what it's supposed to do and my income falls to zero I'm prone to lose the solid faith I need at those times.
We're admonished in scripture to rejoice in ALL circumstances, because it's ALL good although we usually don't have the perspective to understand it. And I do try, at least ask the Lord to give me that spirit of rejoicing and resting in Him no matter what demonic interferences are going on around me. I even prayed for the ability to love my neighbor as my apartment and my lungs filled up with the smoke. "All things work together for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose." I ran that one through my head frequently.
Thought I'd spend this post describing all those disasters, but maybe this is enough. Or as I have the habit of doing, I'll sign off with the idea that I may yet come back and add all that. You never know.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Update on the smoking situation
After nearly a whole month of suffering from my neighbor's smoke, at long last, as of yesterday afternoon, the property manager got her to go smoke behind the laundry room and I can breathe again.
It turns out there is a law against "endangering the health or well being" of another person, which is grounds for eviction. I thought there simply must be a law along those lines, it's insane to think that a person could smoke freely even when the smoke stings another person's eyes, makes her chest hurt, prevents her from opening a window or turning on the A/C, and generally makes her miserable in her own home. Thank You Lord that there is such a law.
The neighbor's attitude had been that "this isn't California and I'm not doing anything wrong!" but I think the principle of the thing finally got through to her --the threat of eviction if nothing else. But best of all I don't think there are any hard feelings on either side and I'm very glad of that since I've been hysterical over it more than once and could easily have said or done something I'd regret. Insufficient prayer of course.
I did get an anti-pollution mask that worked great for a few days at blocking out the smoke, although of course having to wear a mask in my own home wasn't fun, but after a few days the smell of the mask materials started to nauseate me and I had to give up wearing it yesterday.
So the manager's intervention came just in time.
It turns out there is a law against "endangering the health or well being" of another person, which is grounds for eviction. I thought there simply must be a law along those lines, it's insane to think that a person could smoke freely even when the smoke stings another person's eyes, makes her chest hurt, prevents her from opening a window or turning on the A/C, and generally makes her miserable in her own home. Thank You Lord that there is such a law.
The neighbor's attitude had been that "this isn't California and I'm not doing anything wrong!" but I think the principle of the thing finally got through to her --the threat of eviction if nothing else. But best of all I don't think there are any hard feelings on either side and I'm very glad of that since I've been hysterical over it more than once and could easily have said or done something I'd regret. Insufficient prayer of course.
I did get an anti-pollution mask that worked great for a few days at blocking out the smoke, although of course having to wear a mask in my own home wasn't fun, but after a few days the smell of the mask materials started to nauseate me and I had to give up wearing it yesterday.
So the manager's intervention came just in time.
Friday, August 19, 2011
A Rant Against Smokers' Rights
I used to be a smoker, even a very heavy smoker for a few years, but I quit 22 years ago this month and am SO happy I did. What a horrible addiction.
But now I'm unusually sensitive to smoke and avoid it if I can. I don't go places where I know there will be smoke in the air. I don't know if my sensitivity is due to having been a smoker myself, but I've thought it may be. People who have never smoked don't seem to have quite as much trouble with it as I do now.
But whatever the reason, it is very hard on me to be around smoke now. It makes my chest hurt, it stings my eyes, and after some time of exposure it gets up into my sinuses where it causes me to smell smoke for a couple of weeks whether there is any actual smoke in the environment or not. Then it's the smarting eyes and the tight chest that tell me if there is or not.
When I was a smoker I was oblivious to the effects on nonsmokers, as I think most smokers are. It seemed to be mostly a matter of aesthetics, people not liking the smell, rather than anything harmful. You adapt, you go to the smoking section in the restaurant, you smoke on countless front or back porches because the smell of smoke is not wanted in the house, and so on. We heard "scientific" reports of the supposedly harmful effects of second-hand smoke, but such reports have an abstract quality to them. I don't recall anyone complaining that the smoke actually hurt them.
Now I know that it hurts and I know it the hard way, by being trapped in my own apartment with the smoke from neighbors' cigarettes and no right to protest against it. They have the rights. At least in my state they do.
For the first four or five years I lived in this apartment I had the same neighbor to the south of me and he didn't smoke. Then he moved out and there have been half a dozen or so different tenants in that apartment since then, all of them smokers. The management requires them to go outside to smoke because they don't want the apartment walls plastered with the tars and permeated with the smell of smoke. What that means is that the smoke comes into MY apartment next door.
It comes through the window if I have one open, of course, and it comes through the A/C if I have it on. What else do you do on hot summer days but run the A/C and open windows to cool the place down? I can't do that if there is smoke in the air. But it also comes in when everything is shut up. I think that might be because I do have to run a fan since I can't do anything else to keep the place cool, and the fan may suck the smoke in through the cracks around the door and windows. Just a theory.
Mercifully most of the tenants haven't been heavy smokers and were gone most of the time anyway, but while they were smoking it was an unpleasant experience for me. When I once asked the manager if there was anything she could do about it, the answer was no.
Now I have a new neighbor and she's home most of the time and she has friends there with her much of the time and they ALL smoke. And at least one of them is a very heavy smoker. Someone smokes sometimes well into the night so I can't even have a window open during the coolest hours any more.
This is pretty much unbearable. It is the smokers who have the rights, not the victims of the smokers, a very odd injustice. Sure, it's a personal habit but this particular personal habit happens to impact others, very seriously too as I now understand from experience. I'm sitting here with smarting eyes as I write. Tenants are normally protected from other tenants' habits that encroach on them but not from smoking. I did a little research on the rights involved in this sort of situation and it doesn't look good for the nonsmoker. They've got laws against smoking in public places but not in apartments. Apartment managers sometimes try to accommodate people but that doesn't always happen.
I found one case, back in the 90s but as far as I can tell the same attitudes still pretty much prevail -- a man had lived for some time in an upstairs apartment when a very heavy smoker moved into the apartment below him. He would wake up to a cloud of smoke in his bedroom. He got an irritation in his eye from it that required medical treatment. The management said there was nothing they could do about it. When he politely approached the smoker, she agreed to smoke in a different place but that didn't last long. She was aware that she had a "right" to smoke where she did. Finally the management sued HIM for "harassing" the smoker, which merely meant the request that she smoke elsewhere. The court decided against him. He was evicted. Amazing.
I've ordered a carbon-filtered mask from Amazon which should arrive early next week, to wear in my own apartment, because my neighbor has the right to inflict her smoke on me.
But now I'm unusually sensitive to smoke and avoid it if I can. I don't go places where I know there will be smoke in the air. I don't know if my sensitivity is due to having been a smoker myself, but I've thought it may be. People who have never smoked don't seem to have quite as much trouble with it as I do now.
But whatever the reason, it is very hard on me to be around smoke now. It makes my chest hurt, it stings my eyes, and after some time of exposure it gets up into my sinuses where it causes me to smell smoke for a couple of weeks whether there is any actual smoke in the environment or not. Then it's the smarting eyes and the tight chest that tell me if there is or not.
When I was a smoker I was oblivious to the effects on nonsmokers, as I think most smokers are. It seemed to be mostly a matter of aesthetics, people not liking the smell, rather than anything harmful. You adapt, you go to the smoking section in the restaurant, you smoke on countless front or back porches because the smell of smoke is not wanted in the house, and so on. We heard "scientific" reports of the supposedly harmful effects of second-hand smoke, but such reports have an abstract quality to them. I don't recall anyone complaining that the smoke actually hurt them.
Now I know that it hurts and I know it the hard way, by being trapped in my own apartment with the smoke from neighbors' cigarettes and no right to protest against it. They have the rights. At least in my state they do.
For the first four or five years I lived in this apartment I had the same neighbor to the south of me and he didn't smoke. Then he moved out and there have been half a dozen or so different tenants in that apartment since then, all of them smokers. The management requires them to go outside to smoke because they don't want the apartment walls plastered with the tars and permeated with the smell of smoke. What that means is that the smoke comes into MY apartment next door.
It comes through the window if I have one open, of course, and it comes through the A/C if I have it on. What else do you do on hot summer days but run the A/C and open windows to cool the place down? I can't do that if there is smoke in the air. But it also comes in when everything is shut up. I think that might be because I do have to run a fan since I can't do anything else to keep the place cool, and the fan may suck the smoke in through the cracks around the door and windows. Just a theory.
Mercifully most of the tenants haven't been heavy smokers and were gone most of the time anyway, but while they were smoking it was an unpleasant experience for me. When I once asked the manager if there was anything she could do about it, the answer was no.
Now I have a new neighbor and she's home most of the time and she has friends there with her much of the time and they ALL smoke. And at least one of them is a very heavy smoker. Someone smokes sometimes well into the night so I can't even have a window open during the coolest hours any more.
This is pretty much unbearable. It is the smokers who have the rights, not the victims of the smokers, a very odd injustice. Sure, it's a personal habit but this particular personal habit happens to impact others, very seriously too as I now understand from experience. I'm sitting here with smarting eyes as I write. Tenants are normally protected from other tenants' habits that encroach on them but not from smoking. I did a little research on the rights involved in this sort of situation and it doesn't look good for the nonsmoker. They've got laws against smoking in public places but not in apartments. Apartment managers sometimes try to accommodate people but that doesn't always happen.
I found one case, back in the 90s but as far as I can tell the same attitudes still pretty much prevail -- a man had lived for some time in an upstairs apartment when a very heavy smoker moved into the apartment below him. He would wake up to a cloud of smoke in his bedroom. He got an irritation in his eye from it that required medical treatment. The management said there was nothing they could do about it. When he politely approached the smoker, she agreed to smoke in a different place but that didn't last long. She was aware that she had a "right" to smoke where she did. Finally the management sued HIM for "harassing" the smoker, which merely meant the request that she smoke elsewhere. The court decided against him. He was evicted. Amazing.
I've ordered a carbon-filtered mask from Amazon which should arrive early next week, to wear in my own apartment, because my neighbor has the right to inflict her smoke on me.
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