Running Blog Thoughts. Vol. One

I never have anything to blog about. And I so want too. I’m beginning to see things in terms of possible blog entries.

Does blogging equal whining in public? I used to like to read Dooce, but now it seems as if she is one big whine.

Are pets a pain in the ass, or a little bit of heaven?

I will not be dragged into being a gripe ass political blog no matter how much our present national elected jerks continue to dismantle everything the United States of America has stood for the last two hundred and thirty years.

I will not rip the CO monitor out of the wall the next time it starts beeping in the wee hours of the morning. Or maybe I will.

Thanks, I’m feeling better already.

Actually, I’m feeling so good, mind if I continue for a while? (whining that is?)

Why did I feel bad last night, when the toothless woman knocked on my door at 8:30 pm and wanted to shampoo one room in my house for free? I actually listened to her spill until she said, “Oh, my name is Nikki, what’s yours?” Then I said, “No thanks, we don’t want any” and loosened the grip on the collar of my madly barking dog. Talk about a smile turning to a frown.

Hey, don’t look at me that way. I have enough of those ten dollar discount cards from “any merchant in town” peddled by the local “team” to feed and clothe an army.

I still miss the skinny little blonde girl that sold me the yellow trash bags to support her cheerleading squad. They were just perfect, and I bought them all through her middle school and high school years. I know she has graduated; yet when I run out of trash bags I often wonder what became of her.

Alien life forms...my pets

10am

As I sit here this morning writing I have a dog staring out the backdoor, patiently waiting to be let out to explore the backyard for the latest fresh kitty poop.

In the big sea foam colored chair sits “little kitty” in a semi-comatose state laconically watching the room.

“old kitty” saunters in looking for the sunniest spot and settles on the couch where a brilliant beam of early morning sun is momentarily streaming in through the open shutters.

I’ve never wanted pets other than a bird dog to keep outside in a pen to use during bird season. But life has progressed and living with women that seem to attract odd creatures like a magnet (including me) we have accumulated some very interesting animals.

Each animal is a story unto itself. The mean-ass barn cat that loves parties, the puppy that was left on our front doorstep and then developed a life-threatening disease, and the cat (her highness) that has had everything, but is totally psychotic. The problem is you develop attachments to them all and they become members of your family.

*Set this post to the music of Supertramp’s, “My Kind of Lady”, a large cup of coffee with a sugar and you may experience what I am feeling while writing this.*

POLITICAL INSERT: Why can’t we at least treat humans as nice as we treat our animals? I have yet to see any wholesale shipping of pit-bulls off to the equivalent of Gitmo.

And now for a short...Political Interlude

By now I’m sure you are all sufficiently outraged over the remarks Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made during his speech at the United Nations. Regretful, but typical of the US media, they reported only the sensationalistic minuscule part of his speech that poked fun at our elected supreme Decider and omitted the heart of the speech, which was deeply critical of the Bush Administration; not the American people but their elected government, there is a difference you know.

I tried to think of a way to make this bitter pill easier to swallow but I just can’t think of any way to sugar-coat any type of terrorism, even if it is American. Yes, we have been in the terror business for many years now. Two current incidents are at the root of my comments today.

First, as Chavez reminded the world in his speech, this is the 30 year anniversary of the bombing assassination in New York City of the pro-democracy Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier by the CIA and the Pinochet government (the terrorist bomber now lives free in Miami).

Second, Luis Posada Carrilles is poised to be released from detention in El Paso. Sure you remember him; convicted in Venezuela for one of the worst cases of terrorism in the western hemisphere (until 9/11). He blew up a Cuban commercial airliner in midair over Barbados. He killed 73 people, among others the Cuban fencing team and five Latin American students on their way to study medicine in Cuba. He was convicted and jailed in Venezuela (where the plan was hatched), freed by the CIA only to show up working for Oliver North running guns to the Contra in Nicaragua. I think he is scheduled to live in Miami also.

And we thought we were only the victims of terror? You should know by now the US can give as good as it takes and often just gives.

My Dad's Secret Garden

When I was a kid we regularly tilled about a half acre in which we raised most every vegetable we would eat for the year. That meant early peas and lettuce in spring, green onions, and fresh tomatoes all summer long, green beans and new potatoes, cucumbers and squash, early sweet corn, melons, winter onions, late potatoes, okra, beets and turnips for the fall. We ate what was fresh and in season and canned the rest for winter use. Everyone worked the garden, planting, weeding, harvesting. Now, years later I live in the city and try to keep my two anemic tomato plants alive as my neighbors bristle because I don’t have perfect golf course turf in my backyard.

After having success with the tomato plants Dulcinea decided she wanted to plant a few native Missouri perennials. The next thing we knew the bird feeder, the one that no birds ever visited, began to need bird seed. Once the golden finches and red-headed house finches became regulars and began to hang out on the wooden fence to wait their turn at the feeder the human neighbors began to notice. One afternoon as I was mowing the back yard, my neighbor Barbaria yelled over the back fence, “How do you get those pretty yellow birds to come in your yard?”

But I digress. When my brothers and I matured and left home the garden shrunk. Although we continued to relish the canned tomatoes my mom doled out at family dinners and as gifts at Christmas. After she died the garden got very small. Lettuce and onions in spring, no more new potatoes or Kentucky Wonders, but always fresh tomatoes.



Over the years Dad has aged, receiving bionic hips, etc. The garden has gotten very tiny indeed. But it has never gone away. To this day, he is nursing fresh tomatoes on his front porch, that will bloom and bear until first frost.

The News from Hospital Hill

There is a complete full moon tonight. When the moon was just above the horizon it was a glowing orange; beautiful, but it makes you wonder what is in the Kansas City air. Now, hours later it is a brilliant perfect white globe.

I had lunch at You Say Tomato yesterday. It is a new combination coffee house, café, grocery, place to hangout, just south of the Hill on Holmes. It is a great concept and already has personality, and real potential. I hope it can survive long enough to realize that potential. Later that evening, I saw it mentioned on several blogs and in Pitch.

With the completion of the UMKC Nursing and Pharmacy school getting closer and all the new condos being built along Gillham Road the Hill neighborhood is beginning to undergo a transformation. Gentrification, happening in many urban cores is both praised and despised. I suppose it depends on your point of view. But it is nice to see some of the older brick homes and apartments that have stood in disrepair or empty for years now undergoing renovation. Time will tell if the developers overprice and kill the golden goose.

One thing does bother me though. I don’t need to tell anyone about the neighborhoods that surround Hospital Hill. There is a great amount of diversity. And the employees of the hospitals, medical and dental schools, and the research institutes all include many Asian, black, white, Hispanic, middle-eastern and other variations of racial and ethnic origins.

But the workers that are building the Nursing and Pharmacy School are very homogeneous. White, young to middle-aged male, drive mega pick-up trucks and commute from suburbs beyond Grain Valley. I walk this area every day of the work week. I have seen four blacks working on the construction of the School in the past year. The first was an iron worker, then a carpenter, a hod-carrier (brings the cement to the brick layers) and a night watchman. Something is very wrong here.


Okay, if anyone is listening out there send your comments. Thanks

Labor(free) Day Holiday Weekend

Friday, September 1, 2006
You Can Go Home Again

It's just not always the way you remember it.

For Labor Day Weekend I decided to visit my father who still lives down in the Ozarks. It was past time, I have been most everywhere else in the Western Hemisphere this summer now it was time to return home for a while.

Something about returning to where I grew up makes me feel like a child. I decided I was going to take the tent and camp out in the side yard under the big pine tree. Late the first evening, alone in the tent (Dulcinea, having not grown-up in the country, had decided to sleep indoors in a bed) and lying on the air mattress I was enjoying the early cool night air. For some reason I began to remember how much of my summers as a kid were filled with itching and scratching. I turned on the small flashlight and shone it behind my knee where a little seed tick was busily burrowing into my skin. And then I vividly remembered why I was always itching and scratching as a kid: ticks, chiggers and poison ivy.


Saturday, September 02, 2006

I did sleep great until just before dawn when I awoke to a cold pain in my butt. During the night the air mattress had deflated. I always did want to get up early to take pictures in the fresh light of early morning. After a pot of Dad's great tasting coffee (I think the secret is he never washes the pot) Dulcinea and I headed out for a morning of fishing in the creek that winds it way along the border of my Dad's farm. We use the word farm loosely in our family. The farm is the original homestead of my father's family; roughly 130 acres of Ozark hill country that has remained largely untouched since the Great Depression, except for a few fertile bottom acres my Dad lets a neighbor use to raise hay and winter pasture his cattle on in return for keeping our fence up.

After several hours of non-productive fishing and non-productive dove hunting the sun was now high overhead and we were perspiring profusely from the unusual exercise. I'm not sure who had the idea first, but within minutes we were swimming in the COLD spring-fed creek. Just like kids again and it felt great. We were back at the house in time for lunch.

As I write this during the lazy afternoon sitting in a cool breeze on the side porch I am watching two ruby throated hummingbirds do aerial combat stunts as each tries to keep the other from feeding at the red globe of sugar water . They are both so busy defending territory they are oblivious to my presence.

Later...
Time to head back to the city. It has been a perfect weekend. I have no problem with always being a kid when I visit here, if only in my memory.