February 1, 2009 - Sister Lakes Michigan

The ice firshermen have departed the frozen lake where they had huddled on uptruned empty plastic buckets. The sun is bright on the flat expances. The icecicles on the eaves are dripping - the temperature is rising above freezing for the first time in several weeks. There had been a record snow fall this winter - 59 inches - but during the week after New Years the temperature rose and it rained all week and all of the snow pack melted. Everything that is out there now fell during the last three weeks.


On Round Lake once one of the summer residents built an ostentatous abode every one else had to follow suit. Now three story cabins barely fit on their lots. The primative cabins built only a generation ago now look so punny. There would have been condominiums too if the residents association had'nt suscessfuly banned the developers. Now they are safe - there is unlikely to be much new construction this summer.

My brain hurts!- TF Gumby

Gumbys are extremely dim-witted,loud, sometimes violent

Men that are all uniform
They are called 'Gumbys' because 'Gumby' is their surname,

One year after he was on "The Howdy Doody Show"

They gave Gumby his own show. Gumby ran in 223 episodes

Made for TV Gumbys usually stand with their knees bent

All Gumbys wear the same eccentric costume :

Trousers rolled up to the knees

Gumboots, also known as Wellington boots or 'wellies'

A knitted tank-top tucked into the trousers
It's Gumby and his pals Pokey, Prickle, and Goo

Their most defining and famous article of clothing:

A hat made from a white handkerchief

The unofficial term for this is 'Sidcup'.

Dictionary of words for things there are not yet words for

Hosted by Bob Nicholson, who had played Clarabelle the Clown

Replacing Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan

Usually it is Michael Palin who is remembered in the role

For X Rated Gumshoes

Blago is out

Quinn is in

Beaware of

Where the dogs

Go - Don't eat

That yellow snow

From the subjective standpoint, a person is in a stage of agency when he defines himself in a social situation in a manner that renders him open to regulation by a person of higher satus - Stanley Milgram

January 30, 2009 - Caribou, Homewood Illinois

Ugh - will it never ever get warm again - 16 degrees with a high of 19. Will the groundhog see it's shadow?

We understand something by locating it in a multi-determined temporal continuum. Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobil flow of past, present, and future - Susan Sontag

One must tear at the fabric
Of the thing
Stick one's hand into the warm viscera
Of the thing
That new killed smell is the essense
Of the thing
No prostetic device will ever get you
As close to the thing so that
You are one with the thing

Gumshoes, Sleuths and Snoopers -- This database provides an in-depth look at 185 detective and mystery novels originally published during the period 1930-1960. It is the result of a collaborative effort in which volunteers from near and far provided detailed information about plot, setting, characters and other thematic factors for each title.

Gumshoes (1935): Hotel house detectives Monte Collins and Tom Kennedy are after the crooks responsible for a series of thefts. They are distracted by a radio program which causes them to look for a man in a fur coat. After insulting a number of guests wearing fur coats, they wind up in a tussel with a trained gorilla. A purloined Poe plot not quite up to the standards of C Auguste Dupin.

TODAY - Frank O'Hara


Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they've always talked about


still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They're strong as rocks.

The original "gumshoes" of the late 1800's wore shoes or boots made of gum rubber, the soft-soled precursors of our modern sneakers. Like sneakers, gumshoes were much quieter than leather-soled shoes, and at the turn of the century "to gumshoe" meant to sneak around quietly as if wearing gumshoes, either in order to rob or, conversely, to catch thieves. "Gumshoe man" was originally slang for a thief, but by about 1908 "gumshoe" usually meant a police detective, as it has ever since. - The Word Detective

The reason that protective footware is so un-fashion conscious is due to the folks bringing them to you - most of the overshoes are contained in the small consumber segment of the $2 billion protective equipment industry - you know fireman's overalls and those cute vests that santitation men wear. Is it any wonder. NEOS, Servus, Ranger, Kamik, and  Muckboots are all brands of Norcross Safety Products. Their major competitoris LaCross Footware.

January 29, 2009 - Caribou - Homewood Illinois

9:34AM - 23 degrees - wind out of the southwest at 11 mph - humidity 78%



And those self-appointed fashion Nazis who claim wearing rubbers makes you a wanker are just wrong. For two hundred smackers you too can be stylish and protect your footwear without carrying  around a gym bag full of extra shoes. And they are also simply wrong to claim that teetering on one foot making the change over is the only way even if it may be true that there is no way to teeter gracefully. Now there is fashion conscious overshoes. Hurray!





SWIMS the 'nouveau galosher' - as elegant as Al Capone. They even polish your shoes as you wear them. And such luscious colors - pearl, bubble gum, combat green, purple, violet, burgundy, lemon. No need to feel like your wearing combat boots.

Milton Marx (1893-1977) known as Gummo is the unknown Marx brother - even less know that was Zeppo. Groucho, Chico and Harpo got their monikers playing poker in Galesburg Illinois. Gummo although the first of the boys to appear on stage dropped out of the act while serving in the military during the First World War. He was named Gummo supposedly either because of his legendary ability to sneak up on others backstage or because he was so sickly as a boy and frequently had to wear overshoes during inclement weather.


Hold that trophy high over your head
Show those teeth - hopefully they're white
Yes, yes - it's a win - bend the arm
At the elbow, with clenched fist pointed
Skyward - pump - like your blowing
This train 's whistle - it's called
Tooting your own horn, but it's
Not an original visual metaphor
Not with you anyway regardless
Of how spontaneous it felt

But I / know what he will say: / he's the fire hydrant of the underdog - James Tate

January 28, 2009 - Caribou - Homewood Illinois

Burr - oh but it's cold outside (18 degrees) with a light flurry of lake effect snow. And the fake fire (well not really fake, it is real - but gas and not wood - it is the logs that are fake) is toasty. Now it is warming up - up into the twenties and the salt on the streets makes them slushy and the metal awnings of the strip mall heats up and the water drips steadily from the eaves.

Gillette is undertaking the most significant renovation of its World Shaving Headquarters in its 100-year history. When complete, the 33-acre site, located in South Boston, will house P&G/Gillette’s Research and Development, Engineering,
Manufacturing, Marketing and business support.

To mark the significance of this endeavor, the Company is launching a
single-phased design competition for a signature sculpture or landmark icon to
mark the entry to the World Shaving Headquarters complex.

And on her first try at design competition my niece get a merit award - just out of the money by one. Way to go Aska! [Joanna Borek-Clement]

Social bonding is a mundane process
So much is accomplished with mutual
Grooming. It's not so much a stimulating
Conversation as it is lice picking

Democracy so much depends on the inane
Anti-intellectualism is as much democracy
Enabling as poverty is

Yes ... We no longer have any inner voices. We know too much these days: reason tyrannized our lives - Robert Musil

January 27, 2009 - Caribou Coffee, Homewood Illinois

I've already settled into a routine - first to the Caribou, then to the library and then to finish the day off I am off to the Flossmoor Station. There is some variation - I alternate between the Homewood and Flossmoor libraries.

The Caribou (Da Bou as Chet calls it) is second only to Starbucks in number of company operated coffehouses (500 and 3,600) but half of their operations are in Minnesota and second is Illinois with 67 stores. 43% of the coffeehouse in the US are chain operations (more than three locations). When Caribou becomes ubiquitous I shall cease coming here too. And if you are to find the Universal Spider Starbucks would be a good place to look.



And last night I went to let Wrigley in the back door and she came in as sat on her haunches and waited for the command to proceed up the three steps up into the kitchen/dining area but I had forgotten the command - it was a simple word, that I knew, but I could not remember what word it was. . It's OK if you happen to forget some one's name (well not exactly OK but it happens) or mabe  you've forgotte a vocabulary term (the name of something - say the cardboard spool in the center of a roll of toilet paper) that OK too; but this was just a simple command and all I could think to say was 'go' and that was not it. I hope this is not an omen of things to come. Finally I waved by hand and said 'go' and she went. It turns out that a hand motion is taught along with the word command and either one works. I could now shut the door and it was cold outside but I still could not remember that word. This morning Ila let Wriggly in and Wriggle sat and Ila said 'release'. Yes, that's it 'release' and why could I not remember that simple world last night?

I got a new computer - an IBM X60 with tablet. I am still learning. I can mostly hit the right keys but have yet to begin playing with the pen. And with this tiny screen I shall need to get new glasses too. Oh well, every technology has its own challenges and its own creative opportunities.

The end result truly
Reflects the work only
When the work itself
Cannot be seen

If much effort is on view
Then the result is the effort
And sometimes that is what
Was desired. The result
Is the effort itself - oh, adulation

The need of human beings to transcend "the person" is no less profound then the need to be a person, an individual. But this society serves that need poorly - Susan Sontag

January 24, 2009 - Caribou - Homewood Illinois

On the road again - on track - the Southwest Chief to Chicago. First stop La Plata in two hours

Almost all advertising engages
In some aspect of deception
Can't come by sales honestly anymore
And just altering the nature of the lie
Seems to allay all the cynicism
Previously aroused and this is truly
Redemption in action and it just might
Be a proof in the existence of God
His dream of enlightenment itself

And we are under way - rocking and rolling - pitty-pat, pitty-pat - under the overpass picking up speed - woosh woosh - and the sun is coming up - clickity clack, clickety clack - over the points as the tracks separate straight on towards St Louis or to the left and up to Chicago and we head for the river crossing - screech-ech-ech - as the train articulates to make a perpendicular crossing of the River - Picking up speed rolling along the bottoms next to the bluffs - toot toot. Breakfast is being served and has been since 6:30 - up in the dinning car - first come first serve - toot toot.

I'm once again getting
An itch as every mile
Titillates my wanderlust

A low bank of clouds - the winter wheat has been planted - the sun is hiding out - a dusting of snow - this land now awaits a thaw.

---

Leave them in peace. We can always shot them later - Joseph Stalin

---

CURRENT READING:
-
Robert Musil - The Man Without Qualities
-
James Tate - Selected Poems (1991)
-
Susan Sontag - Styles of Radical Will (1969)
-
James Weinstein - The Long Detour - The history and future of the American Left
-
Thomas Blass - The Man Who Shocked the World - the life and legacy of Stanley Milgram
-
Donald Antrim - Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World
-
Marco Iacoboni - Mirroring People - The new science of how we connect with others

January 16, 2009 - Coffee Break, Kansas City Missouri

The snow comes smothering with a high of twenty-two but this is the tail end of the storm almost now to Springfield and extending laterally from Emporia to Columbia. There was only a dusting as I awoke and the sun came up. Then it got serious and I knew that if I were not to get stuck in my room I had to get out now. I barely made it up the hill and then wondered why I had, but was already in the midst of the rush and by then to have turned back was more difficult that to plow ahead and so here I am at the Coffee Break once again Light snow the forecasts said.

Mr. Mick is still around left all alone from four in the afternoon when Dave goes to work and ten when Brenda finally gets home and as attentive deficient as he seems to be, he is a adapting well He lies in his bed and abides his time. And when someone finely comes in he slides across the wooden floor his little paws a scratching – tickie tickie tickie. Maybe he’s a keeper.

Its really coming down. I hope it doesn’t snow all day. I check the radar image on the Weather Underground and this storm must have been saving the best for last – it looks like it should be over within the hour. The tail end is now at St Joe. But god, still it doesn’t look as if it will ever let up.

Galoshes – 98% of the shoes purchased in the US are imported and Americans buy on average seven pairs a year and a pair of galoshes or other protective footwear every other year. This is about half what they purchased twenty years ago. Will the economic downturn be good for the protective footwear industry – I suspect it will. It would be interesting to see the data for 1920-1940. What I would expect to see is a typical bell curve. I would have had a pair if I didn’t maintain the rule that everything I have must fit in a back pack (by choice I am without a home) – its not a fashion statement but a practicality – them galosh is to damn bulky. One sixth of the typical American’s apparel budget is expended upon the acquisition of footwear.

God, theres goes another AH pacing the floor talking business on his cell phone. Isn't it enough for him to be agitated must he infict the rest of us too. I don't mind Spencer Tracy pacing in the waiting room waiting for his little dividend but he didnt have a cell phone either. And what they have to say is always so inane and probably totally unnecessary.

The Johnson Family and the Snoops
Never intermarry
You know a Johnson when you see him
You know a Snoop when you hear one
He was a Johnson
She was a Snoop


A Johnson minds his own business
A Snoop makes it his business
All Snoops are shit
God bless you Mr Johnson
There are never enough
The Snoops are rapacious

He passed and I never saw him again
That is the wayof the Johnsons
And You can’t get rid of a Snoop

Universal reason says there is only one rational mode of thought Anyone who argues against you must be either mistaken (in need of the facts), irrational (needing to have their reasoning corrected), or downright immoral – George Lakoff

January 14, 2009 - Coffee Break - Kansas City Missouri

My most popular posting continues to be the one on umbrellas. And why is that? Because most Internet users are rather unsophisticated users – obviously your are not one of them, the  less sophisticated are you, as I see you are reading this. The Internet is largely used for two purposes – to find and stay in touch with other people who will agree with you (stroking your ego) or to shop for snobby luxury items (some call this making a fashion statement). So of all the hits on my two sites, it has been shopping for premium umbrellas that has landed searchers here ninety percent of the time. One individual was looking for the Christo umbrella project and two were looking for a Theodore Roethke poem about umbrellas.

And then I wrote a piece about Premium brands– cat food, wine, coffees etc. and it got no hits at all. There is something about umbrellas though! So what about galoshes? A pair of SWIMS will set you back two-hundred bucks or you can buy tote overshoes at any five and dime for hardly anything at all – but who is going to go on the Internet to shop for totes.
And them Wellies (Wellingtons) are such an item of fashion – seriously – no 19th Century country English gent would be without em. And Monty Python made a lot of mileage in em. And then there was Gadot and his four buckle artics. Etiquette says that there is no way to remove them gracefully (teetering there out of balance) and they must be considered gauche – better to wear rain boots (NEOS) and carry a pair of shoes into which you can change (and I don’t see the difference between quietly sitting down and removing your toe rubbers and having a huge pair of Wellies sitting under your desk – why is one unfashionable and the other not).

So I am working on an essay about gumshoes (and Gummo Marx the unknown brother was named for them as he could sneak up silently – see the connection with Sam Spade?). And I am certain there is a lot of poems on em too and maybe Oldenberg even sculpted them – man o man look at them dickersons.

The guide reduces it all
To something that is consumable
A list of the best
Ranking it all
Listing the coveted
It is the discontented
That need these lists
And a guidebook is just
An extended list
There are a lot of them
Let us list some of them!

In art the subsconscious sometimes comes percolating through without warning – Robert W Butler

January 13, 2009 - Coffee Break - Kansas City Missouri

Back to the Coffee Break – during cold weather I am not very venturesome (and sometimes I feel that I have lost my wanderlust). But no I did get a reservation made to ride the train  to Chicago next week and I sent off a confusing e-mail and someone was waiting at the  station for me yesterday evening. Im sorry for the confusion I said on the phone and instead of the 19th I had written the 11th which would have been the day before. "It was no trouble," Jerry replied, "the station is only five minutes away and I stayed in the car." But still I felt like an ass. Read your e-mails before hitting send – better yet save them as drafts and review them later and only then send – there is something about time that erases all those things that you just assume and what you see is what is there rather than what you had intented. So asshole save it and review it next time.

Picked up two Interlibrary Loan books at the branch library yesterday – B H Fairchild – Local Knowledge and  Morris Kline – Mathematics – the loss of certainty. I'll have to read them before Monday – set aside the other fourteen books and concentrate on them but Im almost finished with Walter Mosley and Fred Vargas. And there should be time for The Collected Poems of A E Houman and Dixon – The Psychology of Military Incometence. I'll probably also finish Lakoff – The Political Mind. I brought all but Mosely and Vargas with me to the coffee shop – mystery is my wintertime bedtime reading. Everything changes during the winter it seems.

You mentioned fourteen books and that is only seven - wlll then there is also – The Life of Johnson by Boswell – the Collected Poems of Antonio Machado – Fallen into the Pit by Ellis Peters – the poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins, a book on Cleopatra and one claiming that George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh were writing on the same thing.





I'm trying to learn Spanish by translating Machado - poetry is best for language learning because the facing translation only gives you a sense of what it means and it leaves it to you to figure out how words that you translate got to mean what is written on the opposite page - in other words it prohibits a one-to-one literal transference

First to be lain bare
Are the tops of the trees
Then the underbrush
Which soaks up every drop
Of newly available sun
Hangs on for its life
Meanwhile the green grass
Is hidden under litter
And later it will be the snow

Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the cameraa records it. But this is the opposite of understanding which starts with not accepting the world as it looks – Susan Sontag

January 11, 2009 - Coffee Break - Kansas City Missouri

And Nick is not his name either. Remember Brenda did not want her granddaughter who found the dog to know that she had traded it in like some used car. And if Nick on his little tiny legs goes to far and you holler Nick Nick (like Jack Nickleson did in Easy Rider) he does not respond to the name – but he does to the tone of your voice. But if you holler, Ankle! Here Ankle! he stops looks and starts trotting back. Brenda had said she was getting an even smaller dog one that came up only to the ankle. And I though at the time that was a unsual descriptor - one would have expected her to have gone, "he's about this tall" - seperating the facing palms of her hands about six inches apart. But there is no chance that I shall ever call him "Ankle". No way at all. Nada. None

An Amtrak reservation has been made – It was harder than it should have been (well not really harder – more complicated, but that was my fault). Amtrak erased by guest id and I had to enter my email address twice but since I don’t have a working period on my laptop keyboard I have to copy one into the buffer and paste it in. Well that worked fine for the original email address but the confirmation email address did not let you insert a period from the buffer – a security measure no doubt – but certainly inconvenient). So I had to plug a keyboard into the USB port but all the cheep keyboards had PS2 connections. A PS2 to USB cost twice as much as the keyboard. God do they design thanks to be complicated – get you back into the store with every little glitch.

But anyway I’m headed to Chicago finally – a week from today. The Southwest Chief leaving at 7:45 in the morning. I had said I preferred to take the St Louis route but I have never done this route in the daylight. And besides, this way,  I don’t have to wonder around Chicago at night in a blizzard.

Blah blah blah
... have all the answers


Blah blah more blah
...
back then they didn’t know


Blah and more blah
...they didn’t
understand the answer


More blah and more blah
She drones on is a soft
voice
So I fall asleep

I wonder how they will find the time to enjoy the most simple pleasures. We had at our disposal: silence, calm, solitude. Having never known them, they shall not be able to miss them. As for me, I do – and I pity them – Albert Robida

January 8, 2009 - Waldo Library - Kansas City Missouri

Ok so I shall call him Nick too although I prefer Robo Dog. Always wanting attention unlike the Major who couldn't be bothered. Of course Nick is only two and the Major was five which is old in dog years. Always underfoot the little rug rat. Dave and Brenda got to fighting and he got into his car – Here Nick Here Nick, get in – and he left – I gotta get away, I aint done nothing. Just wait until he gets back. He works nights and she had him up early putting away the Christmas decorations.

Looking for Wi-Fi – coffee shop or library and today its the later. There’s just something unsettling sitting at a bar enraptured with a tiny screen – a big screen well that is Ok because that is sports and that’s a whole different matter and it is probably a sports bar.


When one logs onto a computer, it is a retreat into a private space. There are public spaces that can be used that way and there are public spaces that should not be. so used.  Misuse of electronic devices in the wrong space is a faux pas, one that I term misapproiation of public space – that is, it is converting public space into private space. If it is your intention to display aggression and hostility towards the rights of other it is an affective means for doing that.

Rant on – rant on – well I went into Hoopers yesterday afternoon and two of the three guys sitting at the bar were on their laptops – ugh. Get used to it big guy! And I wont go into the episode with those annoying medical interns at the Coffee Break – and medical students are the worst misapproriators of public space – certain careers attract certain personalities it would seem.

I was nine-tenths on my way to infinity
I was a long long way away
Too far away to be seen or to see
Far faraway but not yet far enough
To touch the finish line

A civilized person was someone who consciously sought to put distance between self and all that hinted at animality, natural functions, violence, messiness and indiscriminate mixing – Yi-Fu_Tuan

Major Minor Goes in for Major Major and the Major Domo is No More

Well the Majors replacement came home last night in a big metal cage that smelled of pee but Brenda cant smell because she was shot in the head in a barroom incident – She needs to leave it on the porch and have Dave hose it down before moving it into the house but she probably won't bother doing that  and he will bitch and moan about the stink

The keys on this old machine are gradually wearing out – already gone are the PERIOD (I’m using the dash), the APOSTROPHY (and if you misspell a word with an apostrophe in it the spell checker will insert it – see Im above), the DELETE (I use backspace instead or a CONTRL X) the LEFT and RIGHT BRACKETS, the RIGHT ARROW, PAGE DOWN and END – In Word you can insert characters from a table, that works but is slow and you can always use the numeric code for the character but thats (I didnt spell check this incidence) tedious too – Joseph Addision wrote an essay on false wit where he bitched about the Greeks who wrote whole poems leaving out specific letters – I guess it also became a mania in the 18th century and recently some French writer wrote a whole novel without any Es - And oh yes, I fogot the QUOTE MARKS (with the quote and the period gone it makes using the Internet difficult - not impossible but hard)

I once read a short story by a Swiss author (I dont remember his name – It was a long time ago) where a man who lived on a mountain alone for his own amusement began replacing the names of things in his room with different words until over the years he forgot what they had originally been called and when he came off his mountain after many years and when into twon, no one could understand him nor could he understand them – There was also a story in the collection about a man who decided to set off on a journey around the earth in a straight line and the last anyone saw of  him he was climbing a ladder over the top of the neighbors house



James Joyce invented new words (we get Quark as in Particle Physics from Joyce) and if you gradually (imperceptivity slowly) introduce them in context so that one is not aware of them (unless you are one of the rare ones who reads with a dictionary – I dont but I note new words down and look them up later and am always amazed how many cannot be found – I just chalk it up to having misspelled them, I am notorious for this) by the end of a very long novel such as Ulysses – well you get the point



I am only doing it one character at a time – on the other hand I could just but an external keyboard, but what fun would that me – the easiest solution is not necessarly the most creative







As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage / Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, / dwells-- / That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; / This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. - Gerald Manley Hopkins

Rendition – the legal proceeding for returning a fugitive salve.
Extraordinary - when someone is flown off in a black jet to be third party
and tortured - not so extraordinary anymore

January 6, 2009 – Coffee Break – 54th & Troost – Kansas City Missouri

Poor little Major Domo he is going to get traded in just like a used car – merchandise being returned. I feel for the Major. Perhaps one of those robo vacuums would be better.

It cleans rather than makes a mess. You can turn it off when annoyed by it. True its not very cuddly and one has little empathy for it, but that is true of all merchandise, once removed from its plastic shrink-wrap.

Well anyway Brenda has worked out a three way trade – the Major goes somewhere with kids, and she gets a two year old house trained Yorkie. And I did not even have a chance to tell the Major farewell. Brenda will name the new one Mick so that her granddaughter will not know that she traded the dog she found for her it in – Major Domos paper name was Rielly Mick. I will refer the new one as Robo Dog or maybe Major Minor (how cruel of me - no I will probably not). Bye bye Major!

January 6 - my father would have been ninty today but died three months before. On  the same day that he was born, Theodore Roosevelt died

And then my nose picks up
An aroma – fresh brewed coffee, no
The grinding of freshly roasted beans
This is not the popping of the seal
On a can of Folgers – this is not
Your mother’s coffee anymore

And if my ways are not as theirs / Let them mind their own affairs. / Their deeds I judge and much condemn, / Yet when did I make laws for them? – A E Housman

January 3, 2009 – Charlie Hooper’s

Well, Major Domo don’t like to be locked away. And it is such a small little room. And if you let him outside all he does is pee on the tires of all the nearyby cars.r. That’s what the Major does. If he were bigger he might chase after those same cars. But he is not. He has a lot of piss for one little dog, he does. He has marked my truck and the neighbor’s new car. I don’t think that he as gotten Brenda’s car as it is always gone when I let the Major out, but he has gotten the carport thoroughly scented. That’s where she always parks except if it is supposed to snow, then none of us comes down the hill and park behind the house.

And it’s five o’clock and the sun is going down again and it was unseasonably warm today. Hooper’s had the front door open and the crowd was divided between the Mizzou
and the Jayhawk games. I was watching the former but the sound was turned up on the later and when excitement peaked I looked up from my reading and nothing unusual seemed to be happening and I had to remind myself that that was the KU game behind me not the Tigers there in front of me where the action was.  It’s nice when it’s warm enough to block the front door open and the Major likes to scamper about and I don’t mind watching after him then. But there are packs of big neighborhood dogs about and it would not do leave him unattended.


What’s an old dog to do but to sleep? Today is dog day at Hooper’s too. I had my two and two pints of ale too. What’s an old dog to do but have his two pints a day?



Finding legs it ran away
Metaphorically abandoning me
Play it again Sam, over and over
It had million dollar legs Sam
It ran away with my spoon
It jumped over the moon, Sam
Yes, its my own narrative frame


The saddest features of anti-intellectualism is that it often reflects an actual suppression of intellectual activity rather than any lack of ability – Norman F Dixon

January 2, 2004 - Kansas City Mo - The Coffee Break

Brenda got a Yorkie with papers for $50 and thought this was such a great bargain as they usually sell for $300. But that is for the puppies what she got was a five year old male which was no longer useful for studding. And it is an affection little thing. Lets see how this works out. She couldn’t stand the little toy poodle that her father-in-law had left with her. Her husband said, “get a cat – its a lot less trouble and remember how you were always complaining about Dee Dee (that was the toy poodle).” “But I’ve never had a dog of my own.” They picked up the dog yesterday. Its hair was all matted and it has a growth on its neck. Dave, her husband, was sitting on the floor of the bathroom giving it a hair cut right after having given it a bath. What are you going to do with it when you go to work. I’ll leave it with Betty. Right now it is running about marking territory. He works at night. He drives a truck. Of course I will get attached to it, he said. But why is it that I never get what I want? She tried to keep it the little travel cage in which she had brought it home. Dave won't allow her to do that. Maybe we can make this bathroom its space when she is gone. I don't think Betty is going to appreciate having it pee all over her house. But Betty is eighty-eight and Betty would enjoy the company if not the responsibility.

Now to get tickets to Chicago. Let’s check the Amtrak schedule. I don’t like to fly. I like the leg room and the ability of to get up and roam and I don’t mind at all the travel time. The Chief and Megabus cost about the same but I like the scenery on the route through St Louis and I can save about 20% on that route. Now I need to check on the date. I’m thinking the tenth. Oh but its cold in Chicago – well colder than it is here – 26 compared to 46 here.

Drip drip from the eaves
As the sun begins to warm
The night’s ice and yesterday’s
Snow begin to lose their hold
And I don’t want to play in
The snow and it is so sad to grow old

Everyone is like the travelers who get to know a land and its people from a railway carriage – Nietzsche