Nostalgia- The Death of "Music"

I wandered onto you Tube Friday night following somebody's Facebook post. Started pulling up the musicians of the Swing Era. Sinatra, Glen Miller, Julie London. Doris Day, Bennie Goodman, the Dorsey Brothers, Ink Spots, Mills Brothers, Dinah Shore, Gogi Grant, Julie Christi, Louis Armstrong, Peter Paul and Mary,etc. And I said to myself . . .

Where has all the music gone? Long time passing. Gone to rap and grunge, and no talent electronically enhanced non-singers, boy bands, and profanity-laced non-melody,non-harmony noise.

When will they ever learn, when will they learn?

Living with the Queen Mum

One rule I neglected to mention the other day is this:

"Never make rash promises that you don't understand completely."

For example, "Our home will always be open to you, and you will never have to go to a nursing home."

Bad decision

Forty years later, I'm 70 years old and the Queen Mum is 91.

She doesn't understand being a "guest" in my home, but still believes she gets to run everything.

She got up at noon today to take a shower. She finally left the bathroom to join us in evening scripture reading and family prayer at 8:30 pm.

Even though she has severe edema in her legs, they have sores and "weep", she sits on her "throne" all night long rather than putting her feet up to allow the swelling to subside.

It would be such a pleasure to have nights free to go to bed, food that we wanted to eat, and at a reasonable hour. Great to be able to go out for dinner somewhere without the whining and carping because we didn't take her, although we would wait until 10:00 pm for her to get ready.

So again, don't make promises that will sneak up and bite you in the derry aire some years later.

More Musings

If you see me driving down the road and it looks like the person in the passenger seat has a bag over her head, don't call the police. please!

It's just my mother-in-law engaged in another bout of demented activity.

You see, she believe that if she isn't wearing wrap around super-dark sunglasses she will get a recurrence of cataracts. Yes, they will return if her eyes are exposed to ultraviolet light.

Even though she had cataract surgery in 2007!

Even though she no longer has the jelly-like lenses that God gave us on birth.

Even though it's those natural lenses clouding over with age that produces cataracts.

Even though the plastic lenses inserted in her eyes (and mine ten years earlier)will never cloud over.

Recurring cataracts are oxymorons! It can't happen.

But 24/7, if she gets out of the house, she dons her "Light-bans" before she leaves the front porch. It gets really interesting if it's pitch dark because then she's effectively BLIND, and can't find her way from the car to the house.

And if she forgets them and we don't have time to go hunt for them, she puts a paper towel over the front of her face to keep light from getting to her eyes. Even moon light, as well as street lights and car headlights.

Nothing will convince her otherwise that she misinterpreted the eye doctor when he told her to protect her eyes for the first three days after the surgery. Now it's a forever ritual.

Musings of a Septuagenarian

Some good rules to live by:

1.Never draw for an inside straight.

2. Don't lend money to a friend without an IOU

3. Don't loan money to a friend.

4. Don't loan money.

5. There ain't any such thing as a free lunch.

6. Sam Houston students have a death wish, walking in the middle of the street with their backs to traffic, ear buds in with tunes blasting.

7. Jesus is the Christ.

8. If you can't take regular Freshman classes, don't attend college.

9. Rick Perry should be tarred and feathered and rode out of Texas on a rail!

10. 70 doesn't feel much different that 69 . . . but a whole lot different than 30.

Ring out the Old

As 2010 oozes under the door, everybody is posting the "best of 2010, the Worst of 2010, the Top...the Bottom, etc. of 2010", I reflect that in 3 short months I will be 70 years old. I've been around the world and to the State Fair of Texas, so I guess I've done a lot more than I thought I would at age 35! Although I've given up two fingers, lived with cataracts, diabetes, and sundry aches and pains, it's been a good life. Definitely quiet compared to the parachute jumpers, bungee bouncers, druggies and Tea Partyers.

Resolutions for the New Year? Why bother? I'll live life one day at a time. No maga-million lottery winnings because I don't buy the tickets. No steamy sex life because I'm happy with my wife of 45 years.

Started a Master's Degree in Political Science, then learned that it wasn't the study of government, but the pseudo-science of statistics. Found out that Sam Houston State University was just another money-grubbing business, not an institution of higher learning; constantly raising fees and tuition to build, build, build! The latest project is an Alumni party place, so all of the old grads can come back and get sloshed at current student's (or their parents) expense! It is going big-time into "on-line" courses and those taught at a satellite campus 40 miles away. Yup, rather than walking 5 blocks to take courses on the main campus, you have to drive to the Woodlands for your course.

The University of Phoenix II is in the future. They will eminent domain everything in downtown Huntsville that isn't part of the prison kingdom, then Huntsville won't have a property tax base at all because it all belongs to the State or has been given tax abatement status.

Hullabaloo, kineck, kineck!

No Talent America - The Saga of Bristol Palin

It's amazing that this talentless bimbo got to the finals on DWTS.

Add one more to the club of Paris Hilton, Nicole Ritchie, and the Kardashian litter!

Why do the young idolize this bunch of losers?

She looks like she has a very dry corncob inserted in her anatomy!

The Foolish Generation

We have had the Flapper Era, the Depression Kids, the Baby Boomers, the "Me" generation, the Beat Generation, Gen X, etc.

What do we call the current crop of young adults? How will they be known. I suggest that the label "The Foolish Generation" might well apply.

1. Social networking-Children barely into puberty are posting onto Facebook, MySpace and other social interaction sites text and pictures of themselves that open them up to assault, kidnapping, rape and murder. And that information will be there for years to come. A prospective employer, college admission office, future father or mother-in-law can read stuff that you would never want then to see. And from the writing styles I have seen, they will label you as a total waste of time and effort.

2. Tattoos and piercings- Look cool and let you see a moment in your life. SURE! And is that moment going to be something that you really want to remember 15 years from now?
"Well people ought to be fair and not pass judgement on my lifestyle. If I want to ink up, what business is it of my employer?"
Remember that he is paying you to represent his business, not your spur-of-the-moment snap decision when you were high. If you are sleeved out with a bunch of poorly executed tats, who wants you to work for them. "Love" and "hate" on your fingers will not lead you to the executive floor. Teardrops from your eyes won't get any sympathy from the loan officer, scholarship committee, or H.R. department head.

3. Cell phones, texting, etc.- You already have a strike against you as being a young, inexperienced driver. Don't compound the problem by talking or texting while you are driving. The funeral home already has plenty of business, why add to it?

4. Casual unprotected sex- There are STDs out there that they haven't named, much less found a cure for. Saying "It's not as intense wearing a condom!" seems to pale in comparison to having it fall off when penicilin doesn't work.

5. Drugs - They are expensive, they will hold you in bondage, destroy your health and kill you.
Why go through that?

6. Driving and/or walking while plugged in - Living in a University town I see countless ex high school seniors walking around campus and the city streets deeply immersed in their I Pods, Walkmans, or other music players, with the dual umbilical cords screwed into each ear tightly so the 150Db "music" won't leak out. Unfortunately, street noise doesn't leak in either, and they are totally unaware of vehicular traffic. This would only be a problem at intersections, but these babes in the woods don't understand the difference between streets and sidewalks. They will walk right up the center of a street with their back to the traffic in total oblivion. I guess that it is the school's way of getting rid of the Darwin Award candidates without having to flunk them and lose the tuition money.
And the drivers who are so distracted that they run stoplights 10 seconds after they have changed color need to wake up before they kill a pedestrian who was obeying the law (almost an oxymoron) and was crossing the street in the walkway, with the light).

Trying to keep the funeral home's business at a minimum, I am,

Winter Owl