Friday, October 12, 2018

Today is......

"Today is......." What a great and innocent prompt to get someone else to tell me what day it is. Yesterday, I decided to jump in and guess the date. It's the eighth, right? With appropriate chuckles, I was informed that it was actually the 15th of August, 2016. Even 2016, as I wrote the abbreviation '16 seemed as though I was writing 1916. What's the deal? This experience is fairly new for me. I'm good with the day of the week, most of the time, but the date itself is more challenging. It is so true that time speeds up or seems to speed up as one grows older.

Well, this news of the date reminded me, again, the school days are upon us. Today, my final grades were due for the summer term. Done. My class did very well. My syllabi for upcoming classes are due tomorrow. Fortunately, having taught some of these classes, a few date changes (hopefully, the right ones), and some adjustments to assignments. and I'll be good to go.

It has taken a long time to realize I can make some of the work easier on myself, especially with today's technology. Gone are the days of the mimeograph machine, either hand cranked or electric, requiring a ghastly smelling liquid and the hazard of having blue tinted hands and clothes. Mentioning mimeographed pages to my classes creates a most interesting and amusing haze to appear across the faces of these young college students. Carbon paper? Typewriters with a pencil for erasing, or a dusty tape to type out a mistake or the best thing to come along: this white paint out of a wee jar.

Let's see; I began writing this in August of 2016; it is now October of 2018. The word that stands guard within the clockworks of this Blog is Draft. So, whatever message was intended initially will hopefully come through and I can send one Draft guard on to the next incomplete thought.

Writing is a bit fickle. So am I. 

Monday, May 14, 2018

Hi - Ain't it hot as hell and remember when? Mercy!

Hello y'all,

I hope you are enjoying this warm (tediously hot) weather. I am certainly NOT built for this sultry, humid fare, but using the right words to describe it does at least afford one the joy of creating images of Faulkner or Twain or Foster or others whose works definitely enjoyed most effectively the imagery of the south land. Such romantic features indeed  - however, often associated with a lack of cognitive aptitude or accuracy with social conventions. Well, that just ain't so, thank you kindly.

Having spent some time this past weekend hacking holly bushes in the blazing summer sun, I all but withered...I'm here to tell you.  (left a mere shadow of a honeysuckle bloom what's done lost its honey) Mercy sake!

Please give me a cave, an arctic ice chunk, or at least a couple of box fans. Some of you surely remember a time when we didn't have air conditioning - sleeping was a test of modesty or rather to hell with modesty: flat on my back, spread eagle, with only enough on to cover the (well, you know) - windows open - hopefully there was a box fan - or better, a window fan, one of those we'd get real close to and make mouth sounds, like buzzing, that would be embellished by this rotary blade, into a tremulant not unlike one found on a Hammond B-3, those organs that used to abide with regularity, faithfully in most all upstanding funeral parlors. Now, that's another topic all in itself. I shall attend to that when I attend to it.

Now, this all started with the intention to wish you a most pleasant ...summuh. (Just say "summer" and take the "r" off of it.) So, I shall part with such a wish since I would never want to say a word that is disparaging, impolite, inappropriate, unkind, or even hint at sarcasm.
Not me.
Heavens, no.
Have mercy.
God bless it; (h)it don't know no bett-uh.
Bye for now...                  Damn, it's too hot already.



Meet Margo -
my dear doggy companion; she's a rescue Yorkie. Smart and full of energy and full of barks. Love her. She is named after the character Margo Channing (thus the name - another Diva)  in All About Eve starring Bette Davis, Ann Baxter, Celeste Holme - made in 1950 - B/W film - a classic. I hope some of you know this film. I made a reference to it recently to my students - no connection. I think I may be getting old.