bulletin: tooth fairy not keeping pace with inflation

Kelly heard Hunter crying in his room. When asked what was wrong he said the tooth fairy had taken his tooth but had not left any money. Kelly, knowing there was money there, pulled back Hunter's pillow and said, "Then, what is this?". Hunter wailed his reply, "But, it's only a dollar".

quote of the day

Contrary to today's stereotypes, racists do not always chew tobacco and drive pickup trucks with gun racks. They wear silk shirts, treat women as possessions, and talk about human rights at cocktail parties far from communities of people of color. The men in pickup trucks are just as likely to be warm and caring as the high-minded liberals are to be racists.

--Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation

haircut

I went to the barber shop for the first time in years. Dorothy always cuts my hair, but since she has her arm in a sling I went to town for a hair cut. I was disappointed because it just wasn't like when I was younger. The best part of being shorn by a barber was when he applied hot lather to my neck and shaved it with a straight razor, then splashed on that good smelling lotion. You could always tell when someone had been to the barber shop by the fragrance of the after shave lotion all barbers used. But this time, no lather, no razor, no good smellng stuff. So, when Dorothy recovers she'll still be my hair cutter. After all, she smells terrific, and while she's cutting my hair she often bumps into me, and I like that.

quote of the day

....I'll confess it straight out: intelligent design is a notion, a myth--all right, a theology--I've always been attracted to. Unapologetically in love with both the natural world and the written page (between which I sense all manner of linkage, both of which seem to me to be fading from our lives, to our inestimable loss), most at home in myself when I am navigating one or the other, I've found myself wishing at times that on some level it could all be true. Not that Toto might reveal to us at long last the benevolent, white-haired wizard behind the curtain, but something---subtler: that we could glimpse the wisdom behind it all, sense, even if momentarily, the pattern in the carpet. How glorious it would be to feel the key turn, to be able to enter the culture of things outside of us, to understand not only the what but the why. To read the slow rain of rising trout, or comprehend--really comprehend--the shocking orange of fungus, labial and exquisite, shining on the underside of a rotting log. To grasp the intent and the glory, the slow fire of life, behind them.

--Mark Slouka

dorothy on the mend

Yesterday, Dorothy and I were on the road by 4:15am, heading for Tulsa. She fell at Christmas time and hurt her shoulder and it just wouldn't heal so we were headed to Southcrest Hospital for a procedure to repair a tear to her rotator cuff. I think the doctor used a dry wall screw and a piece of string to fix it. We were home by two and she's been resting and taking her medicine. Her recovery is going to involve physical activity to keep her arm moving (passively). I told her instead of me waiting on her she should be bringing me my ice tea, as part of her physical therapy, of course.

summer time......

When the grass's electric emerald fades toward yellow it's time to cut and bale.

....and the livin' is easy

The heat and humidity arrived ahead of the first day of summer so Marley, Hunter, Jenna and I sought relief at the local swimming hole. This creek runs through the property of my friend, Kathleen. For the first time in years I actually jumped in and wow! was it cold.

what i'm reading now

This is Rick Bragg's third in a series that started with All Over But The Shoutin' and continued with Ava's Man. The Prince of Frogtown is a story that intermingles vignettes about the life of his alcoholic father, who grew up poor and powerless in the south, and Rick's relationship with his ten year old stepson. Whenever I read a book I'm delighted when a sentence jumps off the page and makes me stop and think about it. In this book I found two: "There are some people in the world who are not necessarily good at life if you see it as a completed work, but who are excellent at it one daub of bright color at a time." And this one: "He lived in a common insecurity some men have about women, born of the simple fact that they can never quite figure out what women think--which, in his defense, is a little like trying to map the cosmos on the back of a Juicy Fruit wrapper with a toy telescope and piece of chalk". Two good examples of Rick Bragg's Southern eloquence

a day with jenna

I frequently watch Jenna while Kelly works. This is how we spend our day:


The first thing on our agenda is the donut shop where Jenna eats a chocolate donut with pink sprinkles.
We go for walks. That is, I walk and pull her in the wagon.

We play outside. Jenna is superwoman.

We get in the floor and play games

flowers

stella d'oro lillies

I like these impatiens with the white centers.

I can never remember if these are called verbena or viburnum. Anyway, they are pretty flowers

snake!

Today Dorothy and I heard a commotion in the elm tree outside. There was an American Gold Finch valiantly defending its nest from the intrusion of a black snake. I grabbed my rifle trusty and although it was a trifle rusty I managed to shoot the slithering serpent out of the tree. Then I cut off his head with a shovel. I laid the hammer down next to the snake so you could get an idea of the size of this critter. The hammer is 12" long.

submarine warfare

Yesterday I took Marley, Hunter, and Jenna to the Word War II Memorial park in Muskogee. The submarine USS Batfish is on display there and is being restored to it's original condition. Most of the ship is set up just like it was when in operation.

The USS Batfish was 311 ft long. It had four diesel-electric engines. A fuel capacity of 94.000 gallons and could stay on patrol for 75 days. It's diving limit was 400 ft and could stay submerged for 48 hours

Torpedo tubes. There were six tubes in the bow and four aft.

This bunk is over a torpedo and under pipes. Not much room to toss and turn in your sleep.

The toilet is squeezed into a small space amongst tubing and pipes

This is the shower. There were two showers and two toilets on board. The cook was required to shower every day, but the rest of the crew were limited to one shower per week.

The officers' dining room

This is an officer's sleeping quarters

The controls that submerged the vessel and also brought it to the surface.

Radio room.

This is the galley where meals were cooked for a crew of 66 men. This is not a picture of part of the galley. What you see is the entire kitchen.

The mess hall where the crew ate their meals

Crew sleeping quarters

This is one of four engines.

Looking through the submarine. The door on the right leads to another compartment.

I have no idea what these controls were for.

One of the torpedoes used by submarines.

This is the "Walk of Honor". Each plaque mounted on a pedestal details one of the submarines and crew that were lost during WWII.

Fellow blogger, Mary Lee Coe Fowler, has written a book, Full Fathom Five, about her father who was the commander of the USS Cisco which was lost at sea. This is the plaque commemorating his submarine and crew.