change of scenery

Walking programs can get boring if you stick to the same routine day after day. I had to drive to town this morning so while I was there I did some walking. I parked my truck at the city park and walked down town.

I went by the feed mill and over the rail road tracks....

near downtown....

...and past the Post Office.

When I reached the end of the main street I walked back to my truck, took a turn around the walking track at the park for a total of two miles.

i'm fat

I'm fat. I've been fat for some time now and I will in all probability be fat for some time to come. I was thin through childhood and adolescence and started a slow weight gain in my mid twenties. I always thought it was a temporary condition because my self image has always been a thin one. I'll be 63 yrs old soon, so I think it's time to take action. Diets don't work so I'm not even going to consider that route. Very few people have lost weight by dieting and kept it off permanently. Actually, I'm seeking health more than thinness. So here's my plan: I'm going to increase my core strength and endurance; this will have a side effect of burning more calories. I've started doing push ups. This is an exercise that works a large number of muscles; pectorals, biceps, triceps, deltoids, and trapezoids, and others. I chose this exercise because I will need no equipment and can do my routine wherever I am. I don't like the idea of treadmills and other fitness machines because they would just end up in a yard sale within six months. The other half of the plan is to increase my walking. When I was delivering mail I walked about 9 miles a day. Since I retired I've been walking whenever I can at walking tracks, and at Walmart, but with the increase in the price of gas I needed to start my daily walk at my front door.
From where our driveway meets highway 62 there is a .85 mile stretch where there is a paved shoulder wide enough to walk on safely. So down to the end and back is 1.7 miles. I would prefer to walk along the many country roads, but farm dogs are fierce and have big teeth. I carry a long walking stick along the highway just in case.

Here I am with my trusty walking stick jut back from the walk. I walked at 6pm and it was 83 degrees and humid. Dorothy walked with me and she looked as fresh after the walk as she did before. I don't know why that is.

quote of the day

People who go to work for corporations essentially abandon their integrity as individuals in order to serve the corporation. And the corporation has a set of rationalizations and excuses for its behavior that the people within it subscribe to, which means they have no moral force of their own. It's impossible for them to think for themselves or have a contrary opinion.



Wendell Berry

what i'm reading now

I don't remember a time when I couldn't read. When I was little my grand mother would keep me supplied with Little Golden Books. The Saggy Baggy Elephant was one of my favorites. Then, when I was about nine years old I read Tom Sawyer, and that's when my reading career took off. One day, around 1954, I retrieved The Flying Carpet from a box of books someone had given my grand mother. It was published in 1932 by Richard Halliburton, an explorer who wrote several books about his adventures around the world. I eventually lost the book, but recently I found it again on Amazon.com. This is a first edition and as a bonus the original owner taped a 1940 news clipping to the inside front cover. The clipping announced that Halliburton had been declared dead six months after he embarked on a voyage in a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco. As a young boy I was awed by the fantastic trip Halliburton and his pilot, Moye Stephens, made in a red and gold biplane. The book is full of black and white photos of the people and cities they visited. A great book to fire the imagination of a young boy

Stephens and Halliburton

A soldier of the French Foreign Legion.

maya's granny

When you've been blogging for awhile and trading comments with your fellow bloggers, it seems you get to know them. Although you may never meet, a friendship develops. Today, I mourn the loss of another elder blogger, Joycelyn Ward, the author of Maya's Granny . She had been living and writing in Juneau, Alaska until her by-pass operation last winter. She never fully recovered from surgery and passed away Sunday, June 15.

quote of the day

There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.

~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

father's day

Here we are at the Catfish Hole restaurant in Fayettevill, AR. There are 12 of us at the table. Look at Jenna peeking around my shoulder.


Oh boy! Catfish
Jenna stays close to her daddy
Dorothy and Marley

Hunter and Sam

Sisters, Tara and Sam

a new blogger in town

My daughter, Kelly has joined the blogosphere. If you'd like to peruse her new blog just click on "Life With Kids" in the right hand column of this page. You'll be able to keep track of the antics, frantics, and the ups and downs of life under her roof.

quote of the day

When we're talking about war, we're really talking about peace.

--George W. Bush

(Have you read 1984 lately?)

what i'm reading now

This is the second Bill Bryson book I've read but it won't be the last. In this one he gives a concise, readable, explanation of the scientific theories that describe this universe we live in. He takes complex principles and distills them down to concepts easily understood by laymen, and besides that, he's funny.

quote of the day

Reputation is character minus what you’ve been caught doing.

– Michael Iapoce,

more storms

The storms that rolled through last weekend blew over this tree in Kelly's back yard and ruined their fence. Their two yellow labs escaped the yard and were gone for several days.

Burk is inspecting the damage to the fence. I had some fencing material left over from a project I had done at my house years ago, so Bill and I tried our best to get it looking as good as new.

Hunter said we did a pretty good job.

quote of the day

The people who are doing the work and fighting and the dying, and those who are doing the talking, are not at all the same people.

--Katherine Anne Porter

down the rabbit hole?

Joan in California sent me the link to a website that provides the title of the #1 song on any day in history. So if you want to find out what song was at the top of the charts on the day you were born, simply go here. I checked out the site and found the songs that were hits on each of my birthdays down through the years. I recognized each song title until I reached 1986. From that year to the present I don't recognize the song title or the artist. What happened 22 years ago? A cognitive malfunction? Did I fall down the rabbit hole? Well, I thought about it for awhile and I think I came up with the solution. I've always listened to the radio on my way to work and back, but hardly any other time. A little over twenty years ago I switched from listening to music to listening to the news. NPR always had great programs that caught my attention. So it wasn't my synapses misfiring it was simply a change in focus.