quote of the day

We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements...profoundly depend on science and technology.  We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.  This is a prescription for disaster.  We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

--Carl Sagan

Gracen's growing



Gracen is a true Southern baby. She loves her iced tea.

Gracen has a new horse to ride.

                                   When a baby can do this, it's time to buy a bigger car seat.

1st day of school

We have always accompanied the grand kids on their first day of school. Today was the last first day for us.  Jenna started kindergarten.

She was met at the front of the school by Wild Willy

                                  She finds her seat and name tag

And is ready for class to begin.


In five years we'll be ready to go to Gracen's first day.
                                    .

quote of the day

We should bring our troops home from Afghanistan this year.  No previous foreign power that has tried to work its will in Afghanistan has succeeded--not Alexander the Great, not the Mongols, not the British, and not the Russians , who , after nine years of fighting, had sent some 25,000 of their soldiers home in coffins.  The soviet treasury was emptied and the Soviet Union collapsed.  Even if it were desirable for us to stay a decade more, we simply cannot afford to do so.

--George McGovern

66

The family gave me a birthday party on Saturday.

We didn't get too close to the flame in order to prevent body parts from being singed.

Kelly, Gracen, and Hunter

Gracen has already learned there's good stuff in cups.

Jenna makes Gracen laugh.

                               It's hard for Dorothy to believe that her 11 year old grand daughter  is taller than she is.

                               Jenna saw a grass hopper on the door screen so she got the binoculars
                               to get a better look.

                                    The family got me a Nookcolor eReader.

these Oklahoma storms

Night before last I woke up to the sound of thunder. I immediately got up and unplugged the computer, TV, satellite receiver, microwave oven, and the kitchen stove. I should have unplugged the upright freezer and our new refrigerator, but I didn't.  An hour later we were awakened by a Pop!Bang! clash of thunder. I new something electrical had been hit but decided to wait until morning to check it out. Later we found that a circuit breaker had been tripped.  I flipped the switch to find that our  35 years old freezer had bit the dust. It had burn marks on the side and there were some on the floor as well. Our new refrigerator was plugged into the same outlet but fortunately the electricity took the path of least resistance which was obviously to the old unit. That will be cheaper to replace than the new one with all its fancy electronic gizmos. It wasn't until later that we noticed our home phone was not working. It had been zapped too. We're lucky the house didn't catch fire.

This is the phone's AC adaptor. It was encased in a white plastic cover but it's gone and I don't know what happened to it. Could it have evaporated, or disintegrated?  There's no sign of it.

You can see how the plastic is burned and the insulation melted off of the wire.

quote of the day

 “The next time you are tempted to swallow your truth, try speaking it instead. Everything you are afraid of will happen, but eventually you will fall in love with the sound of your own integrity.”

--Naomi Wolf

quote of the day

“Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.”

--Abraham Lincoln

gem from the past

I rolled up to the local Walmart this morning and discovered this beauty sitting in the parking lot. A 1956 Chevy Bel Air. According to the owner it has the original motor and transmission.What a find!

the temperature's rising

This is how I like to keep my Hostas looking. But, this year we are having record breaking heat.

Here's what they look like now. Daily watering is futile when the temps rise above 100.

107.8 yesterday and 112 is forecast for today.

quote of the day

We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage--almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence.  And surely this is , often enough, an adequate description.  But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.

--Thomas Cahill

what I'm reading now

I saw the ads for Life of Pi when it was first published in 2002. A story about a 16 year old boy who was adrift in a life boat with a Bengal tiger seemed a little too fanciful for my reading tastes, so I ignored it.
My daughter, Rachel, read the book recently and enjoyed it so much she mailed it to me. I started the book and couldn't put it down.  Yann Martel is such a good story teller that he makes the fanciful plausible. In this tale Pi Patel, a boy who was raised by zoo keepers, establishes himself as the alpha male and stakes out a territory at his end of the life boat. He realizes that he must not only keep himself alive but must provide food and water for the tiger to avoid becoming a meal for the huge cat. It's not just a story about survival on the high seas but also about faith, religion, and our perception of reality. Read this book.