Lovely

Here is a great Simon & Garfunkel live version of Bridge over Troubled Water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVDg8fVC4EQ&feature=mh_lolz&list=HL1309481926

Man was it ever nice out this morning. No humidity. Perfect morning for a walk. Could use a whole bunch more like it.



Oops. Mark Halperin made a boo boo. Really I think what he said he pretty fucking funny and it is really no big deal.. Get over it. Worse has been said.

I still have no plans for this weekend. What to do, where to go, i just don't know. Ideas anyone.

Time for a chicken sandwich and an ear of corn.

Peace.

Ken & Carolyn

Two songs for Ken & Carolyn. Happy Anniversary.

We got hammered with rain last night. It was dark at 7:00 p.m. and we got rain until midnight or so. Several inches in fact. It was needed.

Not much else going on. Mow the lawn tonight. Ride my bike and walk the dog.

Adios.

Stormy with a chance of dog

There was a time when this was on the list of songs at a party house I used to go too regularly.

Good thunder and lightning last night. Summer tried in inhabit my couch space. Very humid this morning. More storms today.

Fireworks are getting canceled around the area because of the lack of rain.

I heard they have a Jim "Catfish" Hunter museum over on the east coast where he grew up. I am going to make a road trip over there to see it. I am sure it is tiny. However he was my favorite baseball player. It should be a neat little journey.

What ever happened to all the hearings last year about genetically modified seeds? I never heard anything about any outcome.

Sleep????

Slept like crap all weekend.
Thunderstorms the next two days. Looks like I'll be comforting Summer from thunder.

Do you have an Aldi grocery store near you. The prices on grocery items there is much much cheaper on most items. Very limited selection however if you have one near you you should check it out for some basic items. you can save a bunch of money.

The tomato's from the grape tomato plant Tammy brought me is starting to produce pretty well. They make great snacks.

Yea, a three day weekend is on its way. Have no idea what I am doing yet.

Had to trim so small trees and bushes near one of the bird feeders. Seems squirrels have been chewing on it when they have been able to land on it. Changed the bird feeder also.

I think my brother and his wife are going to France next summer. If they are going I plan to go with them.
My brother is taking French lessons and he is able to speak some French with his wife and mother in law.

I am out.

Have a super duper Monday.

8.75

I went to a couple yard sales this morning and got some needed things.

Yard sale one. Half a bottle of Malathion, 2 new still shrunk wrap spray cans of foam sealant for cracks, a book on gardening folk lore and a book by David Sedaris called Naked. All for $2.50.

Yard sale two. One of those massive three wick candles brand new with the stand. .25

Yard sales 3 and 4 nothing.

Yard sale five. A framed print with a framed quote called.

Live with Intention

walk to the edge.
listen hard.
laugh.
practice wellness.
play with abandon.
continue to learn.
appreciate your friends.
choose with no regret.
do what you love as if this is all there is.    $1.00

The big score of the day was two gallery framed photographs for $5.00
One is from a Chicago gallery.
The other is an arial shot of Boston

One is the picture in the above picture.
Selling online for $249.99

The Boston picture is could not find online.
But framed print from this place selling these are $149.99.

Well worth the $5.00 for both.

Total yard sale spent. $8.75.

Went to Satan's World and spent money on dog stuff. A lot more than I spent at yard sales.

Failed Leadership

I have always thought these guys deserved more recognition than they got.

So dems and repubs are mad at Obama about bringing the soldiers home.

Well me too. We have been there for ten years, spent 440 BILLION dollars and we have nothing to show for it other than a dead Bin Laden. What an epic failure of leadership by the Pentagon, Presidents Bush and Obama, congress, senate, and ultimately the American people for not protesting in mass numbers. When we leave in 3 years we will still be in the same place we are today. Ruling 5 percent of the sand box while poppies and pot rule the rest. Some plan

oops, the beer fest is in two weeks. I guess Saturday is painting the table and putting it back together. Grocery store run and pet store for a long leash so Summer has room to roam when I am outside.

Are you watching the new season of Whale Wars?

I LOVE ME FRIDAYS.

Peace

So Summer does not like thunderstorms and wants to use my head as a pillow.
She also likes to lick the metal grate in front of the fire place, wtf.

Check out this new camera coming to market very soon. I think it will sell well if the software is easy to use.

http://www.lytro.com/

The antique mall down the street is having a NC beer tasting event Saturday. Guess I'll mosey on down. May I can find some hippy things for the porch. I'll live out there when the temp is nice again. Next few mornings coffee on the bench. Also good to nap on.

Time to go to the couch for a few. Then off to bed.

Idiot America

Do you realize that while the United States is going around the world throwing around our military power China is going around the world making friends by investing in other countries resources.

They are using their money to buy friends and we are using bombs to make enemies.

With so much power how come we are unable to win in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan or wherever we drop bombs. Seems odd to me. 

This song says a whole bunch.


Very humid tonight. Summer and I want less humidity.
Cayenne peppers coming very soon.

Time to water the plants.

Summer Solstice

So as summer begins and the temps turn a notch warmer we are on the long slow trip to winter. The days will be getting shorter and the kids will have to come in earlier from collecting lightning bugs. BAH HA HA HA.

Crazy how the Mississippi is still flooding so late into year.
No hurricanes in the Atlantic yet.
Did you hear about the two nuclear plants in the midwest that are in danger of getting flooded.

The rest of the world is getting rid of nuke plants and going to solar and wind power. Bet the US does not follow.

Who has plans for the fourth?

Dog days of summer

Here is Pippa, the name chosen by the rescue, she does not respond so well to her name. I think maybe Summer will be her new name. So is a bit overweight like her owner and they both will benefit from long walks and smaller amounts of food. She is very friendly with a jealous streak if you show affection towards other dogs.

From what I understand she was found on the street with no tags or microchip. She now has both. Anyhow she was someones pet at one time as she does respond to "no" quite well. Other words seem to be iffy.
She walks fairly well on the leash with not too much pulling and does not act crazy during walks.

Loves to lay on her back and be petted endlessly. Likes to hang around almost under your feet.

One day down, years too go.

Arf Arf Arf

Happy Birthday dear Tammy. May your day be blessed with happiness and joy.

If all goes well I'll have a new edition to the family tomorrow. I hope to get Pippa, a 7 or 8 year old golden retriever from a rescue. Lets hope there is a new family member waking up here on Sunday morning.

Bring all our soldiers home, NOW.

Summer Solstice events on Sunday.

ARF ARF.

The fatness is almost over

The big weigh-in is tomorrow. The fatness ends.

The little grape maters are turning red. Zucchini blooming. Peppers flowering.

Here are Sunday afternoon's plan for the summer solstice, a few days early.
http://www.greensborosummersolstice.org/

Rock n Roll your Wednesday.

Totally Tuesday

Lovely temps outside. Perfect for tea, ran out of coffee.

Watch out, the Republicans will try to get rid of the EPA if they beat Obama next year.

Great story about Greensboro. There is a racial problem here waiting for something to ignite it. Our poorly run city and county government are no help. Leaders with no vision for the future.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/07/greensboro.race/index.html

Two too a Sunday

If you did not read my other post for Sunday pleae go back and read it. Thank you.

Thank you Tammy. Many years ago you loaned me "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingslover. I just finished reading "The Lacuna" and it was an excellent book and I wish I had those writing skills.

Went to a new natural food store with lots of local food being sold and what was the thing that was the coolest, milk in a glass container. Yup, they have milk from a local diary that comes in glass. Hell yeah.

Did not go to the beach. Slept like crap both Friday and Saturday nights. Insomnia is increasingly becoming a problem. Leads to unproductive days.

My eyesight is getting worse. Maybe an eye doctor visit is coming soon.

Have a couple of yellow finches feeding at Sevigny Animal Kingdom.

I am beat and spent from doing nothing this weekend, my knees ache and I am going to begin my nightly series of naps.

Enjoy the song. Lovely piano work.

Saturday rememberance

Yesterday was my Dad's 69th birthday.

Yesterday was the funeral of Sally Bowles.

Sally was in many ways my moms big sister. My mom grew up at Sally's. My grandparents were the caretakers of the house and property where they grew up.

I got to know Sally when my mom became a private nurse for Sally's father, Chester Bowles, and when my grandparents went back to the house in the late 70's to live and work there again.

The thing I always liked about Sally was her sense of place and sense of humor. With her jobs she was always involved with many influential people in the world trying to make it a better place and she was more than right at home with you and me. She had a great sense of humor and was always able to find humor in what she was dealing with. She was one of us.

I guess you could say that you always felt at home around Sally.

Here is a little write-up I found. This will tell you where her heart and soul were.

Thank you and goodbye.


Making good ideas useful
Beginning with building the Peace Corps

Sally Bowles ’56

Sally Bowles has lived her remarkable professional life at the intersection of big, bold ideas that would affect millions of people, and the challenge of implementation. She has focused on making change happen. She was a member of the small team that worked with Sargent Shriver to develop the Peace Corps. She worked with John Lindsay to decentralize New York City public schools. She was the director of Medicaid and then in charge of welfare programs for the state of Connecticut. Sally left the public sector in 1990 to assist the president of the Rockefeller Foundation on a major initiative with Nelson Mandela in South Africa and later served as a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation on its $45 million program to build international leadership concerning the global environment and sustainable development. She now is a director of the Charles & Helen Schwab Foundation and a consultant to several national nonprofits. Prior to that, she was president of the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. The Tremaine Foundation initiated the Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities, the first national public-education campaign to inform Americans about learning disabilities. Sally has prolonged and enriched the legacy of public service established by her family.

“When I entered Milton, we had been living in India for two years; my father (Chester Bowles) was President Truman’s ambassador to India, right after Indian independence. Living there at that time was a pivotal experience. My father had left the business world in his mid-thirties to take up public service; so for me, it was public sector all the way.

“He was governor of Connecticut when I was 10, ambassador when I was 12, and he went on to serve in Congress.
I decided early on against running for elected office;
I thought that what you had to do to get elected sort of distracted you from the things you cared about getting done.

“I have always been most gratified working at the junction of vision and implementation. There are lots of great ideas lining the shelves. My strong suit has been not so much developing or researching more ideas as taking some of the good ones off the shelf and making them useful for people. I particularly like start-ups, when all of the big, basic questions have to be asked and answered—clarifying goals, picking plausible strategies, determining how the organization will be structured, financed and staffed.

“Six people began building the Peace Corps, and there were many huge choices that were made by brilliant people, talking to one another about volunteers’ roles, and selection, and training—so many other things. Watching that organization grow was a fabulous education. Then Kennedy died, and I was looking around for the next ‘new frontier.’

I thought it had to be John Lindsay in New York City.
“That was hardly a start-up, but decentralizing the schools was a huge change in a large-scale operation. It was an entirely new experience to work with an established, highly regulated bureaucracy with lots of history [New York City school system, Connecticut Medicaid, then Connecticut AFDC]. You had to ask the question: ‘How do you change without starting over?’ That’s a whole different set of challenges. I gravitate to the early stages of implementing an important, big idea.

“I’ve sometimes thought that the period when I’m at my best is when I know the least. That’s when you ask dumb questions, but they’re often good questions, because you’re not inhibited by what you know.

“I think lots of people underestimate the power of their generic capacities; they shortchange their own native abilities, their intuition, their gut, their questions. I’ve said to them, ‘Now hold on, vision doesn’t spring from a spreadsheet; analysis only gets you so far.’ You need judgment, good antennae—to know why something is important, who cares about making a change, and who cares about the status quo. And you need to get into the shoes of other people without losing your own grounding. That’s not manipulative; it informs the process.

“It’s too bad when the emphasis on higher degrees and specialization overshadows the importance of basic liberal arts. That process of how you grow at school is so mysterious—which inherent capacities you brought and which were cultivated once you got there.

“I decided to leave government in 1990 (I’d been there since 1960), to see how it would be in a less regulated environment. I thought about foundations, where you could stand back, identify and seize opportunities to be the bridge, to fill the gap between an idea and its implementation. I realized that I am not fussy about subject matter—education, health care, another field—as long as it squares with my values, is large in scope, and is important. All along, I found I thrived on new situations, new environments, new relationships, and on learning an entirely new field.

“My friend Peter Goldmark, who also worked with John Lindsay and had led such large governmental organizations as the welfare department in Massachusetts and the New York/New Jersey Port Authority, was then head of the Rockefeller Foundation. Lots of people can’t see the wider applicability of government experience or that the challenges are as tough as any in the private sector. It was fortunate that he did, and that he invited me to help him in South Africa.

“The foundation world enables important change but can be pretty far removed from implementation. I have to watch out, because many times I’d rather be the grantee, making change happen, working where the tough and interesting decisions have to be made.

“I figured out when I was a child that the person who had the most influence in my father’s daily work was his secretary. I didn’t care about title. I wanted four things: to work with strong people I respect, to be engaged with big ideas, to have influence, and to have fun. For my first job out of college, I decided to work for a congressman rather than a senator, because the office would be smaller, and I’d be exposed to the whole thing. That began a pattern of working with the whole picture.”

It's here

Yesterday our computers and phones went down before noon and were down the rest of the day. Made for quite the lazy afternoon. No reason given.

My house is a spider breeding ground.

One week to the fat losing contest.

No plans for the weekend. Should I make the 3 plus hour trip to the beach tomorrow?

Time to feed the birds............

Weed Wednesday

Legalize it my friends.

Hot as heck. 96 is the expected high today.

Cypress Hill is in the house.

How many biscuits can you eat

Anthony Weiner for President.

Fix us

Do you realize if unemployment continues at the same rate it would take 240.7 months to put the 13 million documented unemployed Americans back to work. Unacceptable.

Time to get America back to work by fixing roads, bridges, train tracks, national parks, power grids, water systems and the rest of our crumbling society. Time to get companies the money they need to build solar power grids and get them installed across America, Build wind farms.
Many people are afraid of what it will cost. The cost to America is much greater if we continue to let employment grow at such a pathetic pace.

More and more we are gradually becoming a nation divided by rich and poor.
When the Americans who are poor republicans wake up and understand that fact things will begin to shift back. How can you be poor and be a republican?

Hot summer weather is here too stay. I need a beach day soon.

My nephew and a buddy of his will be here tonight. They are on their way to Florida. Pizza for dinner.

Bloody Mary Morning

Had yours today? I have.........

Friday

Gotta love a four day work week.

They are having a company wide weight loss contest starting on June 16th. Whoever losses the largest % of weight over two months wins $500.00.
I plan to win. The women who last year was huge. Not to be mean but they showed a before and after picture and I could not tell there was a difference. That is a problem for me I can't against that.

I am somewhere in the crowd in this video.

Peace mi amigos.

Murder in the City

This is a fantastic song by the Avett Brothers.

Really, Sarah Palin. God I hope she runs. The ignorance of America will truly come to light. Plus it will be great for the comedians.

A couple of my pepper plants will have peppers any day now. They are flowering already. The watermelon is barely growing.

I want all weeks to be four day work weeks.

My favorite little perk in Gibsonville is how the town picks up leaves every week. brush every other week, and other junk the weeks in between.
Kind of neat.

Hazy and Hot

My favorite Eagles song.

Hazy outside this morning. I imagine the mountain are very hazy and the views are not that great.

Florida Nazi leader aka Governor Rick Scott just signed into law a bill requiring welfare recipients to randomly submit to drug tests to be able to receive welfare. Nice job of labeling welfare recipients as drug users and also keeping government out of your house. These people are very scary. Erosion of rights by laws that on the surface seem to be correct.
Watch as these Nazi's continue to take away more rights and we continue to do nothing. The battle is looming. Look at who is taking away your rights and you will see it is the Republicans.

Time to "Fight The Power" and rise up against these people.