The geese are back with a vengeance. As you may recall, I occasionally have to go through a field on foot to get somewhere. Well, I was on my way there again this Saturday when I decided that as I was trying to catch up to Lovey and the girls, and I was going a different route, I would cut right across the first field, instead of using the winding path. (Note: even though I was going to the shul on the other side of town, I had not eaten or drank anything beforehand, so the CANNOT be blamed on any outside influence).
So I hit the field and I was going towards the far end when I noticed that the geese were back. But then I noticed something different about them. They weren't in the usual skulking about looking surly mode. Nope, something was definitely up with them. They were sort of lined up in a row, about 20 across, just looking at me, and not moving.
I just continued walking across this very large field, feeling like I was participating in the shootout scene at the OK Corral. The geese were puttin' up a racket, honkin' and hollerin' about, but I just kept saunterin' towards them, one foot in front of the other.
Well, all of a sudden, when I was about 200 feet away, the honking reached a crescendo, and then they started to move.
Towards me.
Fast.
And I realized that I was standing, all alone, right smack in the middle of the goose airport runway, and they were taking off in formation.
Now, if you have ever seen geese take off in unison, it is a sight to behold, they start running and honking and flapping, and slowly get airborne. Right at me. Then over me. It was both thrilling and a bit Hitchcockian.
Well, after they cleared the trees at then far end of the field, I continued on my way, passing the five remaining geese who, I guess were the ground crew, or on lunch, or something.
They, at least, were skulking about.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Piff to You
I have been getting snide remarks from others that I have not posted in a while. The truth is most of what is in me has to be distilled down for the masses, so as not to cause damage. ( To who, i will not say) .
Now I have looked about at other blogs, and there have been gaps of, would you believe, 2 WEEKS where there were no posts, even though it is posted to by a couple of people who seem to have plenty to say! From the 7th of the month, to the 21st. And THAT blog did not have one of its contributors on vacation.
So now we have a similar scenario here, where this blog has been resting our fingers a bit before we ramp up for the summer surge of blogs. ( As well as tooling around the yard). The last post here was the 7th. This one is the 21st. So i just duplicated the other slothly blog and kept the same gap, without going one shorter, and grandstanding, or one longer, and letting them come back with " Oh, yeah, well OUR graphics are better than yours, and we have shorter gaps, so there!"
So enjoy another post about posts, the old standby when the other thoughts are still percolating about in my head, and today, being baked in the sun as I enjoy the top down.
Gotta go ride.
Now I have looked about at other blogs, and there have been gaps of, would you believe, 2 WEEKS where there were no posts, even though it is posted to by a couple of people who seem to have plenty to say! From the 7th of the month, to the 21st. And THAT blog did not have one of its contributors on vacation.
So now we have a similar scenario here, where this blog has been resting our fingers a bit before we ramp up for the summer surge of blogs. ( As well as tooling around the yard). The last post here was the 7th. This one is the 21st. So i just duplicated the other slothly blog and kept the same gap, without going one shorter, and grandstanding, or one longer, and letting them come back with " Oh, yeah, well OUR graphics are better than yours, and we have shorter gaps, so there!"
So enjoy another post about posts, the old standby when the other thoughts are still percolating about in my head, and today, being baked in the sun as I enjoy the top down.
Gotta go ride.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Random Thoughts While Whiling Away the Time at an Airport
I usually travel to Virginia and the Carolinas in the springtime. Their's is more advanced than ours by May with most of the fruit trees having blossomed before I got there. The strawberries are ripe and delicious, sweet as the sweetest candy, while ours aren't even thinking of coming up yet. Maybe it's my imagination, but the quality of the morning light on the deeply green trees is somehow different from other places. I have taken many pictures over the years to capture the mood but they don't do justice to the reality.
Driving around in this area of woods and shacks, I am struck by the prominence and seeming importance religion plays in the area. Churches abound here and they don't come small. Sure there are your little roadside clapboard one room churches, but many are huge, with high capacity parking lots and much activity even during weekdays. There are billboards proclaiming the need to repent and pray. I even saw one sign which read, simply, "HOLINESS!" Not sure what that was supposed to mean but it certainly has somethiing to do with religious observance. The radio stations, those that aren't public radio and that don't play rock and roll, offer up a steady diet of sermons, scripture readings, and gospel songs as well as interviews with repentant sinners who offer advice on how to keep your marriage afloat and stay out of debt. Some of it is really quite interesting, especially the scripture readings. Some of the programs contain some pretty anti-jewish bias but that comes with the territory.
Speaking of religion, apparently, a very popular radio personality catholic priest was photographed on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, bare chested, embracing a woman in a bathing suit, and the picture was published in a spanish language tabloid. This caused his boss to remove him from his post for a violation of his vow of celibacy. I don't know. They finally get a priest with normal proclivities and they punish him for it.
Georgia is known to be the second largest chicken producer in the US, after Iowa. On entering Gainesville, GA, a large water or oil tank on the side of the road proclaims "Gainesville, the poultry capital of the world." As I came into Gainsville the other day, I was behind a flat -bed truck carrying live chickens in coops. I subsequently passed another such truck on the highway (the coops on this one were empty) and counted the coops. There were about 600 of them stacked eight high in four ranks and about 18 rows all on one truck and the one with live chickens had a lot more than one chicken in each coop. They were just hunkered down in the coops, looking balefully at the traffic behind them. At least these could see the road. The ones inside probably couldn't see anythiing.
Naturally, driving 802 miles in four days ( a little less than on some trips) I have to listen to the radio, and when I have enough of the preachers, I listen to, you guessed it, NPR. NPR seems to have a bit of a truth hangup when it comes to the Mexican flu. They keep insisting that both scientists and themselves are baffled by the fact that no one seems to die from this disease anywhere but in Mexico and they offer up some really strange reasons for the phenomena, that it's been around Mexico for a long time and therefore is very potent, etc. It seems to me that any child could tell them that the state of hygiene and medical care in Mexico is not a standard a country should aspire to and in a filthy crowded and congested place like that it's a wonder there haven't been more deaths. It's that political agenda again.
The longest lines in the United States are to be found in the post offices. As you enter a post office, there is a line at the stamp vending machine. Proceding further into the manned (or womaned as the case may be) section, you will see a bar usually shaped like the letter L where people can place the item(s) they are mailing. Rarely are there fewer than 15 people waiting along this bar and just as rarely is there more than one person handling the customers. There are plenty of other people behind the counters walking back and forth and pointedly ignoring the line of patient potential mailers. I think the line of customers scares them and that's why they retreat behind the wall as soon as the crowd builds up. If they would fire these people, who don't do anything anyway, they wouldn't have to raise the postage every two years.
Someone should throw a pair of shoes at the chief of the postal service.
Driving around in this area of woods and shacks, I am struck by the prominence and seeming importance religion plays in the area. Churches abound here and they don't come small. Sure there are your little roadside clapboard one room churches, but many are huge, with high capacity parking lots and much activity even during weekdays. There are billboards proclaiming the need to repent and pray. I even saw one sign which read, simply, "HOLINESS!" Not sure what that was supposed to mean but it certainly has somethiing to do with religious observance. The radio stations, those that aren't public radio and that don't play rock and roll, offer up a steady diet of sermons, scripture readings, and gospel songs as well as interviews with repentant sinners who offer advice on how to keep your marriage afloat and stay out of debt. Some of it is really quite interesting, especially the scripture readings. Some of the programs contain some pretty anti-jewish bias but that comes with the territory.
Speaking of religion, apparently, a very popular radio personality catholic priest was photographed on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, bare chested, embracing a woman in a bathing suit, and the picture was published in a spanish language tabloid. This caused his boss to remove him from his post for a violation of his vow of celibacy. I don't know. They finally get a priest with normal proclivities and they punish him for it.
Georgia is known to be the second largest chicken producer in the US, after Iowa. On entering Gainesville, GA, a large water or oil tank on the side of the road proclaims "Gainesville, the poultry capital of the world." As I came into Gainsville the other day, I was behind a flat -bed truck carrying live chickens in coops. I subsequently passed another such truck on the highway (the coops on this one were empty) and counted the coops. There were about 600 of them stacked eight high in four ranks and about 18 rows all on one truck and the one with live chickens had a lot more than one chicken in each coop. They were just hunkered down in the coops, looking balefully at the traffic behind them. At least these could see the road. The ones inside probably couldn't see anythiing.
Naturally, driving 802 miles in four days ( a little less than on some trips) I have to listen to the radio, and when I have enough of the preachers, I listen to, you guessed it, NPR. NPR seems to have a bit of a truth hangup when it comes to the Mexican flu. They keep insisting that both scientists and themselves are baffled by the fact that no one seems to die from this disease anywhere but in Mexico and they offer up some really strange reasons for the phenomena, that it's been around Mexico for a long time and therefore is very potent, etc. It seems to me that any child could tell them that the state of hygiene and medical care in Mexico is not a standard a country should aspire to and in a filthy crowded and congested place like that it's a wonder there haven't been more deaths. It's that political agenda again.
The longest lines in the United States are to be found in the post offices. As you enter a post office, there is a line at the stamp vending machine. Proceding further into the manned (or womaned as the case may be) section, you will see a bar usually shaped like the letter L where people can place the item(s) they are mailing. Rarely are there fewer than 15 people waiting along this bar and just as rarely is there more than one person handling the customers. There are plenty of other people behind the counters walking back and forth and pointedly ignoring the line of patient potential mailers. I think the line of customers scares them and that's why they retreat behind the wall as soon as the crowd builds up. If they would fire these people, who don't do anything anyway, they wouldn't have to raise the postage every two years.
Someone should throw a pair of shoes at the chief of the postal service.
I Remember When...
Talk about the generation gap. I feel like Arnold Fine today. Here's what happened.
I was talking to Boo about when Lovey and I were kids, so I threw out during the conversation that the person we were talking about should have just used her cell phone. Now to Boo, this made perfect sense in her 11 year old mind, as she has no concept of a cell phone free world. So I told her the person could not have used a cell phone, because no one had them.
Incredulous look.
Well, since Boo thinks I'm kidding her all the time, she didn't really believe me. I told her, and Big Sis, who had joined the conversation at this point, that when I was a kid, no one had a cell phone, and when I was a teenager I know a person who had a car phone. Even then, I had to stress A person, as in only one. Boo then asked me how people communicated. I told her pay phones, but when I started working I had a beeper.
Absolute.
Blank.
Stare.
This one, she couldn't even COMPREHEND, never having seen or heard of the technological advance of its time. So I explained that you called a number, and left a number, then the person would get to a phone and call. She still didn't truly grasp the concept until I told her that newer advanced models had answering services send text messages. THIS she was able to understand.
Its incredible how what was a great advance in our day is considered an obsolete relic by the current generation. I finally can imagine the wonders that the generation before me experienced with even more amazing advances, and I have a new found respect for older people who adapt and utilize the new technologies.
But I still feel old.
I was talking to Boo about when Lovey and I were kids, so I threw out during the conversation that the person we were talking about should have just used her cell phone. Now to Boo, this made perfect sense in her 11 year old mind, as she has no concept of a cell phone free world. So I told her the person could not have used a cell phone, because no one had them.
Incredulous look.
Well, since Boo thinks I'm kidding her all the time, she didn't really believe me. I told her, and Big Sis, who had joined the conversation at this point, that when I was a kid, no one had a cell phone, and when I was a teenager I know a person who had a car phone. Even then, I had to stress A person, as in only one. Boo then asked me how people communicated. I told her pay phones, but when I started working I had a beeper.
Absolute.
Blank.
Stare.
This one, she couldn't even COMPREHEND, never having seen or heard of the technological advance of its time. So I explained that you called a number, and left a number, then the person would get to a phone and call. She still didn't truly grasp the concept until I told her that newer advanced models had answering services send text messages. THIS she was able to understand.
Its incredible how what was a great advance in our day is considered an obsolete relic by the current generation. I finally can imagine the wonders that the generation before me experienced with even more amazing advances, and I have a new found respect for older people who adapt and utilize the new technologies.
But I still feel old.
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