Les Miserables

Growing old is a bitch. Growing old when your youth has been bypassed, growing old when your list of promise has only cross outs all over it, that sucks worse. When you're young growing old takes so much longer than it should. It seems like an interminable wait. But you are never too old for a breeze of redemption. If your are young enough, when you see the dust and leaves moved by one, run to it. As Malcolm says, if you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. If you can't crawl, find someone to carry you, but move towards it. Never stop moving towards it.





There was a time when all were kind
Their voices were soft
And their words inviting


There was a time when love was blind
And my world was a song
The song was exciting

There was a time...




I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die


I dreamed that God would be forgiving


Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made

and used

and wasted


There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung,

no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night.....


Their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart


As they turn your dream to shame....

there are dreams that cannot be
there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this one I'm living


It is so different now

from what it seemed
Now that life has killed the dream

I dreamed.


---- Alain Boublil

Ladies You Have Failed: The Gift To America's Women

When the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) failed years ago, it failed because the conservatives in America were able to sell the lie that it was not needed.

The recent Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruling that 1.5 million women could not sue Walmart for years and years of structured discrimination proved once and completely that, that lie was indeed a lie. That argument is dead.

The founding fathers did not intend in any way or form for women in America to have equal rights with men. It is not in the Constitution and can not be construed or spun to be there. That is an American conundrum.

To the women in my life, to my dear (subservient by law) fellow female Americans the SCOTUS has given you a gift. Congress can not, even if it would, make you legally equal to a man, any man. Only changing the supreme law of the land can do that. You must change the Constitution.

Right now, you must reinstate the ERA and pass it. Not next year. Not after the elections. Not when them or us or they have the legislative majorities. Do it NOW!

This is not a partisan issue. No woman except for the severely brain washed could see this as a partisan issue. This SCOTUS ruling has erased all those false starts at your equality. It is the 18th century, today. This will unravel that carefully constructed body of law so many have worked for the last century. Ladies, you have failed. If you don't change the Constitution you are going to be the perpetual victims of those 18th Century male intents.

You want to be a full human being under the law with equal rights then the ERA must be reintroduced and passed by the States. Right now. It has to be, right now, the first and foremost subject of National debate and concern. Do it now or give up and return yourself and all your future daughters to your rightful place in the 1790s.

Fire And Water

It is one of the great ironies of nature that after fire comes water. The Wallow fire alone in Arizona has burned more than one half million acres and on June 18, 2011 it is still only 38% contained. One might feel free to conjecture that it could burn as many as a million acres. However many acres it does burn, one thing is certain after the burn will come the rain. All that burned over area will not hold the water back this time as it has in the past. So everyone in the area and down stream of the area will now be cursed by floods and mud slides and slumps.

For more images of the fire over time from space click here: NASA satellite pictures.

It is never just one disaster. They feed each other.

what do you suppose that was all about

my child says

I make more of things than they really were

he doesn't comprehend what he already knows

that the little things are what we build our livings from

stacked them in ways

until they are more

than all they are

so even when that thing may looked so small

insignificant

it might just have been the final particle

that makes a whole

or even the critical mass

of an occasion

No.....You Didn't!

If Your Baby Is 31 He Isn't Your Baby Any More?

Bullshit, they are all my children, kids, and babies, and I can't wait til I'm 110 and still terrorizing their ragged old asses.

KD (Daniel) Hagy is 31 years old today. He is my youngest. I want to recognize his birthday with a few photographs of him over the years.

By the way he is single, educated, employed, cute, 6'4", and un married and available in case anyone is interested for themselves or a daughter, or niece, or next door neighbor. But he is shy and too damn smart for his own good.

Happy birthday to my son Daniel.

A Man Himself Is Junk

A conversation between two old junk collectors:

Junior Bear

A man himself is junk, and all his life he clutters the earth with it. He carries junk around with him wherever he goes, and wherever he stops he accumulates it. He lives in it. He loves it. He worships it. He collects it and stands guard over it.

—William Saroyan, Rock Wagram (1952)·

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    Jack E. Wardlow III You have been prowling through my barn haven't you?

    
    
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    Junior Bear I got some too. What you got to trade? Once a month OKC has a big junk pickup day when you put any kind of stuff you don't want on the curb. In point of fact it is actually OKC's junk exchange day. We put our bad junk out and roam around picking others good junk up. It is an amazing unintentional recycling program.

    
    
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    Jack E. Wardlow III That is exactly what I would do, try to beat the city truck to eveyone's pile...

    
    
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    Junior Bear

    It really is fascinating. It is almost a dance. I'm slow, so I take things to the curb one at a time. So I take something out, say, that is aluminum, then I go back for more. I come back and the first thing is gone. It has been picked up by a Metals Picker. So then I put down a little wagon load of 2x4 ends and chunks of plywood. When I come back, that is gone. A Lumber Picker came by. In the Fall when I put out industrial size bags of leaves from my forest in my back-back yard, people stop and ask is that just leaves and then my leaves take off to someones mulch or compost pile acquired by Leaf Picker. Big chunks of tree limbs and sometime even piles of twigs attract the Wood Pickers (no jokes here please). Wood Pickers are not the same as Lumber Pickers. They pick wood to burn in their fire places, lumber is not good to burn indoors. We also have Rag Pickers, Glass Pickers, Magazine Pickers as opposed to Paper pickers, and the rarest of all, Knit Pickers looking for old wool stuff to unravel for the threads.
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    Jack E. Wardlow III I too have my share of knit pickers who are wool gatherers....

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