Zoo 2

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Zoo

Yesterday, some of the animals at the zoo agreed to pose for pictures:

Merle Haggard

- When I was nine years old, right after my dad died, my mother got me some violin lessons with this big heavyset lady. It took nine lessons before this lady said to my mother, “You’re wasting your money. He’s got too good an ear. He’s not going to fool with learning to read when he can play something that he hears on the radio.” When I heard her say that, I knew I had something.

- I probably had as bad a sex urge as anybody when I was younger. I remember an old guitar player, Eldon Shamblin, told me, “When you get pussy off your mind, you can go ahead and learn something.” Isn’t that great?

- Willie Nelson’s the one who told me the reason it costs so much to get divorced is because it’s worth it.

- I remember going to a dance as a kid – my older brother took me in. Roy Nichols was playing. My brother said, Hey, there’s a little guy in there playing guitar. He don’t have to pick cotton or go to school.” Roy Nichols became my idol on the guitar. Many years later he went on to play for me at half price. But he and I could never look directly at each other. I never knew why. At first, I thought it was because I admired him too much. But it was Roy, too. Anyway, late in his life, Roy had a stroke. Paralyzed him on one side. Right down the middle. Half of his nose he could blow, the other half was dead. After his stroke, I went over to Roy’s house. He looked me right in the eye and said, “Look here; I love you.” I got chills. He said, “That old shit went down the hole with this stroke.”

~ from a September 2007 Esquire article

lotus

Mud College

Known as Mud College, this one-room elementary school near Littlestown, PA was in session from 1869 through 1949. Thanks to the efforts of the Crouse family and others, the school house, inside and out, remains as it was then.

Meggie

Nightmare

When I was a kid, I read a comic book about a murderous cat. By day, the cat was as nice as could be, but by night it would slowly creep to its sleeping victim, cast a paralyzing spell, and then suck the breath out of him. The reasoning adult in me now sees this as a silly story, but, it’s funny, I’ve never forgotten it.

Last week I was dog-sitting again with Buddy, the silky terrier, and Sky, the sheltie, but this time I was also keeping the cat of the mother of the dogs' owner. Rose Lilly was a nice enough cat. She stayed by herself, and, I think, was a little intimidated by the dogs and maybe even by me. And she had a strange purr.

On the first night, the dogs and I headed for bed. Rose Lilly was off on her on. I fell into a restless sleep with Buddy curled up at the small of my back and Sky at the foot of the bed. Then I fell into a deep sleep, the kind that seems to take you far, far away.

And then the dream. A furtive figure creeping. Dark shadows and a shade of terror. Suddenly I am wet with sweat and gasping for breath, …then screaming myself awake. A slippery tongue licks across my face. OHMYGOD… OHMYGOD! My eyes see a face in the darkness looking down at me….it is the face of a slobbering Buddy the dog.

Et tu, Buddy!!!???

No...time to get up.

Happiness

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a little smile as though I was trying to fool with them.

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river, and I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordian.

~ Carl Sandburg

Key Bridge, Early Sunday Morning

Francis Scott Key Bridge

Connecting Georgetown in the District of Columbia with Rosslyn in Virginia. Named after Francis Scott Key, author of the National Anthem and an attorney who lived in Georgetown.

Froggin'

Triple Digit Temps

Buddy is dog-tired in yesterday's record breaking heat.

Westward Woman

This statue near the Bethesda, Maryland Post Office honors the pioneer women of America.

Ways to Improve Your Life

Not that your life needs improvement....well, maybe a little...

http://liferemix.net/

Punishments in "Dante's Inferno"

Pursued by insects (you'll experience this as you're waiting to get in)
Desire without hope (Is this Hell or normal life)
Battered by violent winds
Perpetual violence (Again, is this Hell or normal life)
Drowned in hot blood (violence against others)
Enclosed in trees (not too bad, suicides and squanderers get this)
Burned on hot sands
Forced perpetually to run (unnatural lust)
Whipped to walk endlessly
Sunk in excrement (for flatterers)
Burned with pitch
Clad in weights
Attacked by serpents (thievery)
Burned with flames
Endlessly mutilated (Just for sowing discord)
Bound in chains
Up to neck in ice (for traitors to country)
Held in Luicfer's mouth (you really don't want to end up there)

Undecided

Folk Life Shoes

Eye Candy

First US Stamps

This month, 160 years ago, clerks hand cut the first postage stamps which went on sale in New York City in July 1847. A five-cent Ben Franklin and a ten-cent George Washington were the first two stamps. More than 130 other Franklin stamps followed, but Washington holds the record, at 305.

All in This Soup Together...

We humans pop up like weeds all over this earth. It could be in London, Cairo, Hong Cong, Moscow, Sao Paulo, or Carlisle, Pennsylvania. We have no choice where we appear. We just get thrown into the soup.

And we have no choice when we appear – Biblical Times, the Middle Ages, the Roaring Twenties, now. All of a sudden we’re just here.


We don’t choose our parents or our siblings. We don’t choose our skin color. We are born with a nationality (we really don't choose it) and usually keep it. We are taught a religion (again, not really a choice) and usually we keep it. We usually end up proud of our nationality and convinced that our religion is the “right” one.

But despite the fact that people have no choice in so many elements in their lives, we humans still CHOOSE to discriminate and turn horribly savage against other humans based on those very elements.

History has all the evidence:

White against Black
The White Man against the Indian
Protestant against Catholic
Hutu against Tutsis
Sunni against Shia
Indian against Pakistani
Nazi against Jew

Add up the carnage, the suffering, the senseless slaughter.

It’s astonishingly stupid, isn’t it. I can see stupidity winning out in the beginning, but after all these ions - come on - we should be evolving into something nobler, something smarter, something much better.

It’s hard to imagine where this civilization would be had we turned into something smarter, had we used all the time, money and effort spent on stupidity and instead actually tried to make a better world.