Celebration

Solstice Eclipse

Post Blog

Solstice

Sinatra

"When you're listening to Sinatra in his prime years, you're hearing the truth. The truth of a particular song and the man singing it and that whole complicated dance between an art work and its interpreter that makes you wonder where one leaves off and the other begins, until you realize it doesn't matter."
~ Louis Bayard in his review of "Frank"

House on the Hill

Ephrata Cloister

Antietam Battlefield

a candle lit for each of the 23,000 soldiers killed, wounded or missing there

Looking Forward

ward

Tommy

Turkey Day

Anna Bravo

Top Ten Beatles Downloads on iTunes

1. Here Comes the Sun
2. Let It Be
3. In My Life
4. Come Together
5. Blackbird
6. Hey Jude
7. Yesterday
8. While My Guitar Gently Weeps
9. I Saw Her Standing There
10. With a Little Help From My Friends
    

Vanishing Americana

Americana

Fall

400 Victories

fall flowering

Birds on a Wire

Earl's Addendum

Halloween 2009:

Earl Snyder made two very bad decisions that day. During breakfast, after his wife had spilled coffee over the table, he flew into a violent rage, grabbed her by the hair, threw her against the refrigerator, then landed his fist on her face again and again. She lay bloodied on the floor as he stormed out the back door. “Stupid bitch,” he yelled back at her.

That afternoon in the woods near his house Snyder began killing squirrels. One shot led to another and, after a few hours, he had killed 27 squirrels which he told himself must have been some sort of record for an afternoon hunt. The desire to share this thought led him to the Belly Up Bar. Inside he downed several shots and beers and happily recounted to others both the beating of his wife and the amazing number of squirrels he had killed that day.

Hours later he walked out of the bar into the fading twilight. By the time he turned his Silverado into his dirt driveway it was nearly dark. He parked under the old oak tree at the side of his house.

It happened as he pulled himself drunkenly out of the truck. Several squirrels dropped out of the tree and landed on him. Claws dug into his skin. He felt panic. He frantically tried to brush the squirrels off of him, but they clung to him tightly. Then dozens more squirrels fell out of the tree. In seconds squirrels covered his whole body. He screamed and flailed at them, but they dug in. Teeth bit into his flesh. Snyder fell to the ground, and the squirrels swarmed over him gnawing and tearing at him. He wailed in pain.

The screams brought Snyder’s wife to the window. She saw what was happening. She did not move to help him. She did not look away.

Finally the screaming ended, but the squirrels continued in a rapacious frenzy. Flesh and muscle were torn away from bone. Snyder’s body was in a thousand bloody pieces under the oak.

Earl Snyder had lived his last Halloween.

Halloween 2010:

Kids playing in the yard under the oak tree dug up a pair of testicles which police concluded once belonged to Earl. The squirrels had buried the nuts.

Describing Keith Richards's face...

"A face that seems never have had the benefit of a moisturizer, let alone a Botox injection." (James Adams, the Globe and Mail)

"A debauched, capering streak of living gristle." (Peter Hitchens, Mail on Sunday)

"Now 66, and the owner of a face that looks like a plate of pad thai." (Sean Daly, St. Petersburg Times)

"Slumped, stoned, and stupid...you figured it was only a matter of time before the wires would announce that he'd choked to death on his own vomit." (David Remnick, The New Yorker)

"That flayed, weathered, kohl-eyed visage, whose topography suggests a moonscape irrigated with Jack Daniel's." (Lou Bayard, The Washington Post)

At Union Mills...

Fall Color

C&O Canal..Out of the Lock

Flea Market

Hawk Mountain, PA

More people than hawks at North Lookout

Some Turkey Vultures made an appearance.

Spectacular top-of-the-world kind of view

How to Correctly Hold On in a Moving Train

Not HER, the old guy!

House of Lights

Sweet Spot

Best Medicine

Recs

Another view of Heikes Bridge

On Broadkill Beach

Johnson

A Thingamabob

at the Dogfish Head Brewery, Milton, DE

"off-centered ales for off-centered people"

Never Forget

9/11/2001

Sir Ken Robinson

Sighted at Long's Park

Jazz Salad

Ticket to Ride

On where the song title came from:

An obvious explanation is that it refers to a train ticket...but Don Short, a British newspaper journalist who traveled with the Beatles, claimed it dated back to the days in the red-light district of Hamburg, Germany. "The girls who worked the streets in Hamburg had to have a clean bill of health, and so the medical authorities would give them a card saying that they didn't have a dose of anything," he said. "John (Lennon) told me he coined the phrase 'a ticket to ride' to describe those cards." McCartney had a more innocent explanation: He said that it was a play on the name of the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. One other possibility: On the day the Beatles recorded "Ticket to Ride," Lennon passed his driver's test.

~ From the Rolling Stone publication The Beatles 100 Greatest Songs

Goodnight, D.C.

Goodnight

eAST cOAST cAT

Mosaic (don't stare at it)

1 in 5 Americans...

thinks socialism is superior to capitalism

reports "excessive sleepiness"

believes in the right of a state to secede

thinks marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol

believes that intelligent beings from other planets have made contact with humans on Earth

admits to peeing in pools

(from yesterday's Washington Post)

Drunk on Pollen

Stone Bridge, Adams County, PA

The Court Rules

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that it is illegal for a US citizen to make fun of other people. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the majority opinion, explained the ruling. "Making fun of someone hurts their feelings, and there's just no room for that in a civilized society," she said. "It's common sense," she continued, "you wouldn't hurt someone physically, why would you allow someone to hurt another emotionally. This ruling, by the way, stems from that horrible reference made by Chief Justice Roberts about me. He called me a wicked witch from the west leaning to the left on her broomstick. That hurt, Mr. smart-assed conservative, sissy boy with a cork up his ass, and now it's illegal."

Outside of chambers that day, the justices (Roberts, Kennedy, Stevens, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Ginsburg, Bryer, Sotomayor, and recently confirmed justice, Kagen) gather round a lunch table:

Kagen: As you know, I'm new here, and I want to state unequivocally that I am not a lesbian.

Scalia: Well, you look like one.

Kagen: Well, I'm NOT.

Scalia: Prove it. Have sex with me right now...

Kagen: I am not having sex with you.

Scalia: Then, that confirms that you're a lesbian.

Kagen: No, it confirms that you're an idiot.

Thomas: I'll have sex with you, Anthony.

Scalia: NO THANKS, Clarence!

Thomas: Is it because I'm black...

Scalia: No, it's because you're a conservative wing nut.

Thomas: That hurts me, paisano...don't be cruel to a heart that's true...

a

Stevens: Well, that's it. My time is up; I'm leaving; nice working with you worthless bastards.

Sotomajor: Don't let the door hit your bony ass on the way out, you old coot!

Stevens: Hey, Chiquita Banana, I resent that!"

Sotomajor: And I resent the fact that you're still here. Git along little doggie...git...git ...OUT!

a

Kennedy: Goddamn it, I'm tired of deciding what's just and unjust; I want to be a Blackjack dealer!

Alito: You look like a Portuguese clown on a bender. I see no blackjack dealing in your future.

Kennedy: I'm a proud Irishman...

Alito: ...on a bender.

Kennedy: You, my former friend, are a loud-mouthed ass whose farts in public are MUCH louder than he thinks.

Alito: I'm placing you under arrest for making fun of me.

Laughter (but not at anyone's expense)

Go Green

Hibiscus