Notes along the way and a great link

In the last month or so I have started and abandoned many posts. I could not settle on the words. I seem to be changing. How, I don't know. Motivation, patience, medium? Something is different. Maybe I'm just restless but I think it's more fundamental. I just don't know yet.

Generally, for my future self, I like to make note of at least the basic changes, events and circumstances in my life but they are slipping by unnoted. So...here's a recap. We were home for about a month, now we are back on the road. It was good. It was different. It was centering. I regretted leaving but also don't feel like I can hold on to anything anymore. And last week our neighbor Dwayne died. His cat Suki still lives next door, now with his son, but he neglects her, won't let her in the house, so she spends a lot of time in the Bird Park. It is safe and quiet there but, of course, her presence keeps the birds away. While we were there, I fed her anyway because she was hungry and for Dwayne because took her in when she showed up in his back yard a couple of years ago, hungry and lonely. Now she sits on that chair on my porch waiting for me and I am not there. That makes me sad.

And while we were home, I didn't contact any of my writer friends. I told them I would would when I got home but I didn't. I am always reluctant. I don't know why. I'm a freak. And it seemed there was never time enough. Now, we'll be gone till fall. This week we will be with the family in Portland. We're really looking forward to it. After that, we'll drive across the country to Florida and, along the way, we're get to meet Roy. Woo-hoo!

Ps. If you're a writer, painter, reader, thinker and/or conscious person Matt Ashby's article "David Foster Wallace was right: Irony is ruining our culture" is a must read.

My mother's diary

April 29, 1939  Friday - Andy and I talked again to-nite of marriage - religion - breaking up. What's the right thing to do? I think we really love each other - - And I think it's up to me to break it up.

The entry is done in pencil and the years have nearly completed their job of erasing it.


Lucky for me, she didn't break up with Andy after all. He's my dad.

The Ballad of Cliven Bundy

Cliven Bundy. This guy is an embarrassment to the great state of Nevada. I live in Nevada and, contrary to what FOX News would you believe, we are not all racist idiot squatter hicks like Cliven.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive

We've spent a lot of time in the Nevada interior where guys like Bundy "run" their cattle. Trust me. It's animal abuse to abandon them to the desert. In their effort to survive in this harsh environment, the poor cows chew vital, shade-giving willows to the ground turning our precious few rivers into stinking fields of shit and muck. Boneheads like Bundy joke about how this threatens already endangered species. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner Bundy and his dim-wit brethren die off, the better.

Check-in

Little A'Le'Inn - Rachel, NV bordering Area 51
I feel like a sailor in port, neither here nor there. For the next few weeks we're home but we've mostly been living out of our suitcases for the last year and the months ahead will be the same. Home. The word sounds odd but when I look around, yes, it's home. My stuff is here, what little there is, and I get into my own routine here. That's nice. And I have friends here that go back awhile. That's comforting. But, if our med checks turn out ok, we're leaving. I'm not complaining. I just need to acknowledge everything, write about it, photograph it, keep some account. Otherwise, I lose my bearings. The Language Barrier is one of my few constants. I need to come here otherwise, in a way, it's like I don't exist at all.

How to create a better password

This post is filed under the label "notes to self" so, if you're not interested in reading about creating better, stronger passwords.That is all.

Heartbleed Hit List

What is Heartbleed bug?

Hey! If the site has already done it's security fix and you haven't then changed your passwords on these sites, do it now!

Man

I haven't seen this one before, or maybe I have but managed to repress it but, oh man, this little beauty by Steve Cutts is IT and totally depressing. Fuck. In real life, the best hope planet earth has is if the aliens come before that final scene.




PS. I found this at Blogorahmah. Thanks a lot, Roy.

Local news at 10:58 PM

Lately I can barely stand to come here. I drop by to use my newspaper links and see if any of my blog buddies have posted anything new then dash away. I should just change the top post and then everything would be okay again but it always seems like so much work because by the time I get the time to drop by it's too late to start anything new so nothing changes and days turn into weeks. You know how the story goes.

But I do have a little news. Our work is done here, for now. K. has recovered from her surgery, the drains are out and we return home on Thursday. It's been a long haul, seven weeks. We're all so glad to have that phase behind us. She starts radiation next but doesn't need us here to do it.

Oh, and I finally settled on what will be my next travel camera, the Sony HX50V. It has a 30x optical zoom which I'm pretty stoked about. It doesn't shoot in raw. That's kind of disappointing. It's something I want to learn more about but M. Lee found a great price through photographyblog, $238 down from the original price of $450, so what the hell?

Checking in

Still in Medford. If I'd known we were going to be here so long I'd.....I don't know. At least the weather's been good. We've been biking a lot. That goes a way toward preserving sanity. Otherwise, haven't been doing much. Playing Dominion. I'm in limbo. It's my own fault. That isn't exactly good or bad but...it's bad. It's a lack of imagination.

Limbo by follower of Hieronymus Bosch via Wikipedia

When I was a kid in Catholic school, the nuns taught us that limbo was where babies went who died before they were baptized. Unlike everyone else in limbo, they didn't get tortured. They just didn't ever, for all "eternity", get to see god. For the grown-ups, limbo, or purgatory as the nuns called it, was the same as hell except that it lasted one second less than forever. Kids are expected to believe grownups, especially ones in long black robes but come on! One second less than forever? WTF?!

I just looked up limbo at Wikipedia. The "official" definition is more of the same patriarchal, hair-splitting, legalese bullshit. My gods religion sucks. It's fantasy at it's very worst. Yuck.

Happy Spring Equinox 2014

The exact moment has passed. Depending on where you live it happened at 16:57 UTC. In case you're wondering what time that was, there's a good converter here. In any case, it's Spring. That's a good thing.

Yellow Shoes

I posted a new poem at AnnaSadhorse the other day. Well, it's not new. I wrote it in 1988 for Lawson Inada, Oregon's poet laureate from 2006 to 2010. I was taking a writing for publication class from him at the time. One day I was wearing yellow shoes, ankle boots actually, and had my feet up on the chair in front of me. Lawson was talking, walking back and forth in front of the blackboard, when suddenly he grabbed one of my feet, held it up and told me to write a poem about yellow shoes and bring it to class the next day. So I did and here it is.