I find myself talking to our dogs more than humans most days. I’m not sure if this is normal behavior or not. Nor do I exactly care. Truth is, with the exception of my family and a few friends, I prefer conversation with the pups to people. The pups actually pretend to be listening, cocking their heads and looking at me intently as I babble away. People, not so much.
We have two, sometimes three pups, depending on if granddog Teddy is visiting, which he does about half the time. Teddy, a year old, is half Havanese, half Maltese — a Havamalt. He is seriously smart, a problem-solving pup....
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I guess time just makes fools of us all.
— Father John Misty
It is no longer possible for me to deny that there is far more in the rearview mirror than ahead in the windshield. I am determined to spend time wisely. This might be an exercise fraught with failure, as Father John Misty (Joshua Michael Tillman) notes in his Dylanesque song, which you can listen to here. That song, which I love, strikes me as a version of the Yiddish expression: Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht, or Man Plans and God Laughs.
When I was younger, rarely did time go by unplanned. I was a project guy, who spent...
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DURANT, OKLAHOMA – The Choctaw Casino & Resort towers over the flat landscape outside Durant with the 21-story Sky Tower and the 12-story Grand Tower bookending the casino, which boasts thousands of ways to lose money at slots, blackjack, poker, craps, or roulette. However, we are not here to gamble, although I did “invest” five bucks on a quarter slot machine. That was gone in about one minute and served to remind me why I retired from gambling more than 20 years ago.
We were here to see the Red Clay Strays, a terrific band from Mobile, Alabama. The Grand Theater at the casino holds...
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I had to get a new battery for my watch the other day. This required a trip to our preferred local jeweler, who performs this task for a reasonable price while I wait. I value such service these days of self-checking and automated voice prompts.
My Victorinox Swiss Army analog watch is nothing fancy. It tells me the time on a round face, no digital partner, and the calendar date. The date, just the number, is accurate as long as I remember to adjust it in 30-day months and in February. That’s it. There are no additional dials or features. My watch doesn’t tell me how many calories I have...
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We recently watched a television show where one of the characters mentioned “Occam’s Razor.” I opined to my Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie that I was a strong believer in this philosophic principle — and somewhat surprised that it was being mentioned in a television show. That led to a brief discussion of its principles, which can be boiled down to this: The simplest explanation of an event or a phenomenon is usually the best and most accurate. In other words, an explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.
Occam’s Razor is named after...
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Many people may rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked Indigenous people, never owned slaves.”
And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.
― Isabel Wilkerson,...
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Cold, wet weather dominated much of January, slowing down progress here at Three Geese Farm on a number of projects. Still, we managed to make some headway. As always, there is no dearth of items to tackle, even as the trees lay bare and the grass brown.
Through a long-term loan, we acquired a 20-year-old side-by-side, aka UTV, that I am attempting to resurrect. I managed to pull it inside the shop with the tractor – a tricky endeavor I managed to complete unassisted without crashing into anything, slowly towing it with a canvas strap. Since this Kawasaki Mule has been sitting outside for more...
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It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.
– Alice in Wonderland
I spent Inauguration Day assiduously avoiding the news. It was a holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, but I am off work on Monday anyway. Save for one errand in town to have a windshield replaced that had cracked for no discernible reason, I spent that chilly winter day hunkered down in front of the iMac, getting back to work on a book project too-long delayed.
About that windshield: There was no rock chip evident, just a long snaking crack starting where the sticker is at the lower...
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“I am simply a ‘book drunkard.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables
I share that sentiment with Ms. Montgomery, the Canadian author of Anne of Green Gables, a hugely popular children’s novel adapted for stage, screen, and television since its publication in 1908. Several years ago, my Beautiful Mystery Companion gave me a wooden tchotchke with that quotation on it, which now sits on, well, a bookshelf.
With the passing of the holiday season, and another stack of books arriving as gifts from my family, who understand and share this addiction, I am taking...
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On New Year’s Eve in 1999 – 25 years ago – I sat in the publisher’s office at the Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches as the clock approached midnight. Across the Angelina River, my counterpart at the Lufkin Daily News was doing the same. A buddy who was the local manager for Southwestern Bell sat in his office as well, as did the fellow who represented the gas company. All of us were waiting for the clock to strike 12 to see if the “Millennium Bug,” also known as the Y2K phenomenon, would wreak havoc on our computer systems.
All of us remained stone-cold sober as we sat in our offices,...
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