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Friday, 20 September 2019

Birthday Blog Rerun

You say it's your birthday?

The Earth has now revolved about the Sun 76 times since the universe first came into being.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. —Charles Dickens


Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy


If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. —J. D. Salinger,


Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nice little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. —Charles Dickens


He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. —Ernest Hemingway


 Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. —Zora Neale Hurston,



 Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. —Charles Johnson

Bligh: Do you really think you'll be able to command this rabble?
Christian: I'll do my best.
Bligh: Well I did my best, and I had the authority of the law. You're a dead man Fletcher.


The moment one learns English, complications set in. —Felipe Alfau,


Q: What's the difference between a tweaker and an elephant?
A: The elephant will eat all your peanut butter.”
Bucky Sinister


The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  —L. P. Hartley


A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon


The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson


I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky



 It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen


It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton


In the cookies of life, sisters are the chocolate chips. ~Author Unknown


 To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other’s hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega


 Never have children, only grandchildren. ~Gore Vidal


Sunday, 8 September 2019

My Early TV Career

Channel 38 started broadcasting a UHF TV signal in Tampa in 1953. The TVs were full of tubes that you could remove and test in the local drugstore. The TVs only were designed for VHF so you needed a UHF adapter to get channel 38.


Captain Mac was the first kid's TV program in Tampa. The program had a contest for the best (name redacted) ginger ale poem so I wrote one and got on TV with Captain Mac to read it. I was ten.


Here is my best poetry:

Would you like some (name redacted)? Oh Boy! Is it good!
It's the only cold drink mellowed four years in wood.
It's delicious, nutritious..has vitamins too.
It's mineral packed with calories few.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant.
(name redacted) is good...one hundred percent.

So I won a green (name redacted) ginger ale picnic cooler and a case of (name redacted) ginger ale. in glass deposit bottles

We didn't like the taste. We tried it with ice cream as a float and with Seagram's 7 whiskey. Nobody could drink straight or as a mixer it so we poured it out. I took the bottles to the local Kwik Check grocery store and traded them for a watermelon. We liked the cooler.

Well, I used to wake the mornin'
Before the rooster crowed
Searchin' for soda bottles
To get myself some dough
Brought 'em down to the corner
Down to the country store
Cash 'em in, and give my money
To a man named Curtis Loew
Old Curt was a black man
With white curly hair
When he had a fifth of wine
He did not have a care
He used to own an old Dobro
Used to play it 'cross his knee
I'd give old Curt my money
He'd play all day for me
-Lynyrd Skynyrd






Tuesday, 27 August 2019

Operant Conditioning

We are visiting. Our hostess has a Pyrenean Mastiff named Oleho and a Bernese Mountain dog named Seaman.


The Mastiff reverted to peeing on the floor when Bruce died a year ago. I helped sort the medals into the right order that the Navy sent his widow. Bruce was a SEAL who started out as a Seaman Basic and ended as a Navy Captain. I liked him a lot.


There are 11 of the medals. The first two in the correct order are the Silver Star and Bronze Star. The Vietnam service medal with two Oak Leaf clusters is way down the ranking.


I read B.F. Skinner in Pysch 101 back at FSU in 1963. positive variable intermittent reinforcement...works on pigeons...people...dogs...chickens...children,,,
He said give me a child and I will turn it into anything you like...



I walk the dogs at 8AM 12 PM and 8 PM. I give both dogs treats and make a big deal of it when they pee outside. The Mastiff got through last night without an accident...a fast learner?


You can train a chicken with this stuff...a chicken at the Florida State Fair beat me out of $20 playing tic-tac-toe.


Tuesday, 18 June 2019

Daytona Beach

Two nights on the beach and then indoor skydiving, ATVs, kayaking, cave tubing, zip lining and everything else we can pack into three weeks that entertain grandchild #5...Grand Cayman, Roatan, Belize and Cozumel...


We will finish up on July 8 and then yet another Cancer surgery....if at first, you don't succeed...Also, an operation for a  hernia repair the following week and then off with Mrs. Phred on another long road trip...getting old is not for sissies...


We stopped at the National Seashore above Cape Kennedy....the worlds most beautiful deserted beach that few people know about...


We get out to study s turtle and the car fills with salt water mosquitos....blood thirsty...we slap them everywhere and ruin the headliner...


This was our first time there since we saw it in our flower-covered VW Van 45 years ago... It's the same as it was then and will be the same as long as the US endures....30 miles of the pristine beach....turtle nests every ten feet...the last 25 miles are on foot only....no road...just beach...seldom visited...what Pone De Leon must have seen....


Friday, 31 May 2019

The Highway Men

Sarasota... Tampa... Miami... Madrid... Lisbon

Hey..there was a picture or three of the grandchildren visiting on that camera sim card.


We've been up for 40 straight hours now. The Miami flight left late so we missed our Madrid connection and sat around the airport for seven additional hours.


According to NPR:

If you traveled by way of Florida's Route 1 in the 1960s, you might have encountered a young, African-American artist, selling a lushly painted oil landscape from his car. They weren't allowed in galleries during Jim Crow segregation -- but motels, office buildings and tourists would buy their vivid works.

Together, they formed a loosely associated band around Fort Pierce, Fla., that came to be known as The Highwaymen. At $20 a painting, they made their way out of agricultural jobs like citrus-picking and defined the cultural look of an era.


The Miami airport has a brilliant display of dozens of these paintings in the International Terminal.




Lisbon is very nice. We have big plans to eat at a Fado and ride the double decker tour buses and see the old neighborhoods and castles.





We're right by the train station, so we'll do a daytrip to Sintra.