It's Nice Here

 It's not the swamp, but there's no belching smokestacks either.  We are in the city limits, but it looks kind of suburban.  We are on a busy street, but I can't hear the traffic, although my wife sometimes can.  The weather has been mild, and we could go outside and walk around, but we haven't found the time yet.  As far as social life, there is one, but I haven't gotten very involved yet.  

I am not as enthusiastic about the election results as Uncle Ken, but let's face it, Trump needed to be stopped or at least slowed down.  I sullied my record for a second time by voting straight Democrat.  I even voted for a guy named "Abdul" and he won.  May God have mercy on my soul!  By the way, it was Biden who held Trump at bay for four years, not Obama.

Let's have some chatter.

 Sorry, I have been out of it for awhile.  Nothing wrong with me, just not getting around to doing things that I should be doing like keeping up with the blog.

So are you guys in like a retirement home?  Doesn't sound too bad to me.  Well I know you kind of hankered for a spot where you didn't have any nosy neighbors smearing your sky with their belching smokestacks.  When I was in Missouri my friend would take me to visit her friends who lived in some farmhouse or sumpin, and they were all like, We love it here, no nosy smokestacks and none of them automobiles rumbling down the road one after another.  And then they would rip off their shirts and beat their chests.  Well good enough for them I suppose but I don't mind the motorcycles and hot rods and fire engines and ambulances.

I have people on all four sides and above me and below me.  "Howdy neighbors," I say when I step out onto my balcony to put out seeds for the pigeons.  And this place, it's got a little store and I figure when I go bad, I will be able to live here longer than in a freehold.

But I wonder how you are adapting.  I bet you like the social life.  When your in the mood to spin a tale you can just walk down the hall and buttonhole the next day with tales of your adventures in the swamp.

Well I never thought he would run, and then I thought he would never win and then he was worse than I ever imagined he would be.  And then at last Obama vanquished him.  I remember standing on the balcony as folks trekked by on the Michigan Avenue bridge after the victory party.  The long nightmare was over, and we would never have to hear that whiny bragging voice again,

Eight years of Obama, very good years.  But then we started hearing that voice again.  Surely it could not be.  Surely he couldn't win again.  And this time it was way worse than the first time.  The cruelty, the larceny, that army of spineless shits ready to do his bidding.

And maybe a couple months ago we noticed November was not that far away.  Polls were looking better and better every day.  Slowly but surely he was going down and the the dems were going up.  But that was what had happened the previous two times.

But this time they were really, really, bad for Trump, and he had despoiled so much, I think the neverending war, the inflation, all this and so much more.

I had some beer in the fridge, and some almonds and peanuts stacked up, and then they were off!  Right from the first vote it was up with the blues and the reds, and everything is Jim Dandy.

So far.  

Settling In

We have been in our new home for five days now and have started referring to Beaglesonia as "The Old Place".  My daughter had the computer up and running before we got here but there has been no spare time for me to use it till today.  We get "free" Wi-Fi service as part of our rent.  All my daughter had to do was plug it in and turn it on.  It seems to respond faster now than it used to on the dish.  We also get "free" cable TV.  We get our phone service through the cable too, but we have to pay for that ourselves.  I have been told that the monthly bill will be about 1/3 of what we were paying for AT&T.   

The food is good and the people are friendly.  Our apartment is nice, though small, about 560 square feet.  There are some common areas: the dining room, a smaller coffee clutch room, a library, and a lobby with fireplace.  Our apartment is close to all this, which is good because neither of us can walk like we used to.  I have been able to spend some time on my breathing treatments, and it seems to be doing me some good.  The move was stressful, but we are starting to get over that.  

I see that nobody else has been posting lately.  I hope that y'all are okay.  

                                                                                                                                               

Change of Venue

It's official now, my wife and I will be moving to that old folk's home in Charlevoix within the next week or two.  During the transition, my computer will offline for some time, I don't know how long.  They have Wi-Fi there, and I have no experience with that system, but my daughter does.  We will be shipping the computer and the TV with some furniture sometime next week and then following with our clothing and personal effects a day or two later.  I will post something as soon as things settle down after that.

See you in September.

And now we are on the brink of October, overall a pleasant enough month, but we all know it leads directly to October, which has its cookies to hand out, especially Halloween at the end, but even before that the leaves, my God the leaves.  And for those of us of a certain age there is the memory of the aromatic odor of burning leaves at the curbside as we passed from neighborhood to neighborhood.  Oh I suppose all in all it was bad for us, but still...

 I don't want to be that guy, another cranky old fart, crabbing about the way things should have been.

A little late for us not to be that guy I think.

A fellow artist once told me the story of a visiting granddaughter who was left alone in her studio and when she walked in there was the moppet elbow deep in her art tools, splashing around on her pad then ripping out the page and declaring, "Another Masterpiece," and she was on to the next page and masterpiece, and the one after that until she had a stack of them.  That is the way I use the word masterpiece.

Usually I get tired of seeing the same old post every time I click on the Institute and hurry up to post something so that there is something newer to click on, but I liked the photo of that piece of heavy equipment and the ambitious title The Marsh Project, but most of all the smell of all that mown hay.  Or is it grass?   Hay is grass (or legumes like alfalfa) that has been cut, dried, and stored for animal feed, while fresh grass grows live in the ground Grass I guess then.  But remember when you could accomplish something in God's own open air, and never go even near a computer to fill out some kind of form?

The Marsh Project

 Here's an example of a project that was never completed.  I guess you could call it abandoned, although it hardly qualified as art.  The plan was to restore an overgrown marsh to the condition that it was a few centuries ago, using the dredgings to build a road through it.  I still think it's doable, but not by me anymore.  Like some famous guy once said, "Man's reach must always be beyond his grasp.  Else what's a heaven for?"

As you can see, the eternal drive works just fine.  Thanks for the tip.

Dog days

What?  August already?  The months have been slipping by with hardly a notice from me as I enjoy the summer, goofing around with my toys, the latest of which is a document scanner (for the archives, don'cha know).  It's an odd piece of kit, a high-def camera on an articulating arm but the tech and software are amazing.

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Those are nice images of Beaglesonia you've uploaded, Mr. Beagles.  Any luck with that external drive I mentioned?  Part of my scheme is to make digital copies of more than fifty years of crap; photos, gadgets & gizmos, artsy-fartsy stuff and things of that nature.  For what purpose, I'm not sure.  There's an ongoing inventory I'm trying to get through and I've fallen down many a rabbit hole but some stuff is fascinating and my be worth revisiting.  I think Picasso said something like art is never completed, only abandoned.  Something like that, could have been another guy.

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I don't remember us discussing Asian Carp.

Not an actual discussion but I made a mention of it four years ago, in June.  You can look it up.

Glad to see you making a few sales with your watercolors, Uncle Ken, but I wouldn't call them "masterpieces."  The old meaning of masterpiece was an artists or craftsmans best piece of work, one per customer.  But to be fair, words and their meanings change over time so I guess it's fair use.  I don't want to be that guy, another cranky old fart, crabbing about the way things should have been.