Send Raspberries

I just made some scones and clotted cream to go with them. HMMMMM !!!!  But we didn’t have  raspberry jam. Damn! Still awfully good though. I don’t know if I had ever tried clotted cream before, and maybe there are different recipes? Don’t know? The recipe I had is from Linda here in San Antonio. Our friends from Mission. Her recipe calls for cream cheese, heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla. I’ve heard and read about it but don’t really know if I’ve had any. But, now that I have, I will again. But I do need some raspberry jam. Aw man! Now I’ve done it. I just flashed back to freezer jam in Oregon. Sister in Law Heather got me started on strawberry and raspberry freezer jam and it’s just about that time of year back home. And nobody has raspberries and strawberries like the Northwest. I use to make quite a bit. Oh well !!!  I guess it would be pointless to say ‘send freezer jam’.

So if you have been following the news you probably know more about tornados than you wanted to and have been keeping an eye on the weather and the location of friends and family. Who wouldn’t? And my heart goes out. But I was going to mention Israel and Netanyahu. Somehow I don’t think Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be on the Obama Christmas card list. But as a couple of people have said from the media that I listen to, ”maybe we can find a birth certificate for Netanyahu somewhere in Hawaii”? Just a thought I know, but wouldn’t it be nice. Our choices seem to be narrowing. It’s not ‘blowing my dress up’ but maybe it will work out. Who knows, maybe the girls will get in the race.  Pawlenty doesn’t seem too bad, and Herman Cain is certainly interesting. Not qualified enough for you? Maybe that’s exactly what we need. Somebody not qualified enough to get advice from somebody who is, and not so freaking egotistical that they can’t. And there is nobody on the Republican list, no matter how far down, who is not more qualified and less egotistical than Obama was at this point in the last election process. My political affiliation is still ‘Tea Party’ so I’m hopeful the girls will get in.

I was cogitating on Israel and all that yesterday and got to thinking of what I know, how I know what I know, and where the process got its start. Almost has to be from Leon Uris and “Exodus”. Then I got to thinking about some other books by Uris and others that would be good to reread. Stuff like ‘Mila 18’. ‘Armageddon’, and then ‘Winds of War’ and ‘War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk. Care to join me???

We are still at Stone Creek. I had my preliminary check up for cataract surgery last Tuesday. All is well in that I am a good candidate and on the schedule to have it done on my right eye. I’m going to South Texas Eye Institute and the VA is footing the bill. I have the second appointment for measurements and things on the 9^th and the actual surgery on the 20^th. I am really looking forward to it. I’m not a complainer I don’t think, but it is just getting hard to see clearly. If I close my left eye it’s literally like looking at the world through the bottom of a Pepsi bottle. I’d say Coke bottle but they’re green. It’s getting bad enough that Kat is doing most of the driving and I’m not doing a lot of finish carving. The fine details are getting difficult. I think the weather is causing some allergy problems too, but it is surprising how quickly my vision has seemed to deteriorate. My doctor is a nice 30ish lady that on first blush I can trust. So I’m ready. On the prostate issue I have a CT scan on the 14^th at Audie Murphy and then a consult with my doctor on the 22^nd to go over . Maybe then we can do a little traveling. That would be nice.

For the Record

Or in this first case, one for the record books. I’m talking about a record ‘hot flash’ for me. It started last night around midnight and lasted ‘till around 7:00 this AM. It seemed that way anyway. It was a warm muggy night in South Texas. But I survived and I’m ready to write. Hooo…waaaaah !!!!!!! I know that’s what you were thinking.

I watched Sarah last night on Hannity. Is she the only Republican possibility with a pair? Her and, oh what’s her butt! Damn! Writers block! The other female possibility in the race. Seriously, Sarah Palin and ‘what’s her butt’ are the only possible candidates for President who have any Huevos. I loved it a couple of weeks ago when Sarah said the other Republicans needed to learn to ‘fight like girls’. Sad, but true. In deference to my young Grand Nephew, Tim, Ron Paul would qualify as having a ‘pair’. But! While I subscribe to the Libertarian view of fiscal and social politics, I have a bit of a hard time with his stance on defense, though surprisingly, you might say, not on drugs. I’ll handle that if my reader[(S) get it?] throw things at me. Michelle Bachman !!!!!!! Whew! So ‘for the record’ I am a fan of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. I know that they haven’t ‘declared’ yet, but I can hope.

And, ‘for the record’. How could you not be political right now. Gas is $4.00 a gallon and we can’t drill of refine yet we send money to Brazil so they can, unemployment is a steady 9% or 10%. And that’s a low ball estimate. Housing is in the tank, the southern border is non-existent. You might draw a line in the sand with more authority. High school graduates can’t read at a 5^th or 6^th grade level, and we’re spending money like drunken sailors. All the while the press and mainstream media seem to be fine with it. ‘For the record’ I’m ready for a ‘change’. This ‘change’ just ain’t working out. ‘Throw the Bums out’!

In my other lifetime as a Manager of a large workforce, on election day, I use to walk around at quitting time and remind my people to not to forget to vote. I’m going to have to renege on that. I think that now I would rather most folks just stay home. Maybe we would fair a little better. And my people were ‘union members. Damn! Maybe it’s all my fault?

Here’s another ‘for the record’. Why do I write this stuff? Well, it keeps family and friends informed of our whereabouts and condition, and I can do it ‘en masse’. Plus, I enjoy writing and having and expressing an opinion, but mostly I really do ‘do it’ ‘for the record’. I never knew my mom or much about my family at all until I started genealogy and getting on line and asking questions. As part of that I found a couple of diary’s of my moms and read them. They weren’t long or greatly informative but it gave me a little insight. From that, I learned that someday, someone of a current or future generation is going to want to know more about a predecessor. So I have done the genealogy and that’s the basics of it. But now I write because the basics just doesn’t seem adequate. So you see I have to write about what is on my mind. Someday it will provide someone who is interested a pretty good glimpse into who and what I/we were. “For the Record”

Now I have to send an email to let you all know there are some new posts to Randy’s Blog. Didn’t do it last time because I was not quite done with my thought. And now it will kind of serve as a test to see who checks to see if I’ve written something recently. Oh yeah! I’m checking on you. And what I’m finding is, it doesn’t really matter what I write ‘cause maybe there’s nobody out there. Hello…………… Is anybody out there? Send me a comment. Hellooooo!! Be nice though, for I am in control.

Who is John Galt?

Once in a while I just have to write about what’s on my mind. Or maybe I do that most of the time. But then most of the time I use restraint. I have always been told it was inappropriate to talk too much about politics and religion. That’s what ‘they’ say. The mysterious ‘they’. I use to hate it when that phrase was used, especially by my wicked stepmother. But then I had a hard time accepting anything she said. So…. the mysterious ‘they’? It must be ‘the powers that be’, like a wicked stepmother, or the news media, or maybe a political party or administration, that don’t want you to question some of the crap they put out because it really won’t stand up to any scrutiny i.e. It’s not polite to talk about and thereby question especially politics and maybe religion. Well ‘horse pucky’, if we can’t talk about it and learn to understand it, we are probably doomed to whatever pap ‘they’ put upon us. So at times I just must talk politics. And to be clear, I said “I was told it was inappropriate’, I didn’t say I believed it!

So! Who is John Galt? I am proud to say I learned who John Galt was way back in either 1962 or maybe 1963. I was in the Army in France at a small installation about 80 clicks east of Paris, Brienne La Chateau. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in my free time except drink and read. So when I wasn’t drinking, I was reading. We had a little library on base and I made pretty good use of it. I read Ayn Rands “The Fountainhead” and then “Atlas Shrugged”, along with all I could get of Ian Flemings 007 stuff, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And I think that is where I started reading Robert Heinlein. It was during the latter part of my formative years and it just filled my ‘tiny brain full of mush’ with the newfound principles and ideas that I have held to forever. And to be a little more precise, reading those authors didn’t change my beliefs but they did better define and cement them. I had always been conservative, my family was, and in those days before the education system took over the job, we all pretty much held to the beliefs of our families. So I was a Republican and believed in the concept of limited government and self reliance. For me it fit. I didn’t like school so much, other than athletics, but I did read a lot. And I read things that encouraged the principles of conservatism. The books of Heinlein and Rand fit that mold to a tee. Lazarus Long, Howard Roark, and Hank Rearden are the characters more people should relate to. Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is one of the best. But I’ll leave it up to you. To bring this to a close, WHEW !!!!!! John Galt in “Atlas Shrugged” said something to the effect and I paraphrase, ‘I will not return until the lights of New York City go out’. Now the movie is out and the timing is pretty good. Maybe they can finish the movie before the lights really do go out !!  I fear the time is closer than we think!

Here is something from Heinlein.

"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome."
— Robert A. Heinlein

 

Remember……………………………  “I was just thinking” And damn, I really didn’t get very political at all. But I think the inference is there! I’ll try to weave more into my writings next time.

On being curmudgeonly

Very recently we went to Sunday Brunch at a place called Schobels. I think that is the correct spelling? It’s a pretty nice German place on one of the rivers here. I can’t keep them straight. It may be the Guadalupe or Comal or some other river. But it has outside seating with views overlooking the river and its very nicely landscaped and all. So you’re asking why are we there? I know, I know, there was no duct tape on the furniture or sawdust on the floors, and the wait staff didn’t have any visible tattoos, so it was kinda’ out of character for us. Anyway, being Sunday Brunch it was Sunday and rather crowded. Being the place it was there was one pretty large group seated outside in a premium location with a spiffily dressed middle-aged gentleman who appeared to be kind of in charge of this wedding party or family affair, whatever(?). Nice group and all, but large and decidedly undecided. They had trouble finding a place to stand or light and in choosing things in the food line and there was just lots of them. Enough anyway to be mildly annoying. So this well dressed and nice gentleman was kind of milling around in front of me saying “where to start, where to start?” Being old and who I am I just couldn’t hold it in. So I said, “you could start by getting out of the way”! And then the fight started! NO! Just kidding. I said it almost under my breath but I think he might have heard me. So he moved with kind of a start and we smiled at each other and went on our way. At least I did! He may still be standing there. So the moral of this story? Don’t get in front of curmudgeonly old farts in the food line!!
We are still in Schertz and will remain here for a while. We took a drive through some of ‘Hill Country’, north of here, to look at some of the possible places to stay for a while and just didn’t find anything better than where we are. We have our nice little shelter to sit under and do our crafts, were right near all the shopping and eating places we could want, not too far from Pickleball, and the price is right at the monthly rate. And this way we won’t have to worry about a place to stay for Memorial Day or maybe the 4^th. Those holidays can be tough when you travel and don’t make reservations. I still need to be here through late June for a check-up too, and now I have a cataract appointment tentatively scheduled for June 8^th on my right eye. So that will take two or three visits. Then maybe we can move on.

My latest work.