Weblog 337
July 29, 2012~ 12:00 am
Hot weather, humdity..... and STORMS, STORMS, STORMS. As a matter of fact, I learned a new word this week-- a description of the long, 700 mile swath of punishing thunderstorms and straight-line winds that made its eerie way across the mid-atlantic and east coast on Thursday this past week. It's called a
'Derecho'
I remember watching the interactive weather map at work showing storm cells, lightning strikes and hail. *(The photo above is an actual shot of New York City as the storm roiled overhead. Gees!) I'd never seen such a far-reaching line of hideous and threatening weather-- moving in diagonal formation like Napoleon's army on the march. Luckily for me, the south end of Pittsburgh received very little- just dark, dark clouds, some BOOMING thunder and a few hard showers, but elsewhere there was a rash of tornados and destruction, as well as two deaths from falling debris, one in Pennsylvania.
This summer has been a BEAST. I have heard cicadas for a fortnight now... earlier than usual, and I've always considered them the heralds of fall. I hope I'm right. Hell, after a short and mild winter, spring came early, then summer came early and HOT, so perhaps we'll be embraced by the cool, calm arms of autumn earlier than usual this year. (I hope so, anyway. Wayne is progressing with cleaning out his household and the 'heavy-lifting' is fast approaching. It sure would be nice to complete that stage in milder, more pleasant weather.)
As for me, it's been a woozy melting of one day into the next, with about as much ambition as a slug. I muse, I blog and read-- I push on one day into the next at work, and all of it by 'rote'. My life is going up in smoke rings while I sit... smoking as well...
as stupidly immobile as an extra on a movie set, doing not much of anything... just looking on. I swear the older I get, the lazier I've become. I am living PROOF of Newton's 'Law of Inertia': a body at rest remains at rest until acted upon by an outside force. LOL!!! (Hey.... at least I'm good for sumptin'!)
Seriously though... (and yes, it's probably the heat, which tends to bring on my blacker moods)... I have a feeling of forboding. It's as if something creepy and dangerous is tip-toeing up the to the lip of the funhouse
ready to tear into my immediate world with drastic and dire results. As I've said before in this blog, summer is a bad time for me. I'm most alert, most optimistic in cooler climes: humidity weighs on my mood as it does the air, till it droops with melancholia.
Wayne and I did manage a visit with Holly, Gary and grandkids on Saturday evening, and played 'round two' of our homemade 'Jeopardy' game, which was the sunny highlight of my week. Lots of laughs and monkeyshines, and both kiddoes love it. Gary fried up some homegrown vegetables from his garden to top our pizzas and that was delightful-- there's simply nothing tastes as good as stuff from the garden. Kay was dancing about, showing off the space where her front tooth had been, pleased to FINALLY collect her 10 spot from me, as promised. (She has a charming lisp right now, that to me, is IRRESISTABLE in children of that age.)
Next Saturday is her 7th birthday COOK OUT party, and I'm sure she feels like she's been waiting a month of Sundays for that milestone to roll around.
And sadly... I heard that my son Matt and his whole family will NOT be coming through Pittsburgh next week on their way to Boston, where Matt was set to get his doctorate at MIT. From what I've gathered, it's the inability to secure sufficient housing and living space for a family of seven, so plans have changed and they'll be treking back to the University of Arizona instead. When Matt studied for his Masters there, the fact that Nicky's family lived close by to help out with the children was a BIG PLUS, and the ranch home they rented for that period of time was MORE than adequate. I'll miss them, but feel certain they'll be happy there while Matt finishes up his long, loooooong education. (It's not final as yet, but I also heard he's on the short list for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. I can hardly believe it. The same kid whose voice took FOREVER to change from an annoying, high-pitched, MOUSE CARTOON, is now decorated brass. LOL!!!)
Thinking of that time, back when Matt had the voice of Our Gang's 'Alfalfa' made me feel nostalgic for those days once again. I went rooting in my photo albums and found this great shot of the three of us, sometime in the mid-1980's.
We were posing in the back yard of the house where I grew up, having just gotten back from a fishing trip with my parents to Lake Erie. Holly was 10 and Matt, just 8 years old. (My oh my..... both Holly and I have some fine legs! LOL!!) And Matt is pint-sized. Smart as a whip, even then.
It was probably my dad who was taking the picture. He would be dead of cancer within 5 years. Oh, how time flies. We are fireflies in the night, each of us. Aglow for such a short time, then fade to black. (See?? I'm maudlin now. My damn summer affliction.) Perhaps it's just nostalgia. But looking at that photo now..... it's been a lovely, lovely ride.
For now, life seems VERY LARGE and unmanagable to me. I feel just like this little bunny....
tiny in a grown-up world, diligently trying to 'dress the part' regardless of how much BIGGER everything is compared to me. That wonderful painting is from one of my favorite artists
Michael Sowa
Looking at his work just makes me feel better. Besides the OBVIOUS talent, his paintings have an innocence and humor that touches me in very soft ways. They are tender strokes to the heart and sometimes... sometimes... a feather under the chin that makes me laugh. His work is wonderful.
August 1, 2012~ 5:15 pm
I was SHOCKED to wake up bleary-eyed today to read, 'GORE VIDAL, DEAD AT 86'.....my GOD! I ADORED that man! There has never been so ascerbic a wit, so crotchey fearless, so demonically gleeful at ruffling feathers than that fine old 'novelist/social commentator/SCOURGE'. LOL!!!
He was a natty dresser, and to my mind, one of the few actual 'aristocrats' of American society. He'd tongue-lash in an instant, much to the delight of anyone who's seen him interviewed. His comments like well-placed daggers from a knife-thrower in a circus. My favorite?
"The three saddest words in the English language are 'Joyce Carol Oates'."
Here's a few others I found scouring the internet today that made me laugh out loud.
"Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60."
"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies."
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
Upon seeing Henry Kissinger studying Michelangelo's visions of hell in the Sistine Chapel, Vidal remarked to a friend, "Look. He's apartment hunting."
There will never be another quite like him. I've read 'Lincoln', 'Burr' and '1876'. He was BRILLIANT at writing historical novels and no one else captures time and personality quite as thrillingly as Vidal did. I also read 'Myra Breckenridge' when it first came out and raised such a stir-- but I found that popular novel to be far less compelling than his later historical-based writing; it was a cultural 'shocker' in the same way the novel 'Candy' was --so perhaps I'll give his other novels a try.
No one could so calmly, or with greater aplomb- lambaste a fellow interviewee. (And I only learned today that he'd never gone to college. He found institutional learning BORING in the extreme. LOL!) Here's to the world's autodidacts... they DO accomplish things by being self-taught and without an official reading list... (or by paying exorbitant college tuition!)
He had EPIC rows with Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley, Jr. ... (another 'hero/heart-throb' of mine. LOL!!) Hard to believe that Vidal outlived his old nemesis by four years... Buckley would have been pissed!
(I've included a link to the infamous fist-throwing debate between the two of them when Buckley passed on in 2008.) You can read about that in the blog entry where I memorialized Buckley, 'my favorite conservative'-- here.
With Gore gone, it's the true passing of an Age. The old flinty characer outlived both Mailer AND Buckley, but the picture above doesn't allow the absolute LOVELINESS of the man-- his exceptional physical beauty --to be known. Here's the Gore that I remember and adored from the late 60's, early 70's, at his height of popularity as a writer and a talk show guest.
What a figure he cut, dressed to the nines, as patrician as they come..... he will be missed. That's for certain.
***
(Return To Weekly Archives)
Hot weather, humdity..... and STORMS, STORMS, STORMS. As a matter of fact, I learned a new word this week-- a description of the long, 700 mile swath of punishing thunderstorms and straight-line winds that made its eerie way across the mid-atlantic and east coast on Thursday this past week. It's called a
I remember watching the interactive weather map at work showing storm cells, lightning strikes and hail. *(The photo above is an actual shot of New York City as the storm roiled overhead. Gees!) I'd never seen such a far-reaching line of hideous and threatening weather-- moving in diagonal formation like Napoleon's army on the march. Luckily for me, the south end of Pittsburgh received very little- just dark, dark clouds, some BOOMING thunder and a few hard showers, but elsewhere there was a rash of tornados and destruction, as well as two deaths from falling debris, one in Pennsylvania.
This summer has been a BEAST. I have heard cicadas for a fortnight now... earlier than usual, and I've always considered them the heralds of fall. I hope I'm right. Hell, after a short and mild winter, spring came early, then summer came early and HOT, so perhaps we'll be embraced by the cool, calm arms of autumn earlier than usual this year. (I hope so, anyway. Wayne is progressing with cleaning out his household and the 'heavy-lifting' is fast approaching. It sure would be nice to complete that stage in milder, more pleasant weather.)
As for me, it's been a woozy melting of one day into the next, with about as much ambition as a slug. I muse, I blog and read-- I push on one day into the next at work, and all of it by 'rote'. My life is going up in smoke rings while I sit... smoking as well...
as stupidly immobile as an extra on a movie set, doing not much of anything... just looking on. I swear the older I get, the lazier I've become. I am living PROOF of Newton's 'Law of Inertia': a body at rest remains at rest until acted upon by an outside force. LOL!!! (Hey.... at least I'm good for sumptin'!)
Seriously though... (and yes, it's probably the heat, which tends to bring on my blacker moods)... I have a feeling of forboding. It's as if something creepy and dangerous is tip-toeing up the to the lip of the funhouse
ready to tear into my immediate world with drastic and dire results. As I've said before in this blog, summer is a bad time for me. I'm most alert, most optimistic in cooler climes: humidity weighs on my mood as it does the air, till it droops with melancholia.
Wayne and I did manage a visit with Holly, Gary and grandkids on Saturday evening, and played 'round two' of our homemade 'Jeopardy' game, which was the sunny highlight of my week. Lots of laughs and monkeyshines, and both kiddoes love it. Gary fried up some homegrown vegetables from his garden to top our pizzas and that was delightful-- there's simply nothing tastes as good as stuff from the garden. Kay was dancing about, showing off the space where her front tooth had been, pleased to FINALLY collect her 10 spot from me, as promised. (She has a charming lisp right now, that to me, is IRRESISTABLE in children of that age.)
Next Saturday is her 7th birthday COOK OUT party, and I'm sure she feels like she's been waiting a month of Sundays for that milestone to roll around.
And sadly... I heard that my son Matt and his whole family will NOT be coming through Pittsburgh next week on their way to Boston, where Matt was set to get his doctorate at MIT. From what I've gathered, it's the inability to secure sufficient housing and living space for a family of seven, so plans have changed and they'll be treking back to the University of Arizona instead. When Matt studied for his Masters there, the fact that Nicky's family lived close by to help out with the children was a BIG PLUS, and the ranch home they rented for that period of time was MORE than adequate. I'll miss them, but feel certain they'll be happy there while Matt finishes up his long, loooooong education. (It's not final as yet, but I also heard he's on the short list for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. I can hardly believe it. The same kid whose voice took FOREVER to change from an annoying, high-pitched, MOUSE CARTOON, is now decorated brass. LOL!!!)
Thinking of that time, back when Matt had the voice of Our Gang's 'Alfalfa' made me feel nostalgic for those days once again. I went rooting in my photo albums and found this great shot of the three of us, sometime in the mid-1980's.
We were posing in the back yard of the house where I grew up, having just gotten back from a fishing trip with my parents to Lake Erie. Holly was 10 and Matt, just 8 years old. (My oh my..... both Holly and I have some fine legs! LOL!!) And Matt is pint-sized. Smart as a whip, even then.
It was probably my dad who was taking the picture. He would be dead of cancer within 5 years. Oh, how time flies. We are fireflies in the night, each of us. Aglow for such a short time, then fade to black. (See?? I'm maudlin now. My damn summer affliction.) Perhaps it's just nostalgia. But looking at that photo now..... it's been a lovely, lovely ride.
For now, life seems VERY LARGE and unmanagable to me. I feel just like this little bunny....
tiny in a grown-up world, diligently trying to 'dress the part' regardless of how much BIGGER everything is compared to me. That wonderful painting is from one of my favorite artists
Looking at his work just makes me feel better. Besides the OBVIOUS talent, his paintings have an innocence and humor that touches me in very soft ways. They are tender strokes to the heart and sometimes... sometimes... a feather under the chin that makes me laugh. His work is wonderful.
August 1, 2012~ 5:15 pm
I was SHOCKED to wake up bleary-eyed today to read, 'GORE VIDAL, DEAD AT 86'.....my GOD! I ADORED that man! There has never been so ascerbic a wit, so crotchey fearless, so demonically gleeful at ruffling feathers than that fine old 'novelist/social commentator/SCOURGE'. LOL!!!
He was a natty dresser, and to my mind, one of the few actual 'aristocrats' of American society. He'd tongue-lash in an instant, much to the delight of anyone who's seen him interviewed. His comments like well-placed daggers from a knife-thrower in a circus. My favorite?
"The three saddest words in the English language are 'Joyce Carol Oates'."
Here's a few others I found scouring the internet today that made me laugh out loud.
"Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an IQ of 60."
"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies."
"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."
Upon seeing Henry Kissinger studying Michelangelo's visions of hell in the Sistine Chapel, Vidal remarked to a friend, "Look. He's apartment hunting."
There will never be another quite like him. I've read 'Lincoln', 'Burr' and '1876'. He was BRILLIANT at writing historical novels and no one else captures time and personality quite as thrillingly as Vidal did. I also read 'Myra Breckenridge' when it first came out and raised such a stir-- but I found that popular novel to be far less compelling than his later historical-based writing; it was a cultural 'shocker' in the same way the novel 'Candy' was --so perhaps I'll give his other novels a try.
No one could so calmly, or with greater aplomb- lambaste a fellow interviewee. (And I only learned today that he'd never gone to college. He found institutional learning BORING in the extreme. LOL!) Here's to the world's autodidacts... they DO accomplish things by being self-taught and without an official reading list... (or by paying exorbitant college tuition!)
He had EPIC rows with Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley, Jr. ... (another 'hero/heart-throb' of mine. LOL!!) Hard to believe that Vidal outlived his old nemesis by four years... Buckley would have been pissed!
(I've included a link to the infamous fist-throwing debate between the two of them when Buckley passed on in 2008.) You can read about that in the blog entry where I memorialized Buckley, 'my favorite conservative'-- here.
With Gore gone, it's the true passing of an Age. The old flinty characer outlived both Mailer AND Buckley, but the picture above doesn't allow the absolute LOVELINESS of the man-- his exceptional physical beauty --to be known. Here's the Gore that I remember and adored from the late 60's, early 70's, at his height of popularity as a writer and a talk show guest.
What a figure he cut, dressed to the nines, as patrician as they come..... he will be missed. That's for certain.
(Return To Weekly Archives)
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