The Legacy of Monday Musings

A brief return to a legacy feature of The Strait Line - Monday Musings. 

I usually have one show that I watch before I go to bed. Currently, that is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. I have seen some Godzilla and Associates movies over the years, but I would not describe myself as a huge fan, nor would I say I thoroughly dislike them.

This one has its pluses and minuses. The biggest plus is that it has one of my favorite actors, Kurt Russell, and his son, Wayne Russell. Wayne plays the same part as his Dad at an earlier point in history. He does not have quite the skills and charms as his father, but he doesn't miss by much. The biggest minus is that there is a lot of focus on a trio of young adults whose storylines are not that interesting - suggestive of a CW show or a less-funny Scooby gang.

The monsters in it are huge, but somehow they don't seem too threatening.

------------------------

Generally, by this time of year, I am completely done with American football. But Michigan went all the way to the National Collegiate Championship (and WINNING it!), and even more incredibly, the Detroit Lions are in the NFL playoffs, and they WON their first game (first playoff win since 1992).

Could the Lions win the Super Bowl? Oh, my Lord, I can't believe I just wrote those words. Take it a game at a time, Son. A game at a time.

----------------------------

The low-turn-out Iowa Caucus was held last night. There was terrible weather, and that helped diminish attendance. Only the most dedicated and crazed showed up. And guess who benefits from that? The Orange Insurrectionist got a bare majority, 51%, earning about 56,000 votes from fellow fascists; that represents roughly 1.75% of Iowa's population.

None of this gives me any comfort whatsoever. The fact that anyone is so far removed from American Democracy that they would consider voting for this misogynist racist chills me to the bone and keeps me up at night.

-----------------------

I made good progress on my lifestyle changes last week. My weight edged down, and my blood pressure improved. Then the weekend came. Oh, well. I'll get the hang of this yet.

---------------------

Please keep checking out your public libraries. Besides wonderful books, many are always doing special programs and events that are fun to participate in.  And the price? FREE!

Musingly Yours,

T. M. Strait

Mean Green Republicans: Saturday Political Soap Box 294

 Look, I know that this isn't straight green. The color is actually described as apple green.

The 118th Congress, the least productive Congress in modern times, did not like their original pins. You see, they were navy blue, and by golly, I guess any shade of blue is official property of the Democratic Party. Well, they can't have that! So, the House Republicans dropped another 40K so they could all change over to a different color.

True, even though it's not a lot of money in the scheme of things, it is endemic to the misplaced values of the Crazy Conference.

Every action or proposed action the House Republicans take is about grievance and preserving power for the wealthy, corporations, and Christian Nationalists.

They have little genuine legislative power at the national level, thanks to a Democratic Senate and President. But they can threaten to shut down the government (hurting countless people), stop forward progress on any genuinely beneficial legislation, block support of the Ukrainians in their battle against a Russian dictator (Speaker Mike Johnson is practically handing the keys to Putin and saying, "Here, Puty, take 'er out for a test drive!"), and hold endless hearings about Hunter Biden while Marjorie Taylor Greene holds up dick pics.

Yes, their childish antics can be entertaining. But they're also destroying any ability to get anything done.

Not so in states with Republican Governors and Republican-controlled legislatures. They have run roughshod over voting rights, and the lgbtq+ community, directing tax cuts to the wealthy and increasing the tax burden of the poor and middle class, supporting book bans, undermining public education, blocking Medicaid expansion, and so many other mean and frankly anit-Christian actions.

Currently, some of these Republican states have sounded off about summer feeding programs for children. The Governor of Mississippi wants to discontinue it because it fosters dependence on a "welfare state." This is the same state that has NO state minimum wage, only the federal minimum of $7.25. Guess they don't want to foster dependence on an employer either.

Georgia is in the same boat. Only Governor Kemp tries to hand out cookies to teachers to bribe them to his side. Maybe they won't notice all the stuff he's taking away from them, including support for summer feeding.

Republicans. They just can't help being mean, green, antidemocratic machines.

But, what the hey! They do have spiffy pins!

Bending for the Dog

 

He bends down slowly. The only way he can bend now. The sciatica screams at him. The pain descends into his right thigh and calf.

But this is a good doggy. And he deserves a pat. And the man is determined to give it.

He pats the little dog, ignoring the pain. The joy of his little companion makes the pain drift away, at least for a few seconds.

He leashes the dog, and they go for a walk. Sometimes the walks help subside the pain,  Sometimes it does not.

Today is a winner. The pain no longer dominates his every thought.

The man sits in his reading chair, the dog on his lap. He loves to read. He can go anywhere when he reads. He can become anyone. Today's story is a mystery from Ellery Queen's magazine. He becomes a gumshoe solving a case in 1930s San Fransico. He has no sciatica and can run, twist, and deck a bad guy with one punch.

He gets up and does some sciatica relief exercises with the help of a YouTube video. It's the same video done by the same lady. She is friendly and calm, like an NPR host. The sight of her has become a comfort to him. One time, he thought he heard her use his name, but that couldn't be. He made a vow to never tell anybody. He didn't want his grown children to put him away.

He has lunch; salad, and some mixed fruit. He drinks a Coke Zero, his great daily indulgence. The salad has some chicken, but he doesn't eat it all. Some of it winds up in his little dog.

He takes out an old coin collection and, using an app on his phone, tries to identify its value. If he finds enough valuable coins, he might be able to afford a cross-country trip to see his family. It's a long shot, though. Most coins aren't worth much more than their face value, and the coin market is not that good.

He takes another walk with his dog. The sciatica continues to fade. This really is a blessed day, he thinks.

Later, with supper, he watches an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He likes watching older TV shows, especially mysteries and cop shows. The episode he watches tonight came out when he was three years old.

He reads for a while and then finally goes to bed, the little dog with him.

He lays awake, haunted by the past, worried about the future.

But the little dog is there, sleeping quietly. The dog calms him. He pets the dog.

He falls asleep.

Dreaming about Waffles

 Poor girl.

Her parents posted a video about her obsession with waffles, and now it's gone viral.

The dudes above even set to song.

And now here I am, posting it as the main picture to my blog story, where another, I don't know, ten or twelve people will see it.

I don't know how the little girl feels about it, but I'm guessing the parents are pretty pleased. It's the apex of our society now to have something go "viral."

I'm not immune to this. My blog has been up since 2009, and I just passed 500,000 views. Or, the number of views that Instagram gets in about 1/13th of a second.

Would I like to have a big hit? Sure. It wouldn't hurt. What would be real nice is if I could make a tiny bit of ad money, but I received the death penalty on that years ago.

I do have one post that has over 112,000 views. That's Authentic Frontier Gibberish, a title borrowed from Blazing Saddles. I think that it just happens to hit higher in the search engines than the others.

It drops way down for my second-place blog story - I Built This Business! Me! Myself! I! has 12,600 views.

My third place is my highest-ranking fiction story - The Vigil at the Honey Dew, with 8,840 views. Vigil is part of the story collection, Crowley Stories, which features interrelated short stories set in a town near the Okefenokee Swamp.

Crowley Stories is my biggest writing disappointment. It should have caught on, at least in the area where I live, and it did not. Bad writing? Maybe. Bad promotion? Definitely.

As I change my schedule, I hope to return to more fiction writing. Does it garner many views? Nah, of course not.

Nevertheless...

Like the little girl above, I can't stop dreaming about waffles.

But, in my case, writing is my dream, and to break through where I make a tiny bit of money.  

Can't stop dreaming about it.

Opening Up the Fissures of Time

 In Bemjamin's study, thre is a closet.

When we first moved in to our home on Glenwood, we had a bunch of stuff packed up that we didn't have an immediate place for.  So, we crammed it into Benjamin's study room closet.

And then, over time, Benjamin's own possessions spread, and the entry way to the closet was blocked off - at least to the extent that it would require a tremendous effort to get inside. 

Now that Benjamin has moved to Warner Robins, we've been slowly reclaming the room, designing it more for exercise, and putting in a day bed.  This reclamation project opened up the closet.

And once I got into the closet...time itself began pouring out.

I've only gotten to about ten boxes (there are still maybe two dozen more).  Each one has overwhelming whiffs of another time.

There are books and old toys and games. There are pictures of Benjamin, and his artwork,  There are items and pictures about Greg and Doug.  Alison has a couple of boxes, including old family movie reels and correspondence with friends.  There are materials from my parents, including more of Dad's genaoligical research.

I found a box of science fiction and mystery pulp magazines dating back to the 50s.  I found a stamp collection of my Dad's, Japanese yen, and a post card collection dating back to the 1890s. 

And I found pictures.  Pictures galore.

The one at the top of this blog is from a collection of pictures my Dad has of his mother.  I'm guessing this was taken sometime in the 1910s.  The back of the card has the front row identified as Ella Snow, Nellie Snow (from Mass.), and Olin Snow. The back row has Ned Tripp and Flossie Snow.

Flossie was the nickname used by people for my Grandmother, whose actual first name is Florence.

She was very smart.  She gave a speech at her high school graduation, one that had a feminist bent, extolling the contributions that women can make.  She taught school for awhile.  She got married a bit later than what was normal for that time, to my Grandfather, Clyde Strait.  She had three children, the first of which was my father, Eugene Everett Strait.

As I organize these treasure troves of the past, they should help generate a lot of stories for this blog.

No, this blog won't be just about the long ago, but it will play a part.  

Sometimes, in order to know where we're going, it's good to know where we've been.

Hail to the Victors Valiant!

 

Go Blue!

A national championship!

How long have I waited to say those magic words!

Well, there was 1997 with that weird co-championship with Nebraska. That was rare, and the asterisk interfered with the glory.

No, you must go back to 1948 to find the last time the Wolverines were the sole National Champions.

Growing up, the most legendary game was when the Bo Schembechler Wolverines beat the Woody Hayes led Ohio State Buckeyes. I remember seeing a Sports Illustrated story before that game that declared Ohio State might be the best college football team of the century. And then the Wolverines beat them 24-12. Other than the '68 Tigers, it was the bestest sports memory of my youth.

Michigan was not just a school I liked; it was my alma mater. Yes, I attended the University of Michigan from September 1973 to April 1977. I've been at the Big House (Michigan's 100,000-plus capacity stadium), enjoying many blowout games, and the fans were almost as entertaining as the game. It's where I remember the smell of Boone's Farm. 

Every year, the big game would be the final game of the regular season against Ohio State. Ohio State won three out of the four years I was there, including one heartbreaker on a last-second missed field goal. The joke among my college buddies is that we all needed to try out to be the next field goal kicker because surely we could do better than that guy. In reality, most of us would even whiff at making contact with the football.

I had college classes with a few of the college players. One of the lowlights of my college experience was when I and another intellectual student went up against two college football players in debate class. We lost, and we lost badly. Their arguments were slightly off-center, and I don't always think well on my feet. I did try to take some lessons from it, and later, I coached a high school debate team that finished 3rd in the state, the best performance in the school's history.  

Living in the South since 1978, I experienced a lot of dismissive talk about the Big Ten, including Michigan. Here, the SEC was the dominant conference, the only one that mattered. I'm not entirely anti all the SEC schools. I love Georgia, which is also the alma mater of my middle son, Doug. But the drumbeat about how the Big Ten was an inferior conference just wore at me.

I worked for over two decades at a CPA firm, where my closest co-worker was an Alabama fan. The overt smug superiority of Alabama was depressing. I longed for the day Michigan would play Alabama and show my co-worker they could beat Bama. Well, it took forever, but it finally happened! The first person to text me congratulations was that co-worker. I don't think he could hardly believe it, but he had to acknowledge that it did happen.

The opponent that Michigan beat in the championship, Washington Huskies, will join the Big Ten next season. It's almost like two Big Ten teams played for the National Championship!

Next year, many of the Michigan players will graduate and/or go to the pros. Heck, there's a good chance Jim Harbaugh will return to the pros. The playoffs expand to 12 teams next year, so you'll have to win even more games to get to the top. For instance, an expanded playoff this last season would have included Georgia. Honestly, I don't know how Michigan would have fared against Georgia.

I would love for Michigan to repeat. But whatever happens, they can't take this year away from us!

GO BLUE!!!

New Year's Commitment

 Once again, I'm trying to change my day structure to....

    1) write more

    2) exercise more

    3) eat better

The writing is to get back into the habit of something I love and to feel a better sense of accomplishment each day. Maybe it will turn into money. Most likely it won't. But I can live with that if I can figure out another way to bring in a small amount of money each year, enough to allow us to travel.

That's the biggest thing  - to be able to travel more. Some of it may be sightseeing, but mostly, it's to get together with family.

Exercise and eating better are to control blood pressure and blood glucose better. If I'm going to travel more, I just don't need the finances. I also need the health to do so.

In that effort, my mornings have changed. I will get my coffee and start writing after a brisk walk (super brisk on these chilly early mornings). At first, it will be like putting a monkey on a typewriter and letting the gibberish come out. But hopefully, in time, I will improve.

I also have a series of exercises that I go through that will help with my sciatica. Some aspects have similarities to yoga, but it's mostly stretching. It helps.  

Later, in the early evening, I have a treadmill. I can watch parts of silent movies while on it. I must be careful not to overdo it because it can cause foot pains. Yes, I must balance exercise while avoiding the onset of arthritis flare-ups.

I'm returning to a spreadsheet that helps me better track what I eat to balance out different categories. It's about the same except for adding potassium, which I watch now. It's more of a check and balance system than super-restrictive. I keep a good ratio of carbs to fiber, and now I will watch the ratio of potassium to sodium.  

----------------

There's a closet in my house that has boxes and boxes of stuff I have not looked at in ages. It was blocked off while Benjamin had the room as his study, but now it's opened up. Some are junk, but others are like taking a trip through time, with memories going back decades.

It has given me many story ideas I hope to share with you.  

New Year's commitments are difficult. I have a lot of church treasury work in the next two months that will require much time and concentration. I lost a lot of sleep last night trying to solve one particular problem, and many spreadsheets were floating through my head. I thought I had left that behind when I retired from accounting, but it's hard to tell my church no.

Best wishes for the New Year, my faithful friends and readers! Hope to be writing to you again very soon!

Until next time,

T. M. Strait