standing at the sink this morning, getting ready for the 10th remaining day on the job, a resident mockingbird is singing to the sun at the top of his avian lungs. hearing the trill "wake up! it's morning already!" in the varied tongues of the neighborhood bird species takes me back to the mornings of my early youth.  In those days my dad kept a stable of fighting game cocks whose habit it was to crow in the new day long before the sun poked its shining head above the eastern horizon.

As the ride toward retirement approaches the speed of  a runaway semi on a 10% grade, I think of how many sunrises separate me from those early days and those more recent along the road of my life.

who woulda thunk on any of those mornings so long ago that the last sunrise of a 38 year career could ever be just 20 days away?  it just goes to show--  life is what happens while waiting for today to become yesterday and for tomorrow to become today.

aio

sayonara, kimbo!

first, let me say the hair was in fine form tonight.  each of Kimbo's best concerts with the ASO, and all of them were excellent, came on nights when the hair was most alive. somehow his hair action imbues itself into the symphony's performance and the mane was working some musical magic on this swan song performance.
the last ASO concert of the 87th season, the last ASO concert with Kimbo on the podium was perhaps the best performance of his five year tenure. In a word electrifying.  Four choirs, 80+ musicians, 3 guest artists and the baton in the deft hand of Maestro Kimbo made for a performance not to be soon forgotten.

kudos to all; your collective efforts were par excellence!

Kimbo, may the hair be with you always and the best of luck to you and yours wherever you may land. those patrons will be some kind of lucky ducks.

aio

david massey...

                                                                         

we made a flying trip down tahoka way today for the memorial service for my uncle david. the truth is he was my aunt callie fae's husband.  still he was my uncle. 

for reasons i find hard to explain, i was closest to my uncles on my daddy's side of the family.  likely it was because they were just way more fun to be around than the sons of my mom's foot washing , primitive baptist parents.  there's nothing wrong with the primitive baptists, i'm just sayin'.

uncle david had just passed his 88th birthday back in december.  he married aunt cal in 1946 and spent the bigger part of his life coaxing a living from dry land cotton farms in and around lynn county in texas.  the young man who led his graveside service had the good fortune to know uncle david at least a little bit.  he was right on when he said "david was a good man." david was kind, soft spoken, always with a word of  some value for a young man growing up; always interested in how my family was doing in my later years.

i wish i had a nickel for every funeral i've attended.  without fail some one or other feels the need to ask, "doesn't he, or she, look natural?" in most cases the truthful answer would be-- "nooooh, he looks exactly like he is, that being dead".

in uncle david's case the gods came together for a perfect funeral.  it was a very simple service for a man who, i would guess, abhorred fuss.  in david's case, he did look natural. he might have been sleeping but for the fact that he was laying in a casket. cleta and sandra's choices were perfect for their dad.  into the coffin's lining was embroidered a "john deere" tractor.  the casket spray had tucked among the perfect red roses, cotton bolls and burrs. the day was cold and gray, the sand was blowing across the road as we came down from lubbock, in other words typical weather for the time of year and the current drought conditions.  as we neared tahoka it was raining hard.

at the cemetery his casket was draped with the stars and stripes.  a three man honor guard stood at attention.  the marine played taps, standing in the rain as the other soldiers folded the flag for presentation to the family. as a unit they were there to pay final homage to david, a fellow soldier, in recognition of his service to our country. 

the rain may have been seen as unfortunate by some. somewhere i'm sure david was smiling.  for a man who spent his life praying for rain, the day was a perfect send off and  the funeral arrangements perfectly suited the man i will forever remember as my
uncle david.

aio     

dreams really do come true....

 

have you heard the old saw, "it only costs twice as much to go first class."?  i've had this idea in the back of my mind for years.  that being, if i ever make it to retirement, the first thing i want to do is take my whole crew on a cruise.

if the good lord's willing, it looks like both those things will come to pass this summer.   it's been a frustrating few months waiting for the purchase window to open, hoping that as the weeks passed i would see ticket prices go down. just the opposite has happened, prices i looked at 6 months ago are now almost double what they were back then.  in fact they took a huge jump from just a week or so ago, after the pronouncement that gas could reach $5 a gallon by years end.

my vision has been to have the various members of the crew fly into a common airport, continuing on to our cruise port city together. dollar signs had me doubting the wisdom of such a move.  hours and hours of searching, at last i thought i'd found a way to save a pretty penny, only to realize that bargain figure was for the first leg of the flight, that in fact the "bargain" was $200+ more than my original search.

i hate shopping!  i try to remember that, if i find something i want at a price i can afford, i should just buy it.  more often than not, after wasting time and money, i end up going back to where i started, buying the item that caught my eye in the first place.

and that's what happened in this case, i ended up buying the tickets that i looked at the beginning of my search.  did i save any money?  probably not. but it will allow us to congregate, proceeding en masse, to the realization of a dream.

bon voyage. aio                                                                 

Christmas morning, 2011...

                                                                      

and so it came to pass at 7420 in little a-town, that most precious of all happenings.  family gathered from hither and yon and that most rare of occurrences... snow on Christmas morning.  and even more rare, more perfect, that snow is falling straight down.

to add a bow atop this snow Christmas gift, the rarely seen at our back yard bird feeder, Horace, the Christmas cardinal.  no other gift need me given to the lady of this house.

                                                                             

as for me i am content, with family gathered 'round and the hush of falling snow muting the hustle and bustle of the day, it just doesn't get any better than this.

my wish for each of you and yours is a picture perfect day just like the one we are having here.  and a blessed new year filled with peace and the the wonder of discovery a new year brings. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

aio 

                                                                     

it's snowing...

as usual, the weather gurus have it wrong again.   the prediction was for snow, "up to an inch on the west side of of little a-town" and tapering off as it passes to the east. it started to snow as i was going to bed last night. as the hour approaches noon, it continues to snow pretty hard at times and accumulation here at 7420 is likely close to 3 inches, give or take. there's nothing wrong with that, we need the moisture.

in general, i object to feeding the birds; particularly in the summertime when there should be plenty of food about. i have a particular prejudice against the common sparrow, the first bird species to move into the neighborhood when we built our thirty odd years ago.

over the years more and different species have come around. i remember our excitement the first spring we saw robin red breast come to call.

my wife (being a buckeye by birth) just about came unglued when she saw the first cardinal flitting about the yard in the spring/summer of '10. this past summmer she watched as juvenile cardinals grew into adulthood.

                                                                     
this morning, with snow on the ground and snow still falling at times, watching the variety of birds gathering for some free seeds and suet at the feeders, (including a beautiful, bright red cardinal btw) my objection to feeding the birds makes little sense.

                                         

                                                                   
                                                            
i can hear them as they feed "chirp, chirp". loosely translated they're saying "thanks, ohio buckeye lady, many thanks".
aio

the spectacle...

                                                                         

Every time I think of Halloween Night 2011 I find myself misting up.  To say I'm extremely proud of our middle son and his Halloween goings on would be a profound understatement.

That merry band otherwise known as the Krewe du Coeur Maudit staged their 5th annual Halloween event, this year a true parade, down Riverside to Congress and over to 6th Street ending the march on arrival at sponsoring clubs Elysium and Red 7.

                                    (photo by Jerry Howard)
Each year this event has grown bigger, each year better.  This years edition in moving into the streets to be seen as a fully fledged parade-- the "Circus of the 7 Dawns" was nothing short of spectacle.  The expansion of the zombie drum line into the "Dead Music Capitol Band" and the addition of the fantastic brass groups-- "Best, Best, Best Friends" and "Major Mayhem" upped the ante, topping the sum of the four previous marches by a wide margin. 

one word--fantastical-- might best describe the night! The giant puppets "Gertie",  a wraith "giraffelant" and the smoke breathing "skelerex", a fortune tellers booth, Franken-Berry, a menagerie of ghouls and goblins paraded along, stepping in time with the music of the bands, handing out doubloons commemorating the occasion. There was an amazing big top, a clutch of clown-bats all aflutter, a ghoulish group of marching girls with batons atwirl and flags afurl, the mesmerizing flickering of colored balloons, show girls with skirts aswishing and bringing up the rear a sight was seen that will be remembered long-- "Pennywise" the clown-clown and his accoutrement of scary clown propellers.  And as the cherry on this very delicious Halloween treat, high atop "Pennywise", complete with ginormous foam cowboy hat, the clown wrangler-- Ely.

So it seems that Krewe DCM has hit it out of the park again this year.  What will the amazing minds of Cap DCM and Ben the Wonder Welder conjure up for 2012?  I can't say but it's sure to be another, extra special, Halloween treat aimed at entertaining the masses and doing it's part in keeping Austin weird. 

I can't wait.

p.s. more pictures and video can be viewed from http://www.krewedcm.com