Childhood

As much as a comment on the state of the economy is in order, it is too depressing. So here is something enlightening.

There are a couple of things that are rewarding to do in The Big City. One of them is the National Gallery. Have some of my favorites. Like the Pre-Raphealites. Another are the Hudson River painters.

Youth

One of the rooms has four huges paintings by Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life. You really need to see all of the details in addition to standing back and taking in the whole thing. Found out just a year or so ago about the Hudson River School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_School) when they had a special and spectacular exhibit of them. Cole started the movement.

Manhood

Anyway, the four works in today's post are some American paintings. Hudson River School. Thomas Cole. The Voyages of Life. Visit the National Gallery and see them in real life.

Old Age

This thought came to me after seeing and hearing a couple of videos on Hawk's (http://isntlifestrange.blogstream.com/) 23 February post. Excellent videos, everyone needs to visit them.

In my high school years, had two music heroes. Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong. Mom and Dad knew I was on the road to rack and ruin. Saved up my pay, five dollars a week, from ushering at the Campus Theater, and the Roxy for the westerns on Saturday afternoon. Got all the records I cold afford. 33 1/3's were a boon. Even got a portable radio. It had tubes, of course. Was as big as a small suitcase. Huge battery. Weighed a ton. But it worked and was “portable”.

When the Class of '58 graduated, Louis played at the dance. Can you picture Louis playing to Dahlgren Hall full of Midshipmen in their full dress uniforms and their dates in formal dresses? When we had dances, we had dances. Can not remember my date, back then it was normal to date a bunch of girls at the same time, but I can certainly remember Louis playing.

Here is Louis and Jack Teagarden:

And got to close with "Muskrat Ramble":

Back on 22 January, made a post on the subject of shaggy dog stories. Here is a good one. You might call it a shaggy cock story. For those with filthy minds, a cock is a male chicken. Thanks to my Cousin Charles for this story.

John the farmer was in the fertilized egg business. Several hundred cute young layers, pullets, and horny old cocks to fertilize the eggs. John kept records and any cock no longer performing went straight to the soup pot to be replaced by a handsome young stud. These records took a lot of John's time so he bought some tiny sets of bells and attached one to each cock. Each bell had a different note so John could tell from a distance which rooster was performing, letting John sit on his porch and fill out his report by simply listening to the tintinabulation.

John's favorite cock was Old Butch, and a very fine cock he was. But one morning John noticed that Butch's bell did not tinkle. On investigating, John noticed that all of the roosters were charging around, bells all atinkle. But the pullets, being the wiser sex, heard the bells, ran for cover. But Old Butch, being a very wise and experienced cock, would hold his bell in his beak so it did not ring, sneak up on an unsuspecting pullet, do his duty, and move on to another.

John was so proud of Old Butch that he entered him in the County Fair. Old Butch was an overnight sensation to judges and spectators. This resulted in Old Butch being awarded ... you guessed it.... The No Bell Piece Prize. Not only that, Old Butch received .... and another one, two for the price of one ..... the Pullets Surprise Award.

Old Butch obviously was a politician in training. Only an experienced politician could find a way to win two coveted awards by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and doing nasty things to (please notice that in the interest of not getting apprehended by TAB's (http://shameonyou.blogstream.com/) NBWSC committee, I have not used the word “sc---ing”) them when they were not paying attention.

When voting time comes, remember that the bells are not always audible.

A couple of blogs recently have brought up the legacy of the Bush Presidency. Reading my National Geographic brought up another aspect of this. It is an article titled “The Drying of the West”. And it lists the numerous indicators that at least the American West is well on the way toward a major drought. The dust bowl of the 30's was a plain old drought. Major droughts in past history of the American West have lasted for centuries. Sorry, Ron, but Arizona is in the middle of a part predicted to get DRY. And it is not the only part of The United States. Remember the water shortages in the Southeast? The photo at the top of this blog is Alabama. National Geographic points out the regular swings in the weather. But also points out that global warming adds a major contribution.

Is this due to Bush's Administration? Not by itself, of course. But suppose Gore had been elected. Would like to think he would have been able to swing policies a little bit toward making global warming less devastating. And would like to think he would have been able to keep the military-industrial complex from raping the environment because of profits. And eight years can be a significant amount of time.

The warming of Earth is definitely not a good thing. But the biggest problem is the changes in the weather. A degree or even a fraction of a degree causes major shifts in the jet stream, in El Nina, in the circulation from the tropics to the temperate zone.

We weathered the dust bowl drought. But it also brought on a major upheaval. Much agony in the United States. But major governments around the world failed. World War. An interesting new book treats the mini ice age of the beginning of the 1800's as a definite cause of the French Revolution. Napoleon devastates Europe. Some governments and civilizations can survive and some can not. But all must pay. And world wars seem to evolve – exponentially.

Natural disasters are also expensive. A major population shift costs. A lot. With a substantial national debt already crippling the finances, it could be something really difficult.

Is it possible that Bush's legacy may not be Iraq and terrorism at all. Will he be the President who let the slide into major environmental and civil failure begin? There is a fascinating series of books titled “If”. They list turning points in the history of our civilization. Could a future chapter be what happened because some judges chose a President?

A day for several posts.

First of all, an addendum to the cockroach entry. Whit (http://bushsyndrome.blogstream.com/) wrote a comment that I should have thought of: “Another detail worth mentioning is that the cockroach has survived virtually unchanged for the past 250 million years. The dinosaurs became extinct over 65 million years ago.” Dinosaurs were on Earth for about 160 million years
Homo sapiens appeared about 130 thousand and modern civilization (true modern man) about 15 thousand years ago. Still wet behind the ears.

Of course, an important aspect is that the strength of cockroaches, rats, sharks, etc. is that they are doing just fine the way they are, thank you very much. The strength of human beans is the evolution into something better.