Existing In BFE

Magic isn't always sleight of hand.  Sometimes it happens when a group of bikers ride the back roads through small towns Illinois.  We were rounding a bend about to leave Elmira when we saw a group of horses along the fence greeting us.  We stopped and spent a few minutes with these friendly guys. About 10 years ago.  Once, we travelled up to Davenport's summer festival that has had a few locations and not even sure if it even exists anymore.  This was a video of Neighbor Tim giving the riding team in the Wall of Death a dollar for their efforts. About 8 years ago. We were all along the Vinoy sea wall awaiting the 4th of July fireworks display in St. Pete when a dog riding at the front of a boat jumped in the water.  They glided over on top of him and rescued it.  7 years ago.

In 1909 a baby was born in the Zululand area of South Africa.  His name was Solomon Linda, Linda being his tribal name.  He grew up herding cattle and became acquainted with local wedding and ancestral songs.  In school he tried out for choir contests and he and his friends began singing Zulu songs in the new syncopated way of singing a capella.  I suppose this is most closely related to the Do-Wop type of music that became popular in the 50's here in the US. Like many in the countryside he moved to Johannesburg and found work at a furniture shop and sang in a choir known as the Evening Birds, managed by his uncles.  They disbanded in 1933 but he revived the band and the name and changed jobs.  He joined up with his boyhood friends who were working at the Carlton Hotel.  Solomon was a soprano, Gilbert an alto, Boy was a tenor and Gideon, Samuel, and Owen basses.  The Evening Birds were resurrected.   By 1939, when Solomon was 30 years old...

March 2019 May 2019 March 2019 May 2019

We have returned from Northlandia and back in the saddle and ready to prolong this project for a little longer. ++++++++++ I took this picture of my TV channel guide a day or two before I left for Northlandia.  No, not the Scorpion Kin...  The one above it. You'd think someone would notice the problem.  And I don't have any idea what the actual name of the program is.   ++++++++++                                                     ++++++++++ I met others in Northlandia who used to read this blog and have left because of the occasional political statement.  Therefore, I have decided to refrain from politics.  I met others on my trip that simply don't care about facts, failure or decay in our politics.  If a person  yells "Fire!" in a crowded theater and there actually is a f...

The staff, maintenance department and editorial board of Existing In BFE are on Spring Break.  We will not return until Tuesday, May 28th.  Be good while I'm gone, play nice, and if there are problems Santa won't find you in about 7 months.  

That cute kid in the front there is my mother, or future mother, Marjie Shirlene Westlake.  She looks to be about three or four years old which would make this picture exactly 90 years old.   I don't know who is on the right, and never will.  That lady, however, on the left is Marjie's mother,  Mona.  Mona is just about relegated to "The Forgotten".  There may only be three of us left who remember her.  And as we have been told that you are not truly gone until all who remember are gone, too, then all that separates her and who she was hangs on us three. Of all four grandparents, Mona has probably risen to the "Best of the Best" status.  No doubt this station was enhanced by her being the first to die.  She left while we twins were about 11.  It was our second death we experienced after Roy Rader, our neighbor, passed away when we were 9.  Mona was our first actual funeral.  She wore a black dress with white frill at th...

Look at a photograph, color or black and white, and they all look normal.  But look at the negative and it becomes almost indistinguishable.  It appears turned inside out - a collection of swirls and inverted colors that relate to nothing at all normal.   Much like night.  Whizzbang, aka, Dumbstruck the Wonder Pup, aka, Ms. Whizzerton, aka, Whizzy is my companion on the early morning walks.  I used to do this solo, but find it more rewarding to let her go with me.  I allow for the sniffing, and exploration, and in return she keeps me informed and safe.   Night is the home of a different world - the negative to our daytime senses. Journey with me to the night world.  Our walk is approximately 2 and 1/2 miles.  The first half is urban.  Roosevelt Avenue is a main artery and even at 4:00 am there is traffic.  Not a lot, but it is there.  We travel to never-closing 7-11 to 58th Street.  We turn right and head down and...

Various stuff found on the world-wide web that may or may not reflect what I believe.  If it has anything to do with Trump or his family or cronies, then, yeah, I pretty much go along with it. ++++++++++ ++++++++++ I can't get Thomas Jefferson's quote out of my head: "Every country gets the government it deserves."  Yeah, we deserve this mellifluous bowl of shit.  ++++++++++ Of course this also excludes Eleanor Roosevelt, perhaps the greatest of all First ladies, as well as Dolly Madison, a one-woman destroyer of partisan politics.  She was the first Presidential wife to introduce bi=partisan social functions at the White House.  It excludes Caroline Harrison who was a proponent for women's rights.  It excludes Edith Wilson who very well may have been the first woman president without portfolio.  It also excludes Betty Ford who brought psychiatry out of the closet.  Or Jackie Kennedy who brought glamour ...

I'm reminded of the Philip Roth quote: "Old age isn't a battle; old age is a massacre."  Of course, I have no idea why.  Maybe a smattering of gray in my oaken brown mane.  Perhaps another hole in the belt, but otherwise just the same.  Some may say I've aged not a whit.   The others in this photograph, well, maybe the less said the better.   I'm a veritable Dorian Gray, lucky me keeping my youth (pronounced hew-yu-eth by the zealots) whilst all about me everyone ages.     Anyway this picture taken maybe twenty years ago.  The flower of our hew-yu-eth.  It is Friday.  Some may go fishing this fine Spring day. Others may be preparing a trip.  Both are fine endeavors.  Whatever you decide to do, make it memorable.  

Florida is the place where you see things and go to places...once.  The one exception might be the Green Thumb sale that happens the last weekend of every April.  This is where Whizzbang made her social debut last year and was properly ooh'ed and awe'ed by many of the fellow plant buyers.  Many venders with plants and yard stuff gather at a park in St. Pete and I must admit, it's OK as far as things down here go. Like all things also sown here, parking is a bitch as are all the people bumping and milling around.  Most have wagons, many have dogs, and all have the sense of entitlement that means they get in the tent to see the bauble before you.   And, I suppose, some are good people. I'd like to bitch about the needy people taking their needy pets to a public function, but since I took Whizzbang last year I won't.  By the way, Whizzy stayed home this year because she is "no longer a pup and isn't cute anymore."* She's no...