Tanka, February 25, 2023

Almond trees in bloom --

Like mine their heads have turned white.

Snow on the mountain --

An old man in a white shawl.

And yet -- and yet! -- new Spring grass!

A. K. Chesterton

 Gilbert Keith Chesterson's alter ego? 

Saw this: 

Thought this: 

If 10 shooters kill 6 people is it still a "Mass Shooting"?

 

It is only 29 hours since the 2:00AM shootings in Sacramento yielded six dead and another dozen wounded. 

Early reports said 50 to 70 rounds fired; another said 40 of those little evidence markers on the ground at the scene.

Little is known, and early reports are often spectacularly unreliable. But where there's blood, it's never too early for the Blood Dancing.

You know.  2:00AM on a weekend night. Crowd on the street. A little family friction becomes a spark. Democrat-controlled hell-hole. Rounds are fired (and sights not used, apparently). And . . . 

Next thing you know, the droolers-in-chief are saying the solution to urban violence is to take guns away from Bible-thumping, flag-waving Duck Dynasty fans. 

What did I read in 2021?

 So.

What did I read in 2021?

Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth / Stanley L. Jaki

The Wrong Box / Robert Louis Stevenson

Intuitive Eating / Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

Kim / Rudyard Kipling

True Grit / Charles Portis

The Big Sleep / Raymond Chandler

Plain Tales from the Hills / Rudyard Kipling

The Fellowship of the Ring / J. R. R. Tolkien

The Two Towers / J. R. R. Tolkien

The Return of the King / J. R. R. Tolkien

Leap of Faith / Gordon Cooper (well the first half is okay…)

Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: Folklore of the Old Plantation / Joel Chandler Harris

New Stories of the Old Plantation / Joel Chandler Harris

Roughing It / Mark Twain

Out of the Silent Planet / C. S. Lewis

Perelandra / C. S. Lewis

That Hideous Strength / C. S. Lewis

The Jungle Book / Rudyard Kipling

The Second Jungle Book / Rudyard Kipling

The Aeroplane Boys in Flight; or, A Hydroplane Roundup / John Luther Langworthy

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone / J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets / J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban / J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire / J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix / J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince / J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows / J. K. Rowling

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám / Persian Quatrains translated by Edward FitzGerald

Our Mutual Friend / Charles Dickens

One Hundred Years of Solitude / Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Cosmos Under God / Robert Godwin

The Last Mage Guardian (Book 1 of the Guardian’s Compact series) / Sabrina Chase

Dragonhunters (Book 2 of the Guardian’s Compact series) / Sabrina Chase

On the Death of Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh passed away on Ash Wednesday, 17 February 2021, a bit more than a year after making public the diagnosis of his late stage lung cancer. 

Soft tissue cancers, even in this 21st century, are too difficult to sense and diagnose early. By the time you're feeling a problem, the cancer has too often spread too far to treat. (Yeah, the cigars. I don't want to talk about it. Nobody "deserves" cancer.)

It is a mark of Rush's good cheer and courage that he opted to endure treatments so he could remain behind the golden Excellence In Broadcasting microphone as much as possible, for as long as possible, through the past year. With half his brain tied behind his back (just to make it fair), AND terminal cancer.

Rush Limbaugh came into my life during the Reagan administration, as a talk show host on KFBK radio out of Sacramento, California, in 1984. The mix of news, commentary, and humor captured my attention. The man was utterly unique at the time. Though many me-too show hosts have tried since then, with mixed success, I believe that to the end Rush was utterly unique. 

The time he convinced a caller that her phone contained a camera that allowed him to see through the handset. The jokes about Rio Linda. The fake commercials. Bump music -- Rush invented that! Biting satire. Insightful commentary. Wise advice to younger callers. 

In 1988 the show went to New York and national syndication. It was a big risk, and I was worried that that would be the end. So glad I was 100% wrong! Oh, those days! Oh to hear Rush, daring to do what nobody else seemed willing to do: the thorough fisking of Democrat Michael Dukakis when he was running against "Dubya's" dad! 

Rush got me through the Clinton years, through September 11, 2001, through the Obama years.  

Though not a daily listener, I will miss him.

Let me state: Rush Limbaugh was neither divisive nor polarizing. Quite the opposite. Before we had The Rush Limbaugh Show, millions of Americans were isolated and voiceless. Since the presidential administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson (and possibly longer than that), Americans that believed in America were being separated and divided and told to sit down and shut up, because fuck you, that's why. The Left are the divisive and polarizing ones; Rush Limbaugh was a voice for America in a way that brought millions together, and if nothing else showed us that it's okay to speak up and speak out for the Good, the True, the Beautiful -- to speak up and speak out for America. 

I will miss him. Many millions will.

 

When I was little, I thought the Christmas song said, "Deck the halls with BALLS of holly."

Well, the berries ARE like little balls, you know.

There's been a bug going around

 

When I was little, I'd hear my parents talk during flu season about the bug that was currently going around, and I thought they meant, you know, a BUG.