31 March 2015

Notes - Truth is ridiculous / fictional demands / honest fiction

        Late morning. You completed your forty minutes of exercises as you did one day earlier this last weekend. You have a pleasant Spring sky this last day of March. – Amorella

         1103 hours. I remember a fair day in April when the great white whale rises and all but one are pulled down into the sea.

         Ishmael. You remember such as fiction as though it were real. Why is that, boy? – Amorella

         1109 hours. It was real as a showing classroom drama can be – projecting an intimate learning situation, like reading in depth, so to speak. With Ishmael doing the learning. Then like the ancient mariner he must tell his story; but it is really Melville showing a reflection of his own story through the characters and setting. – I found this wonderful letter from Melville to Hawthorne – ever full of the dark wit I so much enjoy.

         Drop it is and post by all means, boy. – Amorella

** **
LETTER TO NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, JUNE [1?] 1851

My Dear Hawthorne, -- I should have been rumbling down to you in my pine-board chariot a long time ago, were it not that for some weeks past I have been more busy than you can well imagine, -- out of doors, -- building and patching and tinkering away in all directions. Besides, I had my crops to get in, -- corn and potatoes (I hope to show you some famous ones by and by), -- and many other things to attend to, all accumulating upon this one particular season. I work myself; and at night my bodily sensations are akin to those I have so often felt before, when a hired man, doing my day's work from sun to sun. But I mean to continue visiting you until you tell me that my visits are both supererogatory and superfluous. With no son of man do I stand upon any etiquette or ceremony, except the Christian ones of charity and honesty. I am told, my fellow-man, that there is an aristocracy of the brain. Some men have boldly advocated and asserted it. Schiller seems to have done so, though I don't know much about him. At any rate, it is true that there have been those who, while earnest in behalf of political equality, will accept the intellectual estates. And I can well perceive, I think, how a man of superior mind can, by its intense cultivation, bring himself, as it were, into a certain spontaneous aristocracy of feeling, -- exceedingly nice and fastidious, -- similar to that which, in an English Howard, conveys a torpedo-fish thrill at the slightest contact with a social plebian. So, when you see or hear of my ruthless democracy on all sides, you may possibly feel a touch of a shrink, or something of that sort. It is but nature to be shy of a mortal who boldly declares that a thief in jail is as honorable a personage as Gen. George Washington. This is ludicrous. But Truth is the silliest thing under the sun. Try to get a living by the Truth -- and go to the Soup Societies. Heavens! Let any clergyman try to preach the Truth from its very stronghold, the pulpit, and they would ride him out of his church on his own pulpit bannister. It can hardly be doubted that all Reformers are bottomed upon the truth, more or less; and to the world at large are not reformers almost universally laughingstocks? Why so? Truth is ridiculous to men. Thus easily in my room here do I, conceited and garrulous, reverse the test of my Lord Shaftesbury.

It seems an inconsistency to assert unconditional democracy in all things, and yet confess a dislike to all mankind -- in the mass. But not so. -- But it's an endless sermon, -- no more of it. I began by saying that the reason I have not been to Lenox is this, -- in the evening I feel completely done up, as the phrase is, and incapable of the long jolting to get to your house and back. In a week or so, I go to New York, to bury myself in a third-story room, and work and slave on my "Whale" while it is driving through the press. That is the only way I can finish it now, -- I am so pulled hither and thither by circumstances. The calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose, -- that, I fear, can seldom be mine. Dollars damn me; and the malicious Devil is forever grinning in upon me, holding the door ajar. My dear Sir, a presentiment is on me, -- I shall at last be worn out and perish, like an old nutmeg-grater, grated to pieces by the constant attrition of the wood, that is, the nutmeg. What I feel most moved to write, that is banned, -- it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches. I'm rather sore, perhaps, in this letter, but see my hand! -- four blisters on this palm, made by hoes and hammers within the last few days. It is a rainy morning; so I am indoors, and all work suspended. I feel cheerfully disposed, and therefore I write a little bluely. Would the Gin were here! If ever, my dear Hawthorne, in the eternal times that are to come, you and I shall sit down in Paradise, in some little shady corner by ourselves; and if we shall by any means be able to smuggle a basket of champagne there (I won't believe in a Temperance Heaven), and if we shall then cross our celestial legs in the celestial grass that is forever tropical, and strike our glasses and our heads together, till both musically ring in concert, -- then, O my dear fellow-mortal, how shall we pleasantly discourse of all the things manifold which now so distress us, -- when all the earth shall be but a reminiscence, yea, its final dissolution an antiquity. Then shall songs be composed as when wars are over; humorous, comic songs, -- "Oh, when I lived in that queer little hole called the world," or, "Oh, when I toiled and sweated below," or, "Oh, when I knocked and was knocked in the fight" -- yes, let us look forward to such things. Let us swear that, though now we sweat, yet it is because of the dry heat which is indispensable to the nourishment of the vine which is to bear the grapes that are to give us the champagne hereafter.

But I was talking about the "Whale." As the fishermen say, "he's in his flurry" when I left him some three weeks ago. I'm going to take him by his jaw, however, before long, and finish him up in some fashion or other. What's the use of elaborating what, in its very essence, is so short-lived as a modern book? Though I wrote the Gospels in this century, I should die in the gutter. -- I talk all about myself, and this is selfishness and egotism. Granted. But how help it? I am writing to you; I know little about you, but something about myself so I write about myself, -- at least, to you. Don't trouble yourself, though, about writing; and don't trouble yourself about visiting; and when you do visit, don't trouble yourself about talking. I will do all the writing and visiting and talking myself -- By the way, in the last "Dollar Magazine" I read "The Unpardonable Sin." He was a sad fellow, that Ethan Brand. I have no doubt you are by this time responsible for many a shake and tremor of the tribe of "general readers." It is a frightful poetical creed that the cultivation of the brain eats out the heart. But it's my prose opinion that in most cases, in those men who have fine brains and work them well, the heart extends down to hams. And though you smoke them with the fire of tribulation, yet, like veritable hams, the head only gives the richer and the better flavor. I stand for the heart. To the dogs with the head! I had rather be a fool with a heart, than Jupiter Olympus with his head. The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch. (You perceive I employ a capital initial in the pronoun referring to the Deity; don't you think there is a slight dash of flunkeyism in that usage?) Another thing. I was in New York for four-and-twenty hours the other day, and saw a portrait of N.H. And I have seen and heard many flattering (in a publisher's point of view) allusions to the "Seven Gables." And I have seen "Tales," and "A New Volume" announced, by N.H. So upon the whole, I say to myself, this N.H. is in the ascendant. My dear Sir, they begin to patronize. All Fame is patronage. Let me be infamous: there is no patronage in that. What "reputation" H.M. has is horrible. Think of it ! To go down to posterity is bad enough, any way; but to go down as a "man who lived among the cannibals"! When I speak of posterity, in reference to myself, I only mean the babies who will probably be born in the moment immediately ensuing upon my giving up the ghost. I shall go down to some of them, in all likelihood. Typee will be given to them, perhaps, with their gingerbread. I have come to regard this matter of Fame as the most transparent of all vanities. I read Solomon more and more, and every time see deeper and deeper and unspeakable meanings in him. I did not think of Fame, a year ago, as I do now. My development has been all within a few years past. I am like one of those seeds taken out of the Egyptian Pyramids, which, after being three thousand years a seed and nothing but a seed, being planted in English soil, it developed itself, grew to greenness, and then fell to mould. So I. Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year I date my life. Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then and now, that I have not unfolded within myself. But I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall to the mould. It seems to be now that Solomon was the truest man who ever spoke, and yet that he a little managed the truth with a view to popular conservatism; or else there have been many corruptions and interpolations of the text. -- In reading some of Goethe's sayings, so worshipped by his votaries, I came across this, "Live in the all." That is to say, your separate identity is but a wretched one, -- good; but get out of yourself, spread and expand yourself, and bring to yourself the tinglings of life that are felt in the flowers and the woods, that are felt in the planets Saturn and Venus, and the Fixed Stars. What nonsense! Here is a fellow with a raging toothache. "My dear boy," Goethe says to him, "you are sorely afflicted with that tooth; but you must live in the all, and then you will be happy!" As with all great genius, there is an immense deal of flummery in Goethe, and in proportion to my own contact with him, a monstrous deal of it in me.
H. Melville.

P.S. "Amen!" saith Hawthorne.

N.B. This "all" feeling, though, there is some truth in. You must often have felt it, lying on the grass on a warm summer's day. Your legs seem to send out shoots into the earth. Your hair feels like leaves upon your head. This is the all feeling. But what plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.

P.S. You must not fail to admire my discretion in paying the postage on this letter.

From -- http://www.melvilleDOTorg/letter3.htm


** **


         Later, afternoon. You had a late lunch at Panera on Mason-Montgomery Road. Stopped at Lowe’s for Drano for the shower, which is running slow. Beautiful though windy. You are sitting in the public parking behind the fields at the high school looking east at the south end of Pine Hill Lakes Park, this area is sometimes called Nixon park for one of Warren County’s representatives, at least that is the way you remember it. – Amorella

         1609 hours. The whole park was Pine Hill Lakes but as this is a Republican county by a wide margin (John ‘Boner’ our Speaker of the House is from just west of here in Butler County). Anyway, we still call the whole park by its original name.

         Is there a dark political cloud soaking up your mind, boy? – Amorella

         1616 hours. I’m still thinking about Melville’s letter: “. . . what plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion.” It is a problem with majority rules and even sometimes with minority rules. And, it seems the only way to have government run half way efficiently, i.e. have the trains run on time, is to elect a hopefully benevolent dictator, Plato’s philosopher king. (Wikipedia article below.)

** **
In Book VI of The Republic

Plato defined a philosopher firstly as its eponymous occupation – wisdom-lover. He then distinguishes between one who loves true knowledge as opposed to simple sights or education by saying that the philosopher is the only person who has access to Forms – the archetypal entities that exist behind all representations of the form (such as Beauty itself as opposed to any one particular instance of beauty). It is next and in support of the idea that philosophers are the best rulers that Plato fashions the ship of state metaphor, one of his most often cited ideas (along with his allegory of the cave). " A true pilot must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship" (The Republic, 6.488d).
Criticism

Karl Popper blamed Plato for the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century, seeing Plato's philosopher kings, with their dreams of 'social engineering' and 'idealism', as leading directly to Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler (via Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx). In addition, Ayatollah Khomeini is said to have been inspired by the Platonic vision of the philosopher king while in Qum in the 1920s when he became interested in Islamic mysticism and Plato’s Republic. As such, it has been speculated that he was inspired by Plato's philosopher king, and subsequently based elements of his Islamic Republic on it.

Selected from – Wikipedia Offline – philosopher king

** **
         1630 hours. I don’t agree wholehearted with the article above because I don’t remember all the particulars given – though certainly the references to Hegel and Marx make sense.

         You rather like being a philosopher king of sort while writing your novels. You have control, which you relinquish once in a while to a character demanding more control over herorhis fictional life. – Amorella

         1637 hours. Fiction demands a limited responsibility but only in my private time. Besides, I relinquish the basics to you Amorella because I don’t have the inclination to actually rule even in the fiction. Only a fool would think she or he could actually rule anyone even her or himself. Other factors always play a role – friends, setting, time placement, unknowns (Caesar comes to mind), etc. whether you are class president or president or president for life. 

          Carol is on page 72 of Confessions by Grisham. Time to go. - Amorella

         You had leftovers from Olive Garden for supper, watched NBC News, “Castle”, a “NCIS.LA” and a “Modern Family”. – Amorella

         2118 hours. Earlier we drove to pick up the bedroom lamp now fixed and Carol looked at other lighting in the store. She actually had a good time, and she is happy she has her reading lamp back rather than using mine.


         Post. - Amorella


         2154 hours. It has happened again. Today I have a spike of 195 hits. Something has to be wrong with the blog counter. It shows I have five hits as of 1140 hours and yesterday I had eleven hits. Both are typical. Five is typical. Yet when I put it on Stats Overview it shows 195 hits for today – this is from about 1500 to 1700 hours this afternoon. It has to be a glitch. On my Stat Counter it shows I had 200 hits today but it does not say where they came from. –

         2215 hours. According to Stat Counter the hit was from a communication company at 16:36:19 in Korea. Two hundred hits in less than a second is an equipment malfunction not a glitch. At least it is simply explained. I feel better now.

         You really don’t want people reading this blog do you orndorff? – Amorella

         2227 hours. No, I do not. A few hits are fine. I am sacrificing my privacy in this blog so I am free to write from my subconscious or unconscious mind, that is how I see it. My mind has to be open so I can communicate with you, Amorella.

         This is true. You have to be open and free in heartansoulanmind. You have to be as open and free as you would be if you were physically dead, that’s how you see it, that is how therefore that you have to imagine the situation to be to write an honest fiction; you hope as honest a fiction as Melville’s Moby Dick. That is what today’s thoughts are about. – Post. - Amorella

30 March 2015

Notes - after life / bend

         Monday mid-morning. You are listening to the bagpipes on your personalized Pandora Celtic station and thinking of Queen Victoria and her romance with the Scotsman after Prince Albert died. – Amorella

         0853 hours. I don’t remember his name or the film about the two, but what is important to me is their heartfelt connection. Why? Because heartfelt connections are perhaps more important than any other in this world or the next, at least I’d like to think so.

         People don’t have time for such things in real life. – Amorella

         0920 hours. I agree. That’s why some people wait until after life.

        People, such as yourself? – Amorella


        1030 hours. People, such as myself. I don’t know why this is exactly.

        Post. - Amorella

         You had a late lunch at Panera/Chipotle and stopped at Kroger’s. Once home with the groceries you are now sitting in the cool wind at cemetery central in Rose Hill while Carol finishes a walkabout. Quite a few puffy clouds rolling in from the west, but at least the temperature is the fifties. Carol is on page 19 of The Confession. You have to top open on the Avalon, normally not your car of choice during the week but Carol’s legs are bothering and the Toyota is easier to get into and out of, something you will have to consider when searching for another car. – Amorella

         1618 hours. One must adjust with the body just a people adjust to the times. “Bend with the wind,” (and others similar) was a favorite saying of Grandma Schick. I hope Carol decides to get a cortisone shot in her knee tomorrow. We have our trips in May – if they were tomorrow we would not be going. 

28 March 2015

Notes - a Saturday morning /

         Morning. You were up early as is Carol. Breakfast eaten and the Saturday paper read. You have been listening to Canon in D, Piano Opus played by Brian Crain. The bed is made with a top cover no less. Carol is in the kitchen and you are up in the bedroom readying your mind for your exercises. Ah, the music will change tempo to the popular eighties. Later, boy, you have errands to do. - Amorella

         Later, morning. You had your bath and pulled and packed the towels and sheets off the flowers for protection from the cold. You also tidied up the yard for Kim and the boys. Carol is taking a well-deserved nap. – Amorella

         1109 hours. She has been doing clothes and such since early. The house is fine, particularly for family. Spooky is on top of Jadah’s old cage looking out the living room window and Jadah is curled up within it. The front is just to the left of the register and they both like the heat. The calm before the little ones arrive. The cats will be up under the bed after they arrive. The deck crew has to secure the new boards to the three benches and to refit the gate plus a few trimming pieces on Monday, then they’ll be done. Next we’ll tackle the master bath. The west wall is ten and a half feet in length. We will have to buy a shower and a corner tub with jets and have them installed. Also, we need a new regular tub for the other bath. We will have to buy new fixtures for both bathrooms as well as granite sink tops and sinks for both. New cabinets? New lights? And, we have to order new flooring for the master bath. Granite and sink are for the downstairs toilet along with new bath lighting. That should do it though we have to have the interior of the house repainted and touched up where needed. And, a chair we’ll need to get a chair for the stairs. Major projects all in all but much, much cheaper than moving and buying new. We will stay here (comfortably) as long as possible, that’s our nearer the end of life plan.

         Your mind has the plan set knowing the best laid plans for mice and men are like to go awry. – Amorella

         1131 hours. I don’t know if that paragraph goes in here. I was sitting thinking things out and my fingers are on the keyboard doing what they do but such things are not relevant to writing the great American novel as they say, or any other novel for that matter. I don’t even know what the great American novel is supposed to be. Besides, it’s already been written.

         You are referring to Moby Dick. – Amorella

         1134 hours. Who is going to top that? No one, as far as I am concerned.

         You added your initials then deleted them. – Amorella

         1137 hours. Adding them would be arrogant with a touch of pride that it is by an American author. Everyone has her or his opinions.

         Post. – Amorella

         1139 hours. Sometimes English grammar is a pain in the butt. 


27 March 2015

Notes - working on Pouch 9 / music

         Late morning. You did your forty minutes of exercises and before you cleaned upstairs and have downstairs to do. The deck crew is working and they are pleased with the progress, as they were afraid the rain would put them back. It is much cooler, in the low forties today but the foreman says it is much better for working. Carol is walking at the north end of Rose Hill Cemetery as you wait in the middle between two crossroads. You have the usual Friday errands to tend to, plus readying for Kim and the boys visit tomorrow and Sunday. – Amorella

         1103 hours. I probably should walk some also after my poor performance at the mall Wednesday. Without my cane I had to keep touch with the railing on the upper mall and coming back to Macy’s on the lower mall there was only one place to stop and sit a moment and no railings. There was no excuse for not bringing my cane and I need to buy an extra. I lose one about every six months. I have no idea where I leave them.

         Let’s look at Pouch Nine. – Amorella

** **
Diplomatic Pouch ©2015, rho (draft)

            While half dressed and sitting on the edge of their king sized bed Pyl thinks on Justin and how he is faring. I hope he and Blakey are enjoying his venture to the dig with Friendly. Both are so slow adapting, but then I am not much better. Here we are on a planet much like our own – a place with similar terrains – hills and valleys and mountains but with many more rivers and streams, fresh water lakes and larger and numerous saltwater lakes and seas. A chime that reminds her of a soft Macy’s made-a-sale-bell interrupts. “Come in,” she says in a normal voice.

            “Yermey, here.”

            Pyl is up and out the bedroom door. “Good morning.”

            “And, good morning to you. Thought I would stop by and see what you are up to.”

            I was enjoying the peace and quiet, she thought. “Nothing. I am in my robe because I haven’t decided what to wear.”

            “That’s a consideration. Mind if I sit?”

            “No, of course. Would you like a cup of our hot coffee?”

            He chuckled, “Real coffee, no thanks. You ought to be rationing that.”

            Pyl sits in the chair across. “We keep our furniture out rather than in the ceiling, walls or floors – I hope the sight is not too much clutter.”

            “You humans are a charming species,’ comments Yermey with that wickedly lovable grin of his. A waspish thought pops into his head, ‘packrats’. He rubs at his naked chin.

            Pyl mirrors his grin, “Cat got your tongue?”

            He places his hand comfortably down on his lap. “No. You know, I don’t really understand that phrase, 'cat got your tongue’.”

            “Good question. You were being silent, that is, your tongue wasn’t moving, so I asked it the cat snatched it,” invents Pyl. 

            With a spark of glee in his eyes, Yermey deadpans, “What cat?” Pyl pauses in momentary embarrassment. Yermey clips, “Cat got your tongue, Pyl?” 

            Both laugh in the awkwardness of the moment.

***

** **                                   

       1204 hours. I had to look this phrase up on phraseDOTorg.

** **

'Cat got your tongue?' is the shortened form of the query 'Has the cat got your tongue?' and it is the short form that is more often used. It is somewhat archaic now but was in common use until the 1960/70s. It was directed at anyone who was quiet when they were expected to speak, and often to children who were being suspiciously unobtrusive.

There's no derivation that involves any actual cat or celebrated incident of feline theft. It certainly doesn't relate to sailors becoming taciturn when punished with the cat o' nine tails as some have suggested - that's pure invention. Like the blackbird that 'pecked off his nose', the phrase is just an example of the lighthearted imagery that is, or was, directed at children.

The expression sounds as though it might be old but isn't especially so. It isn't found in print until 1881, in the US illustrated paper Ballou's Monthly Magazine, Volume 53: Has the cat got your tongue, as the children say?

The demarcation of the phrase as being 'children's' suggests that it may be earlier than the 1880s. Children's language wasn't written down until it became used by adults, which may be some years after it was common parlance in the playground.

From -- http://www.phrasesDOTorg.uk/meanings/cat-got-your-tongue.html

** **

         1207 hours. I feel like I invented this dialogue out of the blue. I didn’t really have a plan, but if I did this isn’t what I would have expected. I like it though because it is not sexual in intent. It is just a joke gone awry.

         You are presently waiting for Carol at Kroger’s on Mason-Montgomery Road. Afterwards you are off to Potbelly for a take-out lunch. – Amorella

         1354 hours. We are home from Potbelly’s; no take-out this time.

         As for the joke gone awry, you have had several such female relationships in your lifetime. Some of this dialogue and relationship between Pyl and Yermey takes little to no imagination. – Amorella

         1402 hours. I am 72 and have listened, observed and read much. I know a hawk from a handsaw.

         “Words, words, words.” Post. - Amorella


         You came upstairs after watching “Blacklist” and “Bones” and tuned to Pandora’s ‘Relaxation’ and the song, Brian Crain’s “Hallelujah” in his Piano And Light album. – Amorella

         2147 hours. Carol came up to read but so far is cleaning up. I also have ‘Easy Listening’ on Pandora now and took off several of my selections after reading how to do so. This way Carol can easily find her own selections to choose from and add if she wishes. Mother and Aunt Ruthie used to play the piano when we were growing up. Eventually both sisters got too busy to play. I missed the sounds of the keys and the silence between them, that’s what made the music unique to me, the silence provided by the pianist. I can’t believe I have missed this so much. The Bose clarity brings it out. I don’t hear as well as I used to (I am tone deaf or at least tone deficient) but I love music – most kinds of music. (2157)

         Carol is beginning a new book she bought some time ago Confession by John Grisham. Carol says she likes the music playing. This makes you feel good. – The book closes and the light goes out – the music turned down. – Amorella

         2232 hours. This has been a very relaxing evening. I am ready to just listen to the music. Jadah is climbing up to rest but with her motor running.

         A good time to post, boy. - Amorella

26 March 2015

Notes - little things / old Sony / Ms E.

         Afternoon. You did forty-five minutes of exercise today to make up for the thirty minutes of walking the mall yesterday. (Bose was at the other end.) A short while ago you picked up the directions and quickly added the Bluetooth and had it up and running. Now you are sitting in your bedroom chair listening to Pandora – your “Traveling Wilburys” themed station. - Amorella

** **
The Traveling Wilburys (sometimes shortened to the Wilburys) were a British-American supergroup consisting of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. The band recorded two albums in 1988 and 1990, though Orbison died before the second was recorded.

Wikipedia           
** **
         1358 hours. The sound is quite good, particularly with some of my favorite music; “Hotel California” is on presently. The musical instruments are clearly distinct as is the vocal. Awesome, there are no need for headphones. I am well pleased, just as I thought I would be. Now it is time for a little Simon and Garfunkel’s “Here’s Mrs. Robinson”.

         Looks like you are going out for “linner” at Smashburgers this afternoon.

         1535 hours. Carol is going to write checks for the two billings that came in the mail today; then we go to food. Trivial detail, but if a truck barreled into us on the way or on the back we would probably find some significance in the concept that the last thing we did was pay our bills. Reminds me of Socrates and his supposed last words to pay a chicken to someone (I think).



Death of Socrates by Jacques-Louis David
From Wikipedia

         Your point here is that even the little things bring rise to great thoughts and questions. Post. – Amorella

         1545 hours. That’s good because I couldn’t figure it out. 

         You had potato chips for supper while watching “NCIS” with Carol – along with “CSI Cyber” and NBC News. Now you have ‘Easy Listening” on your Tune In app for Carol who is reading a new Good Housekeeping. She finished her latest book this morning. – Amorella

         2204 hours. It is very pleasant listening to the bedroom radio. That last time we bought a real radio was when we bought a Sony with a walnut boxed (real wood) AM/FM and cassette player built in; this was in 1972 when the cassette concept was still new. They also bought two walnut (real wood) boxes: (each enclosed with a six inch mid-range speaker and a tweeter) Sansui speakers. Carol’s parents bought it for us (we paid them for it) on a U.S. Army base in Germany as they were coming to work in USAID at State from the embassy in New Delhi. The radio/cassette and speakers still operate though I had to buy and install new six inch mid-range speakers when upgrading to a single Sony CD player. Also, I bought and installed a Radio Shack walnut (real wood) boxed subwoofer. This was in the mid-eighties. The whole system still provides warm sounding music and is a nice piece of furniture. We used it until I bought a Bose system for the TV, it had a DVD/CD player and an FM radio – two speakers each hanging from a single vertical piece of steel one on each side of the TV, a Sony 34” inch TV upgradable to HD (which we converted in 2003) – the TV we replaced last June.

         I should bring up that old Sony and put it in the little bedroom for guests to listen to. Jazz has a really mellow tone on that machine. Why not?  It makes the music sound vinyl recorded rather than CD stamped. I used to play it when I was exercising in the basement – last summer I gave the weight machine to Tim K. our neighbor as long as he and his son Ben would move it out. They did. Carol watches the TV when she uses the walking machine. (2234)

         The radio is off and Carol is going to sleep, the lights are out except the MacAir screen is on the dimmest setting. You don’t need to see the keys – you haven’t since Miss Ensore and your junior year high school typing class days. Post. – Amorella

         2238 hours. I had a major crush on Miss Ensore both junior and senior year. I was one of her ‘master typists’. I was allowed to use one of the two electric typewriters in the classroom all semester.

         You would have done anything to win her favor; typing well was the best thing you could come up with outside of going out for theatre class for two years because she, as one of the English teachers, was the ‘theatre department’. - Amorella

25 March 2015

Notes - Our Town thought / Kenwood /

         Mid-morning. Thunderstorms during the night and you assumed the deck crew wouldn’t work today but the rain has stopped and they are working. Carol wants to get her walk in, grocery, and has friends to meet around noon and you will work your Kenwood trip around her schedule or go tomorrow. – Amorella

         0913 hours. I think I am mellowing. At one time I would have been frustrated not to do what I wanted to do at my own time. I don’t care that much. Life is not that busy. If people had three days off a week instead of two or one, most everyone would be more congenial I think. If you are busy all the time when do you just sit or stroll and appreciate everything you have. This is a trigger for my “Our Town” memories. Wow. That has been such a very important piece of literature to my personal philosophy over much of my lifetime. Last night I got a whim to see if Carol’s old iPhone would work on Bluetooth and with a little tweaking it does. So, around the house her phone is another radio. Now, if I can find a way to put Pandora on her phone – maybe through iCloud. Right now I have Tune In and Slacker Radio hooked up. – A bit later – I have the old iPhone connected to the speakers in the living room. Works fine – listening to Celtic on Tune In presently. That phone has just been sitting on the catchall table on rollers in the kitchen near the garage door for about a year now.

         Once Carol is ready off to the cemetery walk. Post. - Amorella

         1009 hours. Carol begins her walk. The deck crew has four boards down so far and it is awesome. We had no idea how nice this was going to look; the solid stain rails have just enough desert sand color contrast with various shades of brown in the wood grains of the boards. I can’t imagine painting over these boards but somewhere down the pike I’m sure someone will. Let them; we are quite pleased with our order as is.  

         Let’s take a look at Pouch Nine. – Amorella

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Diplomatic Pouch 9

         While half dressed and sitting on the edge of their king-sized bed Pyl thinks on Justin and how he is faring. I hope he and Blakey are enjoying his venture to the dig with Friendly. Both are middle-aged and so slow adapting, but then I am not much better. Here we are on a planet much like our own – blue sky, white fluffy clouds and a yellow sun – a place with Earth-like terrains – hills and valleys and mountains but with many large rivers and streams, fresh water lakes and larger and numerous saltwater lakes and seas. (1029) 96w

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         Late afternoon. The top deck floor is complete. You and Carol like the look and color choices. After Carol saw a couple of her friends who volunteer at Bethesda North Hospital you both had an excellent lunch at Longhorn’s – Jen was your usual server. Then you and Carol headed to Kenwood where you bought the Bose Wave III in charcoal with Bluetooth. It was about a hundred dollars more because of the color but it is the color Carol and you both prefer. The only good thing about it is that it is the same price on Amazon. – Amorella

         1727 hours. Most people would not pay the money but this is what I saved it for. Added expenses are what they are. We both marvel at the Bose sound, in relationship to the kinds and styles of music we both enjoy. The sound demonstrated was the awesome sound I expected – clean and crisp – no need to have extra dials or sliders to deal with it. To each their own. I know it comes out of my personal savings but this way it is like a Christmas present out of season for Carol. I feel very good about it.

         Later, my friend. Post. - Amorella