Wives past

Multiple marrying does two things.

It makes life more varied and interesting, and that is usually good. It also adds terror and pain, and that is bad.

Looking through the photo album, I found these two shots. The first was taken in 1966 in New Orleans.

My first wife went by the name of Ginger, a nickname for Virginia. She was “with child,” and we were standing on St. Charles Avenue, Mardi Gras Day.

She has been married to a more suitable fellow for a long time now. She is 67, a therapist and still lives in New Orleans where she was born.

Flash forward almost exactly a decade, and here I stand with Julie, my second wife, outside our apartment, also in New Orleans.

I was bent at the knees for this shot so that our faces would be almost level. Julie is short, and I am tall. I also weighed about 50 pounds more than in the previous photo. I was not really fat, but I was a very big fellow.

Julie is 66 and lives in Houston, Texas. She makes her living as a computer whiz, and she has not remarried. She remains in the same house that we shared for nine years, a house she has remodeled very nicely.

Interestingly, I was her second spouse. She was born in St. Louis.

By the way, I shook those 50 pounds in the early 1980s and now weigh what I did in the top photo, so I’m no longer a very big fellow, just tall.

You can’t shake that.

I wish both my previous wives well.

* * * *

(Note: Two other inhabitants of Mexican cyberspace, Steve and Billie, very talented people, were the inspiration for this idea of old photos.)

Queen Michelle

Queen Michelle is living large on your dime.

Her guy, King Barack, had to attend a Group of Eight summit in Belfast this week. He could have gone alone, of course. But Queen Michelle wanted to go too (Oh, Baraaack!), along with the two princesses (Oh, Daddy!).

The First Family flew to Belfast together on the royal air yacht sometimes known as Air Force One.

But Belfast is a nasty place (all those angry Catholics and Protestants. White people! Ugh!) so the queen and princesses continued ASAP aboard Air Force Two, the backup yacht, down to nicer Dublin.

Yes, two yachts sailed from Washington to Ireland.

The queen stayed two nights in the five-star Shelbourne Hotel, the Princess Grace Suite at $3,300 each glorious evening. That was just for her and the princesses. There were 30 other rooms for the purple entourage.

The left-wing lords, ladies, jesters and sycophants.

The estimated two-day cost is 5 million taxpayer dollars.

Two days, mind you. Your money. Their holiday.

The water jungle

And the rains came . . .

The change seems to come overnight, but it actually takes a spell.

And things happen, large and small.

* * * *

Swallow this!

Saturday night, during a downpour, I opened the steel door from the kitchen to the service patio. There’s an overhang under which runs the clothesline, a clothesline that draws no attention to itself most of the year.

But swallows like to sleep on that clothesline during the rains because the overhang keeps them nice and dry, and that would be okay if they didn’t crap on the floor. They are nasty guests.

On opening the steel door that night, I saw one swallow there, so I yelled at him. He ignored me even though he was only about three feet away.

Smart ass, I muttered to myself as I went for a broom. I whacked the clothesline with that broom, and he sped away, leaving white poop on the cement floor.

Of all the nerve.

* * * *

Like the goat Hefner

Later, I was in the downstairs bathroom, the big one, brushing my teeth, getting ready to lay my aging carcass on the king bed with my child bride, like the goat Hefner and his preposterous playmates.

Drip, drip, I heard, alarmingly. There’s a skylight over the tub, and it was a leak. Fortunately, it was falling into the tub so no harm done. I checked the two other downstairs skylights, one in the hall, one in the closet.

No leaks, but the season is fresh and young, as I once was.

I sealed those skylights with silicone in May, and what good did it do me? The other two will give out before September for sure. One cannot win against water.

* * * *

Making lakes

Depending on which way the wind blows, a good stiff rain can leave lakes on the floor of the downstairs terraza. Sometimes they are small ponds. Other times, the lake covers almost the entire terraza, a roofed terraza, mind you.

Later, it’s necessary to push it all out with a broom and squeegee.

* * * *

Blame is mine

The windows have never worked well, probably because I designed them and then hired a third-rate carpenter to build them. There’s no one to blame but me.

No matter how much silicone I squeeze along their edges, water still finds a way. Paper towels are the permanent, stopgap solution, it seems.

* * * *

Curtain mice

Years ago, I lived alone in a two-story rental closer to downtown. The summer rains would drive mice inside. I set out sticky paper nights, and mornings I would fling the little thrashing buggers over the property wall into a sewage creek.

I was an unkind man.

One night, lying in my bed reading a book, the drapes pulled shut nearby, I heard a scurrying sound as the curtain jiggled from bottom to top, as if something were climbing up from the floor on the far side.

He reached the curtain top, and peered over, and our eyes locked, yes, another dratted mouse! I shut my book, closed the door and slept that night in the upstairs bedroom. He was gone by morning. I think.

In that rental, on three occasions, I found rats in the toilet bowl. I just flushed them back where they came from. Don’t live next to a sewage creek.

A rat flushes easily, if you didn’t know.

* * * *

Poison and peaches

But that was then, and this is now.

Outside, the yard is going wild. Abel, the deadpan neighbor and lawnmower man, cuts the grass on Saturdays, and by Monday it needs it again. That’s just not right. We await the following Saturday anyway.

Snails come out and eat my poison. Flowers burst forth. The fruit trees muscle up. Soon, peaches will litter the grass, to rot and annoy me. I must wipe the glass-top table and web chairs every morning if I intend to sit out there.

* * * *

The good finale

It’s a superlative spot to sit, that stone patio, when the sky is partly blue, the temperature is 75 at noon with a gentle June breeze, and the hummingbirds and butterflies are making rounds to the riot of bougainvillea, banana tree blooms, nopal flowers and anything else with a hint of tasty color.

I sit there amid the grass under the big brown umbrella with a book which usually gets closed swiftly because one cannot read and sufficiently appreciate the cool, clear air one inhales in this damp summertime world . . .

. . . making me sleepy.

So much better than the dust of spring, no matter the leaks.

And there are no mice. It is a joy.

Hooray, Texas!

Were I to return to the United States of America, which I will never do, it would be straight to the heart of Texas.

Taxes are low. The economy is the best in the nation. (Bulletin to Obama: The two are connected.) And Rick Perry is governor, plus there are lots of sensible, down-to-earth people in the state legislature as this story illustrates.

The governor has signed legislation to protect Christmas and other religious holidays in public schools from legal attacks by atheist thugs.

Perry correctly pointed out that religious freedom does not mean freedom from religion, something the collectivist, joyless, ham-fisted speech police, who abound in America’s effete, elitist neighborhoods, will not grasp.

So, in Texas now, you can say Merry Christmas in schools, and nobody can say you cannot. You can also say Happy Hanukkah, Hare Krishna, Praise Allah and any other dang religious thing you wish, and this is how the Goddess wants it.

Let us hope that other states will follow the sage lead of Texas and push back against the tiny minority of sour-faced totalitarians who have grabbed far too much power* in what was once the greatest nation on earth.

“It’s a shame that a bill like this one I’m signing today is even required, but I’m glad we’re standing up for religious freedom in this state.”

– Gov. Rick Perry

* * * *

* Including slipping one of their own into the Oval Office.

June jive

Edging into mid-June, here’s what I see:

The green grass is growing, and it’s received its first cut.

Orchids are blooming on branches of the peach tree.

Bright-yellow calla lilies have burst from underground where they lurk in bulbs most of the year.

A big bush in the yard is erupting in white flowers that look like little roses, but they’re not little roses.

The air is cool, damp and encouraging, and I know that at this moment in Houston and New Orleans, where I once lived, the air is hot and oppressive.

* * * *

Detour!

Time to pound on Obama a bit. It makes my day:

The Ohio Department of Insurance reports that premiums will likely rise 88 percent next year, a direct result of Obamacare. Change you can believe in!

And who says the president does not bring people together?

Both right-winger Glenn Beck and left-winger Michael Moore call NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a hero.

Snowden is in Hong Kong hiding from Obama’s gun thugs. You can go here to sign a White House petition to pardon Snowden. I sure did.

* * * *

At just before 8 a.m., it looks like it will be another cool, moist, lovely day here on the mountaintop. It’s nice to be unemployed.

* * * *

(Lily art by Tanya Stollzhow.)

Attaboy!

Perhaps you’re one of the handful of people who have not heard about this admirable young man.

A collectivist, atheist group threatened a South Carolina high school with a lawsuit if any mention of Christianity took place at their graduation ceremony. The school, of course, knuckled under like the wusses they are even though the Constitution does not forbid prayer at a graduation.

But the valedictorian fooled them. He ripped the speech that had been cleared by sissy administrators, and then he simply recited the Lord’s Prayer to cheers.

This young man, had he been this age in 1938, would have gone on to fly B-17s over Germany because he knows that all lifestyles are not of equal value. He would have been a member of what came to be called The Greatest Generation.

Compare them to what’s running the nation now.

Sitting behind the boy are school administrators, a pathetic pack who, before this deviation from the schedule took place, were thinking of the next 5-year-old they could terrorize for chewing a Pop-Tart into the vague form of a pistol.

Charm of Havana

Alert readers will notice a new item in the right-side column of this website’s home page. It is a list of the most-visited Moon spots on any given day. Actually, it can change from minute to minute.

There is one item you will always see there because it’s eternally the most visited post: Havana hookers, etc.  It was written over a year ago, but it remains the most visited due to internet search pages.

I have long been aware of this phenomenon due to behind-the-curtain stats I can see, and you could not, but now it’s out in public.

The universal interest in sex and Cuba continues. Sex, well, you know. But the Cuba fascination never diminishes. Tropical island. The romantic Ché with his scrawny beard and cocky beret. “Equality.”

Yuck!

Yes, the loony leftist notion that we can all be equal. It’s just and right and fair, and must be obligatory, by Jove.

Something happened in 1989 that was a combination of good and bad. The Berlin Wall fell, and with it the remnants of the dark Soviet dream. This was good for people who lived under communist oppression.

Bad for us. We lost our focus. The Soviet threat that existed for 44 years kept the Free World united. When Soviet communism imploded, as communism inevitably does, we began brawling among ourselves.

This is blatantly obvious in the United States where everybody is so angry with everybody else that nobody is tending the flaming store.

We have not been this unfocused in a century. We were focused during World War I. Then we danced the Charleston for a decade till the Great Depression arrived. Both focused us but in very different ways.

Then we focused on World War II. Following that, the Soviets focused us.

Since 1989, however, we’ve been flying free, and it’s gotten ugly. We focus only on our electronic toys and the notion that everybody else must agree with us.

Turning to Cuba again, it’s incredible how easy it is to find people who praise Cuba, an oppressive communist dictatorship, one of the few still standing on its wobbly, inefficient, nonproductive legs.

True communist regimes have mostly vanished, but lots of people still think it’s possible to enforce equality by government edict.* Much of Europe has long operated on a lesser version** of this nefarious notion, and they’re now falling down a financial drain hole, and riots are happening.

Enforced equality does not so much help the poor as it punishes the successful. In time, the house falls, leaving all equal but not in a nice way.

We are living in bad times. Could someone please resurrect the Soviet Union? I know many would love that because they so love Cuba and “equality.”

Love of both sex and Cuba will always keep that post in the right-side column. Humans are deeply flawed, and it will always be so.

* * *  *

* Obama is one.

** Sweet-sounding Social Democracy.

(Note: Havana Hookers, etc., was the secondary of the two posts on our anniversary trip to Cuba, but the primary had no mention of Cuba or Havana in the headline or URL, so the secondary steals the show.)

Out back

There’s only one way to look out back, and that’s through the upstairs bathroom window, which is a small one.

When I want to open that window, mostly to liberate steam during my showers, I prop it up with a kitchen knife. The window swings up, my own design.

These people live out back. I propped open the window with the knife to take this shot this morning. If you click on it, you’ll get a bigger version that you can then click again to get an even closer peek.*

Sometimes that happens here, and sometimes not. I don’t know why. Technology often confuses me. And the picture is not as sharp as I’d like, but I’m too cheap to buy a fancy camera.

Yes, those folks live directly behind us. We hear tell there is bad blood between them and Abel, the deadpan neighbor who mows our grass. Abel lives on the other side of the sex motel, you may recall.

Having bad blood with neighbors is not advisable. I don’t have bad blood with any of my neighbors that I know about. Sometimes bad blood is one-sided, however, and you never know about it.

My new paisanos are good at harboring bad blood.

* * * *

* I’m assuming you’re a pack of Nosy Parkers.

Hello, feet!

For most of my life, living in warm, sultry climes from New Orleans to San Juan and other hot spots in between, I was well acquainted with my feet because I was often sans socks, and I wore sandals.

Then I moved 7,200 feet into the sky, and it’s quite cool up here. I wear socks all the time. The only moments during which my feet and I renew our acquaintance are the few seconds after the shower and before I don clean socks.

It is during that brief time that I tend to foot hygiene. FYI.

I sleep in socks. I am always in socks. I couldn’t pick my feet out of a lineup no matter how much you paid me. We have drifted apart, gone our separate ways. We have different interests.

They might even have voted for Obama, the rascals.

But something odd has happened recently. We are in the waning days of the dry, “hot” season. I put hot in quotes because anyone in New Orleans would scoff at what we deem hot here atop the mountain.

In the late afternoon and early evening, my feet cry to be free. So I doff my socks for a few hours, and there they are. Friends from distant days, my feet.

But I know this re-acquaintance will be short-lived. We’ve been getting showers recently, not the full-blown, cooling dailies of the rainy season, but it won’t be long till my feet must be sent back into sock exile.

I will miss them.

* * * *

(Note: Yes, the photo is a sock. I spared you a shot of feet, which are almost always unsightly, except occasionally on a woman.)

Dreams of June

I celebrated June First, after a fashion, by lying in the hammock for an hour midday. It was sweet and something I rarely do anymore.

My child bride was putting final touches on pastries, then bathing and dressing in preparation for Saturday’s bake sale out of her basket on the plaza.

The Kindle slowly slid from my fingers, and fell to my chest.

* * * *

As I opened the glass door to the shower stall, a raven flew in through the open window. Shocked, I screamed: Get out!

Why?  he shot back, shocking me even more.

Regaining a touch of composure, I asked: You can talk?

Sure, he responded. We are the brightest of birds, something even you humans know. We and pigs have high IQs, which you humans find disturbing.

That is why you associate us with death and pigs with filth. It makes you feel better about yourselves. It’s the pigpens that are dirty, not the pigs trapped inside. It’s all your fault. Set pigs free. They are our fast friends.

Forget pigs, I said. Why did you fly into my bathroom?

I saw the vapor, and I have never enjoyed a sauna. This is my chance, I told myself, so here I am, standing on your ceramic sink, the raven replied.

Stepping to the black bath mat, and toweling off, I told him: Go ahead.  And he did. He sailed down to the drain hole and stood there in the warm dwindling mist, ruffled and sighed. I sat naked on the toilet seat, watching.

The raven did not overstay his welcome. After a few moments, he flapped back out the window through which he had entered, uninvited.

* * * *

I‘m ready,  I heard my bride bellow from below. I opened my eyes, swung out of the hammock, put on my Crocs and headed downstairs. It was a beautiful first day of June. And a raven flew overhead without saying anything at all.

Thuggery and loons

June is almost here, and that means graduation.

The Los Angeles Times reports that only four conservatives were included in those  commencement speakers invited by 150 colleges and universities.

Cory Booker, the collectivist mayor of Newark, New Jersey, received more invitations than all elected Republicans combined.

A major reason for this shocking disparity of opinion is that conservatives are routinely shouted down and otherwise disrupted.

Diversity only applies to skin tone, never opinions.

There was no mention of how many Mohammedans received speaking invitations from the Multicultural Marxists who control U.S. education.

Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service hunts down the regime’s political opponents, those who do not “think correctly.”

Welcome to Obama’s America.

* * * *

Mexican efficiency

There are many advantages to living south of the Rio Bravo. Costs and taxes are lower. People are more polite. It’s safer and freer. The list is very long.

My child bride renewed her passport today in the state capital. We arrived at the office just before 10 a.m. with all the necessary paperwork. We walked out two hours later with the new passport in hand.

It’s good for ten years and cost the peso equivalent of about 160 U.S. bucks. Mine does not expire till February 2016, and my U.S. passport expires three months later. Renewing the former will be far easier than renewing the latter.

It’s incredible that as Mexico improves, the United States just keeps getting worse. Who would have ever imagined that?

* * * *

American crackpots

A Maryland school (unionized no doubt) is offering psychological counseling to its students who might have been traumatized by a lad who chewed a Pop-Tart into the vague shape of a pistol.

Reason magazine characterized the situation as something conjured up by “madmen,” and it’s not the television show it’s referring to.

The National Rifle Association has given the Pop-Tart-munching kid a lifetime membership. I used to be neutral on the NRA, but now I’m a fan.

You should be able to chew a Pop-Tart into any shape that suits you. It’s a right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Cinderella

My child bride was raised by an evil stepmother, sorta like Cinderella.

This evil stepmother recently handed over a few old photos, and here is a shot from 1968. The slanty-eyed munchkin on the right grew up and married me 34 years later, fulfilling another Cinderella requirement at an advanced age.

She found her Prince Charming.

The miscreant on the left, one year older, is a sister named Maria, and the less said about her the better. The photo was shot in the farming town of Los Reyes de Salgado where my child bride grew up in the State of Michoacán.

She is 7 in this picture, and I was six years out of high school.

Looking around

The Hacienda is a rectangle, so it has four sides. It is two long lots that abut, and a brick wall encloses the whole shebang.

It runs lengthwise from the street out front to the street out back, making it a block deep. The house itself sits in the southwest corner.

Were we to start over, we would do everything differently.

Our task today is to gaze upon the neighbors. In the decade we’ve lived here, things have changed, people have come and gone, often in a hearse.

* * * *

Recycling cabbie

Out back, only visible from one small window in the upstairs bathroom, we look into a large lot across the street where some poor people live. Or perhaps not so poor because they recently installed a wall around their place too.

But we can see over it.

They used to have a brick kiln, and that was their business, making bricks. But it polluted, and City Hall made them stop. Good.

The guy now drives a taxi part-time, and just this morning I noticed a mountain of plastic bottles over there.

Now they’re recyclers?

* * * *

Sex motel and Abel

The sex motel on the left sits on what was once a vacant lot of grass. A cow grazed there, and swarms of houseflies flew.

I like the sex motel. It’s quiet, and it provides us free security. Sometimes people leave the curtains open. That gives both me and them a thrill.

Before the motel, we could see across the lot to the house beyond. That’s where Abel lives. He’s the deadpan man who mows our grass in summertime. His wife, who seems nice, and a couple of kids live there too.

There’s also an older guy who’s the dad of either Abel or his wife. Don’t know which. We don’t socialize. We don’t even chitchat. But the older guy is quite friendly, and we wave and smile on passing. We live in different worlds.

I remember before the sex motel went up. Behind Abel’s house, which I cannot see any longer, there was an outhouse. At night, I would stand on our upstairs terraza and peek. Often there was a fire blazing beneath a huge iron kettle. Maybe there were human body parts, but probably not.

* * * *

Neighbors, known and unknown

Across the street out front are two houses a little to the left because our lots don’t align. One is occupied. The other is not. Both are nice houses.

The one farther to the left is occupied by a man about my age and his wife. His hair is silver, like mine, and he’s very friendly, unlike me. He’s the only one of my neighbors I’ve actually conversed with. Alas, his wife is a grump.

He owns a small clothing store in the center of town.

The other house is unoccupied because it has been under construction for three or more years, which is typical here. Home construction can be an ongoing process that one does as money becomes available.

That two-story home is quite elegant. We have not met the owners, but once they were standing on the roof, looking in our direction as I pulled the Honda into our property. They waved, and I did the same from our yard.

A pricey car was parked outside, so the neighbors will resent them.

* * * *

Cranks and beasts

Continuing to the Hacienda’s right side, we have the menagerie. Pigs, goats, dogs, cats, chickens, a horse, you can hardly name a farm beast that doesn’t live there or hasn’t lived there. There’s a John Deere tractor too.

A decade back, a nice older couple lived there with a younger couple, one of whom was the offspring of the older couple. Plus, there were little kids, grandchildren to the older couple.

One day, the old woman died. A couple of years later, the old man followed her into the mists, the passing of generations. The mother, who is about 35 now, is a sourpuss. Her husband is better, but not by much.

I’ll give him a tip of the hat, so to speak, on passing. I just ignore her on the street, and she ignores me. A few years ago we’d hear a toddler screaming bloody murder on a regular basis, but they hasn’t happened lately.

The kid’s probably buried under the pig pen.

And that concludes the looking around.

My favorite neighbors are the mountains.

The end of spring

She returned to the bedroom in the darkness and said, There’s a big electrical storm.  But she spoke in Spanish. It was about 3 a.m.

She had looked out the bathroom window. I could see nothing because the bedroom drapes were shut, but I heard thunder.

Shortly after, it began to rain.  With spirit.  And the wind blew.

Not last night, but the night before.

Around 9 a.m. yesterday, I was walking around the neighborhood plaza. Stones and soil littered the street, stuff that had sat in peace for months against a curb during the dry time until whacked by that storm.

A metal frame covered by a blue plastic tarp, where someone recently had sold beer or tacos or trinkets, had blown over.

And it was cool. One downside to our spring is that it gets too warm on the mountaintop. It’s most noticeable in late afternoon and early evening.

Back at the Hacienda, walking through the downstairs terraza, I smelled dirt.  It was wet roof tile, formed out of clay, a distinctive smell of dampness.

That afternoon, yesterday, it rained again, gently and lasting longer. The dry grass rejoiced, as did every other speck of plant life within our property walls.

Is this the start of the rainy season? It could be bogus because such things happen, but it might also be true. If so, our whole world changes overnight from death and dust to lively green and damp.

And there will be no more unpleasantly warm afternoons. It will stay cool till next springtime. And it will be very sweet. Change is good.

* * * *

(Note: Spring is the worst season here. Ain’t that something?)

Underdogs and overdogs

The overdogs — free Israelis

The underdogs — self-oppressed Mohammedans

It feels good to root for the underdog, which is why so many people do it. It’s assumed the underdog is under  through no fault of his own. It’s fate, lousy luck, and it just ain’t right.

Conversely, we think badly of the overdog, the guy at the top, the high school football star, the prom queen. We’re full of envy, and hate them for it. They were born attractive and talented, and it just ain’t fair.

Almost all anti-Americanism in the world today stems from this human trait. Same goes for the ballooning anti-Semitism that we see all around us.

More and more, especially among the elites, the opinion-swayers in the Anglophone world and Western Europe, America is bad-mouthed, and so is Israel. The poor, oppressed Mohammedans have our hearts.

Truth is that America and its natural ally Israel are overdogs due to their cultures of democracy, capitalism and liberty. The Mohammedans are underdogs because their miserable, backward cultures are precisely the contrary.

Above are photos of Israeli women and Mohammedan women. In which world would you want to live? The beautiful Israeli babes are free. The Mohammedan women are covered, literally and figuratively.

Maybe they are beautiful too. There’s no way to know. Were they to show us, they might get thrashed or stoned.

The American government in recent decades, no matter the political party in charge, has strived to bring democracy and freedom to the Mohammedan world. The intention is nice, but it has not worked, and it never will.

Might as well try to teach independence to an ant or valor to a sheep. The miserable Mohammedan culture will always thwart such efforts.

One of The Moon’s objectives is to lead you into the light. Here’s a perceptive column by Dr. Michael Youssef, an Egyptian cleric living in Atlanta.

Birds, books and hogs

I awoke alone this morning because my child bride is visiting a brother in Querétaro. He’s making a long recovery from encephalitis.

It was still black out because I invariably bound from the morning bed in darkness, around 6 or so. And perhaps due to being alone this dawn, I noticed the birds more than usual.

Birds, of course, with some rare exceptions, do not fly at night. They sit on a limb or in a nest. If they flew at night they would collide, and dawn would reveal little unconscious birds everywhere.

And they awaken very noisily. All birds, both male and female, greet the dawn like women. They start talking nonstop. It’s a gabfest.

* * * *

Many people store reading material next to the plumbing throne, and I am no exception. But there is something special about my situation.

There are two books next to my seat, resting on a little wooden table, and they have been there for ten years.

One is The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice, and the other is 501 Spanish Verbs.

A decade ago my Spanish was considerably shakier than it is now, so I thumbed these two books while doing my morning business.

I really don’t need these books anymore, but they still sit on the table, and I still flip through them, though rarely finding anything new.

It’s time for a change. Perhaps magazines. I subscribe to two magazines, National Review and Commentary, but I get them on my Kindle. I do all reading on the Kindle, so it appears I will continue doing what I now do:

Looking at the sink. It’s a colorful painted ceramic.

I am open to suggestions for alternatives.

* * * *

I pick up my child bride this afternoon at the bus station in the state capital, so tomorrow I’ll have other stuff on my mind.

* * * *

As I write this, shortly after 7:30 a.m., a hog next door is screaming bloody murder. At times I feel like Old McDonald.

Tres aguas

Every year about now, in bone-dry Springtime, we drain the cistern, drop a ladder into its heart and scrub the fine layer of soil from the floor.

Then we reopen the valve to the municipal pipe that sits beneath the cobblestone street out back, and in flows spring water from under the Sierra.

As it fills, I stand above this hole and think, my, that looks sweet. I’d like to take a dip. The water is clear and cool. I never do, of course.

* * * *

Half a century ago, both before and after I could legally pilot a Ford, I’d head through forests and fields of cotton, corn and peanuts till I got to the spot where the swimming hole was hidden just off the road of red clay.

It was southwest Georgia in the heat of summertime.

The hole was a fair size and spring-fed. There was a thick rope someone had tied to an overhanging tree branch, and you could swing from a high bank to plunge into the hole’s deepest part, which was about 15 feet of water.

That water was clear as mountain air and cold all year. Even though it was 15 feet down at the deepest part, you could easily see the floor.

Nothing else was there. No Stop-n-Robs, no gas stations, nobody rented inner tubes. There was nothing, and usually nobody. Just trees, birds and clear, cold water. You had the place to yourself, and it was wonderful.

* * * *

In January 1997, I swallowed LSD and psilocybin a time or two, trying to set myself straight at last, and it worked. I was 52, and it was way overdue.

Later that year, I learned a meditation technique. You need a drumbeat. A cassette will do. Close your eyes and imagine a hole into the earth. It can be any size because you aren’t actually squeezing in.

I usually found a bunny burrow near a boulder in my mind, so I slipped inside to the steady drumbeat sound. And I descended through a winding dirt tunnel. At times there were doors that had to be opened, so I did.

Finally, the tunnel broke out into a wonderful world, and before me was a small lagoon surrounded by tropical trees and soaring artwork birds.

I would step into the water and swim solitary until the drumbeat accelerated, which was the signal to return. At that point, it was necessary to leave the lagoon and rush up the rabbit hole, back into what we call reality.

Wacky world

Hardly a morning dawns that I don’t look toward the sunrise coming over the Sierra and give a gracious gracias  to the unseen Goddess that I don’t live in what has become of the once-great United States of America.

It’s a nation sadly engulfed in silliness, therapies, irrationality, historical ignorance, organic  grub, radicalism, red ink and self-obsessed people.

Now hear this: The Centers for Disease Control has declared that up to 20 percent of American youth may be mentally ill.

The most common problems are anxiety and depression. Perhaps for not getting an invitation to the prom. America spends, or so it is reported, about $247 billion yearly to diagnose and treat these “illnesses.”

More emotionally stable societies (like the one I blessedly live in) would see this alleged insanity as hormones and . . . kids growing up.

* * * *

(Art by Kevin Rooke.)

The wisdom of Winston

Winston Churchill was one of the greatest and wisest men of the 20th century, a master of war and politics.

A passionate defender of liberty.

He was fortunate to perish before the mind poison called Political Correctness warped Western culture, imperiling all that is positive and civilized.

One of the countless evil things Political Correctness embraces is the Mohammedan religion. It is embraced for no other reason than it is anti-Christian and anti-Jewish.

Political Correctness is also anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-white, against most people and things that brought us modernity, comfort, health and liberty.

In 1899, Churchill published his book The River War, an account of British and Mohammedan fighting in the Sudan.

Here are some prescient excerpts:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine.*

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith . . . and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

And over a century later, little has changed. What Churchill didn’t mention was the Mohammedan’s preferred government: “royalty” or religious fanaticism.

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* Mention this particular nasty detail to a PC person, and watch the subject quickly change.

(Thanks to Canadian reader Bob for bringing this to my attention, and you’re welcome for my bringing it to yours.)

Obama unraveling

These are giddy days for us Obama opponents.

1. His IRS hunts down people with “unacceptable” political opinions. Think Joseph McCarthy.

2. His Justice Department grabs phone logs from The Associated Press. Think Joseph Goebbels.

3. His minions downplaying Benghazi, and deflecting blame from terrorists just months before last year’s election. Think disgusting.

4. A report this week indicates health-care premiums could go up by 400 percent* under ObamaCare. Think incompetence.

5. The White House is still foot-dragging on filling Cabinet posts in the second term. But who needs advisers when you’re king** and rule by decree?

One wonders if those who voted for Obama because he’s “black”*** and white America has done so many dreadful things****  remain happy?

* * * *

* Don’t worry. The average will be just 100 percent.

** Meanwhile, the queen is shaking her booty on late-night comedy TV or going glam at the Oscars.

*** He isn’t. He’s bi.

**** It hasn’t. Quite the contrary.