A cool train. There is something misisng in 21st century life; it has no substance. Steam trains prevailed into the early 20th century, and something is missing in their passing. They were noisy, dirty, but very impressive. Their passage through your little valley was an event. Any town of any size had train service. Until, in the mid-20th century, we decided in the U.S. that the automobile was superior to the train, and to build highways instead of maintain railways. Now we miss them badly. Mr. Obama want's to reinvigorate the rail system, and provide commuter and long distance rail services to most cities. I wish him luck.

See, old men can still rock. Lately, though, I feel like Bozo in his rocket ship, heading for a big crash. My wife's mom is 85, and we put her in the nursing home on Monday, for more "rehab". She doesn't know fact from fiction, and after hip surgery, is fighting them on getting her up and walking again. This has been going on for six months, since a "stroke" or siezure, in February, and we are both burned out on it. That's life in the "sandwich" generation, I guess.

On a more cheery note, I've been listening again to Robin Trower. Originally with Procol Harum, in 60's and 70's, he has had a strong solo career - in my opinion, about the best blues/rock guitar player from that era still left. They used to rap him for doing Hendrix rip-offs, but his style has evolved into his own over the years. Listening to an album he did with Jack Bruce (Cream bass player and singer), from 1989. About 15 strong cuts. Also, Robin's 2009 solo album, which is very nice.

I guess I need to download some more pictures for my Blog. This one's cute, though. Didn't know Imperial Japan liked Mickey Mouse. My wife's family is driving us nuts. Her Mom is 85, and having memory and physical problems, and has been living with us (joy). We have had a constant parade of her relatives in town all summer, all wanting to see and "help" mom, but basically just adding another layer of crap to deal with. Then they call from out of town, and try to armchair quarterback mom's care. I am ready to book a flight to Alaska, and rent a cabin indefinitely. I never see my family, including my parents and two brothers, who living out of state. Seems like our whole life centers around her mother, and her relatives. Sick of it. This blog entry is getting depressing, so will now discontinue this line of commentary.

I felt bad for Michael Jackson, although the media hype and hysteria is sickening. Michael was about 12 years younger than me, but he as been a star most of my adult life, from the Jackson 5, in early 60's, to the King of Pop in 80's, then persecuted ex-superstar in 90's and 2000's. Despite his strangeness in recent years, I doubt very much he was a pedophile, just a gentle, tortured soul who lived a highly artificial life. If you will recall, in the 80's, he was a promoter of children's rights and welfare, on a world wide scale, a very uplifting guy. It's a shame he was dragged through the mud of legal charges - he never fit the profile of a pedophile, in my opinion, who are more likely to be fat, 60 year old men. He may have been gay, but I think his love for children was genuine. It was touching to see his oldest daughter at the memorial, speaking up for her father. This didn't look like the kid of a pervert. So, I hope he will be remembered for the talented and gentle soul that I think he was. Enough said.

The new, and the old. First one, of course, is the young Dr. Spock. The second is the old Bob Dylan. Saw the new Star Trek last weekend, and it was very good. To my surprise, they honored the original characters, and the young actors tipped their hats to the old guys. The obviously better CGI-enhanced special effects were excellent, and didn't overwhelm the story. A good deal of humor as well. I've been listening to boots of recent Dylan concerts. Bob has a crack band these days - loose, but very good, and his is excentric as ever. Does many of the same songs, show to show, but always a slightly different approach. His voice sounds like gravel in a blender, most of the time, these days, but then he is the aging bluesman, isn't he?

Havein trouble coming up with new pics for the ol blog again -story of my pathetic life. Nothing really to say today, except tired of all the wrangling about nonsense. On the Today show, which I am pathetic enough to watch while getting ready for work, they spent 15 minutes gabbing about and interviewing a 10 year old boy who fell on his bike, and somehow managed to impail himself on the brake lever. All you have to do to get on national TV these days, and be interviewed by Matt Lauer, is to be a stupid jackass. Lauer didn't spend much longer with Pres. Obama. Oh well.
These talk shows are nothing but fluff these days-all gossip, and endless plugs for their networks' other shows - gets very tiresome. My wife likes the HGTV home improvement/decorating shows, but after about an hour of that, I'm ready to impale myself on anything at hand. An observation; just because your a gay male doesn't mean you have good taste in decorating - HGTV is proof positive.

I obviously have a talent for juxtaposing things that are totally unrelated, although nothing in this world is totally unrelated, is it? Everything is part of a continuum, although probably not pre-determined. The Stones were my band, in the late 60's; gritty, tough-sounding lads from London, who sneered at the post-war world. The guy in the other picture was also gritty and tough, but also totally insane, bitter, and ruthless. In no way do I hold him up as a model of anything good, other than style. Therein comes the lesson of the day; beware of those who put style over substance, as in most the "modern" pop music.

Long time, no post. I'm listening to this old Johnny Cash album (1960), as I post. Sounds good, even 49 years later. I miss JC every day. Even though I'm more of a rock/pop/jazz/soul kind of guy, I still appreciate good old fashioned country, and JC was unique; a very soulful guy. The Man in Black. Hope the world doesn't forget him.

Long time since last post! Doesn't matter, since I'm probably the only poor soul that reads it anyways. Pic from new Star Trek movie. My son, Mark saw it the first day out, and raved about it. Must see! Other pic is Bob Dylan, obviously, from a recent tour date in Europe. Been listening to a good live boot from some Amsterdam shows in March - gets me going on Bob again. Good, loose but very professional band, and Bob plays guitar, and a lot of organ on it - sometimes sloppy, but funky. His voice sounds increasingly like an aging Lightnin Hopkins, but appropriate, since he's 67 now. Older than me, by about 5 years. Gives me inspiration that i can still do things that matter. Never give up, never surrender!

I like cheesy Sci-Fi. Haven't read this one yet, but have read some of the Fred Saberhagen Berserker stories - good, basic sci-fi, not horror or fantasy. Space ships, ray guns, and mechanized aliens bent on destroying the human race - great stuff!

I've mostly been reading Larry McMurtrey Westerns recently, and just finished Streets of Laredo, hence the video cover above. Lots of apaches, comanchees, gruesome murders, scalping, shooting, suffering and dying - Ah, the Old West!

I didn't remember to do an Easter post, so here it is, a little bit late. Thought the cartoon was too funny to pass up. We had a quiet Easter, the wife and I - first one in a long time, without some family around. Mom (Sue's mom) is in South Carolina, with her son and family, and daughter and family (with grandgirls), are in North Carolina. Son, Mark, and wife Betsy are in same area as us, but his interest was limited to phone call to his mother, Saturday. In case this sounds too pathetic, it was actually nice, not having to cook, or deal with any people all day. We got up late, read paper, took a long walk. I did a few delayed chores, then we washed up and went to Dutch Valley (favorite Greek diner - go figure), for a big feed. I had turkey dinner, Sue had prime rib dinner. We fit right in with all the older regulars there - we qualify as the "young old" these days.

The wife and I might go to Disney World tomarrow, or maybe next day. Of course, it will be busy as heck, with spring breakers. Probably will go to Epcot; Magic Kingdom gets too zooie - too many stroller people. We don't care if all we do is stroll around, get on anything at Epcot that has a shortish line. Must go to fastpass at Soarin', of course, immediately upon getting through the turnstile. If you don't get a fastpass by about 10 AM, you won't get into Soarin til after 4 PM, and we like to go home early. Of course, must eat at Mexico (outside), and have a Margarita (maybe). We have annual passes, so no sweat if we don't do much there. Wife has the week off, from her job as Guidance Counselor at an elementary school. She doesn't need to see a lot of kids, on her time off.

I recently decided to sing up for "Twitter", since all the media wonks are raving about it. Maybe I don't get it, but so far, it looks like a very trivial waste of time. It doesn't seem to have any communities of interest, just allows you to search by keyword, which is pretty crude. Maybe I am misisng something. Don't see how it's any better than any other instant messaging system. We will see. Maybe if I link this blog up to Twitter, someone (besides BillBee), might actually read it!

This is a lonely picture, indeed. It's from some asian bbs - all pictures of trains, or train tracks, train stations, mostly looks like china, or Japan. Wonderous thing, this web, with such specialized little nooks and crannies to explore. I have always been fascinated by trains, especially old steam locomotives. Goes along with my love of the old west (American). We americans have a fundamental ambivalence about "the west" - It forms a large part of our cultural mythology of rugged individualism, and boundless adventure, but it was also an era of great violence, hatred and misery - an adventure that came at a great price. The frontier was effectively closed, when the last spike was driven on the transcontinental railway, in the 1870's. While there were still some very wild places out there, even into the early 20th century, we were well on our way to becoming the heavily industrialized, hyperdeveloped country we are now. We still treasure our myth of the wide open spaces, but they are dwindling fast. Still, you can get pretty lost in west, which I plan to do.

Some cool pics, having nothing to do with each other, or anything. It's wierd that these huge, metal behemoths, battle ships, were the state-of-the-art for about 30 years, and then totally disappeared, as soon as they figured out how to drop a bomb from an airplane. They proved totally defenceless against air power. Now airplanes are pretty much obsolete, given the accuracy of ground to air missles. Oh well. I read a sci-fi book recently about Martians invading (an update of War of the Worlds), in which the Martians sent a power disrupter in advance of their invasion fleet, which fried all computers and modern electronics on the planet, all at once. This technology exists now, although perhaps on a more narrow scale. This rendered obsolete all our advanced weapons. In a twist on the original HG WElls book, the earthlings finally were able to bring down the aliens, by introducing them to antibiotics. (They were germ-based lifeforms, very slimy and disgusting!). In the original, I believe, the Martians caught cold, and died.

I'm not sure what relevance the Nazi pic has, except it's a cool pic. No, I am not a Nazi sympathizer - quite the opposite- though I do find that period of history a fascinating study in social pathology. Also, the uniforms and weapons are cool. The 49 Ford looks like one my Dad had in the early 60's. It was the car I mainly learned to drive on. With a non-syncromesh transmission, and 3 on the column, it was quite a job. My first day out driving alone, I got stopped for driving too slow. Then I got stuck on a one-way bridge, and didn't know what to do. Foretunately, in this days, the cops were a little more patient, and just gave me a warning to try to keep my wits about me a bit more.

My 7 yo granddaughter, Meghan, built this snowman on Monday, when they had a rare snowstorm in Raliegh. Greatest snowman I ever saw.

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot, according to Al Franken. Where does this guy come off squabbling with our elected officials, and why do they dignify him with their attention? The guy is a media wonk, and uneducated slob, with a big mouth, who has no official standing of any kind. I'm sick of people giving so much credence to these media people, especially the right-wing types, who think they can dictate what goes on in this country. They had their chance, for 8 years, an only succeeded in piling on massive debt, getting us stuck in two foreign wars/occupations, and ruining the economy. It's time to do our thing, and ignore the negative big mouths. Guess I told them.

I just got done writing a nice long blog entry, only to have Blogspot recent it because of an "edit conflict". It wasn't off-color, or anything - this is a nice, family-friendly blog. No profanity, nudity, or other dirty stuff. Mostly about music, family, my personal observations, musings, political rants, and the occassional sci-fi entry. Oh well. Now I don't have the energy to write anything. But at least I got my mandatory occassional blog entry in.

Life goes on, of course (or maybe not of course). Nothing is certain, in life, except death. (That's cheerful). Try to have as good a time as you can have, each day, and don't let anyone tell you how to live. If you can still appreciate the Stones, after 40 years, you can't be too dead in the head yet. I'm a die-hard. Also, a little slow on the up-take. I re-discovered Neil Young recently, after ignoring him for 30 years. Oh well.

I was always a big Stones fan. Back in "the day", in college, I had an old record player; vinyl covered, two-tone paper case, with stack-it-up record changer, hinged lid. It was old even at that time, mid 60's. I got The Rolling Stones Now, in brilliant Mono. Figured I didn't need stereo, for rock and roll. It was their second album in the states, and all Chuck Berry, and memphis soul covers. I played that til it wore out, and drove my roomate nuts.

I'm not sure what the theme of this pathetic post might be. That looks sorta like me, playing my old upright pianer, in the olden days. The pianer is long gone, gotten rid of in one of my wife's clean-out the junk campaigns. Yes, it had a musty odor, the finish was mottled and cracked (like mine), but It had a great, deep tone, and I could play my boogie woogie on it til the cows came home (or the Flamingos). The Jimi Hendrix cover I just thought was cool. Axis was a great influence on me, got me through my second year in the Navy. I have a bad attitude today, not given to working much. See you next week, maybe.