I have tried to resist the urge to get up on a soapbox on the subject of Treyvon Martins murder.  I don't understand Florida law for one thing, how can an unarmed person make a life threatening action against a person armed with a pistol?  How can it be possible to… Read full post »

When you are twelve years old and pudgy, you know it.  When you are those things and not well off it amplifies the others.  At twelve I was about five feet six inches tall and shall we say, plump?  I was not what you would call popular.  As a matter of… Read full post »

Waking up with your arms and hands and fingers and wrists singing, vibrating, aching, and numb is a hell of a life.  Couple that with the vague and somewhat sketchy diagnosis profile and you might get where I'm at these days.  Not so long ago focus on other aspects of life… Read full post »

Forgive my hubris but, really?  Is this the best that Republicans can come up with?  I read a lot of unmitigated crap that is printed in the name of politics and I gotta tell ya that it is so damn dumb that I don't understand how anyone could believe it.  I… Read full post »

Yesterday I read and commented on a piece that was pretty humorous in a not to humorous vein.  I am sorry that I did so without at least giving the reasons for it.  Many of you may recall my previous pieces on St Patrick's day and are at this point clicking… Read full post »

I won't belabor the facts of Peter Bergmans life, you can find them anywhere if you are interested.  He was to me that shining light that told me that it was okay to love the humor in the absurd world of the sixties and seventies.  He and his co-horts were responsible… Read full post »

I wasn't always obsessed with my mortality, for many, many years it lay dormant with no elevation to the conscious plain at all.  The past ten years has changed all of that though.  Mortality in general and on a personal level enters my thoughts with great regularity now.  Experiencing… Read full post »

They say these things come in threes.  One of the seventies best guitarists, Ronnie Montrose, died yesterday from prostate cancer.  He is best known for his work with Montrose, a proto metal band that featured Sammy Hagar and Bill Church along with drummer Denny Carmassi.

The band was most… Read full post »

Wednesday was the first major severe weather outbreak and right now we are in the early stages of number two.  /a half hour ago we missed a super cell that dropped quarter sized hail on the town 2 miles south of me, Elkville IL.  Just after it passed us here it… Read full post »

Wednesday was the first major severe weather outbreak and right now we are in the early stages of number two.  /a half hour ago we missed a super cell that dropped quarter sized hail on the town 2 miles south of me, Elkville IL.  Just after it passed us here it… Read full post »

When some people die it leaves a mark even when they aren't family or even someone you've met.  Davy Jones, one of the Monkees was found dead at his Florida home Wednesday from an apparent heart attack.

Jones was best known for his turn as Davy in the pre fab four… Read full post »

I was awakened this morning at about three thirty a.m. by the screech of a tornado warning.  Always nice to have a memorable event on Leap Day*.  We were expecting a round of thunderstorms but the NWS showed only a slight risk of severe weather so unlike most storms I figured… Read full post »

I've been gone a lot lately, I've been reading, and ghost rating.  This is due to what my doctors have been calling arthritis.  Typing, hell, sitting in my chair has been exquisite pain for more than three weeks.  They gave me naproxen and told me it would help but two days… Read full post »

Okay, I know that it isn't possible for me to have been the only one who remembered this.  It did make the Top Forty.

I have pretty much resigned myself to a world wide bloodbath.  The political rhetoric is growing inane and insane.  No one seems to see the danger in the situation other than to try and exploit it for fiscal or political gain.  Talking heads shout disaster and war,… Read full post »

The brou ha ha over contraceptives has left me confused and in need of answers to some religious freedom questions of the power people in the GOP.  Now I've read statements from Superpac managers to seantors like Mitch McConnell about how requiring religious institutions that act as employers to… Read full post »

God knows I've hidden little about my marriage on here.  The  highs and lows and disasters have been faithfully blogged at length.  Many people think that I am not a devotee of the institution and that is really not the truth.

I married a beautiful woman.  Not because she was beau… Read full post »

I know, I know, He's an old man trying to be young.  I know that this means little to people who are not over fifty either.  Still I wish that I could make people see this significance of this performance in the light of death that glows ever more brightly around… Read full post »

By now I'm sure that there are no people left who haven't heard that Whitney Huston, age 48, was found unresponsive in her Beverly Hills Hotel suite yesterday afternoon.  She was long a user of drugs and while I do not know if drugs were the direct cause of her much… Read full post »

Some may have noticed, been concerned, ovejoyed that my presence is diminished.  The reason is a bout of rheumatoid arthritis, newly diagnosed that has left me feeling as though my joints are full of cayenne pepper and ground glass.  There are many topics that I wanted to weigh in on  … Read full post »

When we were kids we often went for Sunday drives.  They weren't trips with destinations, sometimes we just kept driving on back roads as long as we could.  We saw rivers and creeks and woods and lakes with fish jumping.  We saw the abandoned farm houses and barns left over from… Read full post »

Don Cornelius was discovered dead in his California apartment of an apparently self inflicted gunshot wound.  I should go on to say that he was the creator and host of America's first nationally syndicated first run television program that brought style and soul music to the nation for the first… Read full post »

 When I was growing up in the late sixties, there was an almost national obsession with a pass time known as "cruising" or "riding around".  Sounds pretty simple doesn't it?  Well, it was a very complicated and ritualistic way to spend a Friday and/or Saturday night if yo… Read full post »

I've been at this writing thing much longer than my arrival to Open Salon might lead you to believe.  Even though I have poor spelling and atrocious grammer and punctuation skills I've been doing this since the 1960's.  Okay , granted that in the aforementioned 60's I was a child and… Read full post »