Rhodies in my garden. No extra charge for the bee.

Enjoy the day.

Chives in our garden at Cape Cod.

1. I had a nice drive across the country from Peoria to Cape Cod, 1250 miles of America. I drove the less-traveled road as much as practical, and saw some beautiful scenery. I left Friday afternoon, and barely stayed ahead of the weather. In Decatur, Indiana, after dark, there were traffic lights out due to windstorms, but I wasn’t delayed much. For the first time going east I drove up the Allegheny River valley. My Honey called me and said she wanted to go to a stamp convention in Sprinfield (Mass.), so we met up there, getting together a day earlier than anticipated.

2. Got to Cape Cod for the east coast heat wave. It was warm, but, as usual, the breeze across our porch made the house fairly cool. Weather has cooled off a bit now.

3. Since arriving I’ve been doing work in the garden, which is in really nice shape. I think our trip up here in April, when I did a good bit of fertilizing and weeding, did some good. The rhodies are in bloom, as well as peonies, chives, foxglove, and other flowers I’ve forgotten the name of. Yesterday I made up the hanging baskets. I’ve given up on the pre-made plastic hanging arrangements we used to use. I had bought ten black metal baskets (the kind you put the straw “bowl” in), over the last couple of years, so now we have no plastic hanging baskets. Now they just have to grow into lushness.

4. I’ve been keeping up with the weather reports from the midwest. Some of the nasty stuff happened, or is happening, quite close to where I was. Some very sad stuff.

5. Apparently, during my travels, the Congress has decided to do what it usually does about major issues: nothing. I don’t entirely blame the Republicans, there are certainly Democrats whose parochial interests trump the country’s needs, or, for that matter, the needs of the earth. I hope this fall’s elections increase the Democrats in both houses of Congress, and put Mr. Obama in the White House. Then, there may be a bare chance some good things will occur (although I ain’t holding my breath).

6. Oh, the car. I got 50.6mpg for the trip. Just think what would happen if I tried “hyper-miling!”

I’m setting sail today for Cape Cod. Not a particularly early start, but that’s okay. A short driving day today will mean I stop overnight twice, and thus don’t do marathon driving days (with one overnight stop).

Back online soon.

Boots seen in Bishop Hill, Illinois.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all the marching off to war were really done?

Riled up Sky, Galena, originally uploaded by twoblueday.

 

My brother and I took a trip to Galena, Illinois, this past weekend. We stayed overnight, and had a great time. We ate at a tasty restaurant, heard some good music, and relaxed. Galena is an old lead mining town. The mines played out, but the town is a great tourist destination. It’s hilly there, and a couple of streets are interrupted by long, steep flights of stairs to the upper bluff. Huffing Puffing Full Sweat stairs.

Met up with two high schoomates I handn’t seen in years. Sharon had married yet another classmate, but was widowed a few years ago. Craig had been all over the place, recently living in Australia as a permanent resident. I had last seen him in Napa Valley about 1980. We had dinner and a drink and talked well into the evening at their house (they are a couple now). A good night.

I saw that Tatum O’Neal got arrested for buying cocaine and crack cocaine. I cannot recall what made her famous other than being Ryan O’Neal’s daughter. She apparently has had her troubles with substances in the past but, I gather, had recently been “sober.” She blamed certain negative factors for her relapse (well, almost relapse, and therein lies the story). She told the New York Post that if she had not been caught and arrested it would have been her very first drug use of her relapse. The police actually rescued her. It was this wonderful coincidence! What caused her to go looking for thrills? Her dog died. If I can make the link, you gotta read it. Celebrity junkies, what a crew!

I don’t know the name of this flower. This photo is a pseudo-HDR, thus its somewhat unworldly appearance. UPDATE: It is an African daisy.

Yesterday I drove to a small village called Bishop Hill, population about 150. Long ago, think 1846, a Swedish guy and his flock started a commune there. The place is a State of Illinois historic site. Several largish buildings remain, with an unusual type of construction: stucco over brick. I took some photos but have not processed them yet.

The church is interesting, it has actual dormitory type rooms in the lower level and the ground floor, and the church sanctuary is upstairs. Whole families occupied these rooms, no indoor plumbing, of course, in that era. Eating was communal in a separate building. The building was in use for many years, and at least one current resident of the town was born there.

Anyway, the members of the flock apparently had the belief that the minister was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ (I’d make a wild guess that the preacher encouraged this belief). Already, to me, this sounds like a cult (in the pejorative sense of that word). The commune apparently farmed a lot of land, maybe 12,000 acres. The authorities stepped in (1860 or so) beause of “mismanagement.” The land was divvied up amongst the flock. The nice woman who gave me a tour of the church (I was the only tourist in the town as far as I could tell) was a native there, and her family had gotten 30 acres in the divvy-up.

As for the leader, well, a cousin of his later married some rascal and she (the cousin) had to be rescued at times in far-flung towns. The story is rather vague to me. Anyway, there was some conflict here. At one time Rev. and the Rascal were both in the local courthouse (different town) for something, and Rascal shot Rev. dead. I’m told Rascal only got 2 years in the slam, so I wonder if maybe Rev. was in bad odor after the whole commune fiasco.

So, to make a long story even longer. I went in a little craft shop in one of the old buildings just as the guy was coming out the door to close up. He was gracious, and allowed me in. We got to talking and found out we had both graduated from Chillicothe High School (14 years apart). Chillicothe is about 40 or so miles away to the east of Bishop Hill. So, we chewed the fat and I mentioned having attended Union School, a three-room schoolhouse in the countryside west of Chillicothe. He said the family homestead was right near there, and referred to an aunt whose name I recognized. That lady had married a friend of mine from high school, let’s call him Craig. This friend had been living in Australia, and I had not seen him since a along-ago visit in Napa Valley when he lived there. Well, he’s back, and in a relationship with another of my high school classmates, who is the widow of yet another of my classmates. I spoke to her, let’s call her Sharon, and perhaps a meeting can occur.

All because, on a whim, I drove up to Bishop Hill.

As promised yesterday, here’s a picture of Helen, Georgia.

In this self-invented nation, I suppose there are any number of sort of self-invented, or re-imagined towns. Helen was in Cherokee country. Gold was discovered and the rest of the miserable story is pretty well known. After the gold played out, logging was the thing. After the forests were stripped, something new was needed. Some of the burghers in Helen decided to make it an ersatz Bavarian village.

I see where Scott McLellan has written a book, and shits on George Bush to some extent. As I think I’ve written in the past, I have no patience for schmucks like this. You stood in the White House press room, spouting arrant nonsense and lies, and pretty much being a toady to Mr. Bush while accepting tax dollars for your salary. You never had the nerve, the courage, the stones, while in that job to stand up one (or more) days, and say “Here is the unvarnished true version” and then tell it. You were never loyal to your employer The American People, and now you want to gussy up your rep and make some bucks with a shitty book. Well, screw you, buddy. You betrayed the citizenry while in office, you betray your boss now that you are out of your office. What’s next? Cheating on your wife?

Really, I don’t care a fig what motivates Mr. Bush, Mr Cheney, and the rest of those vampires. I’m not their shrink, and don’t want to hear about their miserable childhoods. All that matters is what they do and whether it is good or bad (or indifferent). Some of their actions can be judged immediately, others only with time. I don’t need the upstairs maid to tell me they don’t wash their hands after taking a leak and other such personal failings. Historians seem to be caught up in this sort of rubbish just as much as gossip columnists.

I’m sure if it had been a money-maker, Mr. McLellan woulda said Mr. Bush was a true philospher-king, and the greatest president since Benjamin Franklin (yeah, I know Mr. Franklin wasn’t a president!).

 

Fred’s Famous Peanuts, originally uploaded by twoblueday.

 

This joint is in far northeastern Georgia.

I’m back, lodging with my brother, and primed to inflict myself on everyon again.

1. On the drive to here (Peoria Heights, Illinois) from home in Florida, I took a detour through far northeastern Geogia. Wanted to see the mountains, and just enjoy the drive. Stayed overnight in Helen, Georgia. This town is an ersatz Bavarian village, not far from the above picture, and I’ll post up a shot from there shortly. My drive was uneventful, meaning safe and no bad weather. I was over 50 miles per gallon the whole way to Illinois, where I encountered strong headwinds on my northbound journey to Peoria, and my mileage dropped to just over 49. Rats.

2. As usual when travelling I have pretty much stayed out of the news loop. I tend to get too caught up in the things reported by the press, things I pretty much can do nothing about, and it is actually quite nice to be free of the buzz for a while. I also watch a lot less “entertainment” television. Don’t find myself missing my usual shows much, either, and, anyway, they are pretty much repeats now. Oh, I mean “encore presentations.”

3. I’ve been reading the blogs of those on my blogroll, so I hope nobody felt abandoned. It is strange how strongly those interactions have become a part of my social life, my world. I really appreciate all of you, and thank you for letting me bloviate on your blogs.

4. My brother and I have been catching up, doing a minor bit of photography, and mostly hanging out. We had an outing Sunday to the Hennepin Canal, and a friend of his went with us. As I may have related in the past, this canal is long disused, and the State of Illinois has made it into a wonderful “linerar park.” There are old locks, bridges, an aquaduct, lots of water flowing, some wildlife, and not that many people about. I’ve walked on the towpath, biked it, and just motored about. I visited there with my late mother. I am grateful some folks had the inclination and energy to preserve this bit of history for us. As a commercial enterpise, it didn’t do much, it was pretty much obsolete due to the railroads by the time it was ready for use.

5. Near the Hennepin Canal is a pretty large array of huge wind generators. You can get close to them, and hear the blades whoosh through the air. They rotate slowly, but gearing causes them to spin those dynamos at a high rate to make the juice. Quite a few more were going up, as was a new substation. I do not find that the presence of these towers detracts from the beauty of the rural area they occupy. Natural? No, but then that area has been under intense cultivation for many years, and the farmsteads and fields, also man-created, don’t make the place ugly. I did see recently that some Spanish company is going to be putting up a very large number of these generators in our fair land, and that some oil billionaire is going to also. I’m in favor of them.

6. Speaking of gas mileage. I know that the higher prices we have to pay now for gasoline are a real pinch for some people. Those on extremely tight budgets are doubtless having to make spending decisions, some very difficult. Our society has grown up with poor (and in quite a few areas, nonexistent) public transport, while at the same time sprawling out over large areas. The result is that many people are sunk without a car. Those who are less well off cannot run out and buy a hybrid car. In my experience, many such folk buy what they can which is cheap and, often, unreliable. I particularly am thinking of single mothers, but there are many others. So, mileage. I hear a lot of people (mostly on TV, but some in person) bewailing the price of gasoline. Okay, I’d rather pay a dollare for something than two dollars, I get it. But out on the highways, it appears that they are all hypocrites. They buy a lot of vehicles for which 20 mpg is a pipe dream, but let’s just assume for the moment that’s what they buy: a vehicle rated at 20 mpt. They drive as thought they really, really only want to get 12 mpg! I drive the speed limit on expressways/interstates, unless conditions militate for a slower speed. People in every conceivable car pass my like I’m backing up! I feel like an impediment to progress out there. Amazingly, even Prius owners blow by me like they had Ferraris. Oh, well.

7. Yesterday my brother had a commitment, so I drove to a nearby state park, Jubilee College State Park and Historic Site. Back in the mid-19th century. Rev. Philander Chase started a college with the idea of training preachers to go out West and enlighten the savages (or someone). He had this grand plan for a neo-gothic structure and so forth. It didn’t work out exactly. The lone structure of the school, which is well-preserved, is a two-story affair not much bigger than a McMansion. Secular students outnumbered those studying for the ministry while the school was open, and it didn’t last long. The grounds around the building are lovely, with big trees (including many flowering locusts which are beautiful right now). So, on this beautiful Memorial Day weekend, I was practically the only person about. A shame. I guess not enough in the way of amusements to draw a crowd. I remember going there when I was a high schooler, usually with my girlfriend, a guitar, and some sort of picnic. It isn’t far enough out of town to make gas a real issue.

8. I finished reading Chris Bohjalian’s The Double Bind. It had taken me a while, interrupted as it was by travel, and by reading the entirety of Edward Jones’s The Known World in the interim. The Double Bind uses the technique of not directly clueing the reader in that the protagonist is crazy as a bed bug due to a horrific crime against her. Throughout the book the author weaves in Jay Gatsby, Daisy, and the other characters as though they were actually real people. I thought it kind of cool in a way. Of course, in the end, we learn that this is all part of our main character’s madness. Worth reading? Sure, I guess, but I liked his The Buffalo Soldier and The Law of Similars better. I have now started reading Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk’s Snow.

9. It was my brother who got me, and now others, going on the 1oo favorite song thing. He is so particular about things that he, the founder, is only up to 70. We sat last night with wine and listened and discussed. We share a few choices, but not as many as one might suppose.

10. I have added a photoblog to my blogroll. I titled it Cynthia. She is a good friend of my brother, and has won some prizes with her photography. Her site is not, strictly speaking, a photoblog, but what the heck. Look in if you get a chance. She does amazing pictures of flowers and of Bob the cat. As many of you will have gathered, I ain’t much on pets, and, it won’t be a shock if I say I have even lower regard for photos of pets, so it really takes some doing to impress me in this regard, but she has done it. She’s not all flower and Bob, of course.

An abandoned dock on Lake Monroe. Life will find a way.

In a couple of hours I’m saddling up for my drive to Illinois. I may not post for a bit, depends on my access to the ‘net.

Yesterday afternoon we attended Babycakes’s graduation from kindergarten. I’d never heard of such a thing before. Caps and gowns and everything. Well, it was terminally cute, and I think everyone was just as moved as though their young were graduating from Cal Tech. I know I was. They sang some really cute songs.

Babycakes is going to be in a play at a local community theater. I’m gonna miss the performance, because of my travels. I know she suffers from stage fright, so I’m hoping it goes well.

So, a temporary farewell.

I’m dedicating this post to the Right Reverend Mike Shuckabee. Today, after his ridiculous presidential candidacy is long over, he showed his True Colors. Speaking to an NRA gathering of some kind, he heard some noise offstage, and said it was Barack Obama ducking for cover because someone pointed a gun at him. Shame on you, you who falsely claim to be a Christian minister. You are just another racist jerk, another George Corley Wallace. The sooner you are off the national stage, and the sooner the press stops paying any attention to you, the better off the country and the human race will be. AMF–I hope.

However, Mr. Shuckabee wasn’t the only noteworty neanderthal in the news today, although my thoughts here focus on a general breed of person as opposed to one with a name. That would be the “opposed to gay marriage” type. The gist of the news is that since the California Supreme Court (primarily a Republican court) declared that it is unconstitutional to discriminate against gay people in terms of the right to marry, those “opposed to gay marriage” are gonna ask that the ruling be stayed so they can get a referendum on the ballot to change the California Constitution so that it bans gay marriage. This leaves me shaking my head.

I picture someone, an average “slob like one of us,” a job, a family, bills to pay, kids to educate, retirement to plan for, lawn to maintain, etc. This guy, this gal, is weary, but every day keeps on keepin’ on to do the right thing. To live up to his/her responsibilities. Somehow, this citizen finds the energy to worry about, fret about, the relationships between others he doesn’t know from Adam or Eve. Those relationships affect this citizen, well, as best I can determine, in no way whatsoever. Nothing about gay marriage causes his/her salary to shrink, causes any marriage they happen to be in to be less valuable, causes drought, famine, pestilence, or the housing crisis. Yet, somehow, this slob loses sleep. It is just ridiculous. Go play catch with your kid, or masturbate, or something important will you? Is there no “live and let live” in your pathetic philosophy?

On a lighter note, not to make a pun, in my earlier post today I wondered, idly, what the sun screen manufacturers are going to do if people stop being scared of the sunshine. Well, I was watching the NBC evening news tonight, and I found out. For the first time in as long as I can remember, no less than two companies making sunscreen products bought and paid for advertising time on this show. Usually, almost all the ads are for prescription medications (and their side effects). These grease purveyors are about to lose billions of dollars, and rightfully so. Oh, they’ll still make money, and I’ll still buy, as usual, a modest amount of their stuff. The sun is not our enemy. It never has been. If there is a god, it is the sun. Vitamin D, boys and girls, get it while its hot!