Reasons

Thanks to Andy and Big Ed for encouraging me to get this old blog started up again. And to Buck and Barry the Barbarian for their kind comments on my previous post below which was my first one for quite awhile. I've read all your blogs some over the past few days, but haven't commented.

Why haven't I posted for a while? The grandkids left over a week ago. Why didn't I jump right back into the fray and lay down some scintillating wordplay or slicing political commentary of a quality not seen since H. L. Mencken was ripping it up?

I got some reasons for you...

1. We've been planning our 50th wedding anniversary trip. It seems like yesterday when we ran through the falling rice and squeezed into that little open top Fiat outside Joyce's Daddy's church in Elkton, TN, and headed south to Decatur, AL. That's right Decatur dammit. It wasn't Hawaii, or Niagra Falls, or even Gatlinburg. It was Decatur and I'm proud of it. Kinda. I'll tell more about our anniversary plans later and post some old pics. But I'll tell you this much now. We ain't going to Decatur.

2. We shopped online for a new camera for about three days. Thankfully, Joyce is very thorough about this sort of thing. I'm much more of an "Okay, that looks good, I'll take it" kind of guy. We finally ordered an Olympus Stylus 7040. I'll tell you more about it when we get it and I post some pics. Here's a pic of it:

3. It's been very hot. And humid. Did I mention humid? I know Andy will say we're wusses way up north here in TN, but damn, it has been hot. The temperature here in Middle TN has been averaging around a 1000 degrees every day. I'm not lying. And if you add on the heat index you feel like you're inside a solar flare. And the humidity. It's so bad you can stick a straw into the outside air and take a drink, that is if you like scalding water. Which is also pretty much what the air feels like when you inhale some of it.

Okay. I know my computer is in an air conditioned room. Still, just knowing that kind of HOT is out there makes me feel like I'm in a 50's movie version of a Faulkner story, like the one they made out of "Barn Burning,"  Long Hot Summer, where every one sits around fanning and sweating and fanning and sweating. Especially Big Daddy (Orson Welles); he sweats a cistern full. Newman sweats a lot too. But Joyce says his sweating is kinda sexy. Anyway, that kind of heat sucks the life right out of you.

5. I've been spending a lot of time in the mornings revising a mystery novel I've been working on which I hope to place with a POD publisher in the next few weeks. It's a vanity thing I suppose and few people will read it, but I enjoy doing it. It's title is Blood Country. The narrator, Joe Rose, is a Nashville sideman (guitar of course) whose day job is as a P. I. The plot is derived from Hamlet and concerns a dark secret a Country Music family dynasty is hiding. I may write more about it later.

6. Letdown. Joyce and I worked in over 20 college drama productions over the years. I directed and she did set decoration, makeup and sometimes took an acting part. If you've ever been involved in anything like that, you know it's a lot of long hours and hard work over 6 - 9 weeks, which for a college production leads up to about four or five performances. In short, you work your butt off, there's a tremendous elation on opening night which carries you through the remaining performances till you strike the set, party until late late, and then suddenly it's all over. There's a big let down. A BIG LET DOWN. It's like that with the grandkids. The house is filled with their great noisy joy and and energy and laughter and then they go home and the house is quiet again. It takes awhile to get back to where you were before.

7. And the seventh reason builds on what I said in #6. I've been in a "Lately I've Let Things Slide" kinda mood. You ever get in one of those?  Nick Lowe has. Be careful when you listen to this song. Especially if you've felt that "hammer" in your head that he describes. Don't play it in the dead of night. Play it in daytime, outside with people around.



But now I've stopped the sliding. I'm working. I'm posting. Good to be back.