Wi-Fi Is Again Available

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Tucson Weather Today

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Wi-Fi came available again at just a bit before noon Tucson time, so instead of writing a Monday entry I will merely upload the entries I had written for Saturday and Sunday.

Thanks for getting me back online, Sallie... you're the greatest.

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For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew.
--Robert Frost
(The Figure a Poem Makes -- 1939)
Which was the year that I was born.

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Intended for Sunday -- Title:
A Picture Should Enhance A Tumult Of Words

FYI:
This entry below was belatedly uploaded (as was the Saturday entry) because I have been without an Internet connection all of Saturday and and all of Sunday. I am leaving the entry as it was written, and the reader should please bear with the unavoidable anachronisms that dwell therein...

... again.

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Since I have been denied an Internet connection for a number of days (two, so far) my time for reading from my broken-binding and fast deteriorating copy of The Best Essays of the Century was extended, and two of the essays I read struck me as being particularly relevant to my own sometimes trustworthy memories of what life was 'really' like back in my youngest days of awareness. The essays were: The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Ethics of Living Jim Crow by Richard Wright. Both were written in close proximity to an undeniably transitional era, the weird and wacky era of my birth and childhood.

In The Crack-Up the author wrote:

So there was not an "I" any more -- not a basis on which I could organize my self respect -- save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more. It was strange to have no self -- to be like a little boy left alone in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was noting that he wanted to do --

That small portion of the essay brought me up short in my reading. I knew exactly what Fitzgerald was describing. Yes, I had experienced that same (malady?) upheaval of emotional distress more than once... most recently just after I retired from the active work force and found myself sunk in a similar pit of despair.

I will not (or cannot) belabor this point -- either you know what I mean or you do not.

In The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, like its author Richard Wright did, I too learned through harsh life's experiential osmosis how one must express one's self (no matter what the inward leanings to the contrary) if one were to survive unmolested in America's early twentieth century rural-minded society. And I have learned how heart-breakingly futile (Few-Tile) it is to try to explain to today's ultra-liberal children of The Enlightenment what the times back then were really like.

And once again I will neither dwell upon at this time nor offer more illumination of that period in history in which I found myself living -- either you know what I mean or you do not.

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Walking the streets of Tucson

Below are four photos of the scenery I pass on the days when I embark upon my westerly walk along Speedway Blvd.

Halfway from Camino Seco headed to Pantano

Pedestrian crossover is for MaGee Middle School

During all my daily walks since March 25, I have never seen even one person using this crossover... except for myself, of course, and I did so for the experience, just to see what it was like. It seems easier for the few pedestrians I have encountered to just dash across the street, taking advantage of the road construction that limits the traffic on Speedway Blvd at this time.

Farther along the way there are some vacant desert lots.

Here is one of them

Vacant lots in East Tucson tend to be quite large

Here is another barren stretch

Wanna buy a big building lot?

Below is a picture of an apartment community similar to the one in which I live.

This one is a much smaller complex, though.

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Thoughts On Language And Grammar

Perhaps I am guilty of pedantry in my belief that the American language is being injured by acceptance of the careless usage of certain words that changes the word's official definition and thereby destroys that word's unique original meaning. If this transforms me into a pedant,then so be it.

One example of what I am objecting to is the disgraceful change brought about in the definition of the word decimate which once meant merely to reduce by one-tenth. The word decimate is now recognized by the masses (as well as by overly-permissive, short-sighted educators) as meaning to totally destroy. By allowing this change to occur, the language has lost the only word once correctly defined as reduction by one-tenth. -- decimation -- and reduced it to the same definition as myriad other words synonymous (or nearly synonymous) with total destruction -- such as devastation, obliteration, etc.

There are other examples, such as unique which once meant one of a kind but has now been relegated to being merely a synonym for rare or unusual.

Yes, I probably am a pedant, of sorts.

But, when did and why should the word pedantry itself be seen as pejorative? What's wrong with recognizing a harmful trend and fearlessly objecting to it? Whoa! Wait. That was a rhetorical question. Don't bother to volunteer an opposing response.

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Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
--Mark Twain

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Intended for Saturday -- Title:
Free Wi-Fi ? Hah! What's In A Name?

FYI:
This entry below was belatedly uploaded because I have been without an Internet connection all of Saturday and and all of Sunday. I am leaving the entry as it was written, and the reader should please bear with the unavoidable anachronisms that dwell therein.

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Oh Good Grief! It's eight a.m. and I have not uploaded my quota of today's personal thoughts. Even though this blog entry was completed early this morning, it seems that it will not be uploaded until some time later in the day.

Why?

Because . . .again this morning the FREE Wi-Fi was unavailable.

'FREE' Wi-Fi?

'Riiiight . . .'

Always (or so it seems) we, the gullible Americans, are so laughably prone to fall for those public pronouncements that eventually prove to be what should have been so easily predictable -- they being somewhat less than truly dependable promises.

Right?

And, as for being undependable regarding public promises, Barack Obama could (should?) turn out to be a one-term president.

'Riiiight . . .'

So, the promise of (by implication) uninterrupted FREE Wi-Fi is just another one of the items to add to the Pro and Con list that I am keeping for consultation next March when time for the new lease signing comes around. Although I'm sure the Pros will be a'plenty... like how super the office girls are here.

Since I am unavoidably off-line I suppose I will just go out into the fine Arizona sunshine and get an early start on my daily fitness walk. Might as well.

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What does it mean when a weary old man seated in a comfortable chair before a fiery hearth closes his eyes and sees within his mind an image of a wild boar glaring at him from its mounting plaque on a knotty-pine panel within a rustic cabin in the woods? And the boar's head snarls at him. What means this brief encounter with seemingly prophetic imagery within a restlessly dozing daydream?

I suppose that one could write a fictional story with that subject in mind and thereby find a suitable answer to that question.

A working title for this story might be: Boar's Head Is More Than Merely Meat.

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Success Story by Terence Winch is a poem I read early this morning over at The Writer's Almanac. In fact, I returned to it three times to read the poem again, and each reading, occasioned for a different reason, produced in my mind a different resulting conclusion. Finally, I allowed myself to wander away from the poem although I continued to wonder if success is one of those specific words without a specific meaning.

What is success?

In your opinion?

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Some time ago I posted a picture that to me depicted the essence of the word dystopia

This was that picture

Why does the memory of that image seem to ever lurk near the fringes of my mind, always alert for any opportunity to leap forth without direct bidding to become the central focus of my consciousness?

Good question.

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Last night I attempted to watch Disc 2 of Rose Red, Stephen King's tale of a haunted house. But after only ten minutes I grew so bored with its slowness and silliness that I ejected the DVD and went to bed. Even though it was only a little after eight p.m.

'nuff said?

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Note:
I went for my walk earlier, as I said I would... and when I arrived at Kohl's department store, a walk of just under two miles, I went in and browsed. Glad I did. They have a big special sale going on, and by use of the gift card in my wallet that Kohl's had mailed to me, I came away with two nice Patriotic t-shirts, for which I enjoyed a total savings of $22, having spent (out-of-pocket) only $2.18.

It is now, at this moment, 11:47 a.m. (Tucson, AZ time) and I still cannot connect to Wi-Fi...

Drat!

Another Note:
At 3:30 p.m. Tucson Time, the Wi-Fi is still unavailable . . .
(That would be 6:30 EDST)

Double Drat!

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Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.
--George Bernard Shaw