Middle Of The Week Already

 

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Tucson Weather Today

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The Adventure of The Primrose Mind is the title of a fictional story, well, not a complete story, not yet anyway, but is at least the beginning of what could with some effort (much effort, lots of sweat and tears) blossom into a fully-flowered and strangely satisfactory story -- a tale that I like to call a William Faulkner story, one that starts with a quiet whisper and builds to a thunderous shout, then ends with a deafening whimper squeezed from a lifetime of unsuccessfully suppressed agony.

But I fear that its overly cautious author is once again preparing for the eventuality of failure by announcing hints of personal doubt right at the onset.

And that is a sad state of affairs with which I am quite familiar -- am eminently conversant.

Oh yes.

I have been writing for a great many years a certain fictional story, one based on actual characters and factual events that occurred both in and around the ramshackle bunkhouse of the Cross-5 cattle ranch, more specifically the main character is day after day out driving a tractor, raking hay in the hot summer meadows of Gordon, Nebraska in the mid-20th century.

The story concerns a young white man filled with idealism gleaned from a great deal of book-learned, high-school awareness of the pitiful plight of the noble but downtrodden red man who forever suffers under the boot heels of  evil and powerful Caucasians that ruled a cruel, selfish, and totally bigoted society.

The young man works alongside a pair of manual laborers, biological brothers, two full blooded members of the Sioux tribe living on the nearby reservation. Their names are Curtis and Philip Red-Owl.

The story is about how easily and swiftly a man's mind can be changed by personal experiences, from scholarly idealism into a stark realm of practicality, into a kind of wisdom that transcends the ephemera of high-minded liberal, progressive visions of morality.

Something like that.

But the story is devoid of an ending. Always. After each stint of writing, there exists no factual ending. Always, it just stops. Due to the most mundane of circumstances.

You see, I have never been able to craft a fitting fictional ending for the story. Neither through diamond hard fact nor velvet soft fiction.

Not yet, anyway.

And time, I fear, is running out.


Whew!

(Even this much personal disclosure was exhausting.)

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I was informed that last Thursday, September 20 at 11:15 A.M. Arizona Time was when the Space Shuttle Endeavour was to fly over Tucson on the back of a 747. Well, I watched, camera in hand, the partly cloudy skies above Tucson from 11 A.M until 11:30 P.M. and did not see hide nor hare of the double-decker duo. (Yes, I know it's deemed to be "hair" not "hare").


I did, however, hear the roaring engines of a large plane way, way up there above the clouds, and managed to get a shot of it as it broke into a clear patch of blue.

Well, as I said, it was way, way up there.

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My sister, Phyllis, posted a picture on Facebook of herself (youngest)
me (the oldest) and my two younger brothers, Johnny Joe and Ronnie


Rensselaer, Indiana -- circa 1951

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WORD FOR TODAY

phlegmatic

calm; imperturbable

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY



Linda Hamilton


Born Sept 26, 1956
Age: 55 years old.

Linda Carroll Hamilton is an American actress best known for her portrayal of Sarah Connor in The Terminator and its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Catherine Chandler in the television series Beauty and the Beast, for which she was nominated for two Golden Globes and an Emmy.

Julie London


Born Sept 26, 1926
Died Oct 18, 2000.

Julie London was an American singer and actress. She was best known for her smoky, sensual voice. London was at her singing career's peak in the 1950s. Her acting career lasted more than 35 years. It concluded with the female lead role of nurse Dixie McCall on the television series Emergency! (1972–1979), co-starring her best friend Robert Fuller and her real-life husband Bobby Troup, and produced by her ex-husband Jack Webb.

London's most famous single, "Cry Me a River", was written by her high-school classmate, Arthur Hamilton, and produced by Troup. The recording became a million-seller after its release in December 1955.

   
Olivia Newton John


Born Sept 26, 1948
Age: 63 years old.

Olivia Newton-John is an English born Australian singer and actress. She is a four-time Grammy award winner who has amassed five No. 1 and ten other Top Ten Billboard Hot 100 singles and two No. 1 Billboard 200 solo albums. Eleven of her singles (including two platinum) and 14 of her albums (including two platinum and four double platinum) have been certified gold by the RIAA. Her music has been successful in multiple formats including pop, country and adult contemporary and has sold an estimated over 100 million albums worldwide. She co-starred with John Travolta in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Grease, which featured one of the most successful film soundtracks in Hollywood history.

   
James Caviezel


Born Sep 26, 1968
Age: 43 years old.

James Patrick Caviezel, Jr., known professionally as Jim Caviezel is an American film and television actor. He is perhaps best known for portraying Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's 2004 film, The Passion of the Christ. He has also played Bobby Jones in Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius, Detective John Sullivan in Frequency, Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, Catch in Angel Eyes, Carroll Oerstadt in Déjà Vu and Private Witt in The Thin Red Line. He currently stars on the CBS crime thriller Person of Interest as John Reese.

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All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.
--Edgar Allan Poe