End Of The Monsoon Season?

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Tucson Weather Today


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I have been thinking about launching a new writing project and if I decide to do so these blog entries will no longer appear as a daily event; I will be too busy to prepare an entry each day and will probably have to settle for composing a weekly entry, or perhaps even less than that. And if that comes about, the quality of each entry will probably increase several fold.

More about that later . . .

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Biodork

Clinic Escorting Encounters is the title of a piece by nerdy, liberal, humanist progressive Brianne Bilyew in her blog Biodork regarding abortion clinic 'escorts' and some of the incidents witnessed while Brianne was working as a volunteer escort.

(Above is what I call a complex sentence)

(Informative and understandable though)

Anyway, I recommend that anyone who has an interest in the trials and tribulations of abortion clinics read this short but compelling blog entry.


If you'd like to read more of Brianne's writing . . .




Here is a link to the Biodork Home Page
 

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According to the TV Weather Girl, the 2012 monsoon season around Tucson is nearing its end, and we can now look forward to a succession of dry days.

Hot though.

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WORD FOR TODAY


horsefeathers
Exclamation
Used to express disagreement, disbelief, or frustration.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY


H. L. Mencken

Born Sep 12, 1880
Died Jan 29, 1956

Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century.

Many of his books still remain in print.

Note:
Various of the writings of H.L. Mencken are available for download from The Kindle Store, a few of them at no cost (FREE). I just a couple days ago downloaded Mencken's In Defense of Women (FREE) and am looking forward to  reading it. I also downloaded his Damn! A Book of Calumny -- also FREE.

Link is HERE

George Jones

Born Sep 12, 1931
Age: 80 years old.

George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette.

Jesse Owens


Born Sept 12, 1913
Died Mar 31, 1980

James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete who specialized in the sprints and the long jump. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team. He was the most successful athlete at the 1936 Summer Olympics, a victory more poignant and often noted because Adolf Hitler had intended the 1936 games to showcase his Aryan ideals and prowess.

Dickie Moore


Born Sep 12, 1925
Age: 86 years old.

Dickie Moore (born John Richard Moore, Jr.) is a former American child actor. Besides appearing in a number of major feature films, he was featured as a regular in the Our Gang series during the 1932-1933 season. In addition to his Our Gang work, Moore is most remembered for his portrayal of the title character in the 1933 adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist  He is also famous for giving Shirley Temple her second onscreen kiss, in the film Miss Annie Rooney -- her first was in the film War Babies (1932).

Moore is one of the few living members of Our Gang from the original Hal Roach series.


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I can't recall a single masculine figure created by a woman [author] who is not, at bottom, a booby.
--H.L. Mencken

Reading Instead Of Writing... Again

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Tucson Weather Today

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Yesterday, being a long and overcast day filled with scattered and chilly rain showers and periodic sudden cessations of wi-fi service, I took up my old dog-eared hard bound copy of The Best Essays Of The Century edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Robert Atwan and curled up in my recliner under a 40 watt lamp and lost myself in my lifelong favorite pastime... absorbing the thoughts and revelations of other minds.

The first essay was Corn-pone Opinions by Mark Twain which was a stimulating start to an entire day devoted to deep reflection on the many circumlocutions and derivations as well as adroit deviations the biological brain is capable of formulating within myriad minds in its timeless search for the shadowed and shrouded basic meaning behind the existence of human life.

Who better than Mark Twain could cut through the omnipresence of human pretense and point out the Darwinesque bare bones skeleton of self-interest and its underlying instinctual decree for perpetuation of the species that lives merely millimeters beneath the unconsciously fraudulent surface?

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Sometimes I allow myself to laugh (and sometimes I do not) when I read some of the eloquent and prophetic pronouncements from earlier times, such as:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre -- the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

--H.L. Mencken
Baltimore Evening Sun,
July 26, 1920

H.L. Mencken

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I find myself wondering what both of the above mentioned gentlemen would have to say about the following modern-day innovation:

Or this one . . .

Can't help it . . . that's the way my mind works

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No president who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure.
--James K. Polk

The Bigger They Are . . .

Tucson Weather Today
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Yesterday while I was negotiating a somewhat steep downward slope along the desert path midway through my four-mile daily fitness walk I inadvertently stepped into a scattering of loose pebbles, lost my footing, and fell backward, landing after a midair twist on my right side. Luckily I had instinctively thrown my right arm in that direction to regain my balance, and so my forearm took the major shock of the fall. All I suffered was a skinned elbow, a sore right arm, and a terribly bruised 71 year old ego.

Trying to remember exactly how long it had been since I had last fallen down, I was able to recall in memory that exact instant; it was back in December of 1981 when I slipped on the ice-covered sidewalk at VTI (Valparaiso Technical Institute) when I was a student at that school.

Several other nearby pedestrians witnessed the sight of me being launched into the air and then landing flat on my back. Aside from embarrassment, there were no notable injuries at that time either.

Guess I should be more careful.

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My final trip (of three) in the last two weeks to the Motor Vehicle department was a success. Now I am a legal resident of the state of Arizona. I have in my wallet an official Arizona State non-driver (photo ID) Identification Card. And I am legally registered to vote in Tucson.

Now I can show my papers to any law enforcement officer who might suddenly feel inclined to ask to see them.

"Whew! What a relief."

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Every so often I stumble across some bit of ancient lore that gives me hope for the continuance of human kind.

Here is a portion of a letter from H.L. Mencken to Upton Sinclair

So long as there are men in the world, 99 percent of them will be idiots, and so long as 99 percent of them are idiots they will thirst for religion, and so long as they thirst for religion it will remain a weapon over them. I see no way out. If you blow up one specific faith, they will embrace another. And if, by any magic, you purge them of pious credulity altogether, they will simply swallow worse nonsense in some other department.

This fact constantly forces itself upon me when I read the usual anti-clerical literature say in Socialist tracts or in such papers as the Truth-Seeker. What always emerges is this: that the stupid man, even after he has been convinced that Jonah did not actually swallow the whale, still remains a dunder-head. Today he is on his knees; tomorrow, emancipated, he snorts with the Boisheviki. Turn to Italy. Anti-clericalism is the fashion--but the country swarms with quacks. The mob-man must believe something, and it must be something indubitably not true. The one thing he can't get down is a fact.

For these reasons, it seems to me a waste of time to attack the dominies.

I used to do it for the fun of it, but never seriously. In truth, I can never take religion seriously enough to get in a sweat about it. It simply doesn’t interest me. All I ask is to be let alone. If, as seems likely, the present mania for passing Christian legislation goes to such lengths that life in the United States becomes insupportable, I shall move out. But meanwhile what goes on in churches intrigues me no more than what goes on in lodge-rooms of the Knights of Pythias. I know no one who is religious, and hence am not privately bothered. I often read religious books, but only as a relaxation."

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It is almost a maxim that a writer should write to his audience. Fair enough, although writers inadvertently do so anyway, sometimes unintentionally. And thereby further limit their audience.

For example: A writer waxing nostalgic used the line, "the smell of morning bacon" to stimulate the reader's fond memories of early morning pleasures within the warmth of typical Christian family life. But what image might the smell of morning bacon invoke in the mind of a member of a Muslim family? Perhaps the rancid stench of burning pig meat?

A modern writer has much to consider in a multicultural world.

A pigeon, with its lofty sight;
can see things humans can't.

But sometimes a farsighted world view,
blinds the watcher to danger underfoot.

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My Word For The Day

Paraclete
noun
an advocate; intercessor; pleader;
(in Christianity, The Holy Spirit)

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At Kevin I. Slaughter's blog, (high up on the right side) is this disclaimer:

I don't spellcheck often.
If that bothers you, go away.
In fact, if you're looking for any excuse, go away.
These are my personal thoughts, interests, projects, etc.
Please do assume that anything on this blog may potentially by NSFW.

That struck me as being fair warning.

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"Those big-shot writers could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar."
--Mickey Spillane