Monday Meanderings - 7.30.2018

While most of you were suffering in the heat in the lower 48, Barb and I escaped to the more temperate climes of Alaska, cruising the Inner Passage and taking the observation dome train to Denali. I wish I could muster up more empathy for those of you who sweltered, but I'm having trouble doing so. It was a marvelous trip, and I plan to brag blog about it at length. Sorry.

Observations and Take-Aways on visiting Denali.

It's a big sucker. Too big to get any perspective. In the photo above, we are about 95 miles from the mountain!

I thought, since Denali is more or less out in the middle of nowhere, we would be pretty isolated. Turns out there is a major highway that runs right past the Park, as well as a very busy railway. Princess, Holland America and several other cruise lines have extensive lodges nearby - and there is a pretty good sized village adjacent to the Park as well.

Amazingly, there was decent cellular service for the entire 300 mile inland portion of the trip. So much for the middle of nowhere.

Denali stays shrouded in cloud cover most of the time. In fact, only 30% of visitors to the Park get to see the mountain clearly. If you are among the lucky, you can claim to be one of the 30% club and buy a tee-shirt or souvenir labeled, "I am in the 30% club! Only 10% see the mountain 2 days in a row and fewer then 2% see it 3 days in a row.

We couldn't find any 2% club shirts; it must not be cost effective to print them up, but we are proud members of that group! We saw the mountain clearly on the train up, while on a bus tour of a portion the Park itself (it's 6 million acres large) and from the bus ride down to McKinley State Park.

Alas, clouds obscured much of the mountain all the time we were in McKinley State Park, which has the closest vantage point. Even on clear days, the mountain will make it's own weather.

The idyllic picture of clear mountain streams in interior Alaska is seldom the case. Most of the rivers and streams along our route were fed by glacier melt, which results in muddy, silt-laden water. Though not polluted as such, fish cannot survive in these streams.

Everybody who works at Denali - bus drivers, waitstaff, clerks, guides, even rangers - are not from around there. The Park (and town) closes in late September and almost everybody goes home - usually to the "Outside" - the lower 48. Then they all come back in the Spring.

No sitting on the deck and watching the sunset. At this latitude, sunset was about 11:30 at night. And forget sunrise - it was around 3:30 in the morning.

Most early native Alaskans simply referred to the place as "the big mountain" in whatever dialect they spoke. The name Mt McKinley was originally promoted by a gold prospector in 1867 in honor of then-presidential candidate William McKinley (who supported the gold standard, as opposed to candidate William Jennings Bryant, who supported the silver standard). McKinley never visited Alaska, and thus never saw the mountain which bore his name.

A  long series of efforts to change the name to Denali, the Athabascan word for "the Great One" was rebuffed, primarily by congressman Ralph Regula from Ohio - President McKinley's home state. After Regula retired, President Obama officially changed the name in 2015.  In keeping with his goal of reversing every action Obama ever made, Trump originally promised to change it back, but apparently has changed his mind.

Regardless, it will always be "the Great One."

Monday Meanderings - 7.16.2018

I love a mystery.

My friend JimBo Gulley, for reasons unexplained, drives through Breckenridge Texas - my hometown - weekly. Why he does that is a mystery, but not the mystery that is the subject of this blog post.

He said that the signs above the doors on the old YMCA building cause him to chuckle, and he recently stopped and took a photo to share on Facebook, stating, "Well, apparently it’s only a blank wall that separates the boys from the men."

 

You may have to click on the picture to see them clearly,  but above the left-hand door is the legend "Men" and above the right-hand door is "Boys." Some suggested that you go in as Boys and come out as Men.

Speaking from my own personal experience, I said that, "Actually, the right hand door was the entrance to the town library, where we learned about men. The left hand door led to the gymnasium, where at Friday night Teen Canteen, we learned about girls."

Then JimBo wondered if the section in the middle had been boarded up. What was there originally? That's the mystery.

My interaction with these two doors is almost exactly as I stated. The library, behind the door on the right was probably my favorite place in the entire town. Well, there was this bakery I passed in the wee hours of the mornings as I delivered newspapers that had hot-out-of-the-oven pastries, but I digress.

For my entire growing-up years in Breckenridge, Pansy Pace, the local librarian - skillfully guided me through her meager inventory (neither the city of Breckenridge nor Stephens County has ever fully supported the library;  the organization of my era was the brain child of and was created by the Wednesday Study Club).  Nevertheless, she led me through the Bobbsey Twin series, and the Hardy Boys - and dare I say it - the Nancy Drew books, From there we went through biography's of famous and important people - and beyond. Far, far beyond. God Bless You, Pansy Pace.

And the left-hand door that led to the gymnasium, where every Friday night (except for football season) the lights were low and the music wonderful, and the girls were... Well, as Bob Seger puts it, "We were working on mysteries without any clues."

There was a third interaction. If you turned right at the entrance to the gym, you ended up at the swimming pool, which was housed in a structure that looked almost as if it were tacked onto the building, but my understanding is that it was original with the building. That's where I learned to swim.

A man named Woodrow Garrett taught me - and thousands of kids like me - to swim in the YMCA indoor pool. My recollection, perhaps faulty, is that busloads of kids from the local elementary schools would bus over to the Y for classes. How and when we got there may be vague memories, but the swimming lessons were not.  

And now to the mystery of the "third" door. Looks like it was decorative, JimBo. Here's a picture taken by the architect that designed the building in the early 1920's, W. G. Clarkson.

No middle door. 

The fate of this building is a bit dodgy at the moment. It needs repairs, and like so many small town buildings, has been unused for years and the chances of it ever being used again are slim and none. Some benefactors built a new building for the library; the pool was drained decades ago, and I don't know where "mysteries without any clues" are being worked out today in Breckenridge Texas, my hometown. I just know that somewhere there are still doors that you go in as boys and come out as men.

A modest proposal

If you follow this blog you know that I narrate audiobooks. For nearly 12 years I have volunteered as a reader for Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic). I have logged nearly 2,000 hours in the studio for these good folk, and I plan to continue doing so for as long as they will have me.

In addition to the unknown number of of books I have recorded for Learning Ally, I have done several for Audible.com. The most recent is a non-fiction narrative titled Vicksburg: The Bloody Siege That Turned the Tide of the Civil War, written by Samuel W Mitcham. Here's part of the Publisher's comments about this book:

On July 4, 1863, Confederate Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg and the Army of Mississippi to Ulysses S. Grant. Pemberton was immediately denounced as a poor general, whose incompetence and indecision cost the South control of the impregnable fortress. Some Southern newspapers were especially harsh, pointing out that Pemberton was a Northerner (he was born in Philadelphia) and suggesting that treachery was behind the fall of "the Confederate Gibraltar." 

Mitcham explores the events leading up to the siege of Vicksburg, as well as the battle itself, and the participants in the action in great detail, approaching the subject from the Southern point of view. You can follow the link above to learn more about the book, and even listen to a sample of me reading the book.  

But I urge you - DON'T BUY THE BOOK!  Let me give you a copy instead.

Audible.com gives me a limited number of promotional codes for this purpose,and I will pass them on to you. BUT before you say, "Oh, goody - a free book!" let me make these points. The book is likely only going to be interesting to you...

IF you are a fan of Civil War history - and I mean a fan - this sucker is 12 hours long!!

IF you are a Southern Sympathizer and believe that the South will Rise Again!

IF you love hearing endless details of troop movement, battle descriptions and casualty counts!

IF you want to know the life history of every Southern officer (and some civilians) involved!

AND you must promise you will not drive while listening to this book (see the parts above about 12 hours of minute details).

Reply in the comments and I'll give away these promotional codes on a first-come basis, with instructions on how to use it for a free copy of this audiobook. You do not have to be a subscriber to Audible.com - your Amazon sign-on will work - but if they do ask you to set up an account, with the code, you do not have to buy anything.

Be sure to include your email address in the comment. I promise I'm not going to put you on a list or even tell you about my next book. This is a one-off deal as far as I'm concerned. Call it a 4th of July observance of an event that happened 153 years ago.

However, you likely will hear from Audible.com again. It is an Amazon company, after all, and there's a reason they give out these codes.

Monday Meanderings - 7.2.2018

How did it get to be July already? Though I will admit that it has been fire-cracker hot for some time here in ATX, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Pretty sure I saw an auto repo go down in front of our house the other afternoon/ And no, it was not one of our vehicles.

Barb noticed a pickup parked out front, but there was nobody in it. I thought it might be the tree company guy bringing the bill by for getting us out of the fig tree business, so I was watching out the window, thinking perhaps he had gone around to the side of the house to inspect the job and would be coming to the door in a moment.

Instead I saw a tow truck come down the street and pull in and stop in front of our driveway and lower the hoist mechanism onto the ground. Then a little red car came zipping down the street and drove right up onto the hoist of the tow truck; the driver hopped out as the tow truck driver elevated the front wheels of the red car up, and then took off with the car.

Meanwhile, the driver jumped into the previously-mentioned pickup and took off after the tow truck.

Gone in 60 seconds.

Rob asked if I went out and looked up the street for the person with car-keys in hand, looking around all puzzled, thinking, "I'm sure I parked it right here." And then he reminded me of Gerald, a family acquaintance from long ago.

We became acquainted with Gerald back during our kick-ball and youth soccer era, The Optimists had a smallish sports complex in north Austin, and we went there to play ball. Gerald was active in the Optimist organization, and was a kick-ball umpire of some renown. He brooked no nonsense from players or parents. Especially not parents.

Gerald drove a pickup that had eye-bolts at each of the 4 corners of the bed of the truck, with lengths of heavy wire looped through each eye-bolt. The bolts and wire were there to restrain individuals that might not be initially willing to accompany Gerald when he went to pick them up and return them to the folds of the judicial sysytm from which they had absented themselves. Gerald was a bounty hunter and a repo man, and perhaps a few other things best not mentioned.

 Some of the other Optimists, we learned, often helped Gerald when he needed a hand, such as a fellow I worked with at NPC at the time, named "Blue." According to them, some of the best places to look for individuals needing re-acquaintance with the legal system were the various bars around town. If they waited until closing time, the scofflaws were usually too inebriated to put up much of a fight, but Gerald was an impatient sort, so he and Blue usually just marched in, snagged the guy, and were on their way before his buddies realized what had happened.

But sometimes - say if the guy was buying - they took offense at this interruption. This apparently didn't matter to Gerald. In fact, I think he looked forward to it.

On a more personal note, Gerald had a daughter, Lisa. She was in the Reagan High band and Rob took her on a date to a band banquet once. I've got to hand it to Rob; he knew exactly what Lisa's daddy did for a living and had the courage to ask her for a date. I was out of town at the time, but I'm guessing he had her home exactly on time. Just like her daddy wanted.