Steak is better than chitlins

Steak is better than chitlins

“What brings this to mind is that I was driving to Ozark Alabama, the other day and I saw a bridge on the Road just west of Ozark which was called “James Kelly Junior Bridge”. Now Jim Kelly is a good friend of mine and also his father James Kelly Senior was. He was a very prominent member of the “The Dale County Chitterling Society.” This very unctuous society met at Mack’s Café there in Ozark.  Mack’s Café was a fixture in Ozark for quite a while. Mack ran a drygoods store there near where the café was before he opened the café. I think he began hosting the Chitterling society as a public service.  Anyway I am not especially fond of chitterlings but I did go to the society meetings to keep up my social standing.

At each meeting of the Society Mr. Kelly would give a speech, usually very humorous concerning “chitlins” and the merits of them as a food and how good they were. I remember he had one speech about a trip to Africa where he discovered elephant chitlins which is very comical. I didn’t go to the Society meetings so much that I craved  the chitterlings but that I had to keep up my standing in society.  I always enjoy the fried chitlins more than I did the boiled ones it just seems like it couldn’t get the essence of the hog out of the boiled ones. Judy would go with me sometimes but she only ate the items that went along with the chitlins which were collards and dry peas and cornbread and onions which, I admit,  is a very good meal within itself.

 

Propagation Seems to be in the Doldrums

Well, I still get on the radio every day but I don’t seem to be working as much DX is the recent past. The sunspot number and the solar flux number have gone down in the past few days. But when “Old Sol,” or rotates around I expect propagation to pick up some. Sometimes you can find a real good station on a band that otherwise seems to be dead in the station may be all the way around the world or 180° out of geophase with me. I have been hearing some very good stations on 12 m recently, but they all seem to have such a pile of that I could not break through. Everybody wanted to talk to them. Oh well, the harder the challenge the better is when you do get someone into the log. I’ve been able to copy most of the dxpeditions very well here but I have missed a couple of them that never could hear me. I am convinced I can work anywhere in the world with 100w and a dipole if it is the right time of day and there are sufficient freckles on the sun. The more I do it the more I think that chasing dx is like hunting only you don’t have to clean the game.

I am planning to work the “Alabama QSO Party” this coming Saturday. You can find rules for the qso party at the following URL http://www.alabamaqsoparty.org/ . We will be operating the station W4GEN in Geneva County Alabama. Please work us if you can.

Solitude

Loneliness is a strong emotion. I feel it most pronounced on the occasions when I get insomnia and you hear just the house cracking and popping and the mice chewing. It is just you against the world; you feel as if sleep is fled to the hills for refuge, a thousand miles away. Mocking, “You can’t go to sleep no matter what you do.”
Then there is another kind of lonely feeling that takes place in a crowd. This is one where you don’t know a single soul. I have often felt this kind of loneliness while traveling: the greater the crowd of unknown people the more pronounced the feeling. I have often thought, “I just wish that I could go up and introduce myself to some of these people. However,  I don’t do it. They would think I was off my rocker, and for sure I was going to embarrass myself.” So what I would do do is go on besides my business swallow the lump in your throat. Doing this while endure the same-old feeling until I would get busy enough with your activities to make it go away for a while.
Another kind of loneliness, and this is a good kind is what one feels when out in the woods or wilderness a very long way away from everyone else. This is the kind of loneliness that everyone needs. Another name for it is, solitude, and it is the anthesis of the bustling crowds of urban life and also all the human filth that goes with them. That is why I love to hunt and fish out in the quietness of the wilderness. In town, it is a wilderness too, just a different kind.
Then there is the bleakness of the outcast or the old person. This person just feels that the world has forgotten about them and has minimized them out of the circle of important people. Have you ever felt what it is like to be minimized? I have, and yet I did it myself a few years back. What our society needs is not food, not shelter nor things. They greatly need to feel like someone else thinks they exist and cares that they do. This is the “throw away” society and people are part of the throw away items. How many old people, and I mean people who have worked all their lives are put in nursing homes out of convenience rather than necessity. How many children are put in cages of nursery until is convenient to take them out and play with them. They are more like toys than responsibility. And most of the time we are so absorbed in making more money to buy more toys that we forget that they are persons too. Do we have to wonder why some children do not respect their parents? However, judgement comes on all generations for their life style, because, a few short years, and they will be able to enjoy the old folks lifestyle, I wonder how enjoyable it will be.

2012 New Years Resolutions

1. Get closer to Jesus, not just with knowlege but with the heart!
2. Pray for those I don’t like and that do things against me.
3. Strive to be friendly with everyone I meet.
4. Do not worry but in everthing by prayer and supplication let my requests be known to God.
5. Eat more oatmeal.
6 Walk more.

The Joys of Microsoft Word

2011 11 18- Well it is Friday again, and we are getting ready to go to Mrs. Taylor’s funeral. I’ve been sitting here almost pulling my hair out trying to find out how to change the display on Windows word 2010. I guess I’m just not up to snuff when it comes to the modern software. I finally found it and I guess they considered it to be easy. It’s a little slider bar and will right-hand corner of the screen with changes in this life. I’ve been looking all through the menus to find something, and it was right there in front of my eyes all the time. Well, I guess I need to take the course and get a PhD in Word 2010. Oh well, it’s just the joys of Microsoft. I guess I’m telling everyone I’m not so much a computer geek as I thought I was.
I lost my, Ipad yesterday, and I think is gone forever. I had it in my shirt pocket, and some were in downtown Enterprise, space I bent over, and it slipped out of my pocket. When I got home, I started looking for it, I never could find it. Well, I worried about it for a few minutes, but then I got to thinking. Why don’t I be a little more philosophical about this because I get a little too old to let things be on my mind for several days. If it doesn’t involve my life, my health or anything about my body, then it’s not worth worrying about. It’s only money. Then thinking philosophically, I told myself, “Well, somebody is very happy that found the iPad, so I have brought great joy to somebodytoday. So losing it was not a complete loss. “Probably worth the purchase price of ipod to bring somebody that happiness,” popped into my mind.”
Then I thought to myself, “Say a prayer for the one who finds the iPod.”
I did. God has some very quiet ways of working. I don’t know what He is going to do, but I expect something dramatic.

New WSPR Mode on Ham Radio

I have been trying the new WSPR mode to check out my propogation on various bands and have been having lots of fun with it. It really amazes me that weak signals can travel so far. I am now running 5 watts but I hope to cut that down much lower when I can get me an accurate RF attenuator. I would like to try one watt or even 500mw and see just where in the world it can get to. My plans are to build a small low power rig and power it with a solar panel and battery. It is an amazing world that we live in compared to back when I first got my ticket almost 52 years ago. There is something new coming outr all the time, especially with the digital modes. Here are included two screen shots of people who have heard me or been heard by me. Wish I could work dx like that on the usual ham radio modes. I have, for a long time wanted to set up some kind of beacon rig and leave it on and see what it would do. This system seems like it was just made for me and one of my main interests in amateur radio is propogation. If you want to learn more about WSPR the URL is http://www.wsprnet.org. It is a very easy mode to get involved in but don’t look to carry on any verbose conversations because all you can send is your call, date and time, grid square and your power. But in these days of the internet you can send each other an e-mail .

How Much is Humans and How Much Is Nature

We received a small amount of rain this morning but it was not nearly enough. Charley Platt on his “Top of the Morning” show had an expert on this morning talking about the affects of the drought on our water supply. I believe this to be true that we are somewhat affecting our water supply by affecting the environment and clean cutting of forests or too much cutting of forests because we shortsighted and want to get more money from the forests, so we just make the earth look like a war zone. In this respect, I’m a “tree hugger” more or less. I think our logging practices have some effect during drought conditions as well as influencing long-time climate. I think we have invented machinery, which can devastate forests in an extremely short time. What would take a week or two in olden days using saws and manual labor can be done in just hours with the modern tree axes and current logging equipment that is available. However, I don’t think that mankind has caused all the problems but there is more a collaboration between man and nature to exacerbate drought conditions and make them more extreme.

What’s Happening Now

May 5, 2011 (origionally written)-This has been a trying few days for us. My sister, Jane had a massive stroke and watching her when her life was touch and go puts a different perspective on life for me. The things that I commonly worry about are mere drops in the bucket when they are judged while expereincing event such as that. Material things and the trivia of life pale do not even compare with such a horrible event as a stroke, a life-or-death situation. What has seemed important have taken on an aura of insignificance in the light of the gravity of an eternal prospect. I know that all people have to go through things like that if they live on the earth long enough but they do make one see through a different set of filters and in fact we see them with an entirely new set of “eyes of the spirit”. What is an occurrence we see every day and pass it takes on an enormous cast of graveness when someone personal and close is involved causes us to feel a new surge of sympathy with those other folks whom we have merely passed and repassed before because we know in all the cases someone is going through the same worry and grief process we are now going through. We know that someone is losing a loved one or part of a loved one.

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Strange at the Hospital

Strange in the Hospital
After I had my automobile accident last October I suffered a severe concussion, I guess to be medically politically correct I should say traumatic brain injury. However, I have heard the word concussion all my life so that is the word I shall use. I do not remember anything all that time during eight days that I was in the hospital but the first thing that I do remember is very poignant. I woke up for the first time in the middle of the night when the hospital was very quiet and unoccupied. Due to the concussion I was seeing multiple images when I opened my eyes. I blinked my eyes and tried to focus but everything was jumbled up and it looked like the furniture was piled on top of itself. My thought was that I was in a strange place and garbage dump was the only thing that came to my mind. I said to myself, “I’ve gotta get out of here.” I was unable to get straight out of the bed but I worked around to the edge of the bed and tried to sit up. And in all the struggling around I sat off the bed alarm. The nurse on duty came in and first thing that I knew she was standing by my bed. I said to her, “Where am I?” and she answered, “Flowers Hospital.”
“Well, you couldn’t prove it by me,” I said, “It looks like a garbage dump to me.”
A couple of months later when Ellen was back in the hospital a nurse was in her room taking care of her. I mentioned what happened with me and she responded, “ I remember it well because I was the nurse that came into your room.”
Of all the strange things that have happened to me that is one of the most bizarre. Believe me, waking up and not knowing where you are is a outlandish feeling.

Lie Cheat and Steal

John Edwards is about to be indicted for stealing a million dollars of our money. And I thought that he was not a full time politician. He might have made a good president by today’s standards. He certainly knows hot to lie, cheat and steal. Makes one wonder how many of our “fair haired boys” are involved in the same or worse. I may be old fashioned but I think that cheating on ones wife is a strike against him. But I guess it is the norm now a days. I heard rumors that most of the presidents to that due to their qualities. The thing, they say, that makes them do that is the same qualities that make them a great person in charge. Huh! I guess they need to build a harem on to the “White House.” But I guess that does not hold true in every case. Take, Jimmy Carter for instance, I don’t believe he would have cheated on Rosalynn (sp), for instant. I have read about statesmen in my life, guess I should say statespersons, but I guess they went extinct long ago but I predict if we don’t dig some up soon this nation is done for. Now the word “president” is the antithesis of “statesman.” It would be great before I leave this world to have a government that I could be, “Proud of for the first time.” That is likely wishful thinking. That would only happen if we have an informed populace which seems high unlikely these days. We have a host of highly intelligent and “Educated” dummies. Wow, thanks for letting me vent. I have reasonable health considering my age and circumstances and am reasonably happy.. They say you should end any writing on a positive note so let me say that I am positively fed up with lying, cheating and stealing and especially in Government circles.