Magazine Posts

A rusty old trike.
A small wagon too.
I look for you now,
in this our own place.
No longer the children
will play in our yard.
They are grown now
and live far away,
while we sit and wait
for our final day.
The last day to stay
in our home, as we
face downsizing.

Google cars came out with some statistics recently. Driverless cars don’t have accidents really … and the few they do have are cars with drivers running into them. Some of the boyz in the Flatheads, our vintage car club, were flabbergasted. They’re old school guyz who revel in memories of souped up engines, backroad drag races, cue ball shifter knobs and dangling dice on the rearview. They love their rods, they love their memories and they go apoplectic to imagine a future of robot automobiles they can sit in the backseat and read a paper. They have fond memories of other uses for that backseat.

“The Age of the Automobile is coming to an end,” I made the mistake of saying to Two Toke Tom at the Diner where it was overheard by half the Flatheads at the breakfast pow-wow where they’d pushed half the tables together to make room for about a dozen car enthusiasts. Their Packards and Chargers and 88’s were lined up outside the plate glass like an outdoor Museum for Testosterone, right next to Tom’s beater with the cracked windshield and the missing front quarter panel, all gleaming with fresh wax and loving care. I might have been wiser announcing we ought to confiscate guns in an NRA meeting.

Freddie, the head honcho Flathead, jerked his head in the direction of my blasphemy. “What are you drinking, man???” he practically shouted. Brenda spilled coffee on Harry’s hand, missing his cup by a quarter mile. “Yeoww!” he hollered in pain. The whole café was now on Alert. “I only mean the day is coming when cars will drive themselves. They don’t have accidents, Fred, and if they don’t have accidents, guess what the insurance companies are going to demand? You want to drive your big Dodge, fine, but guess what they’ll charge your Charger for the privilege?”

“Over my dead fender, Skeeter.” Two Toke raised his cup. “Amen, brother Fred, Amen.”

“All I’m saying, Fred, is half the folks out there on the road these days aren’t driving anyway. They’re text messaging, they’re talking on the phone, they’re wobbling over the center line and they’re drifting onto the shoulder. They go from 60 mph to 30 mph. I don’t know what all they’re doing behind the wheel, but it sure isn’t driving. Might be okay with me if they let the computer do that for em so they can pay attention to their smartphone.”

Fred snorted and the assembled Flatheads snorted in agreement. Brenda mopped up Harry’s table and dried his hand. Harry would live, Two Toke would get a good laugh on me later and the Flatheads would all drive down Memory Lane with rumbling mufflers, KaHooga horns, mohaired upholstery, big fins and whitewall tires like mastodons crossing back over the Bering Strait to a garage somewhere in the Pleistocene.   See more by Skeeter Daddle   Go to Skeeter Daddle Site

"We’ve starved our public-health sector. The Costa Rica model demonstrates what happens when you put it first" "Life expectancy tends to track national income closely. Costa Rica has emerged as an exception to the rule that Health requires wealth. Read the full article  

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Nature photographers and other fans of planet Earth always look forward to the blue hour. That's the transition in twilight, just before sunrise or after sunset, when the Sun is below the horizon but land and sky are still suffused with a beautiful blue light. After sunset on August 21, this blue hour snapshot captured the nearly full Moon as it rose opposite the Sun, above the rugged Italian Alps from Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. Sharing bluish hues with the sky, the rocky pyramid of Monte Antelao, also known as the King of the Dolomites, is the region's prominent alpine peak. The moonlight is yellow, but even so this full Moon was known to some as a seasonal Blue Moon. That's because by one definition the third full Moon of a season with four full moons in it is called a Blue Moon. Recognizing a season as the time between a solstice and an equinox, this season's fourth full Moon will be rising in the blue hour of September 20, just before September's equinox.

Photo by Giorgia Hofer

This pan-seared skirt steak with a simple avocado chimichurri sauce will take your taste buds on a South American adventure. It cooks in just minutes in a sizzling hot skillet. Click to see Jessica Gavin's recipe

A dog is great,
even if he's a hound.
He will stay with you,
as he follows around.
Then there are cats,
nice but too profound,
as they don't want you
to be hanging around.

Put down on paper
with your Energel Pen,
the words in your mind,
for the day now begins.
Do you not feel
the love in the air?
Will you stay with me,
breathing the same air?
My heart is happy,
for I see you there.
For heavens sake
put on your underwear.

It sounds kind of weird, I suppose,
what it's like to wear another man's clothes.
To change your style, would be grand
unless the clothes worn are quite bland.
Take an adventure, pick a new life.
By wearing new clothes, perhaps a wife?

Forlorn and lonely,
when I realized
the woman I loved,
sits there before my eyes.

I once owned a roadster,
convertible to thee,
which I loved to drive,
as fast as could be.
Top down; cruising along,
couldn't hear the radio,
as I sped along.
So I was stuck with
singing my own song.
The wind whipped my hair,
which was long, into my eye.
I loved this car;
a 1971 Fiat 124, Spyder,
French Blue the color,
with Mag. wheels and
custom exhaust.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Does a ball drop faster on Earth, Jupiter, or Uranus? The featured animation shows a ball dropping from one kilometer high toward the surfaces of famous solar system bodies, assuming no air resistance. The force of gravity depends on the mass of the attracting object, with higher masses pulling down with greater forces. But gravitational force also depends on distance from the center of gravity, with shorter distances causing the ball to drop faster. Combining both mass and distance, it might be surprising to see that Uranus pulls the ball down slightly slower than Earth, despite containing over 14 times more mass. This happens because Uranus has a much lower density, which puts its cloud tops further away from its center of mass. Although the falling ball always speeds up, if you were on the ball you would not feel this acceleration because you would be in free-fall. Of the three planets mentioned, the video demonstrates a ball drops even faster on Jupiter than either Earth and Uranus.

Video by James O'DonoghueJAXARami MandowSpace AustraliaJames O'Donoghue

Release the pain
from my eyes.
Hear the ache
in my cries,
as my Love's
life of memories,
slowly dies