The Adventures of Bloggard

Great Wall of China, January 13, 2005: With a friend, I hiked up the mountain on the Great Wall today. The air is crisp and cold, and it amazes me that men could carry stones to these remote mountains and build, and build, and build. I touch the stones, and feel the strong hands of men working in the cold so long ago, hundreds of years before Pilgrims arrived in America.

The mountains are shaped oddly to my eye. In fact, they’re the shape that you see in those misty watercolors, as you see here, going on, apparently, forever.

“A man of 20 who’s not a liberal has no heart, and a man of 60 who’s not a conservative has no brain.” — variously attributed to Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill

Is it true? I don’t know, but it sure describes my experience.

We in America, lulled by years of prosperity, find it difficult to believe that barbarians still exist in the world.

But, yes, Virginia, there are humans who are not “civilized” as we know it. People who will kill you for your sneakers, and people who will torture you for the giggles of seeing you twist and scream. These are facts.

In our shrinking world, the far-away barbarians are now next door. With our transportation, communication, information, and weaponry, they’re here among us.

We got trouble. That’s a fact. And talking liberal at them won’t do a bit of good.

Some folks just need killing to dissuade them from their foolish ways. Maybe we don’t like that, but we don’t get to tell the Universe what’s true. We must have the humility to listen. The Universe will tell *us*.

And it’s telling us loud and clear, soldier.

What if time actually speeds up and slows down, but we don’t know it because we are inside time?

For example, suppose you and I are standing in the back yard and I toss a basketball to you. It goes up in the air and comes down in your hands.

Now suppose that time slowed *way* down as I tossed it, and suppose that time then zoomed like lightning just as you caught the ball. But because you and I are both inside the same time, we just saw the ball go up and come down at the usual speed, because you and I with all our perceptions were slowing down and speeding up inside the same time span.

How can we know this is not happening?

I mean, perhaps right this minute! time might be slowing to a standstill, and you will never, ever reach the end of this paragraph! But you will never know it, because you are inside the time and so you think you’re moving forward as always.

Or what if the entire Universe is right now suddenly vanishing in the flash of an eye! But you and I think we’re living all the rest of our lives, seeing movies, driving the car, growing older, making a sandwich, laughing at a joke, making an appointment to visit the dentist, watching a sunset that seems to take forever.

And yet, really, it’s all over already.

Next week: How a refrigerator works.

Mount Shasta, Summer 2005: A week ago on Thursday, I returned from walking down to the post office, and opened the back yard gate. On the far side of the yard a small white dog raised its head and came running. Seeing me, she leaped up on me and all around, saying “Hello! Hello! You’re wonderful! Hello! I’m so happy!”

I liked her.

I went in the back door, leaving the leaping white dog outside. Adrienne was puttering. I hung up my hat.

“I see you found my dog,” I said.

Adrienne turned around, looking timid. “Lizzie and I found her on our walk …” she said, breathless. “And I want to keep her.”

“Good idea,” I said.

It seems that Lizzie and Adrienne, on their morning walk, found the little white dog wandering on the next street. Her ribs are showing, and she’s very young, perhaps four months old. She’s a border collie, like our Tulip, but the little white dog is all white except for speckled brown ears.

The little white dog followed along with Adrienne and Lizzie on the rest of their walk, and then came home with them, I suppose so that she could greet me when I got home. I’m happy to see her.

To be fair, we took the little white dog to the Humane Society for a week, so that if she had family looking for her, they could claim her. She was wearing a worn collar, too tight, but no tags. We want this dog, but if she’s got some child pining for her, they can find her during the week.

Today it’s thursday again. We have visited the little dog every day at the Humane Society, and now she’s legally ours. The folks there called her Jewel, but I seems to me that her name is Daisy. Adrienne agrees.

Now Daisy lives with us. She’s made friends with Lizzie, our black aussie, and with Percy our cat. They have made up games to play and they have a daily routine.

I’m grateful for Adrienne.

She found my dog Daisy, when I hadn’t even known that Daisy was lost.

Somewhere in the South Pacific, Christmas Day, 1942: Back on my grandparents’ farm, the three brothers had grown up together.

My uncle Eugene, the oldest, and Richard had joined the navy. My uncle Robert, the youngest, had joined the army. Eugene and Richard were assigned different duties and different ships because they were family members. So each was alone, like any sailor or soldier in wartime.

Robert became a medic in the army, and was stationed in the South Pacific, and so when he saw a certain ship in port, he hurried down to mail call, hoping to ask for news of Eugene, for Eugene had been on that ship some months earlier.

The canteen building was crowded, elbow to elbow, sailors and soldiers jostling for their mail, which sometimes held treasures of cookies or cakes! The sargent read out the names, and Robert was again disappointed. No mail today, on Christmas day. No word from folks back home; no word from his brothers far away.

“Sailor,” he said to the fellow next to him, “are you on the ship in the harbor?” The sailor nodded.

“Yes, sir!” the sailor replied.

“Do you know anything of a navy man named Eugene Hurn?” my uncle Robert asked of the sailor. The sailor shook his head.

But from behind where Robert was standing, a man spoke out.

“Why, Bob!” the man said, “What are you doing here?”

[Merry Christmas to you and your family from our family.]

A small Japanese marketplace, 1959: My uncle Eugene, known as Commander Hurn in the Navy, was in charge of finances of a navy base in Japan, and had to learn to speak Japanese.

That’s why he understoodd what the men said behind him in the marketplace. One man laughed, turning to the other.

“Look at the Yankee Devil,” he said quietly, “and the red socks he wears.”

Commander Hurn stiffened, and turned slowly, all dignity, to glare down from his 5′ 11″ height at the shorter men.

“Those are not my socks,” he said slowly, in Japanese. “That is my underwear. And therefore it is not your concern.”

The Japanese embarass easily. The men blanched, glanced at each other, and scurried away in different directions.

AllAboutJazz.com, October 21, 2004: The following excerpt is blatently stolen from AllAboutJazz.com. There’s lots more good stuff at AllAboutJazz.com, if you’re interested in jazz. But this superlative interview with Yogi Berra may be of interest even if you aren’t …

Can you explain jazz? I can’t, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it’s wrong.

I don’t understand. Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can’t understand it. It’s too complicated. That’s whats so simple about it.

Do you understand it? No. That’s why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldnt know anything about it.

Are there any great jazz players alive today? No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.

What is syncopation? That’s when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don’t hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they’re the same as something different from those other kinds.

Now I really don’t understand. I haven’t taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.

[Thank you, AllAboutJazz.com!]