Give Me an "E"!

Annual physical; new (to me) physician. I asked for flu shot; Dr talked me into pneumonia shot, too. Nurse popped flu into left shoulder, akin to being slugged in a school-yard fisticuffs setto. Popped the pneumonia into the right shoulder.  Much like being kicked by a mule.  Shod mule. Yikes.

Mechanic overhauled carburator on the chain saw, brought it home. I went on a dead-wood rampage, cutting dross from the austrees.  Only what I could reach from the ground, of course.  The rest will succumb to the winds over time.

Lawn tractor is going to have to be retired.  Think it beyond salvation.  Well, the lawn season is nearly over; what better time to make the change.  Please!  Someone have a good sale on good equipment.

This.  This post is evidence of the desperation I encounter recently in maintaining the blog.  Never much cared for stream-of-consciousness writing, and here I am engaged in it.  Forgive me, Readers, for I know not what I do.  Seriously, I know not what I do.

(I spelled "carburetor."  Spell check suggested the change you saw above.  I still think it should have an "e."   Eh?  I mean "a."  Not so much.  Okay.  I cared enough to give my very best.  Looked it up, and the "e" is correct, except in the Commonwealth.  So why did. . . ?  Next thing we know, spell check will be suggesting an extra "u" here and there.  Just for color, and stuff.  Never mind.)

Bonus:

Wife says, "The car has a problem.  There's water in the carburetor."
"No way," says Hubs, "and you don't even know what a carburetor is."
"Certainly do; and there is water in the carburetor."
"Alright, already.  I'll check it out.  Where did you leave the car?"
"In the pool."

Yeah, yeah.  It was funnier when cars had carburetors.

Family Visit

 Forty years ago my cousin, Gene, visited Indiana.  See, there we are.

This past weekend he and his wife, Merrilee, visited again.

See, same two guys.

Gene and Merrilee were driving all the way across the country from Oregon to the Virginia coast.  We were blessed in that they chose to make our place one of their stops.  We had ample time to visit, bring one another up to date, and reminisce about the old days.

Gene had with him some old family pictures which I had never seen, and I added them to my digital album.

This is our Grandpa and Grandma Morrell.  The little girl is their first child, Ava, who died at age five.  The baby is Ray, who is Gene's father.  My mother was born about a year and one-half after this picture was made.

Thanks, Merrilee and Gene.  Family times are good times.

With their kids, back in the day.

Next level crashes, terrible destruction results

NEWS FLASH
.
Today in Nutso World, Paul, brushing his teeth with Crest^TM brought his mouth to the next level.  This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.  The next level could bear no more.

The real tragedy of the incident is that not only is the next level destroyed, but numerous additional levels, receiving a sudden and unanticipated burden, also succumbed.  The damage assessment is on-going, but it could take decades to repair the levels and replace all the items again where they belong.

{I WISH}



Image:  BiblioFotoTeca

October Sixth

Barbara Castle 1910 - 2002

Barbara Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn, was the longest-serving lady MP at some thirty-four years.  She was designated First Secretary of State from 1968 to 1970, a title which is largely honorary and an office that was vacant for twenty-five years following her term.  She also served as Secretary of State for Social Services from 1974 to 1976, a working cabinet position.

Why do I bring this woman to you attention? Simply because she shares a birth date with my father.
They were both born October 6, 1910.


Delbert W. Lacy  1910 - 1999

Delbert W. Lacy was a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ for seventy years.  Still miss you, Dad.

Proverbs 27: 1,2

Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.  --KJ21

Happy birthday to the beautiful lady who makes my life on this mortal coil worthwhile:  Grace JoAnn, I love you.

You Don't Say

The line in the tv commercial said

"Do you wonder what makes your child behave the way they do?"

Total nonsense, of course.  Grammatically incorrect anyway you parse it.

"Do you wonder what makes your child behave the way he does?"

Grammatically correct, and traditionally understood that "he" is generically representative of either sex.  Drives the feminists up the wall.

So, awkwardly, "behave the way she/he does?"  I have actually seen this sort of thing. 

Or, "behave the way it does?"  Cold, man.  A child is a person, after all.

"Do you wonder what makes your children behave the way they do?"  Tada!  Grammatically correct.  But wait.  Does this suggest that there is a herd of kids and all their behaviors are inexplicable?

Well, what's wrong with that?

Who is Gracy Parmer?

or, Why genealogy is so much fun.

Genealogy is fraught with puzzlement which may be why some people choose to get entangled in it. I tried it for a time.

I hope I can condense this enigma  to an understandable example of the stuff family researchers come up against.  The one common factor to be found in researching this person is a statement of birth year, 1728, and that she was born in Virginia.  Nothing else has been verifiably established, but that has not stopped the family tree builders from asserting her position as matriarch of a Parmer/Palmer clan, the one to which I belong.

William Branham, a.k.a. William Parmer, born about 1743 in Albemarle County, Virginia, who died in 1822, is verifiably recognized as progenitor of the Palmer line into which I was born.  It is asserted that his mother was Gracy Parmer and his putative father was William Branham.  In seeking records, though, one will find that it is almost as though, having need of a mother for Mr. Branham/Parmer, one was posited by someone. She came into existence of necessity and disappeared conveniently, leaving no footprints.

Yet if you look at various family trees, there you will find her, including one in which it is stated that she died in childbirth at William's advent, and another in which she supposedly gave birth to two additional children, one when she was fifty years of age, and the other at age 59!

William went by the Branham name for the first fifty plus years of his life, then he filed for legal change of name to William Parmer.  An affidavit by acquaintances asserted that William "was illegitimate" and he was "fair born" to a woman with red hair.  Come now the family researchers yet again.  One I read after went into a long and detailed historical analysis showing why, in his opinion, this tidbit points to the likelihood that mother Gracy Parmer was a Monacan Indian, and that she was in fact married to Richard Branham, and hence William was not illegitimate at all, but now he was seeking to evade a recently passed law in Virginia requiring inhabitants of mixed race to register as such.

And so it goes.

Again I ask, Who is Gracy Parmer?

Creepy Coleus and Caladium

 Plantings by house, backyard.

Are there things you have encountered that both attract you and repulse you at the same time?  There is no explanation for such phenomena, so one is not forthcoming.  Horror movies and Stephen King novels come to mind.  Suffice it to say that in my case, plant lover that I am, there are certain plants that affect me in just that way, and coleus is one of them.  I pretty much have the same reaction to caladium.

These, caladium and coleus, are strikingly gaudy plants, for the most part, beautiful, most people would say.  And the colors are fabulous.  But the plant expends its efforts in painting its leaves and when the flowers  finally appear, pffft they are nothing to look at, in the case of the coleus, at any rate. I find this disturbing; and yes, that is just me.

Oddly enough, I like the colors of the leaves on the trees in the fall, often go on excursions for the sole purpose of viewing the autumnal foliage.  But I cannot shake the feeling of unease, of something-is-just-not-quite-right, when I look at the coleus.  Perhaps to keep me off-balance, a bit unsettled, so to speak, the planners of downtown gorgeousness here in Perfect decided this year to install huge planters on the sidewalks throughout the city.  They are stunning, and many people have complimented the city on this effort.  Seventy-six pots in total, and well-tended.

One of the principal contents of the planters is coleus.

A few years ago, we spent a couple of months in Lake Placid, Florida which touts itself as The Caladium Capital.  Imagine my enjoyment.

The last of the Uncle Jeptha Tales

appeared here on September 25.    

Should you wish to read or reread 

any of them, They can be accessed 

via the “Short Stories” and “More 

Stories” tabs at the top of the   

page.