Sunday Morning Coming Down

Right now, I'm reading a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's commencement speeches. I remember Terry Sullivan wondering how many of us would end up in Viet Nam or knocked up at our senior dinner.  I guess we were all being 18 year old asses at the time. Vonnegut in contrast was funny, positive, and humble in his talks which all kind of revolved around an uncle of his and the gratitude his uncle had for some of the simpler things in life.  He would often pronounce "If this isn't good, what is?  Cold lemonade, a good tasting meal, or maybe just being with family. I had a moment like that early this afternoon.  I was just about done distributing my product for the day when two high school kids asked for a dollar because they were short on bus fare.  First, I shook my head, then I fished around in my pocket and I found a dollar bill.  I gave it to them.  But first I said "I'm surprised you asked me.  This is a really crappy job some days and I don't c...

Yesterday, while at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami, I saw the latest edition of TIME.  The cover story was about the Moore, Oklahoma tornado. I've been through a major hurricane and several smaller storms.  None of them are any fun and the major danger is that you might be caught by tornadoes that are spawned by the hurricane or if you are near the shore there might be some significant flooding from storm surge. The mattress drill for people that lived through Hurricane Andrew and just about any other storm, where the roof is ripped off and things really start flying is its own case for PTSD. Sixteen minutes to save your life.  If you are lucky, if you are paying attention to the warnings, and if you have a safe place to go.  Duck and cover and you will probably be able to pick up the pieces, or if you are really lucky randomness will save you and yours, and all of your stuff and it will have just been a drill. Twenty four souls an...

It's Sunday Morning again.  The coffee has brewed and there is a donut or two with my name on it.  A church service at the local UU and a little after noon there is nothing scheduled, and Monday is Memorial Day, again nothing is scheduled. Yesterday, I tried to watch some races from Delta Downs.  No Preakness at Vinton, Louisiana, but Brady's March Madness broke his maiden, and won about $135,000 in the Louisiana Laddie Futurity, and set a track record to boot. I can only imagine how his owners feel this morning.  If you make it to the finals of a futurity race everybody gets paid and hopefully nobody gets hurt. On Friday, at Ruidoso Downs there were twenty five trial races and the ten fastest finishers will be running in the Ruidoso Futurity on June 9, 2013.  The total purse will be $750,000.  The winner $315,000 and 10th place will pay almost $17,000. Most of the money from the race will come from owners that nominated their horses and made peri...

Tourist season in Iceland is starting.  The President of Iceland liked a recent episode where Homer and company visit Iceland, looking for Carl Carlson. The Simpsons are seen around the world and this might just a shot in the arm for Icelandic tourism. It's got to be better than Andrew Zimern visiting and touting sheepshead and shark.

I have a friend who was in Moore, Oklahoma this afternoon when the tornado struck.  Randy and Lindsay are OK physically.  He posted picture of the tornado as it raced towards the barn that had horses which he trained. Watching pictures from a plane over the area shortly after the storm panned across a training track, the place looked flattened.  From what I saw I'm grateful they are alive, but this is going to take some time to get over. Late last night, I learned that all twelve of the horses that Randy was caring for were killed during the storm.  Horse people from across the country were shocked that upwards of one hundred horses were lost in the storm. Our connection with life is fragile whether we realize it or not.

There are many forms of public service.  Being a part of the military, a first responder, a police officer, state attorney,  an interviewer for public assistance, a building inspector, or being the tax man. I find the current scandal at the IRS warrants more than an apology. The potential for corruption exists on many levels.  It is vital that the laws and the regulations do what they were intended to do.  I am not clear that granting tax exempt status under the guise of a law originally intended for educational or to promote social welfare to any organization that seems to be political in nature is a good law. If it is found that there was political pressure applied to deny tax exempt status to tea party groups, the offenders in the IRS need to be fired and the politicos supporting the mischief need to go as well. My own experience with Inspector General investigations as a former bureaucrat who survived two of them while administering a welfare to work...

A while ago I watched the movie "Saint Ralph" about a kid in a Catholic School that runs in the Boston Marathon and finishes 2nd.  The movie ends with the song Hallelujah.  It wasn't the Leonard Cohen original. Since then we have had a bombing at the Boston Marathon, the lock down of an entire city, and lots of other coverage about the event.  It gets played at Fenway Park on April 20, 2014. Yesterday, I had an Amazon moment and bought a e-book that discusses ingrate deal the history of the song and the meaning of the lyrics.  Are the lyrics holy or something related to orgasm. I have not listened to more than a couple of versions of the song and there are an awful lot of artists that have sung the song. Along the Saint Ralph vision of the song and my marathon experience in 1983, I prefer the holy nature interpretation of the song, however the alternative interpretations certainly fit in there somewhere. Sort of like "Hallelujah, what's it to ya". ...