The world didn't miss me, but that is okay...

I dropped off the world for a bit, didn't spend anytime on making it a better place, unless my absence was a positive thing. Five or six wargames yesterday, two today, I did watch The Patriot with Mel Gibson (it is almost Braveheart done in the late 18th Century). Read more about the Revolutionary War, and then Sunday I posted, went to church and then sank into dropping off the world again. This time I watched Waterloo with Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer - when I say I am a certain pattern I do know what I am talking about. By time dinner was done and my wife was off to her church I was ready to break out -- so I did.

If this were a soap opera I would be off to find some foolish females, but they are stuck on television and the gossip columnist's page of the vanishing newspapers. I was out for the ride, and maybe some new warmer dryer gauntlets for the Trusty Triumph, tomorrow will have just above freezing waiting for me. The Eagle Leather was closed, they didn't know I was coming, so I continued my ride, hard and fast down I-5, then turning off to go to the bookstore - such a guy, such a library guy. I wanted a copy of Paul Revere's Ride, and the History of the Rifle (which is really American Rifle A Biography) I didn't find the second book but did run across Fusiliers : The Saga of a British Redcoat Regiment in the American Revolution, so I grabbed it and went to the non-fiction upstairs to see what was there -- and found the book I didn't have the proper title for. Now I always kid the inmate patrons about how if they don't know the title and author they will have to put up with whatever I find that could be close - and don't ask me to spell correctly for them either -- still I try, so did the sales people at Borders, I walked out a richer man for my gain, and helped stimulate the economy a bit more. Ever try to stick three books in their bag inside your leather bad boy jacket and not look like you should be riding an H-D Fat Boy, cause you are one? No, well, except for being a bit blocky in the belly I am sure no one noticed. Well, I have enough reading awaiting, and after the Beautiful Ladies get done talking on Korean television I get to watch the Iron Empress. Life is good.

I loved to read the Sunday comics, and the daily's

They are talking about the extinction of the daily newspaper across the country and I look at my own life with and without the newspaper. Being young and limber once, I knelt with my two big front teeth resting on my bare knee and went through all the Sunday, in color, comic strips - to the point of impressing them into the flesh, I hadn't moved anything except my eyes over the pages my hands had turned. Lil' Abner, Terry and the Pirates, Gordo, Blondie, and many others I may have forgotten. Red Rider? Little King?

I did find the other sections of the newspaper finally, my dad talked about them, I got interesting in the stock market, letters to the editor were always a favorite, and then the want ads - where what I wanted was always there although the money may not have been in my pocket. I did find my first motorcycle in the newspaper, I have looked for jobs in the newspaper and found them. Look where that has gotten me.

I still look at the comic strips, but only on the Internet, I still read letters to the editor - although they seem to be the comments to the blogger's current post, since I stopped getting newspapers delivered to my home years ago. To me, newspapers became too heavy and costly and slower than I wanted my information. Just like television is becoming. They are concerned about selling ad space - this is where they think their money is - and they could be correct, but if I don't buy the paper and read it who will buy ad space in a medium that doesn't reach me? Not that I am important to anyone except me. So the papers are folding, the magazines are wobbling, the big networks News tries to be local, the local network news tries to be "breaking and world reaching" and their advertisers bore me away with drumbeats of commercial enterprise. I do doubt that I read any ads on any blogger's page - but I do object to the load time since I am only DSL not super high speed instant transmission - how much delay at light speed is the Moon from Tacoma? Don't add video, and giga-bytes of bits and I will get there soon enough. Does my mind work faster than light speed, or have the powers that be loaded the message to the point of my not picking it up to read?

I was wandering the Revolutionary War, for stories to tell, and found a book my mother had given me in 1975, The Boys of '76 by Charles Carleton Coffin, my copy by Grosset & Dunlap, with illustrations and drawings by Wallis Sturtevant, copyright 1876, 1904, 1918, 1924. Except for the idea of Liberty, Freedom and heroic effort there are no commercial messages. Save for the message from my mother "To Earl, Christmas 1975, Mom" I was in California about to go to Oklahoma to serve as a Drill Sergeant. Don't see that much information and entertainment being given in Kindle, the first kind or the second, but then I am a stick in the mud and don't jump on all the new technology - I have seen it break down when really needed.

Well, the weather men weren't correct, my home is much lower than 1,000 feet and that is snow on the roofs, and those are clear blue skies, no rain today... we know so very little about anything that we should always be in complete awe of what we see.

Friday, furiously finishing...

I normally step out long and quickly, the foot race to the gates from the ferry, and today I am a winner! I pick up a backup tape on my way into the prison, get the distribution from Control and open the library, turn on the computers and the day is fast and full and fun. Everything in its place and still bubbles of something new and something different, when the patrons show up in the afternoon they are loud and boisterous. I have three hours of roar and rumble of bass voices, then suddenly Recall is sounded and the library empties, my crew cleans off table discharge, puts the chairs in place as I turn off computers. They wish me a good week's end and one mentions he has a four day weekend since his mother is visiting on Monday. I tell them that I will see them Monday, Lord willing as I time stamp the time sheets for their departure. Silence, I put the radio away, turn off the lights, pick up distribution and walk to the door, going out and turning around to lock it. Check the door, turn the knob and shake - the library has finished its first week of November. Only rest a bit before Monday starts it again.

Stepping into the Time Machine...

Closed the library on Friday, packed one suitcase for two and departed the Great Northwest. Left the suitcase in Chicago when we changed planes and our best laid plans. The library will be opened one day while I am gone - which means I am not important, or the library isn't or that four days of closure are just more punishment for the guilty. Could be that it has no meaning and no one will notice my shift into the future.

We are visiting my mother for her birthday, she was eighty on the 12th of February, born in a hospital in Uruguay in 1928 and living now in an upscale retirement home in almost Dixie. We find ourselves moving slower, speaking clearer and completely or else repeating ourselves to be understood. My slight limp from the motorcycle mishap has nothing on the number of Scooters, wheel chairs and fourteen types of walkers and canes. I find myself greeting everyone, saying hello with a smile and looking into everyone's eyes. I notice those that are doing things for other people seem the healthiest, happiest and most mobile, a secrect of success?

My sister shows up and hugs my wife and greets me and I immediately tell her to slow down, there isn't anything here to hurry over - she has just stepped out of her hamster wheel in her cage - she needs to adjust (slowly) to our future. We get her coffee and help her wrap a gift and talk (still too fast but we can keep up)about family elsewhere and what is going on and what is important. We don't mention politics nor celebrities.

A former sister-in-law joins us and we attack the set up of the area for the party/reception (elders have a very different party idea - no beer keg in sight). I do the thug work, five women and I just take orders and lift and tote. For fun I get to blow up the baloons, red and pink. Nice set up, nice cake and and most of the local world came to say hello, I get told I look like my father by all that knew him from his time in their world. My mother is having a wonderful time saying thankyous and explaining the pictures from the albums and years ago and far away. I have noted many pictures that I had never seen - some with a much younger fellow I could have been, except never that cute.

Party over, mother sleeping in her throne, we clean up and check the weather, sister decides she can safely return to the hamster wheel in her cage. Wish her well and a safe voyage - back to the place they depend on her for W-2s and payroll, and heartfelt hugs and good advice about home and life. She is speeding up as she turns to go... no time for my hug, but she and I aren't ever that far apart; we both wear LL Bean slip ons, and laugh immediately at the same funny, my sister.

I have a couple of more days for scouting the territory of the ancient, aged, aging, and just older than dirt. We met a ninety-nine year old at the party - she was a wonder. But knowing math the way I do, the women out numbered the men six or seven to one in that age group, I might not make that twenty year trip; I do ride a motorcycle and love to look leeringly at lovely looking ladies (not really, I just wanted to play with L's). I will continue to tell my wife she will miss me when I am gone, and I will continue to jog gently (85% of MHR) when I get back to "my" normal life pace and the walking race into the Prison from the ferry. Work harder work faster... but that is the subject of another post on another day.