SmokeSound

A distant time ago, during a discussion of an academic requirement to be able to read German and French, a friend told me he had no trouble reading German, even though he had never studied it.  He said he just didn't understand a word of what he was reading. I have been listening to radio ads for "a Respitory Therapy program" provided by a local, family-owned institute.  I do not know why it irritated me, but I could use a respite from ads like that.  I looked up the firm, online.  It appears they also have a couple of Vetinary programs and--this one takes my breath away--a Phlebotomy program.  I know what "phlebotomy" means, but I will admit that I wonder what the Institute thinks it means.  It makes me pespire just to think about a radio commercial for it. But perhaps it is not my place to admire the pronounciation they hire:  I once thought of becoming a vetinarian myself, but that was before I knew what phlebotomy was, or how to spell vetinary.  

“A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.”   A series of operations on my right eye have left it minimally usable.  It serves mostly to inform me that it is most likely daytime, or nighttime, and to monitor my right periphery.   In recent time, my left eye, having learned to become the dominant eye, has developed its own problems; principally cataracts, a film over something-in-there, and an irritated retina.  Doctors decided that the first medical attack should be to replace the cornea, and solve the cataract problem, with the hope that the retina would settle down, and that my sight would be good enough.  Monday--yesterday--I had a cataract operation.  They sent me home with a patch over my left eye, meaning that I had to maneuver about with only what my right eye was showing me, and that was not much!   Today, with orders to report to the Doctor, I brushed my tooth, and pawed about in the closet until I had foun

I am beginning to think that we live in a pretty tough neighborhood.  It is no exaggeration to say that there has not been a day in at least two months when a siren has not gone off.   That is unnerving, especially in the middle of the night. At first I thought it might just be that we could hear the sirens from the fire station about a mile away, but that theory was soon put to test, and to rest.  Stepping outside made it clear that it was not fire trucks.  But it seemed not to be police cars in the neighborhood, either.  As the King in "The King and I" said:  "Is a puzzlement!" No one likes the idea of a neighborhood crime wave, but we recently joined a neighborhood . . . oh, digital group that exchanges useful information about what is going on, and there have been several posts about criminals posing as utility workers, who talk their way, or break their way, into houses; in onc case armed with a knife.  That guy apparently did not get into a house, but wa

Christians and Muslims have been staring at, and shouting at, each other across the Mediterranean for a long time.  Sometimes it has looked like a religious conflict, and sometimes like a conflict between Europeans and Middle-Easterners.  It is both, and the lines are liquid. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims extended their reach far into Europe, and Europeans pushed back.  In 1877 and '78, it was the Russians, trying to regain their influence in Eastern Europe, who engaged the Turkish Empire in war.  A couple of Englishmen wrote a song that became popular in pubs, that gave us the term, "jingoism". "We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money, too We've fought the Bear before, and while we're Britons true The Russians shall not have Constantinople." Once, the city was called, Byzantium.  The Emperor Constantine renamed it after himself.  Today, Constantinople is call

I have spent life-changing hours this morning, reading heartwarming and fantasmagorical tales of how things might have been had they not been what we know they are. Michael Laitman is a professor of Ontology, with a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah and an MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics, and he or someone apparently purchased half a page in the New York Times of today.  What caught my eye was the line, "Buying Our Way into Heaven".  "That," I thought, "is my only chance, and I cannot afford it, but I had better pay attention!" I cannot do justice to whatever that cost turns out to be, but I did enjoy the business about Jonah being thrown overboard by the crew of a boat that suspected that he was a Jonah, and how he ended up in the whale of a belly of a whale, and how, after walking around in there for some days, finally agreed to do God's work, which taught him a lesson, I think.  I never did figure out what it would cost me to buy my way into heav

Last night and this morning Coyote and the Sky came by. Coyote was as shy as the Sky was bold. Precisely, we do not live in the city, but in a small  Pima County notch at the corner, probably defined by a fierce urge to be free from the sins of the city across the street; maybe so Coyote would know he could come and go, although tax rates may have occurred also. Coyote created the world, you know,  before the Conquistadores  came marching for gold, and watched them come and go; Someone Else's creation. Someone Else also created  copper miners lusting for land on the other side of town,  where there are trees and water, and where the last Jaguar owns the night. Coyote knows.

" A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. "                                                                                    -- Robert Frost I have not been in such a heavy rain for about two years.  I live in Tucson, and this is October.  There are almost more raindrops than I can count.  My shirt is damp.  Without exaggeration, I can say that I am cold, and I have found a vest to help me stay warm. We have just had lunch with Becky and Stan, at Teresa's Mosaic Cafe--they having just recently returned from a summer stay near Seattle.  Their return is a much more reliable sign of Autumn than is frost on the pumpkin:  no pumpkin, no frost. It is common, but it is odd, still, to look across town at Mt. Lemmon, and know that up there, in what seems to be the backyard of the houses on that side of town, sometimes it snows.  The ski lift up there might indeed be more for show than for snow,