Sunday morning, after chores, 38°
Weight 211 lbs., off to a terrible start, I gained three pounds
Barn News
It was a computer error, that's all, but I've still been bombarded with comments:
I am astonished that you only weigh 118 -- I would have guessed that you were more like 138! More power to you! I am envious.
You've lost way too much, way too fast.
You weigh 118 pounds? Not possible! did you mismatch a number ... 811? no 181? Too much..??
I'll join your diet group and have started a couple days ago with an assist from the stomach flu. Already lost 2 pounds!
How tall are you ? As I recall, I’d put you at about 5’10.” If that’s anywhere NEAR correct, I’d say you need to GAIN some weight, not lose it ! Of course you don’t want to just gain FAT, but mostly muscle – more a matter of TONE, probably, but it sounds like you get enough activity to be in reasonable ‘tone.’ We can’t keep someone alive by just making them thinner and thinner, or ALL the “supermodels” would still be around. But then, I’m not a physician, just a physicians assistant. Best of luck !
Okay, okay, the number should have been 208.
Dr. M. was the only one who was reassuring:
Well, if your MD doesn't make it for another 43 years to keep you alive, I'll step in!
When I reach 110 a DVM would probably be a better choice for health care than an MD. By the way, for those of you who have been wondering what happened to Dr. M.'s occasional commentaries, she's pregnant. You'd think a Vet would know what causes that, but maybe she likes being that way.
Nothing of interest is happening in the barn. I borrowed a buck goat to breed Lucy, but I think I was too late. Lucy is showing no signs of coming into standing heat, it's too late in the year.
Several strange tomcats have been hanging around, so we might be preparing to start a new crop of kittens.
There are only five hens in the chicken house, but they are laying five eggs most days. What excellent chickens!
Tripping to Chicago – part 3
Illinois Beach State Park is an almost 3,000 acre strip along the west side of Lake Michigan running south from the Wisconsin border, bounded on the west by the city of Zion. We stopped there to rest after we fled from Chicago. Zion was founded in 1901 as a utopian community built around the Zion Tabernacle of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church. After Chicago, a garbage dump would have felt utopian, but Illinois Beach State Park and Zion were both quite pleasant without being compared to their noisome neighbor.
The only thing we lacked was pot. How can you be good hippies on a road trip without pot? We all put flowers in our hair (I had hair, then), smiled a lot, and, sure enough, a nice young man with long hair showed up and offered to share a joint with us. Peace, Love, and Brotherhood meant something real in those days.
Peter, the nice young man, was the younger son of an Israeli mother and a Palestinian father who had fled from the Middle East to find peace in Zion. He was a senior in high school, very mellow, and an altogether delightful person. He invited us to his home, where we met John, his older brother, who was a student at Shimer College, very mellow, and a delightful person. John was the author of a wonderful book, Edifying Tautologies, which occupied twenty or so four inch square pages. I don't remember a single word of it, but I distinctly remember the effect it produced, especially when one smoked a good joint before reading it.
Shimer College was, and is, an excellent Liberal Arts college. Their students graduate with degrees in Liberal Arts, there are no majors or electives. Shimer had another characteristic, the student body consisted of people who were seeking both academic and spiritual growth. In the yearbooks of that time there are no pictures of a football team, but there are many pictures of students sitting outside on the lawn, smiling at each other, and discussing the meaning of Peace, Love, and Brotherhood.
Peter and John had created a great little trip room in their house. Their bedrooms were in the attic, with vertical walls about four feet high on the sides. The trip room was in the little triangular space left under the roof outside the bedroom sidewall. It had oriental rugs on the floor and the ceiling and walls were covered with India prints. It was cozy, comfortable, and an excellent environment for getting high.
Our second day at Illinois Beach we decided to express our disdain for Chicago by attacking the city from the air. We went to Zion and purchased some colored tissue wrapping paper, a small bottle of Elmer's glue, and we scrounged up a few feet of wire from somewhere. We glued eight sheets of the tissue together to form a square tube, about two feet on each side and six feet high. We cut triangular pieces to make a peaked top to the tube, and another set to make a peaked bottom, but we left the center of the bottom unglued. With the wire, we made a ring about eighteen inches in diameter, with a few spokes radiating toward the center. The ring of wire was then glued to the bottom peak to form a round opening. We tore a strip of old tee shirt about two inches wide and two feet long, soaked it in melted candle wax and then rolled it into a tight cylinder. Using the spokes of wire, we secured the cylinder of waxed fabric in the center of the wire circle.
That evening there was no moon, and a very gentle breeze blowing toward Chicago. Two people held the tissue paper balloon, for that is what it was, upright, while another lit the wax wick. The flaming wick quickly filled the balloon with hot air, and, after a few minutes, we released it. It floated into the air and out over the lake, glowing in different colors as it turned. It was a beautiful thing, and it slowly drifted away toward Chicago. It finally drifted out of sight. If the power had gone off in Chicago that multicolored thing in the sky probably would have created a panic. The power didn't go off, but we were happy, for we had expressed our feelings in an appropriate manner for hippies who believed in Peace, Love, and Brotherhood.
Book: Touchstone by Laurie R. King
The 1920's were not one of my favorite eras. That is the decade in which gangsters became a part of the society, thanks to prohibition. The people who wanted to force us to follow their standard of morality ended up producing something even worse. The whole decade seemed to be shallow and without ideals. Then Laurie King writes a book about idealists in the 1920's.
Her idealists are the union sympathizers, socialists, communists, anarchists, and similar weirdos, whose ideals lead them to throwing bombs (actually, the bomber hides them in various places). On the other side is an American FBI agent who both hates and sympathizes with them. And, the whole thing takes place in the English countryside.
Once, in Kansas City, I received an anonymous phone call, and the caller said, “Be sitting outside at around 7:00 pm.” I forgot to go outside, so I missed hearing the bomb go off, but I did understand why he set off the bomb. Touchstone reminded me of those days. It's far from being her best book, but it's worth reading.
Music
Have you heard Daft Punk's Technologic? It's interesting, but the video is creepy.
Labels: Cambodia, cat, Democratic Convention, driving, Illinois, pot, Zion
