Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah-Dah-Dah

If you are the sort of person who notices small details, you may have noticed the following line in my previous post:

... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ...

You may have thought it was an interesting decoration used as a divider and nothing more.

I will tell you a secret.

It is not just an interesting decoration used as a divider.

It has meaning.

There was method in my madness.

Let us put a portion of that line under the RhymeswithPlague Virtual Microscope (RVM, patent pending) and examine it more closely:



Three dots, three dashes, three dots.

Ring any bells?

My dad taught me this pattern with a flashlight when I was child. We went out into the backyard and pointed my new Boy Scout flashlight into the night sky. Using the button on the switch, I did it. I flashed three short flashes, three long flashes, and then three more short flashes. I have never forgotten it. Fortunately, we lived in a rural area over which airplanes rarely passed. On many a summer night I could be found out in the backyard with my flashlight, signalling to the universe. Why?

It is now time for the big reveal.

The pattern represents the letters S O S in Morse Code, which was invented by this man for use with this device:



S O S, S O S, S O S. The international distress signal. Some people say it means “Save Our Ship” but that may not be true.

When there is vocal contact, another international distress signal that can be used is “May Day, May Day” which is actually “M’aidez, m’aidez” which means “Help me, help me” in French.

When there is not vocal contact, your only hope is three shorts, three longs, three shorts.

Three dots, three dashes, three dots.

Dih-dih-dit Dah Dah Dah Dih-dih-dit.

Save our ship, because we’re sinking.

Very fitting for our celebrity-obsessed world, where some people actually think it is important that we know that Joy Behar is leaving The View. And Elizabeth Hasselbeck. And possibly Baba Wawa.

The most distressing thing of all is that many people who heard the news thought it was important too.

Oh, there are many things lots worse than The View, things so bad I wouldn’t dream of bringing them up on a G-rated blog. They’re all symptoms of the culture in which we find ourselves.

And we’re sinking.



[Update, 7:45 a.m., 12 March 2013: Thanks to comments received from klahanie and Yorkshire Pudding on my previous post, I have been made aware that The View and the women of The View are unknown in the United Kingdom and, one hopes, throughout the English-speaking entire world. My apologies for having been provincial and chauvinistic, but the original premise is still valid. Readers outside the U.S. may replace “The View” with their own local entertainment atrocities. --RWP]

I repeat:



If you don’t have access to a telegraph key, you can always use one of these:

We interrupt this blog for this important announcement from The People In Charge

The world as we know it will never be the same.

This person is leaving The View:



and this person is leaving The View:



and rumor (British, rumour) has it that even this person may be leaving The View:



which will leave only this person:



and this person:



on The View until they find three other persons to replace the persons who are leaving The View.

We now return you to the blog in progress.

... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ... ... _ _ _ ...

All together now, class:

Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!

It took a bloke from Yorkshire who is currently teaching school in Thailand to help me see the light.

Thank you, Yorkshire Pudding!

In my last post, which basically was about Texas, I said the following:

“The Catholics or anybody else may have you until you’re six if they like, but if Texas gets you when you’re six and a half, you’re pretty much doomed very fortunate indeed a Texan for the rest of your life, like it or not.

“This is true even if you move away when you are 20 and hardly ever go back. I speak from personal experience. Even if you try to put Texas out of your mind, you cannot. I think it has something to do with bluebonnets.”

Yorkshire Pudding straightened out my thinking with the following comment:

“No, you are not a Texan, sir. You are a fully fledged Georgian. You may need hypnotherapy to expunge all thoughts of Texas and the hallucinogenic blue bonnet from your shingles-affected mind, so sing after me:

Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you.

Georgia, Georgia, no peace I find
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind.”

Singing along with Yorkshire Pudding definitely has a certain purgative/cathartic effect, but for the real deal, you have to

SING ALONG WITH RAY CHARLES!

That would make a Georgian out of anybody, plus Ray’s physical movements while he sings serve as the hypnotherapy Yorkshire Pudding suggested. For those of you wondering whatever became of Ray Charles, you will be happy to know that he has found part-time work as a metronome.

Here is a summary of my life, timewise:

I spent 6 years in Rhode Island (1941 - 1947)
I spent 14 years in Texas (1947 - 1961)
I spent 2 years in Florida (1961 - 1963)
I spent 2 years in Nebraska (1963 - 1965)
I spent 3 years in New York (1965 - 1968)
I spent 7 more years in Florida (1968 - 1975)
I have spent (so far) 38 years in Georgia (1975 - 2013)

That adds up to 72 years, which is right on the money, my 72nd birthday being only a few days away.

Since I have spent over half my life in Georgia, and it happens to be the most recent half, the only conclusion I can make is that Yorkshire Pudding is right.

I am a Georgian.

I may have to turn in my credentials as a Texan

Yesterday was March 6th and I did not blog a single word about the fall of the Alamo, which occurred 177 years ago on March 6th, 1836.

I forgot to remember the Alamo!



And four days before that, on March 2nd, I did not blog a single word about Texas Independence Day, which is more important in Texas than the 4th of July.

The big three Texas Dates of Historic Significance (and thus blogging opportunities) are only two-thirds done for this year, however.

There is still the battle of San Jacinto on April 21st, when General Antonio López de Santa Anna got his comeuppance.

In addition, there is Juneteenth if you happen to be African-American, which I am not, not that there’s anything wrong with that.



I have heard it said that the Roman Catholic Church used to claim, “Give us a child until he is six, and he will be a Catholic for life.” I do not know whether that particular alleged boast is true. My mother, a non-practicing Jew, and my dad, a lapsed Methodist, were not religious when I was very young, so I never went to church or synagogue or anyplace else except the Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Day Nursery. When I was around five, I did visit the Woodlawn Baptist Church in Pawtucket a time or two with my dad. We didn’t own an automobile and Woodlawn was within walking distance of where we lived in the third-floor apartment of the house at 61 Larch Street.

In August of 1947, though, when I was six and a half, something momentous happened. We moved lock, stock, and barrel from Rhode Island to Texas.



The Catholics or anybody else may have you until you’re six if they like, but if Texas gets you when you’re six and a half, you’re pretty much doomed very fortunate indeed a Texan for the rest of your life, like it or not.

This is true even if you move away when you are 20 and hardly ever go back. I speak from personal experience. Even if you try to put Texas out of your mind, you cannot. I think it has something to do with bluebonnets.


(Field of Texas bluebonnets; photo by bombay2austin on Flickr. Noncommercial use permitted with attribution)

I know I'm getting old, but next year I simply must remember to remember the Alamo.

And the caissons go rolling along

I have now been taking valacyclovir (Valtrex) for seven days with three days to go. The shingles still look the same to me but may be beginning to fade.

What hasn’t faded is the pain. It has gotten worse. Although I would not call it excruciating, it has steadily built over the past week. I felt worse today than ever.

So I returned to our primary care physician for the follow-up visit and he prescribed Neurontin (or actually its generic equivalent, gabapentin) to be taken three times a day for the next ten days. I have the smallest size, 100 milligrams. The doc told me it comes in much larger sizes as well, but we’ll start with those and hope they do the trick.

I do not like taking pills in general. I’m ready for this stuff to be over.

Speaking of general and over, Hugo Chavez died this afternoon.

Oops, he was only a colonel, not a general. But that was apparently high enough in the scheme of things to become the dictator elected leader of Venezuela.

Congressman José Serrano (D-NY) of the Bronx sang Chavez’s praises here.

Some people never learn.

If this post makes no sense, it’s probably the gabapentin talking.

We aim to please.

In the bowels -- apologies to Yorkshire Pudding -- of the Feedjit Live Traffic thingie over in the sidebar, I noticed that a reader in Houston who had done a search on black women who singing one day at a time sweet jesus had landed on a post of mine entitled “One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus” which includes a photograph of a field of bluebonnets somewhere in East Texas followed by the “Take no thought for the morrow” passage of scripture from the sixth chapter of the Gospel According to St. Matthew. It contains absolutely nothing, however, about the song mentioned in the post’s title (except for the obvious connection readers were supposed to make from the “Take no thought for the morrow” passage of scripture from the sixth chapter of the Gospel According to St. Matthew).

A thousand pardons.

I want to remedy that at once. Houston Reader, here is -- not black women (plural), sorry -- but a black woman (singular) singing Christy Lane’s song, “One Day At A Time, Sweet Jesus” (5:33).

The church is Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois.

And here, Houston Reader, are black women (plural), black men, and a rather flamboyant an impassioned pianist, organist, and drummer performing “The Lord's Prayer” (5:00).

Although that particular musical style and level of intensity in worship may not be your cup of tea, it is what is referred to in the U.S. as “black gospel” music, a genre in which sincerity trumps technique.

But I do hope that Houston Reader is now happy, that Snow- brush out in Oregon has managed to recall a few fond memories from his early years in Mississippi, and that Yorkshire Pudding’s diarrhoea (his spelling, not mine) is now cured.

Writing this post brings to mind what an anonymous woman from Montgomery, Alabama, said at the end of the 381-day-long bus boycott in her city during the Civil Rights era: “My feet are tired, but my soul is rested.”

“Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.”

After three days of the valacyclovir (Valtrex), my case of shingles continues unabated.

I thought the pain was easing and the discolorations were fading slightly, but no. It was just wishful thinking.

It’s becoming a regular pharmacy around here.

I currently take three pills in the morning prescribed by my cardiologist (Cozaar, Toprol, and 1/4-grain Aspirin), one from my family doctor (the Valtrex), and two extra-strength Tylenol. In mid-afternoon I take two more of the Tylenols and another Valtrex. Before bedtime I take three other cardiologist-prescribed pills (a Zocor and two extended-release Niacin), two more extra-strength Tylenol, and a third Valtrex. I keep Nitrostat (nitroglycerin pills) on hand “just in case” of a heart flare-up but I am happy to report that in the 17 years since my heart attack I have never had to take a single one. Oh, and I just completed a three-month tour on Omeprazole (the generic equivalent of The Purple Pill) courtesy of the gastroenterologist following my first-ever endoscopy (bleeding ulcer) and colonoscopy (polyp). Counting the Omeprazole, that’s 16 pills a day, about 14 more than I would like to be ingesting.

I’m turning into a regular Snowbrush.

Well, maybe things haven’t quite reached that point yet.

But that which I greatly fear has come may have come may be trying to come upon me.

I speak of the condition we all dread. A-G-E.

Age.

Old age.

Nah.

It’s probably just the shingles talking.

In honor of the occasion, though, I have composed a pome (translation: some doggerel verse):

Old age -- it ain’t for sissies;
Old age -- it ain’t for wimps.
Old age is full of gases
Like those they put in blimps.

Old age has come a-knocking;
Old age will get us all.
Old age makes people long for
Dear dead days beyond recall.

Old age -- the final frontier --
Into it we boldly go
Where none of us has gone before.
What’s there? You don’t want to know.

(End of pome)

If you’re the type who likes to get a second opinion, you can always go with Robert Browning up there in the title of this post.

Otherwise, take two aspirin and call me in the morning.