Pull Tight

Heading to sister's house. Just in case there is not enough turkey, we are bringing more.

If you were to walk into a kindergarten class and ask "Who can sing?" or "Who can dance?", every hand in the room would shoot up.  Walk into a college classroom and ask the same questions and maybe one or two hands will go up. Do we lose our singing and dancing talents?  Wonder what happens to our self confidence or our imaginations? We went to see the movie  Herb and Dorothy 50x50  l ast week. This is the sequel to  Herb and Dorothy . Herb and Dorothy Vogel worked as a postal worker and librarian while accumulating over 5,000 pieces of contemporary art.  They lived in a rent controlled one bedroom apartment in New York and devoted one entire salary to art.  Their collection has been donated, by them, to the Smithsonian. Parts of it can now seen at a museum in each of the 50 United States.  Their story is very interesting for anyone with any interest in art.  I recommend both movies. A piece of contemporary art is interpreted at least somewhat differently

"Wow so the bible is actually a trilogy? and the book of Mormon is return of the Jedi? I'm interested!" quote from the Book of Mormon Got to see Book of Mormon on Broadway last week.  Written by the creators of South Park it is a very entertaining show.  Spoiler alert - if you can't laugh at some of the absurdities in religion, this might not be the show for you.  We saw an older couple get up and leave the theater during the second song, The song ( Hasa Diga Eebowai )  sung by oppressed poverty stricken African villagers in a hopeless situation might be something any of us would sing in a similar situation.  A quick web search will reveal the meaning of the song words.  It occurred to me while watching the show that if you are a Catholic, Jew, Baptist, etc., you might be quite happy one of the South Park creators was dumped by a Mormon girl friend and not a girl of your particular faith.  The Mormon faith is shown no mercy. During and after the

After several months of little exercise except for 3 or 4 four mile walks each week with my dogs, I have increased my physical activity.  Beginning a couple of weeks ago, now going for about a 20-25 mile bicycle ride after each dog walk.  As it is still really hot in my part of the world, the ride is followed by a quick dip in the pool.  When my daughter heard my new routine her remark was "Dad, your doing a senior citizen triathlon ". Thinking about riding the RAGRAI or something similar next summer.  Also in the early stages of planning a ride in 2020 with any friends and/or relatives who want to join me.  Ride will be from San Diego to Savannah or similar destinations.  More to come on this ride, but think about joining me for a leisurely bicycle ride from coast to coast.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. Ernest Hemingway   I have been experiencing some hearing loss for many years.  Had just of sort of grown used to it, I suppose.  At least high-frequency loss beginning in my 20s or before and a gradual loss through the years.  Maybe from severe ear infections as a child or too much time around very noisy farm equipment, but whatever reason I definitely have impaired hearing.   Had delayed getting hearing aids for various reasons, could still hear conversations if not in noisy settings, closed captions are on TV, hearing devices available at the theater, etc.  And vanity probably paid a bigger part than I would readily admit.  Elsewhere in Pulltight I mentioned a hearing test with the good and bad news being I could not understand female voices. It was actually a lot more than just female voices. Last fall Nancy and I visited the Texas State Fair.  One of the highlights of

Our daughter Lauren became engaged to Beau. in June.  We were planning an engagement party this past weekend.  Lauren and Beau had been looking at various venues, destinations etc.  They have busy lives. Beau teaching, coaching, giving private wrestling lessons and National Guard duty.  And Lauren with work and nursing school beginning this month.  Last week, six days before the engagement party at our house, Lauren called.  "We would like to have a surprise wedding at the engagement party." Decorations and food plans were quickly ramped up (some scrambling was involved).  Around 60 guests in attendance with only a very few knowing what was about to happen.  It was a very nice ceremony and party enjoyed by all.  Turned out great with several people telling me this was the best wedding they had ever attended.

Women don't need bras - says expert - Yahoo! Lifestyle UK : 'via Blog this' This research out a few weeks ago is good news for a few women I met in the 60s and 70s. But, after spending a week at the beach , maybe some men should be wearing the bras so long ago abandoned by my old earth mother friends.  Hey guys, beyond a certain weight, you could improve the scenery at the beach by at least wearing a t shirt. Also, wonder how you get the job as the expert on the need for bras.

The attached article appeared in Fortune magazine.  If you ever take any kind of medication you should read.  The article goes from being scary to making you angry.  Meds we take could very well not be what we think we are getting. They can make you sicker or kill you.  The disregard and skirting of quality and regulation at this one huge manufacturer of generic drugs would seem unbelievable if not proven with so much evidence. Dirty medicine - Fortune Features : 'via Blog this'  what

About 17 1/2 years ago we acquired a West Highland Terrier puppy.  Our kids were 5 and 8 years old.  At the time we had quite a few CDs of children music.  One of the favorites, Cowboys, Sisters, Rascals and Dirt   was recorded by Waylon Jennings for his son Shooter.  At our son's insistence our new companion became Shooter.  He would have many roles including... playmate for the kids soccer fan chaser of squirrels drinking companion my assistant coach for Destination Imagination Nancy's business partner when consulting from home  favored guest status at Paluxy Once Nancy was sitting in the floor enjoying one of our aquariums, when she realized the lapping sound she had been hearing was from Shooter sharing her glass of red wine as he enjoyed the fish also. Neighbors remember him from the walks through the neighborhood with our cat following 20 feet behind.  Some of our kids' parents will remember he was the dog that peed on their folding chairs at soccer games

My ring finger looks like it was dipped in ink after voting in a Mideast election.  Actually, this is the color of a finger after being closed between two sections of a garage door.  Said a few bad words loud enough for the neighbors to overhear and bad enough to be defriended by some of my more prudish Facebook friends. When our son was in daycare many years ago, he came home one day telling us his friend Hunter had gotten in trouble that day for saying two bad words.  According to Austin, Hunter had said two bad words.  Austin, being an analytical 4 year old offered Hunter this advice for staying out of trouble.  "Hunter, next time just say one bad word". Maybe I should have just said one bad word.

Some of my friends from the northeast may recognize this date or, perhaps a few trivia nuts who really should be on Jeopardy instead of reading this post.  This was the date of the big blackout in the northeast US and part of Canada. Went to see a really good theatrical production last night about the lives of a few New Yorkers in the year leading up to the blackout. The blackout changed their lives in some quite positive and surprising ways. Fly by Night is partly a musical and partly a dark romantic comedy.  Very uniquely done with a narrator who occasionally takes part in the production, an indie band from Austin and some very good actors from New York and Dallas.  It is now playing in Dallas and very much worth seeing if you are a theater fan.  Read the reviews and go.  Theater was packed on a Wednesday night  including an unusually large number of younger attendees. Maybe a few days without all of our powered companions would change some of our lives as well.

About a week before the opening day of Baseball season, this was the view as I walked my dogs.  The park between the football and baseball stadiums is quite nice, but never has very many visitors except on game days. There was a lot of activity on this day at the Ballpark including a trial run of the PA system. Must have been some Baby Boomers working that day judging from the music coming from the stadium.  As Lying Eyes  by the Eagles played, I smiled as I wondered if perhaps the music selection was by someone who had observed the same 2 or 3 couples of Baby Boomers, that I had seen a few times, meeting in the adjoining park in the afternoon.  They would always arrive in separate vehicles and appeared a little more happy to see each other than you would expect from a long term relationship. If the Baby Boomer generation has a theme song for cheating, it is probably Lying Eyes . Perhaps some of us have......  Guess, I shouldn't go there. ...She rushes to his arms, The

Wrote about Scott after reading the NY Times article last October and wondered what became of him.  He died 3 days after the article in the NY Times.  Here is link to an interview with the Times columnist shortly after the death of his friend. http://www.npr.org/2012/10/18/163188233/times-health-care-op-ed-gets-unexpected-response Below is my original post from Oct 2012 Fatal Mistake   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-possibly-fatal-mistake.html This article although mostly about the state of healthcare for the uninsured, illustrates the sometimes profound benefit of early cancer detection. Symptoms ignored and untreated because of a lack of health insurance resulted in unpaid costs of many hundreds of thousand dollars and counting.  Also a life will almost certainly be shortened significantly. We all help pay for these costs through local taxes and higher insurance premiums. The article brought to mind my own diagnosis and treatment.  http://pul

Attended the UTA Maverick speaker series last night. Heard an excellent presentation last night by Jeff Corwin, author of 100 Heartbeats and commentator on various TV shows. He spoke mostly about the mass extinctions going on today how it is affecting all of us and what we should be doing about it.  One of the messages was spend more time outside.  Spend time taking your children and/or grandchildren outside and exposing them to the natural world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tQCRmnB1NM

D.L. Coburn's The Gin Game Homepage : Went to see a reading of this play last night starring husband and wife Carole Cooke and Tom Troupe.  If you are a theater fan you likely know some of their performances or have seen them at some point.  Carole and Tom even at ages 89 and 84, mesmerized the audience with great performances.  D.L. Coburn, the writer of the play, was in the audience for his first time to see Carole and Tom perform.  Having the performance at the Kalita Humphreys theater (one of three surviving theaters designed by Frank Lloyd Wright)  was the icing on the cake.  The play won a Pultizer Prize for drama and was Tony nominated.  Written in the 1970s, its theme and commentary on nursing homes are as current as if it was written today.  See it if you get a chance.

Yesterday Mom and Dad spent much of their day searching for a couple of missing calves which were found unharmed 3 miles away.  Made me think of calling and feeding cows when I was growing up. Below is an edited post from 2005 when my son was 15. Sometimes when Austin and I are riding in the car, we have these "philosophical" discussions. Sometimes it is  black holes or quantum mechanics and sometimes it is car repairs Yesterday it was car parts and repairs. I was explaining how car parts, particularly electrical parts, used to be replaced at much greater frequencies. Head lights used to cost a fraction of now, but you replaced several of them over the life of your car. I told him that his Grandpa used to wear out multiple pick up truck horns from calling cows. We talked for a while about calling cows; Austin thinks that his Grandpa probably still wears out horns, even with the newer technology. Austin has recently discovered rock and roll from the 60s and 70s. As we

Before Twitter, IM, Texting, Facebook, etc, bumper stickers were how we communicated short messages to the rest of the world.  When I lived in Austin during the 70s, it seemed like every "stranded in the 60s" type driving a VW microbus had at least an Onward thru the Fog bumper sticker.  I like to imagine them as old geezers now, driving Priuses with COEXIST bumper stickers. When I spotted the bumper sticker in the title above, it took me a couple of miles.  Maybe my creeping senility or the decreased number of smokers??  Keep your butt in the car is sound advice to display for all to see if you are driving west on I 20 out of Fort Worth into the dry grasslands of West Texas.  Maybe bumper stickers are still pretty good for those short messages.

Turritella species found in Cretaceous outcrop near Paluxy, Texas. Maybe it was always a small world. The fossils in this area are mostly lighter color. This particular gastropod may have had a bad meal just before becoming preserved.  That is my thumb (bad manicure and all) for scale.

  "So remember every picture tells a story, don't it"  from Every Picture Tells a Story sung by Rod Stewart Spent part of Monday at Mom and Dad's going through old photos, scanning them to share and hearing stories about the people in the photos.  This photo is of my great uncle and aunt, Will and Alice Holmes taken sometime in the early 1920s.  Some of you might remember Alice, she lived in the big white house on the road to the cemetery in Tolar until sometime in the 1970s.  It was Will and Alice's son Thomas who was killed in an armed robbery of his store in Hill City.  Two of Will's five brothers suffered from hemophilia (factor 8 deficiency) and bled to death as adults. I would encourage all to go through those old boxes of pictures in parents, grandparents, and your own house.  Record names and make copies to share.

Many of you probably don’t know this and maybe I shouldn’t admit it. In about 1980 I got really burned out working in the Medical Laboratory and began to pursue a job in Laboratory sales. Perhaps due to the tight job market at the time or my lack of appropriate experience, I was unable to find a job in that industry. An acquaintance from one of the labs where I once worked had gone into insurance sales and encouraged me to do the same. I should have known better. For the most part, I lost all respect for the insurance industry and most of the people in it. I did however acquire a few good friends and had some pretty good times. The insurance office I worked out of in Austin, Texas had a couple of big live oaks out back that had managed to escape the construction bulldozer. If you walked out the back door of the office past the oaks you ended up in the parking lot of a convenience store and an adjoining liquor store. About once a week (more for some), in the late aftern

Spotted this greeting from long ago walking on the old family farm through what was an inland sea at some point in the Cretaceous age.

Attended a discussion about solar and wind energy alternatives today. This attendee is a good reminder of the damage we are doing to our air quality with our current energy production. Not sure if the image will come out well, it is a dummy wearing a respirator and with the name tag, Ben Zene.

It would appear that the only things growing well during the recent dry spell were cacti.  Took this picture near Paluxy last week.  I will be back to photograph the same location again when all are in bloom. 

My good friend Kim recommended this book. I was immediately drawn in by the title.  It sparked a memory of the the time my 90 something year old great grandfather disappeared from his hospital bed.  When I read the introduction and discovered the book was at least partially inspired by the embellished stories told by the author's grandfather, I was hooked.  This is a great read or listen (I listened on Audible).  Laugh out loud adventures of an old man with some interesting twists on historical events.  If you only read a few books a year, put this one on your list. Oh, and great grandfather, he climbed over the side rail to his bed and was found sitting and talking with his 90 something year old brother who happened to also be in the same hospital. Reading the book brought to mind many of the stories heard from older relatives and friends over the years.  These stories were sometimes plausible and sometimes not, but frequently very entertain

"A dull pencil is greater than the sharpest memory" arthur unknown BC (before calculators) I remember when I was growing up, many of the farmers and ranchers carried these pocket pencils.  They were the calculator of the day.  And any flat surface would suffice for figuring the cost of a load of hay, how much you owed the hired hands, etc.  Seemed like there were numbers every where; on the faded paint of truck fenders, door frames and many pages of pocket sized note pads.

My 11 year old great niece interviewed me and wrote this essay for a school assignment.  We had a lot of fun with the interview.  Seems like a perfect addition to the Pulltight Blog. My Great Uncle Terry By: Charlotta M I chose to write this assignment about my Great Uncle Terry because his generation is a lot different than ours and I thought he would be a great person to talk to learn more about his generation.  Uncle Terry grew up on a farm in Paluxy, Texas, with all sorts of animals. It had chickens, pigs, sheep, cows, horses, and even angora goats! Uncle Terry especially liked the baby goats! He says they were adorable! He and his family even fed the baby goats in a little baby bottle full of milk! Living on a farm was a big responsibility though, so Uncle Terry did have to help around the farm too. He helped by gathering the eggs from the chickens (he had to be careful though, because sometimes there was a snake near, and he did not want to be bit!) Once Uncle Terry