Bodies on the Cold Ground

I heard an interesting   story from a man from Toronto at dinner. We had chatted a bit about history, the American Civil War, etc. I had mentioned how I along with my ancestors and offspring had fought in every American conflict. He then began his story about his father's participation in WWII.  It seems his father was shot in the head by a German sniper.  This was during the invasion following Normandy. It was the winter of 1944 and the snow covered ground was occupied by the Germans He was left on the ground for dead in a puddle of his own blood. Bloody white fragments of his skull punctuated the snow.  The temperature was freezing .  When they were gathering up the dead, the frozen bodies gave new meaning to the word, "stiff". The Canadian's father was discovered to be breathing. A sharp-sharp-red young man noticed the breath of a seemingly dead soldier condensing in the frigid air.They gathered  some of the bone fragments from the back of his head before transporting him to a field hospital. Believing that death was imminent the doctors stuck an IV in his arm and pushed his bed over the corner and waited for him to die. But he refused to die. When asked about it later he said that he was in a snow covered field one minute and then he woke up in the hospital a month later. After realizing that he wasn't going to die they placed a steel plate in his head and sent him home. The right side of his body side had no feeling in it. His mother was over protective. He was wheelchair bound and she waited on him hand and foot. After all he was her baby boy. One day, while visiting, the family priest, who was probably with Noah on the ark, convinced her that she had to let him go through lengthy rehabilitation. And that if she continued caring for him hand and foot, he would remain in a wheelchair the rest of his life. At first he could barely stand and then he sought himself to walk by pushing a chair around. With improvement he managed to get a job  and managed to have a good life with a good wife who presented him with ten children.  However, the memories the war remained and he ways wondered how he had gotten off that battlefield.  Late in life he attended a reunion of the members of his old army unit. He was surprised to hear a voice from behind announce, "You look a lot better than the last time I saw you!"Surprised, the handicapped veteran exclaimed, "Who arenyou? I don't know you!"

"I'm the man that put your butt in a wheelbarrow to get you off the field when you were shot many years ago." A Iife long friendship began that day. 

A Drive in the Mountains

A drive in the mountains

 ‘Turn here,” I said.  We had  been driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway west of Asheville, North Carolina. It was a crisp fall day and the mountain foliage was full color.

“Here?” she asked.  “This doesn’t look like much of a road.”

“According to the GPS, it’s the fastest way back to Black Mountain,” I responded.

“OK, but it doesn’t look like the road we came on,” she said in a voice tinged with doubt.

She steered the Toyota on to the narrow road on the left. As least it was asphalt. I thought. 

“This doesn’t looked like anyone else has been on the road,”  she said.

I chose to not comment on her observation because I was remembering an “unimproved” road in northern New Mexico many years ago. I had insisted that we take said road while on vacation. This was in the very early years of our marriage. It was in the spring after the snow thaw and the road was muddy with deep ruts. The first indication of a problem should have the been the four wheel drive truck we saw abandoned in a ditch. But we continued on until passing by a barricade to a highway announcing that the road we had just traversed was closed to through traffic. I did not need to experience a repeat in the mountains of western North Carolina. 

The asphalt on the road only lasted a few hundred yards and was replaced by pea gravel and hard packed clay. The foliage was beautiful as we descended  on the winding road.I was expecting to see some turkeys or maybe a grouse. Hair-pin switchbacks were common. There was a build-up of mud in the turns which hid some very deep pot holes. We were moving at a snails pace.  Claudette was driving and I cautioned her about the danger f the potholes. On our previous car with low profile tires we had punctured two by hitting potholes. I am sometimes admonished for my suggestions to my significant other’s driving style but this was not one of those times. 

“If I burst a tire, I guess we’ll have to call Triple A,” she said.

“I doubt if a cellphone signal can make it out of the mountains,” I said.

“I’ll be careful,” she assured me.

“What was that?” she exclaimed.

“Where?”

“Off to the left!” she said excitedly.  “I think it was a bear!”

“I don’t think so.  It’s winter and bears hibernate.”

“I before we left home I read in Wikipedia that in the south bears don’t hibernate!”

“Well, if you read it on the internet it must be true…” I said in resignation.

“oh, yeah! Julie said she had found some errors in Wikipedia!”

I dared notcontradict Julie and let the subject drop.

We continued downward. In some places it was a rub board road and I was sure some of my dental fillings were being loosened as it reminded me of a road in Utah. The road worsened as a creek was visible far below. As we slowly made it around a switchback without having to back up she brought the Toyota to an abrupt halt. There was a fallen tree across the road.

“We don’t really need this,” I said.  “Can we go around?”

“I don’t think so.  I know I can’t and I don’t want you to try!’

I knew I could drive the car around the obstacle but did not feel that it was the proper time to test the strength of our marriage.

As I opened the car door, I said, “I think I can move it!”

“Let me help, you know you have a bad heart.”

“Alright…” I said in resignation. I found a branch from a hickory tree that we used as a lever to move the tree trunk from the road. I took a long swallow from our final bottle of water as we continued down the mountain road.

It seemed as  though  we had gone only a few hundred yards when I heard the driver make a sound of despair. 

“Oh no!”

“What now?” I said.

“The low fuel light came on.”  There was desperation in her voice.

“We’ll make it to the nearest gas station I’m sure,” I hoped I sounded optimistic.  But I knew this girl could read me like a book. “Let me check the the GPS again.” My good old Samsung S5 displayed the flashing message, “Searching for signal”.

We rode along in silence. I am remembering when I gave out of gas at 2 AM in a Volkswagen bug.  But I remind myself that a couple of guys in and old VW had picked me up carried me to a gas station. I glance toward the dashboard instruments.  The low fuel indicator light looked like a one hundred watt bulb and was getting brighter. 

I remind the driver not to accelerate down hill and maintain forward momentum at a snails pace.  A slower speed would use less fuel. We were beginning to see cars and trucks pulled off the sides of the road. We saw no people.  I thought maybe we could borrow a gallon of gasoline from someone. We were now on flat land in a valley beside a mountain creek. Fast moving cold water. We passed a campground and decided not to ask for help. After all the low fuel light was not getting any brighter. Eventually, and it seemed like forever, the tires grabbed asphalt and in a few minutes we were in Old Fort, NC. I was happy to see that the gas pump at the first gas station we found had a card reader. I filled the tank and found we had one gallon left.  Would that have taken us 30 miles? Nah, probably not.  I wonder if It had been a bear?

Airplane! Airplane! Airplane!

When I was a small boy I would go out into the back yard and while she was hanging up clothes  I would  look up in the sky and say,”Airplane! Airplane! Airplane!”  And the one I remember was the “Flying Boxcar” because of its unique twin-boom design.

The C-119  “Flying Boxcar”, which was developed from the Fairchild C-82  “Packet”, which was designed as a transport plane. Transport planes move cargo, whether men or material. The Flying Boxcar had huge clamshell doors at the rear of the fuselage to easily facilitate the loading or unloading of cargo.  It was also a good platform from which paratroopers could jump. Occasionally, the rear doors were removed so that cargo could be easily dropped by parachute. The C-119 was designed and built by Fairchild.  The plane first introduced in 1947 ceased production in 1955.The Fairchild manufactured C-119s were powered by the two huge Pratt and Whitney 4360 engines.  With these the plane had a cruising speed of 200 mile per hour while carrying twenty-seven thousand five hundred pounds of cargo or 95 fully equipped troops. These huge 28 cylinder engines produced 3,500 hp each. The C-119s manufactured by Kaiser had the smaller Wright R-3350-85 engines and were designated  for Marine and Navy use.  The Navy department designation for the C-119 was R4Q.  They were used extensively in the Korean War particularly as troop transport and for paratroop drops.  In the French Indochina War they were loaned to the French but flown by American pilots employed by the Central Intelligence Agency.  Later in that same area, during the Vietnam War, some C-119s were converted to flying gun platforms as the AC-119K “Stinger”. In later years these airplanes were frequently outfitted with auxiliary jet engines to carry additional weight. This was called the “Jet-Pack” modification.  The civilian versions mounted a turbojet on a pylon atop the fuselage while the military version carried a jet engine under each wing.  Many C-119s saw service as tanker planes with the US Forest Service. 

The Flying Boxcar last flew for the US military in 1974.

Interestingly enough the most memorable rendering of the aircraft on film was probably in the 1965 film, "The Flight of the Phoenix".  The film starred Jimmy Stewart a former Army Air Corps bomber pilot in World War Two. There is considerable discussion about the film in the comments regarding my video, "Corncobs & Boxcars" .

Internet Portal

Are you using a patient portal.

If you regularly visit a physician or just get periodic health check-ups, patients portals provide a unique insight into your healthcare. 

What is a patient portal?

A patient portal is a secure online website that gives patients convenient, 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere with an Internet connection. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information such as:

• Recent doctor visits
• Discharge summaries
• Medications
• Immunizations
• Allergies
• Lab results

Some patient portals also allow you to:

• Securely message your doctor
• Request prescription refills
• Schedule non-urgent appointments
• Check benefits and coverage
• Update contact information
• Make payments
• Download and complete forms
• View educational materials

With your patient portal, you can be in control of your health and care.  Patient portals can also save your time, help you  communicate with your doctor, and support care between visits.

I’m 74 years old and have congestive heart failure. Through my patient portal I can see record of all medications I take and when they were prescribed and income cases removed from my medication schedule. After each doctor visit I log on to my patient portal and check to see the results of the test I was given.  this way I can see trends in my health.  By looking at this data i can determine if any changes in life style have affected my health. My next appointment is also indicated and I can request prescription refills if necessary. The portal also gives me direct access to my doctor via email and I can schedule and appointment if needed.

My general practitioner brought  patient portals to my attention several years ago and I use a portal with each doctor I visit.  It is simply a way modern technology can make our lives better. 

Ask your physician about a patient portal.

The Entertainer

This past weekend I was sitting on the porch of a mountain lodge in North Carolina talking with a friend. It was a lazy kind of day as two friends spoke of the impending rain, and other subjects of similar significance, to the sound of rocking chairs. A gray bird flew across in front of us and I, having been the class ornithologist of the third grade, identified it as a mockingbird. 

“I’ve seen them chase crows,” I exclaimed.

“You think that’s something? I saw a couple of mockingbirds attack a snake one time!”, my friend said.

“Really!”

“Yep, one of ‘em was at his head keeping his attention while the other was pecking at his tail!” 

I decided to not relate how I had seen a mockingbird chase a yellow cat away from a bird’s nest once. 

The mockingbird’s  name describes it well. The bird weighs less than 2 ounces and is 10 inches or less in length. Lacking in colorful plumage, it is gray and white with a small head and sharp beak. Its stellar characteristic is its ability to mimic other birds, amphibians, and insects. 

I once heard of an incident which further accentuates the mockingbird’s ability to mimic. 

My friend Larry, like many men my age, served in military service during the Vietnam War.  Like me, Larry joined the Navy and was trained as a radioman. Radiomen aboard ships operate the radio equipment and send and receive messages. My job in the Navy was to repair radio equipment, but that has nothing to do with this story. Larry was sent to San Diego, California, for radioman training. Radiomen must be proficient in sending and receiving Morse code. An audible version sounds like a whistle that has two distinct tones. The combination of these tones represents a letter of the alphabet or a numeral. In practice sessions trainees would listen to recorded Morse code messages and interpret the code and write it on a pad. 

One day after a particularly long and trying session, when the class was over and the equipment shut down, an interesting thing happened. As they were closing the windows (It Is quite warm in San Diego in the summer.) they again heard the recorded Morse code messages. The Chief Petty Officer who was the instructor immediately approached the trainee responsible for shutting off the audio equipment  with fire in his eyes. When you have been in the Navy only a few months and a CPO with nearly twenty years is about to chew you out, you are indeed intimidated. Larry was. After Larry cringed and took his tongue lashing the Chief asked Larry to show him how he shut down the equipment. Much to the Chief’s surprise Larry had followed procedures to the letter. The Chief was beside himself and ordered that the windows be opened while he solved the equipment mystery. When Larry opened the window the Morse code message was heard again just like before. The code was coming from outside. Close observation determined that a mockingbird was the source of the Morse code message!

It's all in the name.

Seeing Is Not Believing Any More.

Someone once told me to "believe only 1/2 of what you hear, 3/4 of what you read and all of what you see", but that is no longer true. The advance of technology continues to destroy the axioms of the past. You can no longer believe 100% of what you see. Nowhere is this more evident than in electronic media. Electronic media has become the lifeblood of modern society. In a cursory view of communication this is obvious.

In personal communication we use the cellphone for verbal conversation and the same device for written conversation via texting.  We send images both static and moving with the same device.  Not only do we communicate person to person on a social level but we also conduct our business this way.  When I was in the sign business the fax machine was an important part of my business.  I could send a client renderings of a proposed project for approval before beginning construction. Recently, when my wife was curious about the appearance of tissue after minor surgery, she used her phone to take a photograph of the suspect area and send it to her doctor.  Upon analysis by a medical professional a prescription was emailed to a local pharmacist for a topical medication.  Within the last year I attended the Citizens Police Academy at our local police department. The officers explained how dash cameras in patrol cars and body cameras worn by officers were used to collect evidence in potential court cases.  Documents in our judicial and banking systems depend on transmission via fax machines.

Imagine, if you will, that you have been stopped by the local police for driving erratically. Your driving skill has been impaired by prescription medication.  You fail the rudimentary tests for sobriety. You fail to touch your nose, walk a straight line, and so on.  All this is recorded by the policeman's body cam and the patrol car's dash cam. You are arrested and released on bond awaiting trial. Later the police write their reports and submit them, along with video evidence, to the proper authorities.  You are upset and feel that you have ben unfairly charged and decide to call an old college classmate for help. When you appear in court at the appointed date you find that all charges have been dropped.  What happened?

Your old college classmate is a hacker. He has penetrated the police department files of video evidence and contaminated them so that they are no longer useful.  The images of you are no longer recognizable, you have a different face. When the written documents were faxed to the proper authorities, he hacked into the fax network and changed the wording in the documents.

The preceding is fiction, but completely possible.

The Department of Homeland Security is well aware of video hacking and its ICS-CERT recently issued warnings concerning a particular brand of security camera.  The Industrial Control Systems-Cyber Emergency Response Team  issued an advisory concerning Hikvision Cameras. These particular cameras, with over 16,000 in use, are easily accessible to hackers. This is but one security camera that can be easily hacked.

It would stand to reason that if hackers have access to the video images they could also alter them. In a recent August Article in Wired, covering the DefCon conference in Las Vegas, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU said, "The fact that some law enforcement evidence-collecting devices can be hacked evokes some true nightmare scenarios". Also in the article a hacker showed how easy it was to hack into a body cam and replace the actual footage recorded. A Fortune, August, 2018, article states that all hackers need is the phone number of a fax machine to hack into it and gain access to faxed documents.  If it is an "all in one" printer connected to the office through wifi, then the hackers have access to any device on the network. In the same vein home security systems are easy targets for hackers and associated malice.  An often overlooked security camera is the nursery cam or baby cam. Parents frequently use these nursery cams to monitor baby's activity. A hacker close by can access this camera corrupt the image, perhaps luring an unsuspecting parent into a precarious situation.

All electronic media can be hacked.  By definition hacking is the unauthorized gaining of access  to a data system via a computer. Secure systems remain secure only as long as no one hacks them. Therefore we can no longer be confident that what we read, hear or see is true, i.e. factual. Government agencies as well as private individuals and businesses must remain vigilant against hackers. Manufacturers must continually improve the security of their products. Perhaps future generations will see security as something of which myths are made.



AFTERTHOUGHT
The entertainment industry has manipulated media for years whether the media is read, heard or seen. In many cases the news industry has followed the same trend but to a lessor degree. Bias in news reporting is not always obvious to the consumer, but Hollywood is in the business of creating illusion. We expect it whether it is creating Brad Pitt's aging face in the Curious Case of Benjamin Button or the enhancement of William Shatner's derrière in the Star Trek movies, but it does not necessarily stop there.

Waiting On Florence

September 12, 2018
It has happened again. A storm has formed off the coast of Africa and has made its journay across the Atlantic. No longer just another storm its winds now are 140 miles per hours and it is a hurricane. And it is coming our way.
The South Carolina coast is hardly immune to hurricanes. There was the monster Hugo in 1989. Massive destruction. Millions of dollars in property loss. The current hurricane is named Florence and she could be stronger than Hugo.  Wind and rain in great quantities. Winds exceeding 140 mph.  Rainfall in double digits. With the high tide and storm surge the streets of Charleston, South Carolina will be flooded.
Twenty miles inland from Charleston we are waiting and watching the Weather Channel. Yesterday the nearby interstate highway was configured for westbound traffic only. Shiuld we leave? The governor has ordered manditory evacuation. But this house survived Hugo. Why not Florence? After all the weather gurus are predicting landfall near Wilmington, North Carolina, sever hundred miles away. But Florence like all those named for that gender is not completely predictable.

Miyazaki and Porco Rosso

I am a fan of Hayao Miyazaki, the Oscar winning director of "Spirited Away" The Japanese film director and producer was an artist first.  It is a little known fact that anime producers render the entire process. They write the story and produce the art, then animate it. Perhaps someone else writes the music. Miyazaki did all of these. As an artist his watercolors are colorful and energetic. Many of Miyazaki's works show his love of aviation. (A subject close to my heart.) His love of aviation is best shown in "Porco Rosso". This film is about a bounty hunting aviator cursed with a pig's face in the years prior to WWII known as the "golden years of aviation". The young widow singing the song is Porco's love interest. The pirates of the Mediterranean and Adriatic fly seaplanes.  The planes show all of Miyazaki's imagination in their design. Actually, Miyazaki's grandfather operated a factory that produced parts for the most famous Japanese fighter plane, the Zero. In the American version "Porco Rosso" the  voice actress notes that she was singing a song in French in a Japanese film set in Italy with English dialogue. Porco also appeared in manga, the Japanese comics as well. Miyazaki contributed to newspaper comic strips also. His stories featured the constant conflict of good versus evil. Progress versus the destruction of the environment. Miyazaki confirms my idea that creativity transcends various genres of creative endeavors. I am a great fan of those creators the "do it all".  And I like to follow suite in my own small way. 

Interestingly enough, but maybe not for me, is the contrast between my favorite anime films, "Porco Rosso" and "Cowboy Bebop". Kind of a comparison between the Wright Flyer and the Lockheed Martin F-35.

The Ghost and the Thunder

It was back when we lived in the little house. It was a sharecropper’s house on a large farm in the red clay area of South Carolina. A strange thing happened on that late summer afternoon. I was eleven years old and attending Bradley Elementary School.  It was the time in my life when I could have been considered the “boy scientist”. I was intrigued by the possibility of space travel, no doubt fostered by devouring issues of Collier’s Magazine and its stories of space travel as predicted by Werner von Braun. I had been trying to make black powder for a rocket that day. 

The day of the week was Thursday.  I remember it was Thursday because Daddy had been to the grocery store that day on the way home.  Thursday was also the day he got paid.  It was a warm day with a temperature in the nineties. (I had started recording daily weather conditions in my scientific journal.) The late afternoon thunder clouds were beginning to form in the previously cloudless sky. Mama, my younger sister, and me, were sitting down for supper when Daddy came into the kitchen carrying a bag, a small brown grocery bag. It did not seem to be very heavy, but then Daddy was a big strong man. At over two hundred pounds and over six feet tall he earned the nickname,” Big Jack”. He set the bag on the table and announced, “I brought a special surprise  today!”

I elbowed my way past my sister to get closer to the bag. “What could it be?” I thought.

Daddy’s big calloused hand reached into the bag and pulled out the biggest Coca-Cola I had ever seen! It was the twenty-six ounce size. 

“Put some ice in some glasses, Mama, and we’ll enjoy this surprise”, he said.

Mama went to the Frigidaire, got a tray of ice, and put some cubes in each of the four glasses. All

the glasses were different, having come from different kinds of store-bought pickles and jellies.  Daddy, of course, had the biggest glass and got the most ice. He opened up the big Coke just as we heard the first clap of thunder close by.  He gave everybody some of the soft drink and replaced the cap, leaving the bottle about one quarter full. 

That Coca-Cola sure tasted good as we stood around in that little kitchen.  I always liked the way the foam on top of the Coke tickled my nose.  Mama had been cooking supper, and It was really hot in there.  

Before we could finish our treat a bolt of lightning struck the big cottonwood tree beside the back porch, and the lights went out in the kitchen.  (We had the lights on because it had been almost dark when Daddy got home.)  Now we were in total darkness. As it often is before a deluge of rain, it was very quiet.  For some reason, in our family, you were expected to remain seated and very quiet during a thunderstorm, almost reverent.

“I hear something,”  my sister whispered to me.

“Yeah, me too.  It’s called thunder,” I responded.

“No, something else. It’s like someone whispering. Like Sh…sh…sh,” she said.

I listened intently for a few minutes. I heard it too!

But not to allow my fear to show, I said, “I think that might be the ghost!”

“A ghost?” I could hear the fear in my little sister’s voice…and I loved it!

“Yes, Grandma said that the old man that died here always spoke in a whisper. Like this:’ I see y-o-u…!’” I whispered.

From across the room I heard Mama say, “Stop scaring your sister!”

“But Mama…”

“Don’t ‘But’ me,” Mama said.  I knew that the next time she spoke to me she would use my full name and that would mean I was in real trouble. Daddy hadn’t said anything.  He was deaf in one ear and we never knew whether he didn’t hear us or just didn’t care to respond.

We continued to hear the noise as the storm raged outside. It seemed to rain forever, but it didn’t.

Then, suddenly, the lights flickered and came on.   I looked on the kitchen table at the remaining Coke.  My throat was dry.

“Mama, can we drink the rest of the coke?” I asked.

“Share it with your sister,”  she said.

 I grabbed the bottle and unscrewed the top. The mysterious noise stopped.

Proudly I announced, “I found the ghost!”, which really wasn’t a surprise since I was a budding scientist!

T

Jimbo tries out for football

This is a story about my boyhood friend Jimbo Dillashaw. 

I reckon we were about 11 or twelve years old at the time. It was in late summer. On some of those days of summer Jimbo would visit and help me pick off peanuts. Daddy had just plowed up the peanut crop and we were picking them off the vines in the front yard underneath a big chinaberry tree. We would wash the peanuts later and bag them up for sale. Daddy would sell them at the cotton mill where he worked.  On this particular day it was in the late afternoon and Daddy was home from work when a new Oldsmobile drove up in the yard. Neither me nor Jimbo recognized the car. But Daddy did. 

It was Daddy’s overseer from the mill. He had a young fellow with him. Jimbo elbowed me in the ribs and said, “You know who that is?”

“Naw, I don’t,” I said.

“That there is Bradley Thompson. He’s the quarterback of the Greenwood Emeralds. They say he’s gonna go to Clemson next year!”

“Really? He’s a lot bigger than I thought he was.”

“Oh yeah! He’s a big boy. He can throw that football a long way to.”

“I’ll bet you couldn’t catch one of his passes!

“Oh yeah, I could catch anybody’s pass. I could even catch one of Johnny Unitas’ passes!”

Jimbo’s mouth sometimes promised things he couldn't deliver. And I thought I would have a little fun at my buddy’s expense. 

“Jimbo let’s see if he will throw a pass to you,” I said.

“Right-o!” Jimbo said.

We walked over to the young man with the flat top haircut dressed in a varsity jacket with the big green “E” on the front. We talked for a few minutes about football and then I made my request. 

“Brad, my friend, Jimbo, here wants to be a wide receiver in high school, if he gets there. He says he can catch a pass from anybody. I wonder if you would throw a pass for him to catch?”

“I’d be glad to,“ the high school football star said.

Jimbo handed the old scarred up old Wilson football to Brad with a big grin on his face. We must have been quite a site. Two dirty farm boys barefooted in bib overalls  looking up at the idol of local youth. 

Brad palmed the football in his big right hand, winked at me and told Jimbo to run. 

Jimbo was thin, but wiry, while I was somewhat rotund and slower than he. His bare feet kicked up dust as he ran across the red dirt empty peanut patch. Brad cocked his big right arm and delivered a perfect spiral in Jimbo’s direction.  Jimbo was fast, you know, he had once chased down a rabbit and caught it! The ball seemed to float over Jimbo’s right shoulder as ball caught his eye. We saw him dive forward and disappear in a cloud of red dust. As the dust settled we could see Jimbo dancing around holding the football high overhead in his left hand. Brad couldn't believe his eyes and took refuge in the big Oldsmobile. By the time I got to Jimbo I found that his dancing around had nothing to do with football at all! He had dived into a fire ant mound and they were biting furiously. 

One eye was swelling shut and his right arm was twice its normal size. 

The next day at school Jimbo was showing off the new muscle in his right arm. He said he was taking the Charles Atlas bodybuilding course he had seen advertised on the back of a comic book and he was only halfway through the course.  That boy could make the best of any situation. 

Jimbo did play football for the Greenwood High Emeralds though. He was All-state wide receiver. 

note: This is a work of fiction for the most part. A story in the upcoming book:"Stories from the Red Dirt Road...and then Some.

Continuation On A Theme

This title may be a bit trite but I think it sort of fits this blog post.  In my  last post I wrote about seeing William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Mesa Performing Arts Center performed by the Southwest Shakespeare Company. We enjoyed the show tremendously.

Thursday night, February 8, we saw The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged presented by the Flowertown Players in Summervile, SC.  It was a treat equal to any chocolate nut sundae.  Like the previous mentioned work of the Elizabethan playwright, we had seen this play before. But there are those things in life worth repeating. This play was presented in the theater annex, or at least I think that is what it is called.  We had forgotten about this location. So after arriving at the box office we were directed to go to the corner, around the gas station, and down the alley. After feeling our way through the dark alley we found the small theater behind the theater.  There were few people there on opening night. I'm some times leery of opening nights.  Maybe the director hasn't gotten all the bugs out of the performance. In this case there were no bugs or they weren't obvious in this fast paced show.

There were only three actors: two women and a man.  As you might imagine there were many costume changes for the many characters played.  And, of course, costumes were minimal.  You must enjoy laughter at this show singularly and corporately. There is great audience participation too. There was one intermission in the show and it takes you by surprise.  Two of the actors simply leave the stage, run out of the theater and disappear into the night while the other is left on stage to explain their actions.  

We really enjoyed this play.  If you enjoy Shakespeare and laughter be sure to see The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged.   The play runs through February 17.

Blood and Tumbleweeds

We were fortunate three weeks ago to attend a performance  of William Shakespeare's  Romeo and Juliet presented by the Southwest Shakespeare Company. The Company presents its productions at the Mesa Center for the Performing Arts, Mesa, Arizona. Like many buildings in this part of the desert it is an impressive structure of stainless steel glass and stone. 

It was a matinee performance and the theater was only partially filled.  Our comfortable seats were only a few rows back and to the right of center stage. The stage itself had minimum of props. It was multilevel and had the appearance of stone. The director, Patrick Walsh, addressed the audience first with brief comments about the production, requests for monetary support for the theater and the usual prohibition of video and audio recording. And, of course, the obligatory silencing of cellphones. 

Shakespeare's words had not changed since the last time I had heard them and nor do I remember the last time I had heard them. Let me preface my following comments by stating that I am not a Shakespeare scholar and my views are not those of expert of the theater or the thespian arts. I have seen a number of performances of the Bard's works and did, nay I say, suffer through a study of several of his plays in high school.

I found several things unique in this production. Light was used very effectively in the production. Not only was the color of the light effective in contributing to the mood of various scenes but emphasized certain actors as well.  Music.  I had never seen music used in a Shakespeare play and I'm not aware of its used in the Elizabethan theater. Nevertheless, a cello off stage but in full view provided much mood inducing music for the performance. In this play the fight scenes were well choreographed and well acted. In one fight scene the the director took a cue from the cinema and had the actors perform in slow-motion!

Later as were enjoying vegan cuisine with Pat and Kim who had treated us to the performance we discussed the play. Criticisms were few. Perhaps the only criticism of merit was the age of the leading actors. Kyle Sorrell and Sasha Wilson both appeared to be in the thirties.  A bit old to be playing teenagers.  Nonetheless, it was a very enjoyable afternoon in the desert.