Music
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Summer Comes In
While the spotted twins snoozed on the back porch this morning, I walked for an hour and inhaled summer’s new air, holding it in my lungs like a stoner, letting it absorb into my body and give me a morning buzz. The neighbor’s feed corn is thigh-high, the leaves grinning their green grins beneath the sun’s path. While I leaned against the fence and scanned the rows, I could still hear the dogs — two yappy Dachshunds and a basset mix — carping about my temerity in daring to pass their house on the way to the pastures. I knew that if I was near Jinx and Bluebelle, I would…
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, Jinx, Movies, Mrs. Orr, Music, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections, Saints
Memorials
I walked the road the other morning alone, leaving Jinx and Bluebelle to romp in the backyard while I strolled the mountain lane, and I noticed how the gravel at the edges of the road had been ground down by the tires and tires and tires until it resembled nothing so much as gray aquarium rock. If I had one of those glass boxes full of water and marine life and topped with a humming light — I’ve never in my life owned an aquarium, and usually only think of them when I read Loren Eisley, who spent a childhood making and stocking his own — I would scoop up…
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A Sunday
Winter feels over, though I suspect that we’ll have blackberry winter yet, and the frost will burn the tips of the tender things in the coming mornings. Today we saw 83F, and we were forced to put out the fans on the back porch. . The dogs lolled around on the warm boards, the bees and wasps flew their missions against us, the dandelions straightened themselves out on the green expanse, the birds gamboled and frisked, and the snakes made an appearance as well, prompting Mrs. Orr to ask me to cut down the Japanese magnolia at the southeast corner of the house. The lithe black things seem to be…
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Undisciplined
I have tried to keep to my schedule of weekly postings of memoir entries, but sometimes things just load up on me and I can’t do it. Lacka damn discipline, my Drill Instructors would have said. If I can’t offer my own words, I’ll offer someone else’s much more talented take on this life. For now, it’ll be Miranda Lambert and a little sample of her Marfa Tapes album. If you’ve ever seen the movies “Hud” or “Giant,” you’ve seen Marfa, Texas, a mysterious place of bleak and blasted beauty. Miz Lambert took two of her musician buddies out there, armed only with acoustic guitars and two microphones, and they…
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Saturday Before Holy Week
The day was odd. After mild temperatures all week, today saw snow all day, on and off, until about 5 pm. Sunny one minute, confectioners sugar in a tornado the next. It frosted last night and I covered Mrs. Orr’s new roses. I will do the same again tonight, because they are leafy and lush and thriving. One dislikes seeing good work undone. I’m uncomfortable in the shackles of the awareness that I’m almost three days late in posting my most recent memoir entry. I have half a draft ready and will, unless books and dogs and chores distract me, finish up tomorrow night and post it. I don’t listen…
- Bluebelle, Books, Daily Life, Holy Days, I Never Thought I'd Be In This Situation, Jinx, Movies, Music, Photographs, Poems, Prayers, Quotations, Reflections
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
Salmon patties for supper, and it’s not even a Friday. Ah, deliciousity…. *** It was too frigid and windy to do much outside today, though I did prepare the beds for Mrs. Orr’s new roses. Not just any roses, but certified Tyler, Texas roses. And climbing roses, at that. Tonight it will frost, and then we’re supposed to have at least ten days of no-freeze, so I’ll try to get them planted tomorrow, and then I can cover the tender leaves. They’ll run up the side of the old goat shed if everything goes well. I never could have thought I’d have to get out the San Angelo bar…
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Free Tickets: Dinner & A Show, on Me…
Some of you may recall that I have been a big admirer of the pop singer Gilbert O’Sullivan ever since he came to prominence in the early Seventies. Two years ago, I bought tickets so that Mrs. Orr and I could go to see Mr. O’Sullivan in person. After many years of waiting for him to return to the USA, we learned that he was launching an American tour and would be appearing in Nashville, Tennessee in early April of 2020. And then the Covid freakout started, and the tour was cancelled. The venue where O’Sullivan was to appear has a strict no-refund policy, but they did announce that they…
- Bluebelle, Church Life, Daily Life, Holy Days, Jinx, Lectio Divina, Movies, Music, Photographs, Prayers, Reflections
Saturday of the First Week of Lent
Tonight we make the annoying switch over to Daylight Savings Time. I believe the time changing back and forth is both irrational and also a deliberate thing. Those who rule this world could easily enact a law to keep the time one way or the other, if the hours really do benefit mankind by their placement. but those people choose to do the silly back & forth. I think they do this so they can remind us that they believe themselves more powerful than God. They can speed time up or reverse it, depending on the season, and for no better reason than a bureaucratic whim. Yesterday marked the two-year…
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In A Monastery Garden
Ah, the wizardry of the Irish tenor…no one like Joe Feeney. Ever. ~ S.K. Orr
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A Choir of Seabirds
The cold here is deep and milky, with probing fingers and breath on the back of my neck. The quiet has settled in at our little farm, and the flames are waltzing behind the glass in the stove, and I, I alone, am awake in this room, this room lit only by those flames. When I arrived at work, my crows were standing in a line so straight, they looked like decorations in a shop. They burbled at me in soft voices as I walked past them, sprinkling crackers across the striped and oil-stained asphalt. Later, when I came out to sit in the back seat and eat my lunch…