Music
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Jinxaversary
It’s hard to believe that it’s been an entire year since I wrote this post. The spotted menace awakened us this morning with his usual antics, and I thumped him and pounded him and rassled with him and then I sang him a “Happy Jinxaversary” song to the tune of the overture from William Tell. Ever the astute critic, Jinx showed his appreciation by trying to pull my shirt off of me. After he ate, we went for a walk. We were standing on the side of the road when our cattleman neighbor drove past with an enormous bull in a cattle car, headed for the Saturday auction. The bull…
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Last Weekend in Standard Time
Jinx didn’t let us sleep in too late today, which was a pity because I was still exhausted from yesterday’s little stroll. But spotted dogs with small brains and enormous personalities cannot be denied, and we laughed together as he bounded around the room, growling and moaning. Yes, moaning. Jinx has a peculiar noise he makes when he’s trying to provoke us into playing with him, a noise that sounds quite a bit like the timbers in the HMS Indefatigable with HH on the bridge during a storm. A deep, creaky, groany glissando up and down three octaves. Moaning will have to do as the noun here. The moaning. Oh,…
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The Trip and the State of All
I spoke at length today with an aged woman. She told me about the death of her husband a month ago. I expressed sorrow for her loss and the void it must have left in her life. She thanked me, then shook her head. “But you know,” she said, “we had a good life together, a good long life. And he went home to Jesus just as easy as pie.” I liked that, and I asked her to elaborate. This is what she told me — “He’d been ailing for some good little while, and one night, he seemed to get his strength back. I cooked him a good supper…
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Not Dark Yet
Our eldest son sent me a song in a message and said, “I can’t get this song out of my head. It seems to sum up the mood of the world these days.” I listened to it and enjoyed the brooding, shadowy tone, so I thought I’d share it tonight while the rain falls and the cattle call to each other across the hollers. The lights are out in America, my friends. But Christ Jesus is still the light of the world, and I pray that we can — all of us — take heart. ~ S.K. Orr
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One Warm Day
Ice is forecast for Thursday, but for now, the pleasant respite of warm air has settled upon these mountains. Snow is a memory, the birds are a painted and scurrying mob, the clouds have fled, the honeysuckle almost looks green, the waterfall sounds like artillery, Jinx resents every minute spent indoors, the crape myrtle and the snowball bush keep pestering me to prune them, and the furnace has enjoyed a small rest. One warm day is a luxurious stretch of the limbs of the soul. But it will be spring soon enough, and the noisy, insectified summer will follow, and who will stretch whom then? I am forever tugged between…
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More Serious, More Sedate
Instead of animal opera, here is a better offering. Old Willie is nearing the end of his race. His latest CD, which I gave Mrs. Orr for a Christmas gift, is a nice collection of tunes. This is one of my favorites. The end of the year brings a wistfulness, a glancing back over the shoulder, a resignation to what has gone before. ~ S.K. Orr
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How About A Little Fire, Scarecrow?
Wait…I meant, how about a little opera? Something classy to close out the year. ~ S.K. Orr
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On The Feast of Stephen
The dogs allowed us to sleep late today –0700 — and after they had eaten and while the good Texas pecan coffee was brewing, I took Jinx for a walk. Not even a hundred yards into the ramble and I was wishing I’d worn sunglasses. The fresh-risen sun was slashing across the diamond-studded smooth white surface laying on the fields, and it hurt my eyes. All about me, though, was beauty of the pure shocking kind that only wintertime can produce. The snow lay all around, deep and crisp and even, and Jinx chased a cow that had somehow escaped her fenced pasture. My heart lifted as the sun lifted,…
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All Hallow’s Eve
Jinx and I went for our morning stroll while it was still full dark, the coin of the full moon shining down on the grass, the blades silvered by the breath of some Frost Giant who slumbered among these mountains during the night. I watched my dog sprint and prance among the tombstones in the graveyard, his shadow flitting along with him while the large owl in the adjacent trees asked his eternal question and the coyotes on the ridge sang their eerie songs across the lit valley and a rooster crowed in a nearby farmyard. Halloween already, and tonight we turn the clocks back to what my grandmother used…
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Accomplished By Needles
Up before dawn with two hungry dogs, one of them also quite urinacious (the spotted menace has no such weakness, being of the Ancient Order of the Iron Bladder), and Mrs. Orr prepared breakfast tacos. We ate and talked of west Texas and her tough people and her immutable wind that scrapes across her lion-colored hide. Jinx and I walked and watched cows bent to their unceasing cropping of grass, working their magic of transforming green blades into white milk. In the un-sunned early hours, we could hear the moist tugging of the grass into the soft lips, and an unseen owl in the enormous oak tree asked his eternal…