Strange Roommate and UTA Campus Benches

A common scene for both female and male working students attending college full-time: Catching Z-Z-Zs on a campus bench! At one point in my life these benches became my bed, too.        (Image courtesy  unsplash.com)

By Dan Bodine

 

Hee, hee! Me sleeping on student benches at the UTA campus in Arlington TX while my strange roommate enjoyed sexual trysts back in the apartment ain’t much to write home about! True story, though. Remind you of someone?

And this never bore bad ill will between us, ’cause it was a verbal agreement sealed by a handshake — e.g., I’d promised to clear out in the event he ever brought home a bar toad (aka, “a soused but gentle fat woman” [his vernacular]). Me? I was out on the streets already; campus was a block away; and, yes, I was that desperate for a place to live! So even with his caveat, I agreed. Continue reading

‘Dead’ Hummingbird Hawk Moth Flew Away

"Moths are among the most diverse organisms, yet because most are nocturnal we rarely appreciate them. ... One effort to increase our knowledge about moths is National Moth Week, July 22-30, 2023" [Photo Courtesy Pixabay]

Hummingbird hawk moth (Macroglossum stellatarum) in flight, Yastrebets, Rila Mountains, Bulgaria
The top one looks more like the one I snared with the net once, although I think it's body had a lot of gray on it, too. [Image courtesy of Charles J. Sharp, sharpphotography.co.uk

 

By Dan Bodine

 

Yeah, National Moth Week is here, July 22-30. I saw a Hummingbird Hawk Moth sipping on some blooms late in the evening in the back garden a month or so back, and I cringed a bit.

Buried guilt? First time I’d seen one of these awesome critters in decades! Probably since I almost tortured one to death once! Continue reading

Unabomber Ever Eat At Presidio Sr. Citizens Center?

 

Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski being escorted to an arraignment proceeding. [Image courtesy of Getty Images]

 

By Dan Bodine

Did the notorious Unabomber who died in prison just recently at age 81 — authorities are saying by suicide — ever eat at the old City of Presidio TX’s Senior Citizen Center when he was on the lamb decades ago?

When the Center was on O’Reilly Street downtown? Years before the city built a new facility, up on the hill?

Or was it his brother instead? Continue reading

“Sovereign Citizen” And Cardboard License Plate

LAW IN FAR WEST TEXAS: This is the old Presidio County Annex Building where I held court as Pct. 2 JP for two years before Commissioners built a new county annex. The county jail was 60 miles away to the north in Marfa, an incentive to all concerned to resolve issues in “initial hearings” before “heading north”! Hard to think about a tiny courtroom inside but imagine the old judge being called out at midnight by deputies some Saturday night to referee a domestic dispute. Cars parked all around this building and in-laws and out-laws all lined up outside to put in their “two cents” with the judge. A lot of memories, yes.                                                                                    [Personal Photo]

By Dan Bodine

Idiom “tilting at windmills” from Miguel de Cervantes’ Spanish novel, Don Quixote seems apropos in today’s U. S. culture war.

(Note: A long one, dear readers. Hang in!)

Our current U. S. Civil War II (aka, Culture War) exploding now acts something like an imaginary kill-all virus that’s crept in, no? Casting suspicions about us. I’ve heard political commentators argue we’ve made tilting at windmills chic again, i.e., someone defiantly going after imaginary happenings and objects that were out there to git ‘ya!

Personally, I can’t fully grasp this fight now. Too old and too many weeds in the garden, maybe. But of what is it as a civil people we’re supposed to be so damn scared? Does the religious right want to neuter us sexually? Take all our property and wealth? Assign a mean, dispirited mother-in-law to all downtrodden and disinherited waifs? 

Current Republican politics seem to be centered civilly enough around lawmakers. But there’s a military curtness about it, too. Continue reading

New Right’s White Supremacists & Civil Rights, # 1

 

Image montage using CC Flicker image

GUN-TOTING FAMILY: Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), posted this Christmas picture of himself and six others on his Twitter account several years ago holding firearms that appear to be machine guns and semi-automatic weapons. (Photograph: @RepThomasMassie)


[Yeah, I’m feeling they’ll be a version # 2 on this topic later. Will appreciate all comments. — d.b.]

By Dan Bodine

When U.S. presidential candidate Ronald Reagan endorsed the Religious Right at a take-over-the-nation religious affairs conference 43 years ago coming up in August this year in Dallas, I actually cried on my way back home to nearby Cleburne.

I was a staff writer, editor for the local daily newspaper, and covered that 1980 Dallas national election event mostly out of curiosity.

Earlier New Right‘s news releases coming across the desk relating to merging church and state were dead on, too, it turned out — e.g., this was a beginning of another long crusade toward Authoritarianism — and I felt as a country we’d never be the same again! Continue reading

Survival On ‘Croissants & Candy’ Tops My ‘Ti Doughnuts’

 

Texas Instruments headquarters in Plano north of Dallas on what use to be North Central Expressway, coming from downtown. [Commons Image courtesy of lighthouse.app]

By Dan Bodine

Hee, hee! I knew I’d hear a better one someday! The recent snow storms in California — as rare as they are for the state — have uncovered one. An 81-yr.-old man has survived almost a week snowbound in his auto thanks to eating croissants and candy that he had with him, CNN reported Thursday.

Oh, Life comes in strange shapes sometimes! [Image courtesy https://www.dreamstime.com/

 That tops my 8-day spell of testing God in mid-’60s, Continue reading

Riding The High Seas In A Bosun’s Chair

 

 

 

By Dan Bodine

Reading about the U.S. Navy’s plan for “Chaplains to serve as counselors aboard all Navy destroyers by 2025″ brought back a frightening time almost 55 years ago when I rode a bosun’s chair from the aircraft carrier I was on, over to one of these “tin can” destroyers — all to fix it’s radar IFF unit.

Memorable, it was, yeah! Some of my ol’ seafaring days as a Navy electronics technician back during the Vietnam War era. Continue reading

Layover At JFK Airport For An Icelandic Flight

By Dan Bodine

Hee, hee! A true one about an ol’ Navy sailor once caught in an airport layover between duty assignments, and broke after boozing away his travel leave money! Memory stirred from long waits by thousands of Southwest Airlines passengers in the current weather-delay odyssey. Worries in layovers, they are. But don’t say rescue angels don’t exist! Continue reading

“Fiddling Around” On An Ol’ Pickup

 

 Heck, if’n it starts up and runs, no problem, right!? (DMT photo)             

 

By Dan Bodine

Yeah, the sky has fallen upon my beloved ol’ Ford garden pickup. And I’m fit to be tied. Kinda. I’ve been accused of not fiddling around on it enough, while driving it some, too. And now I’ve burned the transmission out! Is there anyone or anything else we can hang for it? Fiddling around with ignorance, maybe?

This is my defense. Kinda. Continue reading

Hearing Aids And Terrorism In The Sound Of Silence

By Dan Bodine



Coming back home from a visit with a pulmonary doctor across town yesterday afternoon, I heard a “zip” sound in my ears. And then: Silence!

Ah…That moment when both of your hearing aids get contrary and decide to go out at the same time, this questioning moment became for me.

But it’s hard to describe the Sound of Silence. Continue reading