Category Archives: Blog
Removing Oleanders No Job For Sissies
SETTING: Front of our little stucco home early 2015, after I’d worked around the “landscape rocks” a few years doing landscaping. [Desert Mts Enterprises photo]
IN BACK: Setting yourself up to stop a jailbreak! [Desert Mts Enterprises photo]
When we moved upriver to El Paso in 2010 from Presidio, i. e., the only plants around our house were a Western Catalpa in the front that’d die three years later from soil fungus, 4-5 tall cedars, and three large toxic, greedy Oleanders, all in the back.
The remaining space around the house was all landscape gravel — aka, rocks, rocks, rocks! Maybe 3-4 in. deep throughout the yard, it was — rocks, rocks, rocks! All tossed on sand that’d been trucked in soon after the house was built. On a squeezed lot just short of 50 ft. wide and maybe a 115 ft. deep.
“Plants setting down roots, in this?!!” I lamented often. “What the hell did we get into here???!!” Continue reading
Christmas Eve Borracho in OJ Catholic Church
Note to readers: The original draft of a true story of a drunk at a 1994 Christmas Eve Mass in a little Catholic church shown below in Ojinaga (OJ), Chih., MX, I wrote just weeks after it happened. OJ‘s a mid-size city directly across the Rio Grande from Presidio, Tx. — where I served as justice of the peace. It hit a long-dormant fundamentalist nerve in me! The story languished for years on my computer. But this past week, posting a comment of it on Facebook about this photo drew requests to post it online. Here it is, slightly edited. It highlights a schism in modern Christianity — e.g., Christians’ role in abusive behavior and defining proper response. — DB Continue reading
2022 Roe-vs-Wade Cuts Abortion Rights
Anything to Avoid Abstinence! Our ancestors would try just about anything to prevent pregnancy, from animal poop and poisonous potions, to citrus fruits and wooden blocks. Before modern medicine gave us go-to’s like the pill, couples resorted to more unusual birth control methods. More moderns, above. (Image courtesy of webmd.com)
By Dan Bodine
Indeed, there’s much talk about women losing abortion rights with last week’s draft release (preliminary Court decision) in politico.com upending ’73’s Roe vs. Wade case – e.g., approving a Mississippi case restricting abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Formal release of the opinions usually comes at the end of court’s term in June. So, sex likely will be going undercover again. (Pun intended.) Continue reading
Tied To Whites Supremacists, Is It End for GOP?
America’s 1952 Presidential Election: “Conservatism is / As Conservatism was”
By Dan Bodine
Remember well growing up in the Segregated South (Texas, aka ‘nother Buckle on Bible Belt) in the ’50s in Cleburne. Fear of a Yankee plot in the air: ‘Em Blacks (polite word) multiplying like rabbits! Hell, soon they’ll overtake us! We gotta do sumpthin’!
Duh…Jethro, ‘ya may be too late to stop whatever it was that happened then! Census counts don’t lie, though, now. But if’n you want to act like a cultural idiot and git up on ‘ya high horse, think like a white supremacist, get outta my head! You’re in a New Reality! Latinos showing up like the newest cool! Continue reading
If Mexico Can Boot Neoliberalism, Why Can’t U.S.?
The textbook design assembly in Veracruz, MX, this week. [Image courtesy of Mexico Daily News]
By Dan Bodine
Of course, everyone knows why! So actually this is just fluff. Mexico is a free state. In all its messiness! The United States, on the other hand, is owned by corporations in a plutocracy! Which drives neoliberalism.
Which drives both education and radical white extremism. But a plutocracy can’t boot itself! Savvy? But you wanna know what’s cutting “neoliberalism words and concepts” from school textbooks in Mexico? Continue reading
Whiteness, Straw Man, and How Electrons Move
There’s often a “straw man” argument behind someone’s political opposition.
By Dan Bodine
Hee, hee! Ain’t got a bone to pick but sure got a yarn to tell! A compassionate African American assuaged my bruised ego in the Navy once when I allowed myself to feel like the dumbest kernel of corn on the cobb! So, with migrants and minorities both now under fire, you can mix your races, yes — but you can’t segregate human lightbulbs! We all shine some! Savvy?
Me, coming up with this? Yeah, me! Even an ol’ slow country boy from Texas has learnt a thing or two about Life. Hang on; don’t go to sleep. This is really against using straw men, or the Boogeyman, in politics! Continue reading
Salmons “Lost Cause” Has a Sequel?
Earlier ends of salmon runs in this Northwest U.S.A. area, due to decades of dam constructions, have shut down most of the fisheries here. Meaning a loss of thousands of jobs and the rich culture that transcended it, too. With the planned removal of the deteriorating dams now, decades later, is there a chance the salmons will return? Bringing back that Life? (Current Map Image from Wild River Fishing)
By Dan Bodine
Yeah, it was one of those “moments you’ll never forget!” A “grown man cryin’ in his beer!” His name was Darrell. A salesman of some sort. And an obvious recent transplant to hot, ugly Texas. During the Sunbelt Era.
He was sitting on the barstool on my left at what was then the dearly revered Flagon Lounge, just off I.H. 35 in Central Texas. Heaving heavy sobs. Continue reading
7 Polyps on Colon Wall — Cut ‘Em Down; Back on Town
Devil be damned! — The World Health Organization says as many as 25 percent of cancers worldwide may be attributable to alcohol consumption. (https://www.stopcoloncancernow.com/news/april-2018/alcohol-increases-risk-of-colon-polyps-colon-cancer)
By Dan Bodine
Doctor cut seven polyps from my colon Wednesday in what’s becoming my triannual colonoscopy exam. And I don’t know whether to celebrate with whiskey or by eating more oatmeal!
For an ol’ drunk, these tests are increasingly dreadful — They foretell the wickedness of my past ways! Continue reading
Interrupting Dreadness in Doctor’s Waiting Room
Feigned Indifference in Doctor’s Waiting Room. (Image from CC)
When you’re in a doctor’s waiting room about to be told a date and time a camera’s gonna be shoved up your butt for a bi- or tri-annual colonoscopy, you’re not happy. Fact of Life. Even in today’s Pandemic, this forced boredom (that actually is dreadness) we pull off only through feigned indifference.