We are Family

[curt]

We don't need another / a new discussion to prove it.

It is as it is.

Let this "fred" (discussion thread) live under the theme .......

long live this family

brothers, sisters, brethern, dogs, cats and birds, ants and flees, water and air and gas and Clare and Jim and him and the window Simm (??) and you and me and he and she and we and them and us and puss (???) and fish and the dish (it's on) and paper and pen.

Yip.

[BO]

Hannah, your secret is safe with me. Thanks for the overview of your digs. Sounds like your ancestors were similar to mine--farmers who lived close to a small town. But for the most part were self-sufficient.

Sad to see so many quant mid-west towns that have been abandoned. But maybe, the mass exodus to the cities that's been taking place over the last 70 years or so, is beginning to reverse. So many people left the area where my grand parents lived, it turned back into a frontier. Now the town is beginning to show signs of revitalization again. 

Loved the Harveyville project video.  Kinda wondering where the hills are in that photo of the blues festival. Oh well. The so-called "mountains" near my grandparents farm are only 1000 feet in elevation. Just high enough that you can see out over the prairie. The charm is that everything is scaled differently--more spread out, and definitely flatter. Sure, you can see the mountains if you live in Seattle, but you can also see how they've been destroyed by clear-cutting. 

Anyway, thanks for the info. Gotta keep looking for that one great spot, myself. Before it becomes too late. I'd consider returning to the home of my ancestors myself, if weren't so damn cold during the winters. 

 

[littleoldme]

Thanks Hannah

[hannah j]

[hannah j]

[pan]

I'm 54 today - yay me!  Didn't ever imagine getting old.  Still cranking out the job applications, still hustling for grants.  Still not really established anywhere.  Ms. Medusa refuses to let me give in.  I tell my students not to just settle but there is a big part of me that wants to settle down.  I like our house - we have an amazing view of the low mountains that ring our town - and I am so tired of packing and driving a U-Haul.  Unfortunately this Department, this University, this town, this state is dedicated towards entropy.  They all have settled at the bottom of a very still pond, quite content with quiet compression from the accumulated settling silt until death or fossilization.

 

So, I need to crank out another narrative to propose for another residency.  Put it off while Ms. Medusa was working on her proposal and now it is due on Friday.  It would be cool to get it (another artists residency in Italy - Genoa)  but I don't have any big ideas and so I'm gonna have to fake it.  Got to keep paddling if I want to move forward.  Even without forward movement - got to keep paddling to tread water and not settle with all the other silt.

 

It would have been so much easier if I had listened to my father and trained to be an engineer.  If I had  settled much earlier on......probably wouldn't even notice the weight of the sinking silt by now as it would have become such a part of me.

[littleoldme]

Happiest Birthday!

Oh, and by the way, did you want to be an engineer.........didn't think so.

[hannah j]

http://youtu.be/cgzl1Sai4Y0

[waldopaper]

Good oneon ye perfesser pan... remembering that day was the end of my academic ticket-punch that wound thru general swamp... through business... then History... and finally settled with language.  As Denzel Washington said... " ...i love the 54th..."  that great gettin-up morning.  It aint so bad to "settle."  happens to us all anyway. 

Sacco-Vanzetti and the continuation of Train might be kinda cool.  The other night the boys were wondering about their education and i told them the old korporat joke... the educated one... the experienced one... which one did they "hire?"  Answer: the one with the big tits.  Maybe time to abandon that packaging. 

Package the ideas.  There's a Train a-comin.  You dont need no ticket... you just get on board.  Maybe it's the Clue Train.  I believe it arrives on the edge of Slipspace.  At least we oughta take a delivery.  Now my social "security" is deliverin what would be greeter-at-warmart minimum wages.  It's gotta be enough. 

There's an underground railroad now.  While the dums are trying to cost-cut their way back to the past, we oughta open our Clue-Train delivery and move off into Slipspace.  It's everywhere they aint.  The package may be shoes... or even a bicycle... or just a bag of protein bars.  Too late/dum for me to wear falsies. 

You too eye bet. 

 

[pan]

Settling in or settling upon is different than settling for which is different than being settled on.  Perhaps it is a prepositional dilemma. Since, as the Buddha says, All Life is Struggle, I guess I want to be the one determining what I am struggling for (don't think I can really determine who I have to struggle against).

Yes - really want to revisit/upgrade Train - especially given the vehement regressive language about union "bosses" and "thugs".  If we stay in Pocatello "the gate city" there is a rich train history to draw upon/site a political manifesto disguised as a nice little history performance piece. But I really don't know where we will be next year - Medusa has a SKYPE interview for a gig in Miami - we really don't want to move again and have no desire to go to Florida but the salary is damn near double what she is getting now and there ain't no end in sight for the struggle here over nothin'.

Next move we aren't buying a house, aren't planting trees, aren't hoping to put down roots.  We need to accept the reality that, in spite of our proper American upbringings, we be traveling folks who are viewed with the same suspicion, distrust and bigotry as any Romani.  Seems we might be boarding yet another train in Slipspace.

[hannah j]

I understand not buying a house in an overpriced area (as we are underpriced here, we have bought 3) but you can plant trees cheaply, and know that they will be appreciated by someone down the road!  My dad planted an olive tree in Arcadia, CA, when I was born, and though we moved before I was three, we went back to look at it two years ago and it is a magnificient, gnarly tree of 60 years (then) and I could tell he was happy he planted it.  The Arbor Day folks have cheap trees, and some survive!

[hannah j]

54 was a good year!  It's a nice number, and ever so much younger than 62!  my old man is nearly 69!  it's weird to grow older but considering the alternative.....

 

so have a happy birthday, enjoy your lungs, my father says! 

[Cal]

Happy birthday Pan!

 

I hit 54 in 5 months time.  And by then I will be living 500 km east of here in a new job.  I am in the 'unsettled phase' as I write.  Sold my house here, sold another small house in PIetermaritzburg and put in an offier to purchase a small piece of paradise in a coastal town called Mtunzini (40km south of Richards Bay where I'll be working).  Waiting anxiously for ownere there to sign the deal.  And doing my finacial sums over and over again.  I am pouring all my resources into getting this place.  It is to erfs - one vacant as the lower garden, the other with a house & flat.  Figuring out how I can pay it all of by the time I retire/get retrenched.  Hoping I'll be able to live in the flat & rent the house out if things don't work out so well.  If the deal goes through I am pretty sure this will be my final home.  I can think of worse places to die.  TIf the deal goes bad I go bankrupt & probably pull down the final curtain myself.  The town is surrounded by a coastal nature reserve which even has a special beach for dogs.