I kid you not, Subway

You may be jealous. I would be if someone posted pictures of this nature every day for me to view while living in more urban environs. Or you may be glad you don’t have to make a 30 – 70 mile round trip to buy groceries, see a doctor, borrow books from the library, or eat something not of your own preparation.

Today dawns peacefully if one discounts the strident squawk of the clock radio. The once “semi-annual” time change, now the “sort of- semi-annual-thanks to Congressional meddling- time-change” that has taken place when badly needed, Sunday around 0 dark-thirty allows me to stumble out to the mail box to retrieve the paper in post sunrise light. The sun has yet to crest the eastern ridge then. The moon is still brightly visible along with the few 1st magnitude stars that speckle the vault. The dog can see what she wants to sniff at most of all. But despite the presence of daylight I don’t let her linger as I want to get back inside and let the aroma from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters’ “Vermont Country Blend” teases some of the residual fog from my mind.

I want to turn on CNN, for lack of anything less filled with puff pieces, preachers plugging books, and just plain nasty segments of what others might choose to call “cute,” in order to find out if the planet still spins in orbit or if we’ve suffered an abrupt departure from our current gravity-determined place in the time and space continuum. That grim fate not imminent, I get a quick scan of what is supposed to pass for national and international news these days.

For those of us who need something bigger than a 2x3 inch screen on a phone/television/video/MP3 player designed to guarantee carpal tunnel, hearing loss, and several other medical conditions that did not exist before Apple found the letter “I;” we must take what the cable providers and programmers offer as “news” via television – the bigger the screen the better- or computer – pretty much your choice of size.

After retrieving the paper, I get to shuffle through it while CNN babbles in background. It offers us what passes for local news, food ads, and arrest reports. Most of the political commentary in it is far right of center. Two or three times a week a centrist or mildly left-leaning column sneaks in. Doonesbury, one of the few cartoons I bother with anymore is never with the rest of the cartoons and comics, nor even on the editorial page. I have to find it among the classifieds. It is hidden there lest the eyes of impressionable children fall across it and be somehow directed down the path to “socialism.”

But what should we expect from the Johnson City Press. After all, it uses a restaurant critic of such discernment and culinary knowledge that last week’s “mystery diner” column featured “Subway.” Other notable reviews of the past few months include various other fast food chain stores, and one of those shops that serves nothing but juice blended with over the hill fruit and yogurt, with a helping of food substitute vitamin powder. Gloria and I have offered to take over the column and actually visit real restaurants. The lack of invitation leads us to think that the food critic is related to someone in the publisher’s family. I hope that’s the case. I can’t think of any other excuse to keep the writer on staff.

By the time I’ve scanned the paper, the coffee is ready. I fix breakfast, take my daily vitamin tablet and fish oil capsules. Time to wake Gloria. The smile in her voice is always a treat. So, too, the smile in her eyes.

Today’s schedule took her to stained glass class in Limestone, then to Greeneville and back. I stayed here with a repairman who came to replace a faulty wiring harness in the new range hood.

Shortly after sitting down at my computer today I stumbled across a delightful column published in the Miami Herald. Fair warning, this is another smack at Sarah Palin. If you wish to avoid it, feel free. But if you are regularly reading anything I write, it will probably strike you as funny as it does me.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/columnists/story/1309387.html?storylink=fbuser I sent this to many people by email broadcast. If you are among them, be happy. You have two chances, today, to laugh at political incompetency.

Tonight’s dinner will be a Thai soup, Tom Yum with shrimp and thickened/extended by adding coconut milk. There’s a new sushi restaurant in Johnson City, a chain shop called Edo. We may look at that for lunch tomorrow. We need to go to the library, to Earth Fare, and to ETSU.

Or we may throw caution to the winds and dine at the highly acclaimed "Subway," and hope it won't make you jealous of us.

Music playing today:

Leonard Cohen: live in London, Songs From A Room, New Skin For An Old Ceremony

P, P& M: tracks from several albums

Jerry Garcia Band: How Sweet It Is

Garcia & Grisman: No Just For Kids



Bullwinkle’s Corner:

Sapper's Hours

Between the dreadful fall of night, and the longed-for break of day,

South of the 17th parallel and west of Cam Rahn Bay,

In a hundred impermanent NDP's surrounded by curtains of wire,

The grunts all wait on half alert and scan their fields of fire.

Chorus:

For the sapper battalions roam tonight,

From the delta to the Z,

And every satchel charge they toss,

Is aimed at a grunt like me.

They don't go home when the rains begin, for they have no fear of the mud,

They're out to collect a toll tonight and the payment they want is blood.

They are skilled at infiltration; they’ve vengeance in their hearts,

By the time we learn they've come to call, they've blown someone apart.

Chorus:

There ain't no one invincible, but they sure as hell are good,

I've never caught one comin’ in on any watch I've stood,

I know we have to shoot 'em before they ever get that close,

But I'd rather be inside the wire than out on a listening post.

Chorus:

I'm out too far to get back in if anything goes down,

Whichever side should start to shoot, I'm right in the killing ground.

There's nothing but brush for cover and brush is terribly thin,

Skoshi protection overhead if they walk the mortars in.

Chorus:

From Dong Ha down to Ban Me Thuot, and over to Nui Ba Dinh,

We sit and watch tonight against the sappers creepin’ in,

From the mouth of the muddy Mekong river and northward to Quang Tri,

The sapper battalions roam tonight to kill the grunts like me.