Lucy ...

in the sky with diamonds, of course.

This is a collage I made about eight years ago, when I got my old Dell computer. I took pictures of Lucille Ball, a city skyline, a paisley background and the red diamonds used on playing cards.

I used MS Paint, a primitive photo-editing program which I rarely use these days.

I also wrote this vignette to go with it:

I can imagine Ricky walking through the door and saying, "Lucy, I'm home."

There's no answer.

Then he sees the Mertzes. Ethel is lying on the floor and is out cold. Fred is gazing out the window with a look of shock on his face.

Ricky says, "Fred, what's going on?"

Fred says, "We came up here to borrow some flour. Lucy wasn't here. Then Ethel looked out the window and fainted, and I...I just can't believe it! Look for yourself, Ricky!"

Ricky looks outside the window and sees...

Lucy...

In the sky...

With diamonds...

I had posted this at another site. I got 13 votes up and 18 votes down, along with this one and only comment:

Lucy would be flattered...I think.

Stop And Correct

Just as parents and their children often will look alike, I'm beginning to believe that some act alike subconsciously.

One example is my mother and me.

My mother had a stroke in 1994 that left her with a moderate case of aphasia and had a hard time speaking. On a scale of 100 to 0, with 100 equaling full conversational ability and 0 equaling muteness, I would say she was between 40-50.

Often when she spoke, she would mispronounce a word or couldn't think of it. Instead of stumbling along with her speech and saying a nonsense word as a place word, she'd either stop speaking and give up or go back and try to get the correct word.

And I, as I write these posts, will often go back and correct the spelling of words and the meaning of sentences as I write, instead of going ahead and writing post, and then going back to correct it.

That's most of the time. As I write this post, I've become self conscious and not correcting the spelling and wording; I will wait until I through.

Some Notes On Race And Class

Last week. I jotted a few notes bout race and social/economic class in the United States. Please consider them just notes that I might expand for a later essay.

White rednecks and black original gangsters have some things in similiar. An exaggerated sense of honor and respect due to them, a quickness to anger and attendant violence with it are two things.

But there is one big thing that separate these two groups: Most of the times, blacks dress better than whites.

There is a hierarchy of dress among three social/economic groups.

The one which dresses better is black, whether white collar or blue-collar, whether middle class and working class.

After them are white-collar, middle-class whites.

At the bottom is working-class, blue-collar whites.

As for the blue-collar whites, their way of dress might be a way to say, I'm not a middle-management tool like you, dependent on the approval of those above you for work and respect. I'm free to dress how I want.

Kid-Glove Evil

While I was going through my books, because I brought most of mine to my new apartment and found out I don't have enough room for all of them: Or possibly three-quarters of them.

One of them I plan to sell or donate is One Half of Robertson Davies, a selection of essays by the Canadian author. It has one quote I want to put here so it's on the record and easy for me to retrieve.

It's from the essay "Phantasmagoria and Dream Grotto," which was one ofthe lectureshe gave in November 1976 at Trinity College, Toronto, on the theme Evil in Literature.

He mentions the 19thcentury English novelist T Atnohny Trollope, which he said some people read "in search of a special quality of well-bred nullity, relieved by intrigue."

However, he mentions Trollope's seriousness of intent:

The Trollopian world is a disquieting place, when you really explore it. I never cease to be surprised that Victorian fathers and the fussy Puritans who controlled Victorian circulating libraries allowed Trollope to fall into the hands of innocent young women;a girl with her head on straight could learn more about the kid-glove evil of the world -- about selfishness, money madness, sexual manipulation and cold-hearted social climbing -- from Trollope than from any other Victorian, and it was all presented with a manner which seemed to say: this is how it is; what do you make of it?

And I have seen the kid-glove evils that Davies mentioned among the middle class of central Indiana, especially those who tend to vote Republican and set the moral tone here. And this is why I despise them.

I have also been reviewing some books about Nazi Germany. Now, the sins committed by the kid-glove wearers is nowhere near what the Nazis did. But those folks are rarely blameless.

And I am sure that many Germans of the time practiced these kid-glove evils while looking away at the greater evils.

See The Sea

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A Suprise Christmas Gift

Sometimes, the best Christmas gifts are things that you didn't want, but are very glad to get anyway.

Such a gift came to me a little more than two weeks ago.

Between 2:30-3 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 23, in a parking lot on West 86th Street in Indianapolis, I was unloading some paper grocery sacks full of books from my car.

I was planning to sell them at Half Price Books to see what money I could get for them instead of just donating them to charity. I did it as part of my move from my old apartment to my new apartment.

As I was putting the bags on a cart the store lent me, an overweight woman came up and said, "Are you planning to sell those books?"

I was tired because I woke early that day to do several chores related to my move. And when I get tired, I often get angry.

I thought No bitch, I'm fucking putting these book on a fucking cart for my own fucking health. Why the fuck do you want to know?

But I held my tongue. I wasn't that angry. Besides, it was still the Christmas season; peace on Earth and good will toward men would still apply at least for me.

"Would you take $80 for your books?" she asked.

"Hell yes!" I said, taking the assured money, because the price I had received before for books I've taken to Half Price Books has varied greatly. One time I had taken six grocery sacks full of books and only got $40 for them.

(Note: Recently I took four grocery sacks full of books and a half-full sack to Half Price for sale. I received a bid of $37 for them.)

I helped the woman put the books into the trunk of her car. She said her company, a radiology business on the northwest side of Indianapolis, donated books for U.S. military personnel overseas.

So that was my Christmas present for the season. My brothers, their families, and I don't exchange gifts. And my parents, in the last few years before they died, gave us money instead of gifts.

New Year, New Entry, New Efforts

First, I hope you all had a happy holiday season and so far are having a good, if not great, 2012.

Second, this is my first entry in this blog in about three months. I've decided to restart it after a big change in my life.

I moved out of the apartments where I had lived for nearly two decades to a apartment complex in my home town. It's on the western outskirts, halfway in the country; you can tell when the winds roar from the west, as they have during a few nights last week, with no buildings to stop them.

It's about 11.5 miles southeast of my old residence, but seems like a county or two away from my old haunts because I'm not as close to Indianapolis as I was before.

I finally got tired of living there because management -- and this is the second or third management group -- has promised but hasn't acted on improving the complex. Plus, the complex was filling up with white trash.

Someday, I'll write more about the situation, but not now. I need to get more details.

I'm writing this at a computer terminal in my new local library; before, I had posted from my home. But I'm in the middle of unpacking and trying to determine if I currently have phone service or internet access.

I also have too much furniture and need to sell or give the extra pieces away. I must determine how and when and where to do that.

I also plan to write more about my life -- my past and especially my present. As of today, I'm 58 years, 3 months and 19 days old, and the 40th anniversary of my high school graduating class will be later this year.

(UPDATE AS OF FEBRUARY 3: A 40th-year reunion is being planned for some time in October.)

Because of my age, I've decided to take more of a review of the whole process, but after I get hooked up at my new apartment.

Therefore -- watch this space.