Ruminations of a Retired Recalcitrant Reprobate

I finally got out of the house to mail a letter, pay the utilities and go to the grocery store...(my life is so interesting) and when I was driving down Burnett I spotted some flowers.  It was in Olde Town and the house has been restored and maintained beautifully.  I had my camera with me so I drove around the block and did some drive by shooting and grabbed some photos.

 This was next door as I drove up.  I love the Bridal Wreath.  I don't know whether or not it is because it is a flowering bush that blooms in May or because so many of them were around Ames when I was growing up.  (including my great aunts home)You don't see them so much around the newer homes but maybe that is just because I haven't been looking,

 Here is the house with the beautiful wrap around porch and the flowers I spotted. It belonged to a councilwoman here in Ames and she was responsible for the Olde Towne (Old Town) ordinance that designated the original area as "historic" and people may not make major changes to their property

 We used to live in a house of that vintage and it also had a wrap around porch.  I loved it and even moved my bed out there in the summer and slept in the screened in portion of the porch.  We did not have the beautiful landscaping.  Here are the close-ups of the flowers.

 Iris are also one of my favorite flowers. We had them when we lived north of Ames on what is now Dawes Drive. I remember my grandmother on her knees digging them up and separating them when they got too thick.  Hers were multicolored.  Purple, lavender, brown, yellow (you must always have yellow in a bouquet.

Last Friday I found out that Dan Brown's new book Inferno was out.  I ordered it for my Kindle and finished the book I was reading and then on Sunday I had finshed it- I wrote this on Goodreads - "Dan Brown has written another "page turner" - I started the book on Saturday, read until 2:15 and finished it on Sunday. Well crafted if somewhat predictable in places. The biggest problem I have with his books is that I keep seeing Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon and I would prefer someone else. But the read was very good and kept my interest to the end. Interesting premise and one we as humans will have to deal with."

A Blogfriend over at Harper's Valley also read the book this week-end. He wrote a better review than mine and what he wrote about Dan Brown's formula for his books is worth repeating.

• A person in some form of distress is the only one that has information necessary to prevent some really bad thing from happening.
• That information can only be found by solving clues, usually communicated by means of some nifty gadget, leading our intrepid hero on a treasure hunt through some famous, beautiful, and historic city.
• Art Historian and Symbologist Robert Landon is uniquely qualified to follow those clues because solving the riddles requires knowing a lot of arcane and esoteric things about art and symbols associated with some great master of something; art science, literature, whatever.
• Bad people try to stop him
• He’s assisted by a beautiful, but somehow troubled, young women who has some unique characteristics of her own that qualify her to help.
• The two of them, thrown together by danger, circumstances beyond their control, the ill will of others and the tides of history, fall in love, in a chaste, PG-13 sort of way, before they save the world.

It is surprising about how many authors and songwriters do the same thing.  In fact I wrote a poem about that very thing years ago.

Most People

Most people sing just one song
give just one speech,
have just one conversation –
usually with themselves.

Most people dance
just one dance,
walk just one walk
Go to just one place - many times.

Most Rock Stars give the same concert
over and over.
Most comedians tell the same joke -
although sometimes with different punch lines.

Most Authors who write just one book
can do it many times.

Most politicians have just one idea –
usually some else’s.
If you change your audience no one knows you are boring!

Some people however
Sing several songs,
Dance many dances,
Walk in different worlds.

Some people have endless conversations with many people.

Some people never listen
but others always do.

Some people stand out and stand up.

They are original, diverse, endlessly fascinating shining stars.

It is one of my favorite poems.  I need to write some more poetry.  Lately I have not even been trying.

I read this today

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. 

[E]very man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. 

There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.

Andrew Jackson  - Who Knew? 

He wrote this as he vetoed the Banking Act that people said he would not do because the Banks were too big to fail.  I am really sick and tired of the politicians doing nothing.  Time after time they obstruct and argue and fight with one another and nothing gets done.  We have major problems in this world, not the least of which are climate change and overpopulation and unless solutions are found I am afraid that my friends grandchildren will not have a world to inherit.  Personal greed must give way to the working together to find solutions to these and other problems.

Instead sociopaths who rule this country (and yes I used that word deliberately) obstruct and find every way they can to keep things so that their profits will keep coming in - the only saving grace is that people can still vote.

One example of the way things are going in Iowa..