Charles W. Moore

Mothers Day from Facebook

Little Yellow in the morning

Here it is the day after the 4th of July. This is the day after the night before and when I slept soundly through the fireworks that I did not hear. This is the day after the early morning arrival of Abby, who jumped upon my bed and awakened me, and who disappeared almost immediately. This is the day that I could not go back to sleep after Abby Event.

I got up and made some porridge, via a three minute burn in the microwave, and added pecans, raisins, cran-raisins plus local honey that I know came from fields nearby. While all this was melding together, the electric teapot was plugged in and water was boiled, cooled to proper temperature and added to two bags of Teatley English Breakfast tea in a very fine teapot. Breakfast was enjoyed on the back porch while being serenaded by birds of all sorts on this clear, cool day.

I took the deck umbrella cover off and laid it aside so that I could deploy the umbrella and made it so. The morning sun was just filtering through the trees while I was enjoying my strong tea and Abby cavorting around the deck in her silent non-barking manner. While all this was happening, I noticed a green tree frog sittng in a nook on the adjacent deck chair. She was a pretty frog.

Later in the morning I took the red but striped cover down to Little Yellow so I could cover the exposed boom that has the main sail attached. I adjusted a few lines and this helped LY to ride more naturally in her slip and left for the morning.

Science fiction legend Bradbury wrote this as part of a 12-piece series for Esquire in 1951. Bradbury explores a world in which everyone has the same dream that the world would end, yet no one erupts in panic. Instead, the unstated end of the world lends a kind of calmness to society with everyone following their daily routines exactly as planned. The story leaves you wondering what exactly you would do if you knew the world was ending.

Read it for free here.

4 July 2014 – A Sail with sister Ann

Today is the 4th of July 2014. So far I have heard very, very little fireworks or other indications of the celebrations going on outside our little quiet town of 500 souls. Out big deal is the family get together at sister Ann’s house. We had great hamburgers grilled by Lee. The burger meat came from Albright’s in Corunna – they are a recognized purveyor of fine meats of most types – and we like their style. They also have sheep cheese which is aged – guessing at 8-10 months – and I am able to digest this cheese with no problems.

After lunch with most of my sisters clan, we headed down to Pleasant Lake for water fun. Ann and I took out Little Yellow for her maiden voyage on this boat. She did a fine job of learning the fundamentals and took care of the Jib and sometimes the Main Sheets. Next time I sit back and be a coach while she sweats and keeps us from a capsize. Finally after and hour or more I became thirsty so we sailed down to our beach and just sort of drove her onto the beach where we leisurely lowered and stowed the sails and gear. Then we manually hauled Little Yellow around to her slip on the north side of the pier. The winds on the lake today were from the north and maybe 5 MPH down on the lake which is in a glacial moraine bowl. Every once in a while there was a little puff that might be 10 MPH and this cause moments of fun with screams from some as the boat tilted past 20°. We are under the influence of Hurricane Arthur as you can see from the picture.

“Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemmingway

Just finished reading a short story “Hills Like White Elephants” by Ernest Hemmingway.  I read this today as part of a series of 14 brilliant pieces of literature that you can read on your lunch hour.  I still want to know what the little operation or procedure that is almost nothing really happens to be – I guess we will never know and this allure is perhaps what drew me to the article.  I am attaching the pdf in its entirety to this short post.

Hills Like White Elephants – Ernest Hemingway

A sail in Little Yellow

Today’s sail came after church, lunch at home and a nap.  The summer cumlus puffball clouds were prevelant today and the winds were about 5 Kts at the surface above the level of the glacial moraine lake.  What this means is that there were some good winds and some doldrums and mostly mediocre winds.  My Tumblr blog is at the following link

While writing this blog I read my daughter’s Panama Experience at Tumblr.  She documents things well and it is a photo-documentary with descriptions.  There is a new episode that I just read regarding her trip to Nicaragua.  It is worth reading at http://panamooreexperience.tumblr.com/

I have read a few of these

This will be a short blog about some good short stories that are free. Check them out.

http://mic.com/articles/90453/14-brilliant-pieces-of-literature-you-can-read-in-the-time-it-takes-to-eat-lunch

Sailing Little Yellow

I went down to our nearby lake where we keep out “little yellow sailboat”. My wind gauge was saying 3.1 MPH so I knew it was not going to be a high speed day. I took the gas can and filled her engine with the 50:1 she sips and then bent on the sails. I started the lil’ beast and flipped the motor around to back out of the slip and was just clear of the dock when she died ( and me with an on shore breeze). I pulled and pulled but no would she start. At the end of the sail I experimented and found by riching mixture it would start and run great – lesson learned, richen when you shut off engine :).

The sail was enjoyable but slow, with only a few puffs of wind to drive us into about a 10° port side down ( a starboard tack) angle. I sailed around for about an hour but the clouds were darkening and the occasional thunder rumble could be heard si I headed under sail for the dock. The wind was just right for the approach to the dock but I knew it was going to be dicey with no motor. At about 5’ out from the dock and making slowly for the slip, I raised the keel – big mistake – and the boat more or less turned 45° to the slip and dock under sail influence alone. Bang into the dock with the bow. I grabbed onto one of the posts and forced the boat around into the slip. Whew – sweating time was over. Time to go home for the day.

Party Polarization vs Party Co-operation: Gridlock and the decline of the USA

Most of my life has been in a climate of political co-operation.  Things were good here in the USA and life was great.  My troubles, if you can call them that, began in about 1990. At this time there was no great political divides like there is today. However, there was trouble brewing in the American Heartland as the manufacturing base began its disintegration.  In our little sector of NE Indiana came the collapse of International Harvester, General Electric, Tokheim, Dana, Weatherhead and a whole myriad of small support companies. I became a victim in this collapse that left our small, medium and large cities full of rotting buildings and rampant unemployment and transient job conditions and a flight of highly trained and educated people to the South.

However, My main reason for this post was to present the chart. I scraped it off of some site I was looking at and found it interesting so I have just wrapped some words around it.

A busy week ( and a half)

We both have been busy, not necessarily with paying jobs, but with donating time to the church for the annual garage sale and for me keeping the computer system and network healthy and growing.  Our pastor has announced his retirement at the end of August.

SAM has been helping her sister with her job of cleaning rental housing out at the lakes nearby.  Our poor sailboat has just been collecting water with all the rain of the past week. I need to get down there to pump out the boat but it is expected to rain again today as you can see from the cropped radar I took a few minutes ago.

I have not had much time to play with the blogs and html so I am devoting this part of the morning to a format of floating and padding. This little exersize is using the float:right to get the picture to wrap around the text which on the left. Not a big deal really but just a little fun to keep using html.