Tuesday Turbo Boost

Let's Start This Work Week By Busting Something!

Back To The Old Grind! vid by Gary Bahre

Brave Dog

Lightning is a sad case. He showed up as a stray in the autumn of 2012, and he was slow to tame. We put a heating pad in a doghouse for him and began putting his meals there, and pretty soon he made that his home, but three years later we still cannot touch him. He walks with us, he comes when we call, but he needs his vaccinations, and we know from the way he coughs that he has heartworms.

We always know when someone drives in because Lightning goes ripping out of his house and across the porch as soon as a car comes off the blacktop. He would make a great squirrel dog because he can follow a squirrel from tree to tree. I even saw him catch one on the ground once.  Last night Lightning was barking loudly, so I went out to see what the problem was, and he was barking at a skunk that was just below the porch.  I went for a rifle, and by the time I was out the door Lightning was halfway across the yard with the skunk out in front of him.  He was staying back twenty feet, but he kept the pressure on.  He drove that skunk across the road without triggering him to spray.  Good Dog! We put extra treats in his bowl.

Not My Victrola: One Of Elsa Lanchester's Classics

Weekend Steam: Big News

Game Camera Fun

We are enjoying the pictures we get from the game cameras. We set one to shoot video and this is some of the action we are seeing.

Incredible Tale Of Bravery In Vietnam

I saw this video over on Curmudgeonly and have watched it twice already. I don't do many re-posts from other blogs, but this is so remarkable I want more people to meet these heroes.

Poetry From The Great War: Charles Vildrac

Relief

In our place
Fresh troops have come
Sent up the line
As bait for death
Met face to face.

We needed all night to make our escape,
All night and its darkness,
Sweating, frozen, to cross
The martyr forest and its swamp
That shrapnel scourged.

All night in which to crouch,
Then to run like the wind,
Each man picking his moment,
Trusting to nerve and instinct
And his star.

But beyond the last entanglement,
Out of it all, on the firm road,
Met together, with no delays,
In the glow of the first pipes lit,

Then, mates, O lucky winners,
Then what stumbling voluble joy!

That was the joy of shipwrecked men
With hands and knees upon the shore,
Who laugh with an agonized happiness
As they recover their treasure again;

All the treasure of the vast world,
And of memory unplumbed,
And of the thirst that can be quenched,
And even of the pain you feel
In the shoulders since all danger passed.

And the future! Ah, the future!
Now it is smiling, in the dawn:
A future of two long weeks ahead,
In a barn at Neuvilly.

Ah, the appletrees in blossom!
I'll put blossoms into my letters.
I'll go and read in the middle of a field.
I'll go and have a wash in the river.

The man who is marching in front of me
Whistles a song that his neighbour sings
A song that is far away from war:
I hum it too, and savour it.
Yet: to think of those killed yesterday!

But the man who has tripped
Between death's legs and then
Recovers himself and breathes again,
Can only laugh or only weep:
He has not the heart to mourn.

Today's first light makes all too drunk
The man who finds himself alive;
He is weak and is amazed
To be dawdling so along the road.

And if he dreams it is of the bliss
Of taking off his boots to sleep
In a barn at Neuvilly.

Charles Vildrac

Translated from the French by Christopher Middleton.
From: The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, edited by Jon Silkin, Penguin Books, 1979

Crankin' It Up For Veterans' Day

Big Tipper

We ought to start a tree tipping pool and see if we can raise the money to pull this big boy out of the pond when it takes its dive. We have been watching it for many years after noticing that muskrat activity had undermined the south side of the root system.

It's big alright. The roots had mushrooms growing on them after rains this year, and the ground is kicking up on the north side.

In 2010 it was off by 2 3/4" in two feet. In recent weeks it has changed to 5" The change is very noticeable from the back porch, and we won't be surprised when it goes. I hope the squirrels survive the drop.