Dac Crossley's Western Blog

A Dead Zone

We find ourselves caught in a certain dead zone, a period between two holidays, both of which celebrate the spirit of renewal. A week of dawdling, unstructured days, resting in place. We of a certain age try to ignore the media’s pictorial reviews of the year. We don’t look back ourselves – too many goodbyes behind us. We take our diversion elsewhere than from our television. 

I surf my bookshelf and browse my favorites. 

The Eternal Frontier by Tim Flannery. How the West was made. Were I still teaching I would insist all students read this one, a geology of North America. Flannery writes so well, so readably. So many discoveries in historical geology since my own coursework, half a century ago. Flannery lifts your spirits. Life is good. 

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. “How do we make intelligent decisions about our increasingly technology-driven lives if we don’t understand the difference…?” This one hits a nerve. With the Web, so much constant circulation, how to judge between information and disinformation? I see it every day, and you do, too. Forwarded nonsense. Sagan is dead serious. I sympathize with him, but put the book away. A bit depressing for this season. 

Wicked by Gregory Maguire. You’ve watched The Wizard of Oz with your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and enjoyed the fable as a child yourself. Maguire takes it to an amazing level, a fantasy seldom captured in words. Like the movie, it’s to enjoy again and again. Especially if you think you would be a writer yourself. In Wicked e you can lose yourself, in this dead zone between holidays. 

Open a favorite book. And with me, turn a page of life. 

Dac Crossley

12/29/2009 

“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” – Kurt Vonnegut

 

 

 

 

Winter Solstice

It’s the gray time of year, when we bring as much color into our homes as we can manage. The sun’s rays are long and low. The cat stares out the window, watching the wind blow leaves through the woods.  

The winter solstice brings promise with it. The sun begins its long return from the south, a little at a time, day by day. I measure those minutes. 

At this season, let us be thankful for family and friends and the smiles of strangers. I’m grateful for the pacific El Nino, the visit of the Christ Child, and the drought-breaking rains it brings. And the promise of renewal. At my age I plan slowly and look back with caution. 

And winter solstice is a season of hope, with the promise of the returning sun. 

I hope that our Legislature can put aside petty things and give us health care, affordable and available to all. 

I hope for a renewed economy and the blessings of new jobs in greener industries, and the decline of our destructive coal-based energy policies.

 I hope for a better vision of our goals in the Middle East, well-defined targets that will soon bring home our men and women of our military.

 And most sincerely, I hope for an end to the rancor and divisiveness that has infected our America these past few years.

 Winter solstice, when things look darkest, is in the end a season of rebirth.

 Merry Christmas to all,

 Dac

12/22/2009 

"Never look back. Something might be gaining on you." -  Satchel Paige 

 

A Constant in a Changing World

Even in a world where the only constant is change, where we struggle to keep pace with the demands of our youthful society, it’s nice to find one entity that is with us forever, even beyond the pale.

 I’m speaking of a university alumni association.

 Today I got a letter from the Texas Tech Alumni Association, addressed to “Nettie K. Crossley,” asking for a donation. Nettie – I called her “Keirsey” – passed away in 1959. That is a half-dozen street addresses away, at least. How did they know where to send that letter?

 I’ve have had phone calls from the Association:

     “Hello, may I speak to Nettie K. Crossley?”

     “She’s not here right now.”

     “Will she be back soon? This is the Texas Tech Alumni Association calling.”

     “I don’t think so. I don’t know which way she went.”

 I’ve talked to two or three of the twinkies those outfits hire. I have also explained to the head honcho that she’s dead. None of this seems to matter to them. Fund raising is an imperative that extends into the next life, it seems.

 No, Miss, she won’t be sending you any money. Not today.

 It’s a good bet, though, that someplace beyond us, Keirsey is having a good laugh. I’ll join her in that.

 Dac Crossley

12/18/09 

“Education is what remains when one has forgotten everything he has learned in school.” – Albert Einstein.

 

 

 

My TV Raises Questions --

The big flat-screen TV abruptly quit. A call to North Georgia Electronics. Ti took two men to carry it off to the shop.

 And I remembered the drugstore tube tester. How many of you old-timers took the tubes out of your B&W TV and tested them down at the corner drugstore? Bought a new tube. Fixed the TV yourself.

 (Once, in the middle seventies, I got disgusted with the University and took a correspondence course on TV repair. For a while there, I could tell you what tube to replace when your TV bombed).

 Changes come at us fast and we don’t realize it, until we look around and something is gone.

 Typewriters – now entirely replaced by electronics

Calculators – the good old Fridens and Marchants, likewise.

 Carburators. No more tinkering under the hood. Vacuum-operated windshield wipers. Remember those? No loss there.  Electric motors are better.

Kodak film. The darkroom. Now, it’s pictures on your computer.

 

Makes me wonder. What object, common in our lives, is suddenly on the edge of extinction?? What’s your candidate?

 

Printed books? Will they be replaced by adult comic books? A good question.

 We are clearly changing the way we communicate with each other. Do you use Twitter? Will it give us an entire new scope of social interactions?

 Change you can believe in?

 Dac

12/13/09

 “Between friends, differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.” – W. H. Auden.

The Persistent, Insistent Horse

Once upon a time, my grandchildren, we rode horses to work – to school – wherever we needed to go. Horses still walk among us, tokens of another time before Henry Ford and his competitors gave us gasoline power. We don’t horses any more. Or do we?

Whoa, there, Pardner! I know, I know, horses still work on the ranch, in places you can’t use a pickup truck or a four-wheeler or a golf cart. We still run the Derby. We teach our children to ride – for pleasure. They're just no longer essential parts of our civilization, as they were for thousands of years. Is there anyone alive today, who can claim a horse saved his life?

Horses and humans have come along way together, haven’t we? Sure, we’ve bred horses for those characteristics we want. Speed, or strength, or gentleness, or just plain beauty. We’ve raised the colts and trained them, teaching them to accept us, to do our bidding.

 And I wonder – have horses changed us as well? Is there some place in my DNA, a little twist or trait that allows me to understand the needs of the horse kingdom? Have we co-evolved; grown old together, so to speak? Maybe horses do more than reinforce our humanity. Maybe they are a big part of it.

 Perhaps horses now share that certain space with dogs and cats, more than pets but not quite a separate culture. (Well, cats may actually be aliens, watching us.)

 So. What can we learn from horses?

 Dac

12/5/09

 “If you’re married for more than ten minutes, you’re going to have to forgive somebody for something.” – Hillary Rodham Clinton.