Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  I vividly recall walking in to one of the bedrooms in our house back in Ohio. It was an older home, and at the time the registers to transfer heat upstairs were on either side of the walls opposite each other, one in each bedroom. There were metal vents that could be opened or closed so that you could heat one room, but not the other, if you so desired.   I must have been around two or three years old, and for some reason I had awakened early, before my folks were up. I knew that there was a Santa Claus doll filled with sand in the bottom drawer of a dresser in the room I came in to. I had been told in the past not to play with it because the doll had a small hole in it, and the sand would leak out.   When you're a little kid, Santa is like a hero. He's never crabby, doesn't make you eat broccoli, and even if you're sometimes bad, he seems to have forgotten all that by the time Christmas rolls around, because he's brought you a bunch of toys. He never gives you so...

 Well, here it is, almost the end of another year, and what a year it's been. I suppose that  a lot of people would like to forget this year all together. It's been a rough one. I won't go into all the problems that we've faced, we all know what they are. I'll let Dave Barry, the humorist, give us his take on the year. The one he did for 2020 was worthy of a prize. It was incredibly long, but I had tears streaming down my face as I read it. Actually, I was at a loss as to what to write. Since the economy seems to be heading down the toilet, what better way to protect ourselves than a toilet seat cover? I didn't see any that had pictures of hundred dollar bills on them, but perhaps I didn't look far enough. I clicked on Amazon and was a little surprised to see all the ones that are available. As you can see, there are fluffy ones, which I guess would feel good if the toilet seat has a tendency to be cold. I remember my dad complaining about using the toilet a...

I'm well aware of the fact that I haven't posted anything on this blog for the past several months, but there is a good reason for that. I've been down in Hoonah working on the boat and fishing and wishing that I was fishing instead of working on the boat and wishing I was home instead of in Hoonah working on the boat and well... I wish I could troll here in Wasilla. Anyway, I don't have the internet in Hoonah. I've been staying on the boat and it's less than ideal living conditions. In fact people living in dryer boxes on the street might be considered living high on the hog by comparison. Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating just a tad, but not much. I had already planned to be here in Wasilla during this time span. It was somewhat fortunate I guess that the transmission on the boat decided to give up the ghost during this time. I'm hopeful that by the time I get back to Hoonah it will have been fixed and will have only cost me my left arm. As it is, I just ...

       I wish I could lay claim to the title for this post. I found it enlightening and entertaining. I was listening to a pod cast by Dave Ramsey today and he coined that phrase while he was ranting about the stimulus package that has apparently passed in congress. One TRILLION, nine hundred BILLION dollars large. The largest bill ever passed. I saw a clip of the president talking about this stimulus bill. He mentioned that $400 Billion was going to the relief package to help out the American public. He didn't mention what the other $1.5 Trillion  was going to be spent on. Where is that money going?  Who do you think is going to be paying the bill when it becomes due? We're already seeing a spike in energy prices. I suspect a good part of that is because of the war on the oil industry, but we can't overlook the fact that the government is printing money at an unprecedented rate. What do you think that money is actually worth? In another year will we be pay...

   There is something about music that touches all of us-at least everyone who can hear. I wonder if songs play in the minds of the deaf but they don't know how to express the melody. I believe Beethoven was deaf, but I'm not sure if he was born that way or if it came upon him later on in life. I guess I should research that. Whether you're riding in an elevator and having Musak piped in or shopping in your favorite department store during the Christmas season and listening to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for the four hundredth time, we're surrounded by music. If I may, I would like to give a word of advice to retailers all over the country. Stop trying to sell Christmas before Halloween is even here. Remember that your customers have already heard the country rendition, the rap rendition, the new age rendition and the original rendition of Hark the Herald Angels Sing more times than they care to ever hear again in their natural lives, long befor...