Back Burner

Howdy good neighbors!

If you are alerted to this post,  then, by golly, you are a good neighbor indeed! You see; I haven't posted on this blog for perhaps a year and a half and I have changed my primary e-mail address since then. It's therefore highly likely that you have lost track of me altogether! The e-mail address where most of you "Brand Spankin' News" junkies contacted me is no longer in operation. REmry1@austin.rr.com is now history;  RaleighEmry@att.net takes its place.

My experiment today is to find out if any of you good neighbors who once "enjoyed" alerts to my new blog posts are still out there. If so, and you don't have anything better to do, how about clicking on my new e-mail address (above) and letting me know.

I have little up my sleeve today other than idle curiosity. Perhaps I will post something new from time to time if I ever have something new to share.

Cleaning the Cobwebs from the Bunkhouse

I thought I'd better write something so you devoted followers of this blog won't give up. I had hoped that by now, some of you writers who jumped through the hoops to get your independent posting credentials would have added your two bits worth and, therefore, kept it active for me, but the ol' bunkhouse has stood empty since my last posting of 3 March. Apparently the blog is "out-of-sight and out-of-mind."

Terry and I have been keeping rather busy since then. We decided to paint the interior of the bunkhouse and have made a valiant start. For those of you who have painted, you know that the easy part is picking up the roller or brush. The hard part is moving all the furniture, cleaning the surface, filling the dings and dents, masking the trim, cleaning up and moving everything back. We painted a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms and then our project was taken over by other events.

My 93 year-old step-mother, Alice Emry, caught an 18-wheeler to Dallas, Texas where we picked her up and brought her to Austin to stay with us for about three weeks. We had a fine time showing her the sites and wearing out a deck of cards playing Kings on the Corner.

We then took Alice home to O'Neill, Nebraska in time to celebrate my mother, Ortha Emry's 87th birthday in Ainsworth. We spent a week plus the two bookend weekends in the Middle of Nowhere.

We are now back in Texas and catching up. We may reinitiate our painting project although the great outdoors has now taken center stage on our chore list. This spring has been one of the best. The long-overdue winter rains have really touched off a colorful show of wildflowers this year - but with those came the fast growing weeds and grass.

Will We Miss the Mississippi When it's Gone?

I'm a skeptic about man-made global warming. Perhaps man's collective efforts have had an effect on our planet's fever; however, the Earth has been warming and cooling long before we came along. You don't have to delve too deeply into geology, geophysics or other earth sciences to learn that we have had fairly recent cycles of Ice Ages that have blanketed much of North America with hundreds of feet of glaciers. Those vast ice fields pushed forward and retreated several times in the Earth's immediate past and all without the help of man. What goes around has a tendency to come around again. Cyclic events are normal in nature so I don't see warming and cooling trends as necessarily man-made. Perhaps the earth is warming now, but plausibly, future North Americans as far south as Kansas and New York City may once again have to move out of the way of another advancing ice field.

Being a skeptic goes hand-in-hand with being trained in science. Not much is gained if we accept wholeheartedly whatever theories seem to make sense. For most of man's history, it seemed that the sun went around the earth and that was accepted as fact. The scientific method requires skepticism - it's healthier to test our theories from a doubtful perspective than starting with a preconceived bias regarding the outcome.

The Global Warming debate is often linked to environmental cleanliness. Would the world be a better place if we humans picked up after ourselves? I can't think of anyone who wants to promote a legacy of dirty air and water. The goal of leaving the planet a better place than we found it, in theory, is universal. Unfortunately, human civilization needs energy and the competition for finding the cheapest and most abundant sources - predominantly burning fossil fuels - has contributed to pollution even if it hasn't contributed to global warming.

When it comes to the science surrounding the Global Warming debate, I recalled writings of Mark Twain. He too was a sometimes skeptic. In Chapter 17 of his book "Life on the Mississippi" he was describing how the Mississippi River became shorter due to the serpentine bends being cut off, either through natural forces or by man's desire to navigate the river without taking hours to proceed around a long river bend that would gain only a half-mile or less as the crow flies. Here's a piece of Twain's chapter where he explains the Mississippi river cut-offs as a "scientist" might see them:

"Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend; and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate, sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend, which shortened the river ten miles or more.

Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and 'let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor 'development of species,' either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe:--

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,' just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

Pen Pals and Chain Letters

Do you feel as hopelessly addicted to the information age as I sometimes do - that our favorite internet news sources and social network sites are updated on such a frenzied basis that if we don't check them every few minutes we fear we will be hopelessly left behind? It sometimes feels like I am trying to drink from a fire-hose.

That's the sort of mindless drift that I get myself into some days. On the good days, I'll rein myself in before I enter my office and sit down to my computer. Usually, I will only have to ask myself one of several questions:

"Does it really matter if I know the latest breaking news before I go out to mow the lawn?"

"Could the internet weather forecast have possibly changed in the last fifteen minutes when a look outside the window tells me 'no'?"

"Do I really need to see if there is an updated Facebook status for any of my 68 Facebook friends - especially when many of them seem as mindlessly hooked on minutiae as I am?"

"Keeping up" in this information age can be like trying to catch a tsunami in a teaspoon if we don't step back and put things into perspective.

Yesterday, when I reined myself short of another mindless hour on the computer, I remembered the Facebook alternatives of my childhood - Pen Pals and Chain Letters.

If you were a kid living in rural Nebraska and felt the need for companionship with someone your age, you could often find the name and address of a like-minded kid in the Pen Pal section of your local newspaper. If your Pen Pal interests went beyond the readership of the local newspaper, you could find similar names and addresses in the Weekly Reader, the wonderful little national newspaper for elementary school students. Once you had invested a three-cent stamp and had broken the ice, you often found a new friend.

I don't recall having a Pen Pal but I know that my sister(s) or perhaps a cousin corresponded for a while that way. If you grew up back then, perhaps you had a Pen Pal and some of you may have kept in touch for all these years.

When we lived on the Niobrara River and were far from civilization - no telephone and a sometimes radio - the Chain Letter box was the social network that kept my family in contact with our cousins in far off places. The idea was simple. All you needed was a carton large enough to hold the individual packets, a list of addresses, and enough egg money for postage.

When the battered, well-travelled carton arrived in the mail, it was filled with letters, photos, newspaper clippings, etc., in separate packets from everyone on the address list. After a few satisfying hours of reading aloud about the recent experiences of far-off family and enjoying the photos and news-clippings about births, marriages or other life-events, my parents found the packet of information that they had placed in the box possibly a year prior. Mom or Dad then replaced the old items with our recent family news, sealed up the carton and sent it to the next address on the enclosed address list.

It was a joyful time, possibly a year later, when the battered box once again arrived at our address on North Star Route, Long Pine, Nebraska.

I recall, as a child, a certain addiction to that chain-letter - much like the anticipation of Christmas and the arrival of Santa Claus. That, though, was a healthy addiction, and one that had far more value and satisfaction than discovering that a Facebook friend has recently updated their minute-by-minute status to "I'm so bored with Olympic figure skating, I could puke."

Yes, good neighbors, there is an exciting life that we can all still find without the use of a GPS or computer. In fact, the only way to find it is to turn off those distractions and look around. There it is staring you in the face. It might be only a gecko on the window screen or new buds on the buckeye tree, but you won't see it if you don't take the time to look.

Now don't you wish you would have tried that prior to reading this blog entry?

Gray Eagles

This film was forwarded to me by Barbara Lamb. The thirty minute film is about an encounter between an 88-year-old WW II combat pilot and the P-51 Mustang that he once flew. It's a wonderful little story that I think you will enjoy.

You can access it by clicking on the title of this post.

The Nuts and Bolts of Security ... but mostly the Nuts.

After our trip to Washington, DC last fall, I shared a few comments regarding security checks along the way. You may remember my describing the amusing episodes - if you can call them "amusing" - regarding Terry's Jekyll and Hyde Bagallini purse.

Her purse easily passed through security checks into all of the historical sites we visited along the National Mall. The list of prohibited items, posted at the door, included many things including backpacks - but purses, fanny packs, etc., are allowed.

Terry usually carries her Bagallini purse over one shoulder on the single shoulder strap. For added convenience, the "single" shoulder strap however has a zipper along its length. If she unzips the zipper, one shoulder strap becomes two so she can then wear her purse like you wear a backpack. This gives her more freedom with her arms and hands to take photos, etc., without her purse slipping from her shoulder.

Unfortunately, if once beyond the security check she decides to unzip the zipper and wear it like a backpack she immediately catches the attention of security guards who insist that she must wear it like a purse. For what reason? Because, rules are rules. Meanwhile I am wearing my fanny-pack on my fanny. Perhaps if she fastened the shoulder straps around her waist and wore her purse like a fanny-pack and not like a back-pack she would be in compliance.

This brings me to 3.4 ounces of shampoo. If you have traveled via the airlines, you know that you must restrict your liquid items, such as shampoo, to 3.4 ounces or less - and then have no more bottles than will comfortably fit in a one-quart plastic bag.

If a passenger's carry-on bag is inspected and the traveler forgot that he had a ten ounce bottle of Breck tucked inside, the bottle of Breck is tossed into the confiscation bin along with all the confiscated over-sized hand-lotions, tooth-pastes, mouth-washes and makeups.

When the over-sized liquid rule was enacted, the first instinct of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was to give the confiscated items to charity or, for some enterprising airports - to sell them on e-Bay. The TSA then considered the liability risk. According to the TSA, (a quote from their website) "As you can imagine we have voluminous amounts of liquid items surrendered daily. ... Early on there was a move to donate the liquid items to local homeless shelters but we were forced to suspend that practice after the determination was made that there is a liability risk. We couldn't continue to donate items and not know if the water was truly water or if the shampoo was truly shampoo. While unfortunate, the litigious world in which we live forced the abandonment of that process. So now, those items are tossed out."

But wait a minute, here! Why were those over-sized items confiscated in the first place?

The only reason that those over-sized bottles are confiscated is because they could be potentially dangerous terrorist weapons in disguise! If such items, either separately or in combinations, are potentially lethal wouldn't you think that a government Hazardous Materials (HAZMAT) Team would rush in the moment that an over-sized bottle is discovered, handle it with kid-gloves, take it to some concrete revetment and destroy it?

If confiscated items can be tossed into collection containers, and thought sufficiently safe to be donated to charities or sold on e-Bay, then why are we going through this mindless exercise? Even the TSA wasn't concerned with the danger about blowing up a homeless shelter or having a homeless person consume a lethal substance that they thought was water. The TSA, in their own words, were not as concerned about being safe as they were concerned about being sued!

The terrorists want to destroy our way of life - or so we say, and we are allowing mindless rules and faulty logic of our bureaucracies to do it to us instead.

Good night nurse! What next?

The Price to Pay for Being a Rugged-Dressed Man

Last week in the Life and Style section of the Austin American-Statesman a column caught my eye - "Crazy for a rugged-dressed man" with subtitle "Today's menswear celebrates the masculine mystique of yesteryear" by the "Style and Substance" writer, Marques G. Harper. I don't make a habit of reading the "Style and Substance" section or articles by this guy Marques. I'm so clueless that I have no idea what "substance" means in this context. The whole section would have escaped my critique if it were not for the
accompanying photo.

The photo shows what's purported to be a "rugged-dressed" man wearing clothes very similar to some I have owned - not only back in "yesteryear" but also into the twenty-first century.

His shirt, a pinkish and grayish plaid western style "snappy" shirt looks very much like one I was wearing when I caught a whopper of a trout in the Deschutes River of Oregon in the fall of 1966. A photo, that day, shows me holding my 36" catch and wearing the strikingly similar shirt. It was a Wrangler denim, western shirt. I may have received it as a Christmas gift. If I bought it, it was for the durability of denim and not to make a fashion statement - and quite likely on deep discount at the Ranchland western-wear store in Ainsworth, Nebraska.

The summer of '66 was the final of seven that I worked for Morris Skinner and the American Museum of Natural History. I had graduated that June from Colorado State University and as a new Second Lieutenant I was awaiting my orders to Air Force active duty in October. A few weeks prior, I visited my mother in Oregon and we went fishing. As I was a college graduate and military officer to boot, Morris raised my pay that summer to twelve dollars per day (before taxes) - yes, you read that correctly - per day. Being somewhat frugal, I know that I hadn't squandered days of pay on that shirt; yet, those were the days when a lowly dollar had some weight. A quick check on the internet reveals that a similar Wrangler shirt can be purchased today, for around twenty bucks.

The model in the newspaper article has his shirt-tail out; a manly man of yesteryear would not be caught in public with his western shirt flapping at the tail. He might wear it out if he's pitching hay or engaged in other dusty chores just to keep sharp grasses and debris from trickling down inside his pants and causing a pain in the posterior. However, any guy celebrating his manly mystique would definitely have his shirttail tucked in so you could admire his silver rodeo belt buckle the size of a serving platter. The newspaper model's shirt-tail hides his belt - if any - underneath. It also shrouds any distinctive markings of his blue jeans that might betray their maker. At the bottom of each leg of his jeans is about a four-inch cuff.

I seldom wore my Levi's with a cuff - yet, back when Levi's shrunk a size or two, it wasn't uncommon to start out that way. I have a photo of my father wearing at least four inches of cuff. I remember when smokers who were caught indoors without an ash tray would use the cuffs of their Levi's to catch the long gray ash that precariously teetered on the ends of their cigarettes. I wondered, back then, if this was risky, but apparently not; cowboys usually have enough common sense to not deliberately torch their Levi's in polite company.

Having recently bought some "good" Lee jeans for twenty-nine ninety-five when I could have bought some inexpensive blue jeans for ten dollars less, I figure both shirt and pants, today, should easily fit inside a fifty dollar bill - and that includes the sunglasses and gloves.

The masculine mystique model wears a pair of sun-glasses - aviators - much like those I'm wearing in my fishy photo. I'm certain, however, having been an aviator, that there are many more aviator wannabes sporting aviator sunglasses than aviators. It's the same phenomenon as horses' arses. A sage once opined, "Why are there so many more horses' arses than there are horses?" Aviator glasses that could pass for the ones in the newspaper article are hanging by the dozens on the rack at the local grocery store. Ten bucks would get you close to the top of their line.

The black work boots protruding below the masculine mystique model's four-inch cuffs are similar to the "engineer boots" that some rugged-dressed men wore back in yesteryear - heavy black leather with a buckle across the arch. They were durable, long-lasting work boots that I believe most wearers would kick off on Saturday night in favor of some Justin's or Tony Lama's for "boot-scootin'" at the Johnstown dance. It's certain that a pair of engineer boots, bought for work, would cost far less than a fancy pair of pointy-toed boots with eagles stitched into the leather shafts.

The engineer boots were for necessarily long wear and were not necessarily for good looks. However, I can think of one exception where both may have been in play back in yesteryear. Lyle Wheeler - a rather handsome and rugged young fellow who lived a few miles south of us and who baled hay on contract - dressed top-to-bottom pretty much like the guy in this newspaper photo.

Lyle's orange Allis-Chalmers baler kicked out little round bales in those days. Lyle had wavy black hair that was slicked into place with ample slatherings of hair oil. He baled hay for my Dad one summer and I noticed his black engineer boots with some admiration. His tractor had to be clutched twice to produce one hay bale. After conveying up enough hay for a bale, the tractor was clutched and taken out of gear. Then the clutch was released while the baler wrapped twine on the bale and kicked it out the back. Then he depressed the clutch again, shifted back into gear and released the clutch to move forward into the windrow so the conveyor could pick up hay for the next bale. Lyle's engineer boots with thick soles and heavy heels were ideal for all that clutch work - at least two depressions for each hay bale. Hay baling was obviously depressing work. When Lyle clomped around with his shirttail out, kicking wayward hay bales out of the way of his tractor, you could say he was a reasonable facsimile of the guy in the newspaper photo - minus the cuffs.

In one hand, this guy in the photo, the guy who is advertised to ooze masculine mystique is holding a pair of work gloves. I have a pair exactly like them - think I bought them at Lowe's or Home Depot. They are my "cheap" work gloves - split horsehide leather fingers and palms with a canvas or denim back. They are too stiff for general work but are handy for handling rough stuff like cinder blocks. They aren't expensive - no point wearing out the fingers of twenty dollar gloves in an afternoon. I think I gave about eight bucks for my pair. I'm not sure if the masculine mystique look is to wear the gloves or to hold them in one hand as an accessory. I presume it's the latter.

Here's the price tag as per the newspaper article: "Shirt by Ben Sherman, $88, at Service Menswear; jeans by Levi's, $55 at Service Menswear; sunglasses by Mosley Tribes, $170, at - you guessed it - Service Menswear (Service Menswear has quite the markup, it seems); gloves $14.50 at Stag and boots by Red Wing, $308, at Luther's."

I can't price this fellow's underwear - or lack thereof - but what you see in the photo is what you get for $635.50 if you want to look like a rugged-dressed man with masculine mystique.

If you are the real deal and if you shop where I shop, you will save about five-hundred bucks on the regalia.

The Bunkhouse Blog

Hi Neighbors,

Yours truly, the caretaker and occasional janitor of The Bunkhouse, stops by - http://remry1.blogspot.com/ - once in a while to see if it needs my attention.

After several days of detecting no activity other than my own, I've decided that the familiar adage, "If you build it, they will come" should read, "If you build it, will they come?"

The answer is, "apparently not," but that's okay. I thought The Bunkhouse might become a substitute for The Brand Spankin' News, but perhaps it's more trouble to you than it's worth. I'll continue to offer it as a place for you neighbors to interact; some things take time.

Perhaps my long-winded instructions have made it appear more complicated than it truly is. Some of you have had difficulties commenting and that also erodes confidence.

Once in a while, when I "comment", it is rejected on the first click of the "Post Comment" button. I click it again and it has always been accepted on the second click. Perhaps if two clicks won't work for you - then the third time's a charm. I have tested the "comment" section a couple times this morning and I was successful although one test took a second click of "Post Comment" after the first failure. If you are successful, it should let you know that your comment is awaiting my screening.

Somebody somewhere in blog land understands the uses for the weird selections in the "Comment as:" section. I don't. Just scroll below the weird stuff and click either "Name/URL" (type something into the "Name" box and leave the "URL" box blank) or click "Anonymous." If you click "Anonymous" you can tell us who you are in the body of your comment.

A few of you "neighbors" have accepted my invitation to author posts although no one has yet tested the water. Come on in; the water's fine!

Sincerely,

Raleigh Emry

Nifty Notebooks

I have always been a sucker for nifty notebooks. Ever since I was a little kid and received my first diary for Christmas in 1954, I was hooked. It was a little green pocket-sized diary and memo where seven days of my life could be chronicled on each double page spread.

The diary was for year 1955, I was ten years old and ready to become a journalist. According to my personal information, I began the year standing 4 feet 6 inches tall and weighing in at a strapping 67 pounds. The cash summary page near the back showed that I began the year with $1.04 cash on hand; I apparently went on a spending binge as my cash resources had been depleted to zero before February.

The longest week in 1954 was that week from Christmas to New Years Day when I was a kid and itching to write something in my new nifty notebook. The week crawled along while I read every information page several times. The little book includes Postal Rates; in 1955 you could send a first class letter coast to coast for three cents. It lists time zones and moon phases. Facts about the world, continents and climate. Weights and Measures. Distances between cities. Average weight for males and females and several pages on how to save a life.

I sharpened up my pencil and waited for the evening of January 1, 1955 to roll around. When it finally came, these are my words to describe that day: "We went out home and cleaned the house. Went to Granddad's and had a oyster supper. Butch stayed all night last night and tonight." Those words filled the allotted space and were printed neatly. "Out home" refers to the home of my boyhood on the Niobrara - the old house we cleaned still stands today and hasn't been lived in since we moved to Ainsworth, Nebraska a few months prior to my entry. "Granddad's" referred to my Emry grandparents. "Butch" was once the nickname of my cousin, the fellow who grew up to become Dr. Melvin Campbell, MD.

My entries continued daily for a couple of months. Then, although, I was still disciplined to fill the squares, I did so with much larger print. By April my enthusiasm was waning. The last entry for 1955 was on Monday the 4th of April when my entry simply stated: "Another school day. Really chilly."

My parents never gave up on me. A couple of years later I received a five-year diary that was much smaller than the one-year diary multiplied by five. Apparently I had decided early in the first year that there was no point chronicling my days in short phrases to fit even tinier spaces. Over fifty years later, the five-year diary is still substantially empty.

That didn't dampen my enthusiasm for nifty notebooks. I enjoyed the concept; I simply didn't like the confined spaces. When I was in high school and began to work for Morris Skinner and the American Museum of Natural History, I coveted his diaries and notebooks. His diaries had one page set aside for each day. His black, leather-bound, record books were filled with lined pages with no preprinted confinements. "What nifty notebooks", I thought. I inquired as to where I might get ones like his.

The one-year diaries were rather easy to find; I may have purchased mine in Ainsworth. The record books, however, were too exotic and wonderful to be found in Ainsworth, where merchants' shelf space was needed for essentials and not luxuries. Morris told me that he bought his in a store in Lincoln, Nebraska - on O Street if my memory serves me. He gave me the address of the Lincoln store; I quickly sent off for two nifty notebooks - a 4" x 7" and a 5 1/2" x 9" Record Book each with 180 lined pages.

I filled those books with important stuff like addresses; my budget and expenditures; the list of all US Savings Bonds that I had begun to buy and other financial records. My Private Pilot flying log was too restrictive to record my adventures in the wild blue yonder. I amplified each flight in these nifty notebooks including my first solo on 29 Oct 1965. "Soloed! Did 3 touch and gos. Rare experience!" is how I described those short fifteen minutes while my instructor, China Henderson, stood by the end of the Fort Collins, Colorado runway holding his breath. A few years later it amplified my USAF flying log and chronicled my combat experience in Vietnam including the names of my fallen comrades.

In my younger days, I had more things to memorialize in nifty notebooks than I do today: computers have taken the place of nearly every requirement for a paper log. Yet, I still enjoy the old ways. I have several notebooks that I've purchased, I suppose, more for their feel and look than anything utilitarian. After buying them, I find I'm hard-pressed to put them into service. The computer is better for nearly all record keeping - including financial records, logs and journals. I'll consider a use for my new purchase and then decide, "This notebook is just too nice for that mundane chore; I'll use a spiral or some index cards instead." With that logic, I have ended up with several notebooks lying fallow as they are just too nifty to use.

This January, while I'm attempting to organize some end-of-year records, I've come across various spirals, index cards, post-it notes, etc., that are now a meaningless puzzle of user names and password hints for various computer accounts. Some are current; some aren't. Some password hints are no-longer familiar. Some tidbits of other crucial information that I'd thought I'd lost forever have turned up in the most unlikely of places. I exclaim "eureka" but then realize that the sought after information is no longer relevant.

This paper chase convinced me that if I had used one of my nifty notebooks instead of relying on bits and scraps of less-worthy writing materials, I would have more quickly found what I was seeking. I picked up one of my nifty notebooks and vowed to use it for "inappropriate" things. My new logic is akin to Erma Bombeck vowing to never eat another black banana. She had learned that eating black bananas so they won't go to waste will reward you with a black banana the following day. Erma concluded, with her"waste not want not" logic she never got to eat a banana when it was at its prime.

Terry returned yesterday from New York City and presented me with another nifty notebook. It's a 2010 Calendar and Engagement Book from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's filled with Eliot Porter Landscapes and much too nifty to use. Yet, 2010 is only here for 365 days and about one month of 2010 has already sped into the past. There is no time like the present to put my pen to its pages. In eleven months it will be too late.

I have a complementary calendar from some fund-raising enterprise that until yesterday, was placed on my desk and enlisted to record my medical appointments and other routine stuff. It's not nearly as nifty as the hard-cover calendar that Terry gave me. I've decided that my mundane and unworthy words won't be anymore out-of-place in the fine book from New York City than the miles of graffiti on Big Apple subway cars. Today, the nifty notebook from the Metropolitan Museum of Art takes the place of the utilitarian "gimme" calendar.

If there is a moral to this story it might be this: If any of you good neighbors are thinking that "The Bunkhouse" blog is just too nifty for your unworthy words; forget that notion! If that were true, I would not have entered my first Post. Our Freedom of Expression is so important that our Constitution guarantees our most humble of thoughts. Please feel free to express yourselves. There is a shorter distance between "humble" and "bold" than you might realize.

Nifty notebooks are meant to be used.

The Bunkhouse - Status Update

Good Morning Bunkhouse Buckaroos,

The Bunkhouse is off to a slow start; yet, I believe it may catch on. Charlotte Griffith posted a comment to the blog and mentioned its major drawback, ". it doesn't just land in your inbox, it is easy to forget to look." Charlotte mentioned that she bookmarked the web page to help remind her. Subscribing is another way to get reminders; you can do that with the subscribe buttons in the sidebar. I believe if the Brand Spankin' News was important to you, then it will only be a matter of time before you regularly go to the following link to The Bunkhouse in addition to your checking your e-mail.

http://remry1.blogspot.com/

There may some confusion about posts and comments.

Posts are the original contributions with titles that you see in the major column of the blog. Posts can only be written by me or the blog authors.

Comments can be left by anyone at the bottom of the Posts.

As I've explained, anyone can comment to any existing Post. If you enjoy reading the comments, then it may be a hassle searching back through all the posts to see if new comments have been posted. I'm attempting to get an application to work that will show you the latest comments in the sidebar. So far, I've had no luck. I'm probably not holding my mouth right.

For your convenience, I have written a Post entitled "Quick Comments" where you can leave general comments. You can easily find that post by looking for "Quick Comments" under "Labels" on the sidebar and clicking it. If everyone will write their general Comments to that Post, they will be easier for everyone to find.

Some of you may be having trouble leaving comments. I think that, with practice, it will become easier. The blog, like all WebPages, may get persnickety at times and return an advisory that you were unsuccessful - to try again or try later. Perhaps the BlogSpot server is being over-tasked at the moment. I'm just guessing. However, each time I've had that problem, I first made sure that I hadn't inadvertently made an error and then hit the "Post Comment" button again. Each time, I've been successful.

The new blog authors have yet to post; perhaps no one wants to be first. If you are unsure of the procedures, I will explain:

If you have completed the blog author process, when you visit The Bunkhouse, you should see an indication at the far right top of the page -outside the dark blog border - whether you are signed in. If you aren't, you first must click the words "sign in." It will then ask you for the e-mail address and password that you used to become a blog author. When you are signed in, that line should show this sequence: "(your e-mail address) : New Post : Sign Out" Click the words "New Post" and a window will open with a screen very much like an e-mail drafting screen.

Anytime you are ready to become an independent Bunkhouse author, let me know via e-mail and I will send the invitation:

How to Boil the Perfect Egg

This morning I was getting tired of my same old bachelor lunch and thought I'd boil a few eggs. For you strangers, I'm no bachelor, but Terry is off in New York City cuddling our new grand babies.

My old, nearly perfect, egg boiling recipe was to cover the eggs in a couple of inches of water, heat to boiling, boil for two minutes, remove from heat and let set for about 20 minutes. This morning I stumbled into an easier solution - although it might have been one step short of burning down the bunkhouse.

I placed four beautiful brown eggs into a big saucepan and covered them with a couple of inches of water. I turned the heat on high and wandered off to do a couple of things on the computer while the pot came up to a boil.

Some time later - and the "some time" is a vague guess, I heard an odd bumbling, thrumming sound. I didn't think much of it as they are always working on the railroad track - probably replacing girders or ties down on the Onion Creek trestle, I thought.

As I scrolled through my e-mail, the odd sound puzzled me. Yet, it was sort of a peaceful little bubbling, boiling sound ...

Bubbling, boiling sound!! Ack! The eggs, the eggs! I had completely forgotten the egg boiling enterprise. I scrambled to the kitchen. The pot was bubbling furiously, the glass-top burner underneath was a cherry red. I turned off the heat and removed the pan. Hmmmm... how long should I wait on the eggs? I tentatively set a timer for five minutes - thinking that my distraction was probably at least 15 minutes. I then noted that about an inch of the two inch header had boiled away.

I could have used calculus - a differential equation that took in the diameter of the pot, the inch of boiled off water, the atmospheric pressure and a few other variables and calculated the time. Instead, I figured the eggs had endured about as much cooking as they could stand. I plucked them from the water, put them in a dish and placed them in the refrigerator.

When they had cooled, I tested one. It popped clean of its shell and was perfectly cooked.

Don't try this at home.

The Blizzard of 2010

I thought you might enjoy some dramatic shots of railroad snowblowers at work clearing tracks in Nebraska.

Snow Blower in Aurora, NE
Snow Blower in Trumbull, NE
Snow Blower North of Hastings, NE

Leona Ketteler sent me the links. I decided to use them for practice inserting links into a blog post. It's straight forward and easy; if you guest authors would like to try, just click the "Link" button on the menu where you are drafting your new post and fill in the squares.

Quick Comments

Here's a Post that might be useful to those of you who prefer not to be guest authors but who may on occasion have some information that you would like to share with the group.

You do not have to register to leave comments on any of the posts. Therefore, I am creating this post specifically as a comment drop box where you can leave your information in a comment at the bottom.

On the sidebar, near the top and below the search box, you will see a title "Labels". I have labeled this post "Quick Comments." Therefore, if you want to leave a quick comment or read those left by others, you can click that label to find this post when it is no longer open.

Brand Spankin' News - Crunch Time!

Brand Spankin' News

Crunch Time!

Good Morning Neighbors!

Okay, here's some more mind-numbing stuff regarding the blogity blog. The good news is that this will be the last. I'm attempting to answer all of your questions so I apologize in advance for being verbose and repetitive.

Here's my goal - pure and simple: Keep our group effort alive but without me being the middle man.

The Bunkhouse will only be an alternative to the BSN if others join me. If it works the way I anticipate, it will be your meeting hall where you can walk in at any time and get on your soap box or just sit there and take it all in - and all without waiting for me to show up, unlock the door and lead the discussion.

A few questions from you good neighbors can be paraphrased this way: "Why can't we just e-mail our contributions to you and then you can put them on the blog?"

First: That keeps me as the middle-man. It could possibly make it even more complicated than the e-mail BSN. There is no point going to all this trouble if it continues or makes worse the hassles that I'm attempting to eliminate.

Second: If I forwarded your contributions they would post as if they came from me. I would then have to edit them to make sure they reflect the correct author. And what if I err and post a personal note from you thinking it's for the blog? That's too much like concocting the BSN . No thanks!

There are exceptions. If I receive an urgent notice from someone who hasn't signed up and hasn't been a regular contributor in the past, then I'll post it. On those occasions, I will also e-mail the important message to my address list. If you become a "guest author" and receive something urgent from someone, you can do the same.

If you see a potential loophole, not so fast! I won't fall for the trick that everything e-mailed to me is an "urgent notice" or an "important message" and I won't mind posting it. I'm smarter than the average bear! If someone routinely has a lot of urgent and important stuff to share, then they will have to sign up and become a cog in The Bunkhouse sausage mill.

Here is a collection of other concerns boiled down this way: I don't want the hassle of signing up. I don't know anything about computers or blogs.

I am confident that anyone who has contributed to the BSN can complete the sign-up and learn how to send a blog entry in less time than it took me to concoct one e-mail BSN edition. If you are deliberate and already have a Google account, you can probably complete the process in only a couple minutes.

Okay, listen up!

Instead of picking and choosing invitees from my address list, I am inviting all of you to be "guest authors." The blog supports 100 guest authors and that's far more capability than we need for our group. Only about ten percent of my address list has contributed to the BSN. If only a few of you sign up now, others can be added in the future.

If you want to give it a go - and yes, that means you - then please let me know by e-mail and I will send you the sign-up link.

Note: When I signed up as a "guest author" pretending to be Terry, the step-by-step suggested that "Terry" could also start a blog at the same time. You need not have a blog of your own; just ignore those steps and accept the invitation to post on The Bunkhouse.

Note 2: If you do not intend to publish your own posts, you need not sign up. You are in like Flint to read and comment on existing posts without doing anything other than keeping this blog link handy: http://remry1.blogspot.com/

Before you take the leap, please keep this final thought in mind: When you are considering whether you want to participate, please disregard all thoughts about my feelings or my expectations of you. If you do not wish to participate, then that's certainly okay with me - no explanation is necessary; I mean that sincerely.

In any case, The Bunkhouse is available and if I'm the sole occupant, I'll keep the latch string out and the coffee pot on.

Sincerely,

Raleigh Emry

Brand Spankin' News - Gettin' Down to the Last Gasps!

Brand Spankin' News

Good Morning Neighbors!

I know . I know. For someone who has given up writing the Brand Spankin' News I've certainly had a flurry of activity to the contrary for the past few days. Although many of you are supportive of my terminating the e-mail and beginning a blog, my e-mail blizzard is driven by many notes that could be boiled down to this theme, "Well, what do we do now? Where do we go from here?"

After stringing you along for maybe fifteen years, I owe it to you to give you a lifeboat before I scuttle this old tub.

Perhaps there is someone else who will volunteer to captain the e-mail ship. I've heard rumors, but no one has stepped forward to say, "I'll do it." Until something better comes along, the blog "The Bunkhouse" is open for business as a meeting hall.

http://remry1.blogspot.com/

The blog is better suited to our purpose than Facebook and it's much easier on the host than e-mail; speaking from experience, that is for certain! Yet there is reluctance against the blog.

I asked Fara Lee Ignert, "Why do you suppose some of the good neighbors are either reluctant, totally turned off or maybe even fearful of the blog idea; I mentioned that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had opined, 'There is nothing to fear but fear itself.'"

Fara Lee said, "Well them years of FDR was a much simpler time. The only things folks back then had to skeer 'em was a BIG Depression, dust-bowls and droughts, dirty thirties, a stock market kerlapse, a World War Two or two, mushroom clouds, soup lines, bein out of work and maybe catchin' tyfloid fever 'er polio and wearin an iron lung fer the rest of yer borned days. FDR was only opinin' the oblivious, that none of that was skeery. But that was years before The Blog!"

I asked Fara Lee if she was familiar with a blog.

She said, "Alls I know is "The Blog" is only one letter away from that horror show back in the late fifties where Steve McQueen got his start in Hollerwood. That oozy goo that gobbled up everthing in its path was certainly skeery. I figger a Blog is nuthin more than a Blob with the tail draggin' on that last "b". Them blogs are out to gobble up our personal information and set us to runnin' in the streets without nary a stitch to our names. Bossman, the innernet ain't to be trusted!"

I said, "What if I told you that a blog is no different than any other webpage? You don't have to sign up to read a blog; you don't have to give out any personal information to read a blog or comment; you don't have to be a "Follower" or subscribe. In fact it's safer in that regard than Facebook where you do have to join.

The only ones who will have to register to use the blog are those who want to contribute independently and on a regular basis. Then it's only a Google account. Many folks may already have a Google account and not even realize it. If you use Picasa for your photos or use Gmail, you have a Google account. If you use Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Chrome or use iGoogle or Blogger, changes are you have a Google account. Google, in my assessment, is safer than, for example, some on-line greeting card services that collect e-mail addresses, etc., when people use them.

"Blog" is short for "Web Log" - a specialized webpage designed specifically for people who want to keep a log and then either keep it private, share it with a select few, or open it for everyone. A Web Log could as easily have been called a Web Diary or Web Journal but the designer called it a Web Log and it became known as a Blog. Sort of like the army's General Purpose (GP) vehicle becoming known as a Jeep.

Fara Lee thought for a moment, "Well maybe it ain't so skeery afterall. I tell you though, bossman, If'n Blog is short fer "Web Log" then I can see why the inventer din't call it a "Web Journal."

I asked, "Why?"

Fara Lee opined, "Then one of them innernet nerds woulda giggled and called it a We-Urnal and that's what we'd be callin' it today!"

This is what happens at the bunkhouse when the Fair Bride is not around to keep order.

Tips on Commenting.

The block below the area where you type your comment has a drop down menu of several suggestions entitled "Comment As." You can access the menu by clicking the little down arrow at the right side of the adjacent window.

All of the selections are probably confusing to folks who don't do this too often. If all you want to do is have your note say it's from someone other than "Anonymous" you can select the "Name / URL" field in the drop-down menu and place your name in the "name" field and ignore the "URL" field.

You need not use your full name; you can even use a nickname. For example, Dale Coleman, responded only with "Dale." and so his comment reads "Dale said ..." instead of "Anonymous said ... " Of course you can leave that field blank and simply put your name within the comment field as did Annie Johnson. Her note is from "Anonymous" but she shows her name in her note. Either way will let readers know who you are.

If you prefer to be Anonymous then that's okay; however, I might think it's spam and not allow it when screened.

Confusing but amusing.

Invitation to Guest Author - Test

Here is how it will work if I invite you to post directly to "The Bunkhouse" blog. I sent an invitation to Terry at her e-mail address. I then went to Terry's computer, found my request in her inbox, and responded as if I were her. To do so, you click a link. To post a blog, requires that you have a google account. If you don't have one already, I recommend opening a Gmail account before you respond to the guest author request. (Gmail is a handy and free e-mail service.) If you open your google account prior to responding to the invitation to be a guest author, your user name and password will be fresh in your mind when you proceed.

You then follow the on-screen directions.

As soon as the administrator of the blog (that's me) acknowledges your request, you are then free to post as frequently as you wish and 24/7. I'm now at Terry's computer and creating this post.

This might be intimidating at first but the learning curve is fast. I also uploaded one of Terry's flower photos as and experiment; it was easy. I simply clicked the "Add Image" icon at the top and selected a photo.

You will notice that the lastest post will take the place of the previous one at the top of the post screen. "Change of Pace" will either show below the new post and/or at the blog archive link in the right column.

Some of you e-mailed me that you had attempted to comment but ran into difficulty. Check out the three comments at the bottom of the "Change of Pace" posting on hints about how to comment.

A Change of Pace

I recently informed the readers of my e-mail newsletter, The Brand Spankin' News,that I had decided to call it quits. My decision is disappointing to some of you "neighbors" - it was not an easy decision for me. We've been together for a long, long time. It wasn't the writing as much as the format; the years of enduring e-mail glitches, manually updating birthday, anniversary and address lists, the cutting and pasting, the working under my self-imposed schedule and deadline, having to split my address list into smaller portions to keep from exceeding the sending limit of my provider, resending e-mail to recipients who hadn't received it, etc. It seemed that the more I tried to streamline the process, the more it tended to encroach on the rest of my day.

E-mail is an good way to communicate; I'm hoping that this blog will be even better. We never learn until we try new things - so this is my change of pace and I invite you to join me.

I don't intend to publish on a schedule but only as the urge hits. I can post to a blog whether I'm at home or traveling and I don't have to keep an everchanging e-mail address lists current on more than one computer. It seems that it will be easier for all of you to keep track of one of me than for one of me to keep track of all of you.

When I add new posts, I welcome you to add your comments below them. You need not comment on the original topic, but may ramble as you please. If you neighbors accept this format, I will invite additional authors (for example, the regular contributors to the Brand Spankin' News and other volunteers) to post original contributions directly to the blog. That way it can keep active without my involvement.

Although I haven't tested it, I understand that if you subscribe to this blog then an alert will be sent to you when a new posting or comment has been published.

If you look on the lower right column of this blog, you will see this link "My Bunkhouse Website." It's a website that I began long ago but never got around to improving. Nevertheless, it includes all of the "Story Writing 101" assignments that we wrote several years back. Click around and you should find them if you want to reread them. There is also a link at the website to get you back to this blog.

If you would like to comment about this new proposed approach but have difficulty leaving one below this post, please contact me via E-mail.

The Brand Spankin' News was not about me it was about us. If there is anyone who wants to take on the challenge of being "bossman" in an e-mail newsletter, I will certainly encourage them to give it a go. A fresh approach is always a good thing.