Questions of the New Year

The new year is barely underway and already two questions are knocking on my skull. Two days, two questions. The new year is already setting the course of the rest of the year. My dread was that this year was going to be a somewhat confused year.  A political mess to be sorted out by November just didn't seem possible and yet...somehow, it will be sorted out come November.

Tonight watching Charlie Rose, Neil De Grasse Tyson was giving an educate interviewed. Charlie Rose ask him what would be his most important question to ask about the universe and his answer was something that has been answered much the same way already by a photographer. Tyson said his question would be the question that has not yet been ask because we are not smart enough to ask it yet. The photographer had been ask what is his best picture and his reply was the one that had not yet been taken.

The first question that came to me in reverse order here would be one that is a more powerful one on all fronts. The story behind the question has been tested for more than a few days now and only yesterday did the actual question form and begin pounding on my skull.

The story that formed the base of this question is:  A grad student at UCLA has been going to the San Diego Zoo every day for more than a year as part of his research for his doctorate. He had, in the beginning, ask such a simple question: how does a monkey peel a banana? The results has proven almost everyone has been doing it wrong. These past few days as I ate my daily banana, I peeled the banana the way the monkey peeled his. As a result of the grad students research, my first question of the year came about.

There is no question that after having tried it myself for several days the monkey has a winner. But, that still does not answer my question that all this fuss generated. In fact, now, a second part to the original question has come into play. So before I can ask the perplexing question, there is now a second part to be answered to the original question. That answer will just have to wait. The only way that I can get the answer that I need will require going to the Dallas Zoo and maybe even the Ft. Worth Zoo. You see, part of the answer is a visual answer. The only way that I can get that visual answer is go to the zoo. My best picture is one that hasn't been taken yet and I have a project and a plan! It is a once-in-a-lifetime shot. It will take some planning. Seeing an orangutan (on YouTube  Orangutan) fall to the floor and roll in laughter when he watched a magician do a magic trick that fooled him was priceless. This might be the only project on my agenda this year. But if I get the shot that I am hoping to get, it will have been a very good year. 

The Fickleness of Fettle

The title almost seems like an Arthur Gordon chapter title. Although it is not, I'll take credit for this one.
A morning that has already tickled the brain and tinkered with the memory.


Somewhere in time, I do remember who they were, but I can not tell you when or where in time I learned this fact.Probably as a child most likely. This morning, while reading articles and scanning the web for the state of the world affairs, I heard the names Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior. I'll come back to that later on.

On the Local Stage

Years ago, I spent a lot of time running around the office putting out fires. Someone would generate one here and there then set on it until it began to spread before coming to me and  telling me about the problem. I didn't enjoy those situations but along with the nice office came the firetruck, hose and nosels so to speak. The hat just morphed into what ever the situation was for the day. I was always glad when I could put that folder in the pile of closed problems.
However, that was then and this is now. Now, when Texas gets below 30 degrees F, I feel it even with a layer or two of clothing. And here is the fickled side of  human nature in that situation. I don't go out for the frosty sunrises and foggy mornings anymore. I blame it on the battery pack getting cold. Which it does, but is still a poor excuse to not go get those shots.

The Nations Struggles

We haven't found MH 370, have not totally cleared the flight that was shot down over the Ukraine.  Now there is another missing plane in the Java Sea to add to the list. But even more fickled in scope is how the world's number one retailer--Walmart-- could receive and sell PS4s filled with rocks rather than electronics when Walmart is known for its high-tech RIFD inventory scanners and in store wall of eyes everywhere but in the receiving area. Shrinkage starts at the distribution center level, continues down to the store receiving level, then to the in-store theft that goes out the front door. It can also go out the front door as a sold item, then the box is filled with weight and returned during the busy return season. All-in-all, it's another fine example of the Fickleness of Fettle. Inventory to and fro of boxed rocks. How fickle is that? I'll tell you. It's Fettled in Fickleness.

Have you come up with the answer to the three names yet? How about the names of the three Magi or Wise men of the East. Okay, a simple kiss my grits will do for the wise men of the East.

 Point with No Counterpoint

The point is..life will mix things up for those locked in their comfort zones. Never say never because it will come back on you. For those that prepare for that shift that will not come during this lifetime, it really didn't matter in the first place because when it comes around again, very few of us will ever be remembered in a hundred years. The preachers sermon or the commercial that brings a laugh about being careful what you ask for because you just might get it--from the good Lord or from a genie in a bottle-- is really a possibility of and/or in life. A million buck wish becomes a neighborhood of a million  reindeer bucks! The story about the guy who didn't like to fly and prayed he would never die in a plane crash retires and drives to Florida only to be hit and killed within the first hours of being there crossing a street.

 I see a younger generation growing up with their nose in a phone screen and I wonder what they will write about in their years when they look up from their screens and discover that life is just about to the final act because I really do not believe that they ever see that day in their future.

 There isn't an app for that. There isn't social media to bring back that lost time with family. There won't be a YouTube video that will draw six figure hits of the funeral director watching your casket settle into the vault and the lid being placed on before the grave diggers dump a load of dirt in on the vault lid. That's fettle my friends, nothing fickled about that.

Time to go eat some homemade vegetable and ham soup with a glass of red wine. I made it yesterday and it was good. Today it will have increased it flavor  10-fold. With the  first of three cold fronts already here, it's either chilli or soup time and I'm thinking soup to finish out 2014 and chilli in the new year. One thing about Texas is that we eat simple--but we eat good.

The was on the first day of Spring a couple of years back.