Crazy Cat and Onlookers

The Balad of Butty and Unice

Years ago Georgia Warren brought home this Horsie, and the Horsie .. Unice is her name ... wanted to be a freaky FLYING Unicorn. So I made her a horn, to which I appended a plume of feathers so it would do no harm as she flies around the room. Then Butty the local lamb wanted not only to RIDE the Unicorn, but to have TWO horns of his own. So I provided the horns: with a downward curl to be safe for sure. And now they fly by night when I'm in the loft sleeping And as to where they go , that's for us to imagine and them to know , b'cause it's secret that they're keeping.

Pearls Music Box

dryads

Cat Top Writer

Dead and Gone

Fairy Squirrel Fart

Spider From Mars Puts A Gasshopper Away for Later

Hickory Abides

I made a super deluxe dog house out of a packing crate, but the Dog's didn't use it, nor did the cats that came after. Ginger the hen brooded a clutch in the bottom floor , and then it was unused again for some years, though i made it comfortable with old dog beds. Then the poor damaged cat I called Roody came around, at first slinking tail down around in the tall grass outskirts, then hissing and pissing right up onto the deck where the other cats gave way to him, though he was a surprisingly little stinker up close and he really did stink, He acted the asshole, but he was not well to begin with and fixing to die. He moved into the Dog House, top floor when he could get there, but he couldn't, or anyway didn't go anywhere else to either piss or shit. When he couldn't climb back up at all, and was mostly just going around in circles that got smaller and smaller, I let him in the house to finish dieing, and I hosed the dog bedding down good, then left it in the sun for a few weeks for the UV rays to work , then I put them back in, and still the outdoor Cats would not go in there, so then I sprayed it with a piss neutralizing enzyme, and after another few weeks, Hickory the indoor/outdoor cat began taking his morning and afternoon naps upstairs in the ..tiny house, from which he can keep his eye on the food dish and chase away the cat called Tramp who comes around, and whom he hates for some reason I don't know, probably not because he has a marking under his nose that makes him look like Hitler.

Irene morphine

Irene won't settle down.

Got To Fly

Rose of Sharon LOVES all over Dogs Plot, happy as the Sumac and Birds Foot.

How You Two Can Live Together

Living in close quarters with others requires stealth and underhand tactics, sometimees,

Don't Do It In The Road

First Chants

If you believe some people, the Chanterelle musrooms are generated by lightining, and they do appear in mid july as the summer thunder storms roll in, and that happened, so I ducked down to Sisters Gulf to have a look ...first greeting the sisters: the sisters being two trees, that have come together and melded a yard or so above the ground, so they stand as one on two feet, and they hold the ground, mother it, rather than walking away as the two feet might make possible; she is the mother tree and we have to greet her in the right mind....and attitude; speaking or singing or even dancing to her is acceptable, but PLEASE do no hug the tree, or take selfies. Have some respect, and listen. Do you see the sister faces:? Look but don't stare. What she tells me is beware the Aminita Pantherina below, and of course, there it was and I am not sure why it is named Panther, but I beware. And on and not so far, practically also below the sisters' skirts the a trail of baby chanterells fit size for fairys, and I follow them to the yawning gulf and there below on a steep, and maybe slibbery slope, a royal flush of fully formed Chantreels, and it looks like a tough retreival, so we will have to lower a man down in a hand basket, and I didn't have a hand basket so I used this bag, and no man, but this stick, and I lowered away and....well you can see what happened, but everybody made it home for dinner, and Holy Cow ! THE SHRIMP BOATS HAD COME IN. There'll be dancing tonight.

Priya the Glum Reapeer

Orchid Turtle

STOMACH THIS

You may not have the stomach for this, but it’s too late now. I once had a captive sparrow Hawk that I fed on mice the cats brought in, and he ate everything but the gall bladders. Here, now, one of my cats ate a rabbit, but didn’;t have the gaul to eat the stomach.

Mama Doe

Dogs Plot livestock

moring visit

We were hoping for a sign, but when it came, we chased it away.

lion in Summer

The Lion has been activated for the season. I will be harvesting duck weed regularly.

Pearl Rebio;t

Dust Up

There was a big Dust-Up on the back side of Pumpkin Hill yesterday as this guy pulling a double harrow gang seemed to be having too much fun:

Georgia Got her Woowoo On

Back in the Soviet Era when Uri Geller was on TV reading our minds and bending spoons with his own, both the Russians and the US governments searched for persons who might have some degree of psychic ability for remote sensing … so we could spy on each other better. I suppose it was her brother Greg the, CIA operative, who suggested that Georgia and their mother Pearl be included in the search for remote sensors. Pearl claimed she could see through the backs of cards, but whether or not that was true, she was unbeatable in the frequent family games. And there was that time her husband’s buddies at the taxi company cleaned him out of a weeks pay, after which she had George invite the boys to the house again for cards and snacks, something they did now and then, but this one time she didn’t just make the snacks, but joined the card game and took the men for all they had,. And Greg’s sister Georgia not only saw fairys, but she also aced the SAT exam at age fourteen, as if she KNEW the answers, A test that more spectacularly and confoundingly demonstrated Georgia’s gift, or curse as it could be, was a mid-term exam for a course involving the ancient artworks of Florence, Italy. Georgia had done NONE of the reading by the evening when realized that the test was the very next day. She not only aced the test, but to do it, had (without any such intention or notion that it was a feasible, emergency measure) dreamed that she traveled to Ital y …to a cathedral that housed much of the art in question. There she met the nun in charge, who told her about the art and artists and sent her about the city to see the other collections. And so she went. To have such a vivid dream was one thing, and vivid dreaming was native to Georgia, but for the dream to be so full of new information was another thing - and as puzzling as it was informative. She would always struggle to explain that test prep. She tried supposing that instead of just falling asleep late that evening when she realized the test was next day, she had trotted over to the library and read a whole book. That too would be a bit of a stretch and she certainly did not in the least recall such a thing, although she WAS a prodigious speed reader with deep memory. The intial CIA sensitivity test should have been a cinch for Pearl, because it was a simple matter of telling the investigator whether the face of the card he showed her the back of was X or Y. I don’t know how Pearl did on the tests, but she never went to work of the C.I.A. and had better things to do for her country, which around then was leading the regional campaigns for Bobby or Hillary. And as for Georgia: by the standard for that first level of testing, she failed completely. But as she was leaving the office the investigator caught up with her … because he just wanted to say, the interesting thing is … that it wasn’t like she didn’t get more than half of the Y or X answers right, which at seventy five percent would get her to the next level, but she ALWAYS said X when it was Y and visa versa. A hundred times. She failed TOTALLY. That’s outside the algorythimic peramaters of the systems structure, or words like that. Georgia was an undiagnosed dyslexic psychic, and her learning was retarded by the great weight of her gift. Maybe you or I are like that.

The Door in the Sycamore

Along little Paynes Creek near here, or Little Paines Creak, I wlways for get which it is.

Launching the island

Nobody can be an island, but most people can have one, though they may have to build it, and for that you will need a lake of some sort, and you can build a sort of lake too, which I did... .and today I launched the (Norman Island) for the season, after pruning back the willow trees and restoring the cottage, which had been vandalized by a Goose who nested there when I wasn't looking.

Spring Cleaning

As most friends know there are no Dogs at Dogs Plot now days, while our major icon is the Cat, and even the King of Beasts (not me) needs a Spring Cleaning, so here;

Quequeg's Pipe

I got Queewegs pipe from Professor Slade PeckarStine, a student of the seas and its mysteries, who told me that he himself had received it from an old auntie who was second niece once removed from Herman Melville. The proff handed it down to me when he got too old for the responsibility, telling me (I was younger back then ) to preserve and protect it as the invaluable artifact it is… since Mellville himself had gotten the pipe from its original owner ....or, to be exact, from that man’s coffin. And you probably know that QueeQueg was t’he brown sailor, of uncertain but possibly canibal extraction and was bunk mates with Melville who ( begins the book saying ‘Call me Ishmael’ but we aren’t dumb, and we know it’s Mellvile we are dealing with. But we are more interested in Queequeg anyway: Queequeg with the fantasticly tattooed hide, who had nothing to hide and not much to show or stow but his bill hook, some coins, his pipe, and rope which he kept in the coffin that he had enough foresight to eommssion the ship’s carpenter to make. But it’s Queequegs PIPE in particular that we are concerned with here, If Queequeg had been sleeping in the coffin with his pipe and stash instead of aloft when the great whale brought them to grief, he might have lived to tell the tale, but when the ship went down as ‘Ishmael” tells us, he - Melville - was thrown clear and treading water when that coffin bobbed to the surface. And ( as Mellville told his nephew, who told his mother, who told her grand neice, who told to professor, who handed it down to me) there in the coffin was Queequeg’s pipe and stash, his bill hook and some coins which , because of the weight, Herman dumped, keeping the hefty bill hook in case of sharks, You can see from the photos here the face that Queequeg carved on the pipe. h Mellville thought it was the face of Queequeg’s idol or god, but some experts say it only repressents Queequeg himself, or some other Sea Dog. Whatever it is , I myself am too old for the responsibility to preserve and protect such a thing now, and so I’m handing it down. I’m keeping the bill hook though, in case of land sharks.

Snakes in the Bath

Cats are more superstitious than Dogs.

purrrrrrrr

How can a guy sleep, on a three dog night, when he's got no Dogs?

Pearl Will See and Raise You Too

Pearl Will See Yours and Raise You That the children were out of the house, while both Pearl and George worked long hours away from home, and Grandfather George had died or faded away, did not leave the Old Farm House cheerless and empty of life. George and his fellow drivers congregated much of the time at the dispatching office , where they passed the time playing cards. George’s buddies generally played for low stakes : friendly enough games that on weekends when Pearl was home, George would invite his buddies out to the Farmhouse for cards and Pearls food, and his buddies, some of them immigrants who had no family in this country and could barely cook for themselves, were always glad to accept. That didn’t happen EVERY weekend, and the more regular card games at the dispatchers office on pay days, with the temporary inflation of attitude the lump sum encouraged, sometimes caused the betting to get out of hand. One Friday George came home, having lost his whole week’s pay. Pearl was angry of course, but not incensed, and not at all without recourse. Shew didn’t batter her husband with a chair, or yell and stomp her feet. Pearl was was cool. She told George to invite his buddies for cards and treats again the next weekend; which he did, and of course the men came. Pearl had a simple plan: she would feed the men cake, but then sit in on the game. The Cuninghams of Tug Hill , had always played a lot of board and card games when at home together, and - when she wanted to - Pearl won. She claimed that she could see through cards, particularly blue-backed cards like the family used. Whether or not her children believed she could actually see through the cards, they certainly would not go up against her for real consequences, and none of them except - to some extent - Georgia, had any such ability. As it happened that evening, the taxi boys left without the money they had come with. During the nineteen seventies both the Russians and the U.S. investigated the possibilitiy of employing extra-sensory perceptors for the purpoase of remortely gathering nformation about each other. The US program was called the “Star Gate Project”, and it would continue into the nineties when it was abandoned and declassified, and then started up again. It’s all so messy: These paranormal matters are highly irregular, various, and - of course - exist in a general fog of fraud and delusion. I suppose it was through her secret-agent brother Greg that Georgia and her mother became known to the project development team. Pearl had no interest or time for that, but Georgia agreed to take part in the intial screening sessions meant to narrow down the field of possible, distant sensors.. The test was simpler than guessing - or sensing the many possibilites in a whole hand of cards: . The man who conducted the trial sat across the table from her and held up a card, to which her choice of response was bianary: heads or tails, yes or no. So the chances were that anybody at all would get fifty our of a hundred correctly. I don’t suppose they were blue backed, and anyway Georgia never claimed to see through cards; but she had a lot more than an inkling of the answer. Despite her inklings, Georgia failed the test. She failed it utterly. After she left the room, and before she left the building, the investigator caught up with her and said that oddly, she had not just failed the test but had gotten every single answer exactly wrong, opposite, heads for tails and tails for heads, and THAT was truly something, though it represented a sort of psychic dyslexia not useful intelligence service. So Georgia would never be a spy, though she would sometimes help people find misplaced possessions, claiming that it was only by means of attuned logic, which - to MY mind, is too tidy an explanation.

Georgia's Visit from my Grandfather's Ghost

Georgia Speaking

While Georgia was enrolled in the Central Square High School, her mother arranged for her to take advanced credit in math at Syracuse University, which was convenient enough because she could travel there with her older brother Freddie, whom their mother had convinced the Veteran’s Administration to support through four years of college. Georgia was smart enough that she probably could have overcome the normal high school distraction of boyfriend crushes to do High School and college classes at the same time: There was a boy with whom she collaborated for a class assignment for which they wrote a short “novel” about a world war during which one side prevailed by means of their abillity to control the weather. Maybe it was a prophetic work, but I don’t know how the war turned out, or if there is a copy of the story anywhere, and anyway … there was no romance involved in the collaboration. Then there was a classsmate, for whom she had some fond feeling, and who actually sent her a Valentine. Unfortunately it was a normal Winter in those parts, with a heavy snow on Tug Hill, and the Cuningham mail box was burried under the snowbank for several days, so by the time they dug it out and Georgia found the valentine she had already dissapointed the boy not responding, or so she thought; and anyway, she was about as shy as she could be, and didn’t speak up. I don’t know how much extra help she got in the school: She didn’t tell me about her high school teachers, except about the day when the whole school was called to an assembly, for which the teachers were brought on stage, or all the female teachers, if there were any men at all. A staff member went along the line-up with a measuring strick that had a mark showing the maximum acceptable level of the skirt or dress hem above the floor. I suppose all had been informed of the regulation. Georgia’s r favorite teacher’s skirt was over the red line; and so she was soon gone. I guess there was no student uprising, and it seems no parents spoke up about this stupid cruelty. More or less on her own, but always with her Mom’s support, Georgia did very well in that imperfect school; so well that she graduated at the top of her class, and the problem was that a the class valedictorian, she would be obliged to get up on that stage and give the valedictory speach. Bit as well as she performed in schooll otherwise, and though she could not just write a speach, but recite it from memory, she was still a mere mumbler, and if she didn’t some how learn to SPEAK UP, no one beyond the first row of the assembly would hear her. Pearl had a plan for that. She directed Georgia to stand on that porch, and, after she herself stood a few yards back, to start reciting the speach. Which Georgia did: “ We are gathered here to celebrate our four years of learning, friendship, and indoor plumbing …” “ LOUDER”, Responded Pearl. Which Georgia just managed to do, to her mother’s satisfaction. Then Pearl took a few more steps back. Georgia spoke up. “We are gathered here to celebrate our four years of learning, friendship, and indoor plumbing …” Pearl backed a few steps. “ Okay, now continue!” “ We are gathered here to celebrate our four years of learning, friendship, and indoor plumbing…” …” “ Good enough.” Pearl took a few more steps back ….. And so on. Maybe you can see more or less where this is headed. I had to make up Georgia’s words here, but not only was her was the valedictorian speach a great success, it was the first obvious step on her journey to Masters AND Doctorate degrees in both Speech and in Theater. Yes, Although she would never aim to be an actor, just a set designer; and she would never get work in that line of (man's)work either.

The Nine Lives of Greg

Everybody enjoys a good story, and it doesn't even need to be true, though it’s only right to distinguish between true stories, fiction, and lies … which are three different creatures . You will have to be the judge of that in this story: I am simply repeating what Georgia told me, and reminding you that she had such a powerful imagination that it sometimes overpowered her perceptions or her memory; and that's true of us all to some extent, but her imagination exceeded by far my own ability to visualize or make things up. In any case, a good and proper story should not have obvious holes or missing parts; and if you skip ahead to the end of this chapter to Greg Cunningham’s obituary, you will read of his many, if not all of his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, but there is no mention of his parents, his life prior to graduating from high school, of his ever having any wife or wives, and though there is a reference to a hitch in the Army, it is only to say that he “served in the Army for a number of years”, which must have been a life-altering experience:, given that he came of age at the start of the war in Vietnam, and it would have been marvelous good luck for him to survived it at all, or to not at least have been damaged for life, as were his older brothers Jim in occupied Germany, and Freddie in wartime Korea. . Greg didn’t need war to define or disable him: he was BORN with a heart condition, and it wasn’t clear from the beginning that he would even survive childhood. But he was lucky to have loving parents. They…and it seems everyone else in the village of Central Square … were always so solicitous of his welfare that he got better fast ... WAY better. Despite the strictly vegetarian meals Pearl prepared (due to her having as a child been given a calf to raise, without being told it was going to be slaughtered) the boys grew up strong, healthy, and even contented: partly because they were always welcome for meals at neighbor Claude’s farm , where beef and chicken were in the yard and on the table. Greg grew strong like a bull, and became a star high-school football quarterback. He developed the self-confidence and charm that comes with being cheered on by one’s whole home-town, and he won a girlfriend or several. He also joined the Boy Scouts, or said he did. He drafted his mother to suit him up properly for scouting activities. Pearl was ready and willing: a champion seamstress and designer; she had her own side-business, “Pearl’s Thimble”. She was an accomplished maker of well- dressed dolls with which she won prizes at the state fair. She not only could but DID make dresses out of feedbags, and would eventually, design the uniforms for Mohawk Airlines stewardesses. She would proceed to design, not just the uniforms of the Hess gas stations attendants, but the facades of the stations themselves, the truck detailing, and the famous Hess toy truck campaign. She made Greg’s uniform, and when he announced his promotion to Eagle status, she sewed up the special sash on which to display merit badges he claimed, and which she also made. I don’t know what the merit badges were for, but you are already suspicious. Scouting involved a lot of pack meetings, overnight camping and such, so Greg was often away overnight; more often than most Boy Scouts. I don’t recall from Georgia’s account just how Pearl and George found out, but his parents discovered that Greg had not joined the Scouts at all, but had been spending those nights away at his girlfriend’s house. George went and confronted the girl’s parents with the facts, of which they were well aware, and which they tolerated; figuring that it was better and safer to have that going on, than having the kids sneak around; and what with Greg being such a fine young man anyway. Nothing much came of that. He would never marry the girl, high school graduation came along and, despite his the poor outcomes of his two brother’s Army experience, he still planned, as they had, to join up, become an Military Policeman, and emerge ready to be a State Trooper. But this was just as the War in Vietnam was heating up, and he, not being well informed about that, enrolled. Then, shortly before he was supposed to report for duty, somebody told him about the war; and he very quickly disappeared. Greg was was of course very good at disappearing. Even his parents didn’t know where he was for a long while, and it took a couple of years for the government to catch up with him. He moved from place to place and job to job, converting his Cuningham sir-name to a double N version, and, no doubt, using other names too. During that time … always afterwards also …. the family didn’t hear from him often or ever really know where he was. The sport was challenging enough that they came to admire and value Greg’s devious talent. After a long confinement, which didn't suit a man like Greg, they made him an offer: Work for the CIA, or spend his life in the clink, like any ordinary deserter. An easy choice for Greg, requiring no real disruption in his accustomed way of life, along with a salary and support for his cover identities. He became a Central Intelligence Agency operative. According to Georgia’s count: during, and before his patriotic service, he had seven wives and no divorces. He must have had many interesting lives and broken a few hearts. He had at least two daughters whom he named Georgia, not just because he adored his little sister, but so that he would not slip up and call one by the wrong name. I don’t know how he managed the several wives without any divorces, but one day, one of the other Georgias showed up at the door looking for a Greg Cunningham. I doubt that she ever found him. But he would sentimental about family and still fond of our Georgia, telling her more about his professional activities than he probably should have. He told her that he was there on the Tarmac when Senatoer Aquino was "assassinated", but that the guy was already dead when he was “helped” off the plane. In the summer of 1968 when Georgia was in Chicago for an academic conference, he just happened to be there too, knowing what hotel she was in, called a message to her hotel, saying that she should be at a certain public phone booth at a certain time when he would call, which she did, and he called telling her about the shit that was about to happen and that she should get out of town. He didn’t meet up with her then, but she got away before the shit hit the fan. Years passed and they never saw him, though occasionally he would call home and promise to visit soon ... or sometime. Eventually he was able to retire from Government service and with the money he made from that PLUS the money he made from his cover identities, he bought land in Florida: the whole of a village abandoned due to I don’t know what, so maybe it didn’t cost that much and anyway, he apparently lived in Miami Beach anyway, but still he never came home again. Greg didn’t make it to his father’s funeral. And later on, when Pearl was sick and about to die for real this time, he promised to come and see her one more time before that happened; and he didn’t ,but he called the day of the funeral, when brother Jim and the rest of the family were gathered there, and Georgia answered the phone. When Jim realized who it was, promising again to show up with flowers or something, Jim took the phone from Georgia and told him with deep sincerity and high emotion that, if Greg DID show up, he .. Jim ... would damn well SHOOT him, and I have to admire Jim some for that. Of course Greg didn’t show up, nor would he have anyway, and I don’t know what he died of; the obituary doesn't say, but here it is: Obituary for Judson G. Cunningham “Judson Gregory (“Papa”) Cunningham, 80, passed away on Friday September 16, 2016. He was born on April 24, 1936 in Syracuse, New York. He is survived by his sister Georgia; his four daughters, Colleen, Georgette, Ashley, and Michele; his two sons-in-law, Michael and James; his grandchildren Kayleigh, Amy, Michaela, Maya, Taylor, Giovanni, Aimee, Max, Rachel Ireland and Vincenzo; and several great grandchildren. He played football at Central Square High School. After graduating, he served in the Army for a number of years. Afterwards, he began an extensive career in underground utilities. He supervised and managed underground utility projects in the U.S. and overseas for over 40 years. He was a certified heavy equipment operator and an expert welder. He traveled to various counties throughout his career including Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and all over West Africa. He had a great passion for ministering to people. While in West Africa, he was part of Eternal Love Winning Africa (“ELWA”) in Liberia. He worked closely with Dr. Bob Schindler, founder of the ELWA Hospital, to spread the gospel and help plant churches throughout Liberia and West Africa. After returning to the U.S. he took courses at the Moody Bible Institute and was a member at Miami Bible Church. He was very involved in the church and sang in the choir. After spending many years Miami, Florida he relocated to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Ten years ago he moved to Clearwater, Florida and started a second career as a mechanic. He loved spending time with family and friends, camping, fishing, boating, taking RV trips, cooking and baking pies. In addition to his passion to minister to people, he had a servant’s heart. His desire to help people was a driving force in his life. His acts of service impacted many lives and will continue to have an impact on his family, friends and the community for years to come. He will be deeply missed by his friends, family and all who knew him.”

Rood, Needy, and Obnoxious

I noticed that the wretched little immigrant Roody was going around in circles more and more, that at the worst one or another of his paws was so limp as to not seem to have any joints, just like a rag, so he couldn't get up into his loft in the Dog house and he was making a nuisance of himself, and suffering outdoors so as we are into another cold-snap; and so.....although he is not littler trained, to say the least, and cries OWWW every three seconds without ceasing when he is not in bed asleep, sometimes stretching the ow it to three syllables and adding consonant or two ... sounding like the cry of a woman down a well . Or a ghost. And despite the fact that he stinks and Hickory therefore avoids him, I let the little fucker .... I let him in. It's going to be cold for a couple of nights .He was so debilitated that I could touch him and pick him up, which has not been possible till now, and by fist bumping his head the way the cats all do, and involving Hickory, which I am able to do because I have two fists, got Hickory to accept him ...at least to the point of feeling no jealousy, and fooling around with him some. Although Hickory doesn't Roody up on our stool or to spend a lot of time head bumping with him, our being endlessly encircled by the little stinker, Hickory pets Roody with his tail. are better than one head, and four legs would be great, but I wish I had a tail. Insects have four legs two arms, AND a tail. What's that?

Prince Roody Bandicoot Takes the Throne

Roody at my feet

The Cardinals Pope

Cardinals generally mate fore life and flock during the winter, but this particular Cardinal is a singular loner: the Pope of Cardinals. He feeds atop the Cat house and poops in the woods.

Pearl's Fiddle

A hundred years ago, young Pearl Clark and family lived in the tenant house on one of the big farm estates that thrived then where the North Syracuse suburbs are now. Papa Clark took care of the fields, barns, roofs and machinery; while Pearl, with her Mother and her sisters cooked, served, and cleaned inside the Estate House from root cellar to music room. In the music room, the lady of the house noticed that Pearl’s hands had a lovely way of tickling the piano as she breezed by with her dust cloth - the dust cloth on the border of which those same hands had embroidered perfect little roses. Because the girl had such obvious hands full of talent, the Lady arranged for music lessons with a prominent Syracuse Violinist. The prominent Violinist was immediately impressed by Pearl’s hands that seemed to know the way without being taught; but of course there was still plenty for her to learn from the old master. He taught her well and at the end of their time together … maybe near the end of HIS time altogether … he gave Pearl the violin we have here today. With a flashlight and some head-twisting you can look into the music hole of the battered old instrument and read the label which states in stately Italian terms that it was made in anno seventeen twenty-six by Stradavarius himself, who has signed it to assure us that it’s so. Well everybody knows, or else should know, that back then, before patents were invented, or just weren’t such a bother, making and selling fake Stradivarius violins was an industry with global reach, and you may even have one in your garage. Her teacher may or may not have been a victim of any illusions about the violin, but in giving it to her, he somehow gave Pearl the impression, or Pearl gave Georgia the impression … or anyway Georgia gave ME the impression that somebody thought this is a real Stradivarius. It’s a FAKE Stradavarius, but Pearl took it with her when she left the farm to live upstairs over a candy store in Syracuse. There in her bare, caramel scented room, she could put the uncased violin on her one of her two chairs, leaning it comfortably against the chair back, and if she sat in the other chair with her sewing and sang, the violin would sing took or if she walked around the room dusting and singing, the violin would hum along. In her time living over the candy store, Pearl continued to do odd jobs in the service trade, but she also took the violin on the street and made some money busking there. I don’t know if Pearl took the fiddle with her that Thanksgiving evening when she went to have dinner on her first date with George Cuningham, the disowned heir of the Cuningham meat-packing family, but the day after her night at George’s apartment, she went back to the room over the candy store to get the fiddle and …or …everything else she owned, I don’t know how much she played the fiddle when the two of them and the five kids frolicked thereafter up on Tug Hill, ; but their three boys pretty well punked the poor thing.. So we’re not about to shove Pearl’s fiddle down a Woodchuck hole; just want to get the haunted old thing pulled together for our mutual comfort. if she doesn’t sing, or if it or he does, but has a voice like Tom Waits on a tough night, that’s Okay. Might put her together myself, with the right advice. Hang her up for a security camera housing, conservation piece, and story telling device. She didn’t come with a bow anyhow. Where can I buy horse hair?

Fizz iz a Book

Off the Top if My Head

My name is Lammar (two-ems) Nuthatch and I may be crazy ( which sure I am) and I may have told a stretcher now and then (well I’d be poor company if I hadn’t) but there’s nothing in this story that glorifies me, and the facts of it are nothing that, for shame, I would want you to see; but after so long, the ever-swelling truth is literaly (as you will learn) splitting my head; it must come out, and believe you me, it’s all true, or my name’s not lammar Nuthatch with the double ems. In a nutshell : I shot the sky, and the sky fell. It happend a long time ago and it’s the reason I always wear this rag on my head.. Come nineteen sixty, when I was a young man just old enough to drive a car and hunt small game, there was a special season for hunting Rabbits at night during the full moon of February, because Rabbits are mostly nocturnal, so , with the full moon, and always (in those days) snow to amplify its light - the chances were pretty good for bagging a few bunnies, and it’s less likely that a guy might mistake another hunter or your Cat for a Rabbit then: that is, unless the sky is clouded and everything is not so bright. But there was no regulation in the law saying that it holds only on clear nights, and I was not so bright at age sixteen, and my parents wre very permissivve, so one sort of cloudy night during the full moon of Beghruary circa nineteen fiffty eight, I took the family car, and the double barreled sixteen gauge Fox shotgun that I inhereited from my Grandfather and went a hunting out by the Tompkins county airport, across the road , about where a huge Borg Warer factory was built years later, and may be still there, I haven’t been by there in many years, though when it was new and partnered with Alan Pike, using a Kelly Croswell paint spraying machine to stripe parking lots with fast drying (and toxic) paint, we actually painted stripes on the concrete floor of the Borg Warner Plant, as stupid as that may have been, considering what those naptha fumes can do to your body, your lungs, and probably your head. Before the striping years and any perceptual problems resulting to that, I was still, if not the birightest kid, still clear sighted, and still don’t wear glasses, even for teading, but on the nightt we are speaking of now, was not particularly clear, out there by the airport. For nminutes at a time, the big old moon hung there like somethng painted on a back drop, thjen it would go racing through a flock of clkouds, or would seem to, as the clouds raced by the moon: seeming to be trooping trees, ghost herds , schools of fish,, groups of fat laddies,, random objects, mountain ranges, cigars. Plenty of tracks in the snow, but no Rabbits ….not even spectoral ones hopping across in the sky…. and the sky was getting all my attentions. One of those luminous cigars, a lone cigar after a fleet of shiip clouds ahd gone by from North East to south west, one of those luminus cigars, a lone one, was not moving in that direction and maybe the wind was shifting….everyting did all of a sudden seem very different in every way….one of those cigars tilted up about thierty degrees annd then, as it slowly levele3d, int….not so slowly began growing LARGER, and as it grew largeer the cigar became more of an elipse…growing largerr and faster until when it was right over me, I could see that it was actually a dixc shape….unless it was a globe like the moon, until it hovered right over my head. To my ever lasting shame, I shot at the fiucking thing, both barrels at once, just as I had too often done when startled by a grouse bursting out of a tree, or a rabbit from a snowbank. Number six bird shot pellets from a couple of sixteen gauge shotgun shells should not be expected to bring down an aircraft, and maybe it didn’t but the doubleblast not only shattered the silence, but the sky itself, as if it were a dome of thin ice with bright lighting cracks fractalling all all over it, the pieces parting, falling slip slidey, fracaling into white, ash, ashes to dust, dust and I whited out, coming back into consciousness, flat on my back in a fog so thick I had to feel around to find my shotgun, but couldn;t find my hat , but my head hurt hard and with my hand ungloved I could feel the wound, such as it was, bloodles, as an ancient scar, raised fleshy lips, like a mouth on top of my head. I felt great shame for shootiing at whatever it was. Always after that I wore a rag or a hat or both on my head, so as not have to explain, and never…..until now when I am old and out of the way…have I mentioned it to anybody. And of course my experience doesn’t answer any of the usual questions about U.F.O.s., but I by now, after a big stretch of time during which I have matured someqhat, t, persued indepenent and guided studies, and have somewhat, oversome my childish shame and shyness, Ihave a better idea of what to make of the incident, but I would not be coming forth with this, had not te erie ips of the fleshy scar atop my head had not begin to part, which made bad fudge in my pants, as I expected blood, guts, or what was left of my brain spill up outt of there, but only a faint windy wistle at first, but then a voice in a language I didn’t understand, but then I did, and though I can’t call it up now, or at will anytime, I recall what it said, and I believe what it said, that voice in my headwind, but. It is clear to me now not just from that ongoing voice, and this may be born out by the expereiences of citizens unlucky enough to have been taken aboard UFOs, that the typical, large-brained, big-headedd beings who capture them have, during their own evolution, developed huge brains, due not to it making them any smarter, but just due to the haphazard evolution of the brain in their species, as in ours, it is an overlarge organ with many cobbed togather chambers and later-day lobes, which nature has not yet integrated in a compact version, though a good enginer COULD, and which in the meantime, and time can be a mean sort of prison, makes the process of giving birth: passing thjat huge headout of the womb through the limited portal of our, oand more so with their hips ( for have you ever heeard of a one eyed, big-headed, wide-hipped flying green alien; These…..people…. are here to fuck with us. They want to implant their outer space sperm in the wombs of our women to spare themselves the unbearable pain of childbirth, to abourt the progeny at a late stage and finish them in some kind of world wide womb industrial complex. I don’t care of you believe it or not it’s the straight truth right off the top of my head, and you can believe me or my name isn’t Lammar Nuthatch, with the double m.