Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #4,415

yeah I know you did not ask!

As you are cruising around your day, have you ever looked at person and thought, “This person has completely given up… on themselves, on life, en todo?” But then again, you never really know what journey someone has been on.

While, on occasion, I have felt that way for brief periods throughout my life, I have generally snapped out of it.  Most of my adult life I have exercised in one fashion or another.  Especially the last  two maybe two and half decades I have Continue reading “Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #4,415”

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My 11th Great Aunt – Pocahontas

A while back I signed up on the Mormon genealogy site, FamilySearch.org.  It is free, and has a ton of contributors.  Of course, like any crowd source data, it is not free of errors…and on occasion I have thought wishful thinking.   However, both sides of my family have been in this country since Europeans first step foot on these shores.  This is especially true on my father’s side that has many tentacles traceable to very ancient European and British Isle ancestors.

I had stumbled across this connection by myself, but FamilySearch sent me an email about connections to famous people, including Continue reading “My 11th Great Aunt – Pocahontas”

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3rd Time is the Charm    

If you have ever studied any human anatomy, you will know we are pretty much the same under the hood.  However, there are a multitude of recorded variations and abnormalities from the standard model.  I once had a physician, a D.O., who would frequently give shots and draw blood himself.  He called the veins in the antecubital fossa – the area where they normally draw blood – in one of my arms, alien veins. He went on to state that only about five percent of the population had my particular venous configuration.  Heaven forbid I should adhere to a convention like bilateral symmetry.

Several years ago I was in a doctor’s office and they needed Continue reading “3rd Time is the Charm    “

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #7,135

yeah I know you did not ask!

I suppose another one you could file under ironic. Certainly something to ponder on.

I was working with one of my Spanish tutors when somehow the subject of George Floyd and Michael Brown came up.  My Mexican tutor who lives in Tijuana told me that in Mexico the American police have the reputation of being brutal.  I had no real argument with that, but said, “and the police in Mexico?” To which he replied, “they are not brutal, simply corrupt.”

What a world we live in when those who should be serving and protecting are frequently doing neither.

And so it goes.

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Day of the Dude – March 6, 2023

Gather round all you Dudes and Dudettes, today is The Day of the Dude, a celebration of our favorite Lebowski Dude,  and one of our favorite movies The Big Lebowski, one of the few movies I actually own.

From the website National Today:

“Day of the Dude is celebrated on March 6 every year to commemorate the North American release of the movie ‘The Big Lebowski’ in 1998. The movie portrays a protagonist with a laid-back attitude to life who chooses simplicity, peace, and happiness. The idea is to enjoy life’s little moments such as bowling or drinking with some friends. The holiday looks to promote ease and simplicity in society. Being able to easily let things go and go with the flow is a big part of the lifestyle. The lifestyle portrayed in the movie inspired the birth of the religion/philosophy known as ‘Dudeism.’”

To read more: Day of the Dude – March 6, 2023

The Dude truly abides.

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I Want To Live by Helen Imagene (Jean) Jones Felfe

This was an easy book to read.  This was a hard book to read.

It was an easy book to read as it was well written.  The first part of the book started off a little slow for me, but persevere, it picks up quickly.  After reading the whole book those initial chapters almost seem written in a different style.  Perhaps that was intentional.  Once I got into the meat of the memoir I found it to be a real page turner.  It was an easy book to read as there was Continue reading “I Want To Live by Helen Imagene (Jean) Jones Felfe”

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Southpaw – I never knew

Once again during my regular regal ruminations I was perusing the book, Dictionary of Word Origins by Jordan Almond when I came across an entry for Southpaw:

“All major league baseball diamonds are laid out so that the batter will face east, thus putting the afternoon sun behind his back and making it easier for him to see the ball. Therefore, when the pitcher faces the batter he’s facing west and his left arm is to the south. So if he pitches left-handed, he’s pitching with his ‘south paw.'”

It makes sense that they would construct ball parks this way – aligned with the compass, but I had never thought about it before.  I had never really considered why left-handed pitchers are called south paws.  I had just heard it all my life and accepted it without thought.

As my son-in-law has informed me a couple times ( I had forgotten the answer from the first time I asked him) that the stadium space in center field without seats, and usually green, is to help the batters see the ball also.

Don’t you feel so  much smarter now…

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #3,726

yeah I know you did not ask!

File this under ironic.

When I first moved in with Señora around 2012 in this St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield (population 49,703), there was a big discussion going on in the media about racial profiling, The city of Chesterfield was listed as one of the most egregious cities in Missouri for profiling of black drivers. A quick search on Google did not bring up any current articles, however.  Chesterfield is 77% white, 13% Asian, and only 3.5% black. Hispanics are 2.9% and the rest vary.

Continuing through the pandemic until now, home deliveries of whatever has become and remains massively popular.  There seems to be delivery vans constantly driving down our street.

The ironic part… the vast majority of the folks driving these vans are exactly the type of persons that the Chesterfield PD was accused of profiling a decade ago. Apparently it is okay if these folks are delivering your goodies and wearing a corporate uniform.

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The Year I Almost Went to The Masters

When I moved back to Oklahoma from Rhode Island I went to work for Coburn Optical.  Their main line of business is the manufacturing of the machines that other companies use to modify lenses to mount in eye glasses.  They also have a division that takes orders to modify and mount lenses.  I was young, still working on my education, and my work experience had been in restaurants, factories and warehouses.  I was a warehouseman there.  I worked there from 1973 to 1976, leaving to move to Oklahoma City to pursue my educational goals.

My father had left his position with Kaman Aerospace and moved back to Muskogee, OK where my mother had been living for a while.  Looking around for a job he found one with Coburn and started there shortly after I left.  He moved up rapidly and after a while was managing the division that prepared lenses for other companies.  Part of his responsibilities involved making Continue reading “The Year I Almost Went to The Masters”

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Día de la Diversidad Cultural 

Columbus Day is still a Federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the Monday closest to the 12th of October.  However, many states are renaming it, terming it Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and rightly so. If you have read the history of Christopher Columbus he was not a moral person. His treatment of indigenous people and people of color in general was abhorrent.  Normally, I try to understand historical figures in Continue reading “Día de la Diversidad Cultural “