Tag: life

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Paul Randolph Rush | 29 October 1953 – 21 June 2025

Began as a Request

Angie, the wife of Paul’s son, Jason, asked me for some fond memories of Paul for the memorial service. This is what I sent her with some additions.   So here goes… in 4000 words or so which does not seem hardly sufficient for nearly 72 years on this planet.

Paul, the Curmudgeon

I say fondly, I say with all kindness, my brother Paul was a curmudgeon. Perhaps the best explanation as to what a curmudgeon is, I encountered in Jon Winokur’s book, The Portable Curmudgeon. In that book he describes a curmudgeon thusly:

“A curmudgeon’s reputation for malevolence is undeserved. They’re neither warped nor evil at heart. They don’t hate mankind, just mankind’s absurdities. They’re just as sensitive and soft-hearted as the next guy, but they hide their vulnerability beneath a crust of misanthropy. …They ease the pain by turning hurt into humor. They attack maudlinism because it devalues genuine sentiment. . . . Nature, having failed to equip them with a serviceable denial mechanism, has endowed them with astute perception and sly wit.

Curmudgeons are mockers and debunkers whose bitterness is a symptom rather than a disease. They can’t compromise their standards and can’t manage the suspension of disbelief necessary for feigned cheerfulness. Their awareness is a curse.

Perhaps curmudgeons have gotten a bad rap in the same way that the messenger is blamed for the message: They have the temerity to comment on the human condition without apology. They not only refuse to applaud mediocrity, they howl it down with morose glee. Their versions of the truth unsettle us, and we hold it against them, even though they soften it with humor.”

I truly cannot think of a better description of Paul.  He had a heart of gold, but the absurdities of the world were often too much for him.

A Baseball Game

For another window in the essence of my brother Paul, I recently discovered Continue reading “Paul Randolph Rush | 29 October 1953 – 21 June 2025”

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Bottle of Tequila – Revisited

I generally do not recycle articles.  I also do not write a lot of fiction, but once a decade or so a story pops into my mind.  When I do write fiction  it is generally triggered by some story I have heard or something that has happened to me. Then my “imagination” runs wild  extrapolating on of the former. Or sometimes – according to Señora about stories of her – I just make s*** up. Generally, I am stringing all those founts together.

The broken toe from a dropped bottle of tequila actually happened to a friend of my ex when we lived in Oklahoma City.  A friend of Señora recently dropped a bottle of wine on her toe, breaking it, bringing this story back to mind. The rest of the story’s derivation is best left to the war time motto of “Loose lips, sinks ships.”

I enjoyed writing the story 12 years ago.  Hopefully, you will enjoy reading it.

Now to the story…

Bottle of Tequila

He saw me limping down the hallway and asked,”looks like you had a wonderful time, what happened?” When he said that I was instantly back to her bedroom and recalling the events of the previous evening…

We had placed a few pillows behind our backs up against the headboard.  The lights were still low.  The Coltrane CD had started back around.  Man, is he ever timeless. With the warm glow that can only be felt from energy well spent, we were both smoking cigarettes and idly chit chatting about absolutely nothing of consequence.  I noticed that we had both pulled our knees toward our chests.  The result was two well formed tents, side by side in the sheets.  Mine was a good bit taller than hers.  My mind flitted back to childhood days when my parents would take me to the circus.  I wondered which tent was more interesting.  Was it the larger one with the 3 rings of non-stop entertainment, or the smaller one with all the made up freaks and hucksters trying to separate you and your money? Laughing to myself I wondered where the “tunnel of love” was.

It was at that point I slapped myself softly and she looked at me funny.

“Just a weird thought,” I explained.

My vision drifted down to my left arm.  I realized that I had left my Rolex knock-off on.   It surprised me that she had not complained, Continue reading “Bottle of Tequila – Revisited”

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My Luddite Rebellion Against Wally World

yeah I know you did not ask!

There is a big push in many stores to decrease the number of checkers and force the clients into self-service checkout.  I have not problem with technology having spent the majority of my adult life programming computers.  What I do have a problem with is the decrease in service level at many stores, especially Wal-Mart which has always had bad service. I also believe that the Waltons do not need any more money, and decreasing employees is a way to increase their profits.  My other issue is the elimination of jobs for Homo sapiens.

One of the earliest Kurt Vonnegut novels is Player Piano.  The Wikipedia synopsis sums Continue reading “My Luddite Rebellion Against Wally World”

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Help Support The Carr Exhibit with Amazon Smile

Paul Henry Carr was my mother’s brother who fought and lost his life in WW II.  While losing his life he performed heroically.  He received several honors posthumously, included having a missile frigate name after him.  After 30 years of service the ship has be decommissioned,  but the memory lives on in our family.

This November 3rd, 2018, Paul Henry Carr is to be inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame.  The family is looking on this as a huge honor, as it is.

The family commissioned an exhibit that is at Checotah, Oklahoma. Checoath is more or less the ancestral pueblo. There is an ongoing effort to complete the funding.

You can help support The Carr exhibit by doing what you do anyway…buying on Amazon.com .  “How?”, you ask,  By following some extraordinary simple steps.

  1.  Login to smile.amazon.com and go to “Your Account”
  2. Set charity to: “Paul Henry Carr Memorial Foundation”
  3. To support charity, always shop at smile.amazon.com
  4. Shop until you drop…

Cheryl Smallwood-Roberts designed the exhibit honoring Paul Henry Carr in Checotah, OK. The Carr exhibit, installed by Crain Displays, is located Continue reading “Help Support The Carr Exhibit with Amazon Smile”

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3:39 a.m. – Random Thoughts

Staring at the unseen ceiling at 03:39 a.m. with random thoughts trying to rattle their way into or maybe out of my thoughts…

  • Life is a machine for generating regrets
  • Never regret being kind, even when it does not work out the way you intended.  It was still the right thing to do
  • It’s worn and trite and all too true… when it is all said and done all we have are each other
  • When I was young used to think old age was the way God prepared folks so they could let go of life. Now as someone on the cusp of that phase of my life, I think old age and the ungraceful exit so many people get to make is proof that there is no god, that there is no intelligent design.
  • We need to remember that most of us most of the time are really doing the best we can
  • Not only do we need to forgive each other, we need to forgive ourselves
  • All too often we take things far too seriously when it is just the other person stuck in their own bag of skin
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The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence

the_rainbow_1504This is a book of poetry masquerading as prose. It is a book short on dialogue and long on imagery, both external and of the characters’ internal emotion-scape. The book came out in 1915 and was banned shortly thereafter in Britain for 11 years.

The novel covers three women from the same family over a period of 65 years starting in 1840 and ending in 1905. This is roughly the Victorian era. This is a period of great change just after the Industrial Revolution in which England was changing from a mostly rural based culture to an urban based society. Along with technological advances and migrating populations, it was a time of changing social mores, including sexuality and of the relationship between men and women. It was Lawrence’s graphic depiction of sexuality (for the times) that resulted in its banning.

It struck me that Lawrence saw the relationship between a man and woman as more of a contest than any sort of synergistic union.  A passage from the middle of the book really brought home this concept to me. Continue reading “The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence”

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Carly Fiorina – Only people with the “right talent” deserve a family centered life.

carly fiorina

“When I was chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, we also offered paid maternity leave and paid paternity leave,” she said. “It’s pretty clear that the private sector, like Netflix, is doing the right thing because they know it helps them attract the right talent.” ~~ Carly Fiorina, one of the mob vying for the Republican presidential nomination.

As I readied myself for work this Monday morning, I was getting my morning cup of WTF by listening to the political news on NPR. I heard the above quote from Ms. Fiorina and my cup overflowed.

First and foremost came the thought that if you were not the “right talent” then you did not deserve paternity leave? That tells me all I need to know about the Ms. Fiorina’s world view. Compassion apparently is not on her Rolodex or in her contact list. One can only assume that as the former head of a tech company she has dumped the Rolodex, but the rest of her views tend to point in the other direction.

When I was searching the Internet to make sure Continue reading “Carly Fiorina – Only people with the “right talent” deserve a family centered life.”

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought # 9,215

yeah I know you did not ask!

We spend most of our life in anticipation, in looking forward, in dreaming of the future. Suddenly we crest some vaguely defined ridge or mountain and we are looking backwards. Some of us are regarding the past with regret, some of us with satisfaction, and most of us with a some combination of the two.

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

cage bird“The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.”

This book is about several things. It is the autobiography of Maya Angelou’s first 16 years of life. It is also the story of strong black women as evidenced by the quote above which is towards the end of the book. It is about the black experience growing up in a racially divided world. It is about folks making it the best they can under those conditions. And under all this is the story of surviving sexual abuse.

The first strong woman we encounter is Momma, her father’s mother who lives in Stamps, Arkansas. Stamps is in the southwest corner of Arkansas, a poor region in one of the poorest states in the Union. Momma ran “the only Negro general merchandise store since the turn of the century” in that part of Arkansas. And Momma did reasonable well for herself.   She is in a financial position where she has white renters, and at times loaned money to white people. She is also old school religious. After her son and Maya’s mother split the blanket, Maya and her brother are unceremoniously placed with their grandmother. Continue reading “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou”