Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Fine Art Tuesday

You get a two-fer today. Compare and contrast

A painting by Thomas Kinkade (American)

Hauling a Barge on the Volga by Ilia Efimovich Repin (Russian)

Rivers are highly symbolic in most cultures.
 
Rivers can be symbols of rebirth, as exemplified by the many before/after miracles in the Bible associated with the Jordan River. One example.
 
Rivers, which start with vigor and end up salty when they flow into the sea can be a simile for life.
 
Rivers can be a symbol of endless toil. (the second picture)
 
They can be symbols of wealth and industry. (Nile, Rhine River, grist mills)
 
They can be symbols of connection with the outside world. 

They can be symbols of death, as exemplified by the River Styx or images with a bridge across it. (the first picture)

Many thanks to Tireless Lucas and unnameable reader who suggested these artists. 

Skid-steer Mike (Introduction, fiction)

I was just settling in with Catherine to watch Judge Judy. I had rubbed lotion on her calves and shins and checked the length of her toe-nails.

My life had turned into a narrow tunnel since Kit's accident. I kept the house neat. I cooked and ate. I took care of Clyde, our dog and the chickens. I worked out at the gym for stress-relief. I went to Mass every Sunday. And I spent as much time with Kit as the rehab facility allowed me.

She had suffered a fall due to sudden vertigo. The doctors insisted on discharging her to the corporation’s step-down facility rather than sending her home. Their reasoning was murky. The vertigo was diagnosed as a viral infection that impacted her inner-ear. The doctors claimed she needed to be "in-patient" because she needed special physical therapy...but I had my doubts. The facility had recently added a wing specializing in "fall recovery" and they needed to fill it with patients to stop the financial bleeding.
 

Kit shared her room with Penny. Penny was in following a double rotator-cuff repair and was learning how to stand up.

I ate lunch with Kit every day and we watched Judge Judy. I brought my own lunch. I also brought Kit a sliced-up Fuji apple and a small container containing her favorite brand of Greek Yogurt. Institutional food is...well...lowest common denominator at best.

We kept the TV volume low. Penny was a Wheel-of-Fortune girl. She returned the favor by keeping her volume on her TV low, as well.

Early on, I greased the skids by asking Penny what she missed the most from “outside”. It was coffee. The step-down's kitchen brewed coffee in a massive urn. Other than being cold, weak, bitter and stale, it was acceptable coffee. I won Penny’s eternal cooperation by bringing a fresh coffee of the local coffee chain’s Premium Central American Arabica blend every time I visited.

I am not sure that the CNAs (Certified Nursing Assistants) who had to handle Penny’s bedpans were as happy with me, but I brought them donuts once a week so they couldn’t too mad.

The case was typical Judge Judy. The girlfriend had kicked her boyfriend out of the duplex and filed a restraining order against him. Then, she wouldn’t return his property claiming they had been “gifts”. The twist was that her ex-boyfriend’s father owned the duplex she had kicked her ex out of and the lease was in his name.

I was as comfortable as I could be considering the circumstances. That is when I started hearing angry voices in the hallway. At first they were distant, angry sounds. Many people involved. Sharp. Short bursts of syllables. Belligerent. Gutteral sounding, hard "ck" sounds. Command voices.

I was able to start resolving words. They were looking for somebody.

They were looking for Mike Tardive. “We seen his truck in the parking-lot...” 

Kit reached out and gripped my wrist.

My name is Mike Tardive. I write a blog. Sometimes I write about sensitive issues. That was not a problem a few years ago, but now every issue was like five gallons of hot nitroglycerin...looking for any excuse to explode.

I knew better. I never should have posted the essay about Mohammad (possibly) being a Jew who had been snubbed and not invited to be a rabbi. All the evidence was there. Mohammad claimed Abraham as an ancestor. Monotheistic. No local gods allowed. There was no knowledge-path of Abraham's existence outside of the tribes who left Egypt for the desert. The most logical plot was that Mohammad was a disgruntled Jew who went full L. Ron Hubbard on his peers.

The post went beyond my regular 30 readers. It got picked up by aggregators and then international newspapers. The chains all lead back to Skid-steer Mike's blog. The usual suspects were burning tires in the streets.

The usual suspects had found me. Somebody had doxed me, even to the extent of tracking my truck.

I felt an overwhelming desire to urinate. Not fear. Just a natural body reaction when I knew I might need to fight for my life.

I scanned the room. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon. By design.

I wasn’t carrying. I wasn’t even sure that I would use it if I had been. Too much possibility of collateral damages. Lots, and lots of fragile people in this facility.

It was just a matter of time before one of the CNAs spilled the beans. HIPPA does not allow it but they would either be scared or be sympathetic. "Sympathetic?" you sneer? Somebody let the mass of people into the facility.

Either one of the CNAs would rat me out or the thugs would start throwing open doors and search room-by-room.

Whatever was going to happen, I didn’t want it to play out in front of Kit. She didn’t need to be a victim of this, too.

I gave her a kiss. “It might be a few minutes before I come back” I warned her.

She closed her eyes and said “I love you…”

I pulled my arm away from her grasp.

Before I went out the door, I did 10 pushups to center myself.

Standing back up, I dusted off my hands. It was now or never.

I gently closed the door behind me. Then I walked up to the group. Every one of them, individually, outweighed me and the oldest one looked to be 30 years my junior, maybe even 40 years younger.

They were all looking past me.

I walked up to the oldest man, the one with the command voice and said “I am Mike Tardive. How can I help you?”

 



*** I don't know if this has the legs to go beyond a very short story-arc. I have things going that came up this week so I am tossing this out to fill space.***

Monday, September 21, 2026

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he does NOT crave

It is idle curiosity, but I wonder what the Chinese policy makers think of the Houthi blowing up the infrastructure supporting the trans-Saudi pipeline. That pipeline diverts oil from the oil fields near the Persian Gult to a port on the Red Sea.

China has been playing both sides of the street. Buying oil from whoever will sell it while propping up the Iranian military complex with components that can be used for missiles. I suspect that the military support came with some caveats; specifically that they would not target oil destined to China.

If so, China is learning that Iran's promises are not very reliable. The reasons it is not reliable are not important. The point is that repeated shocks to oil availability are grinding away at the myth of Chinese ever-onward-and-upward.

On a related front, Britain continues to supply Zelensky with missiles with enough range to hit oil infrastructure deep within Russia. While this is suicidal for the greater, European economy it is less damaging to the U.K. economy. Relatively speaking, Johnny Bulldog can rub Hans Pinscher's nose in the ground with little risk to to his own skin.

Meanwhile, elements of the international, deep-state supply Zelensky AND Iran with targeting information. Occam's Razor implies that they want total chaos and, perhaps, WWIII.

Even slackers sometimes touch upon the truth

My paternal grandmother once commented, quite dryly, that a fellow who can eat cornmeal mush with a cheerful face will never go hungry. She grew up dirt-poor near Allegan County's Little Rabbit River. She learned to speak English when she went to Kindergarten. Her husband, my paternal grandfather, died when she was 33 and left her with a child just as The Great Depression was about to experience the second crash (1937).

Thoreau, a slacker of the highest order, observed that the wealth of a man is proportional to the number of items that he doesn't crave. Proof that even slackers sometimes say something wise.

Craving and envy leads us into debt. Debt is the currency of the slave. Envy makes us do stupid things. Desire for status makes us do even stupider things.

Folks who grew up hard-scrabble will almost certainly do better in hard-times than the mama's-boys. The mama's-boys will go to the relocation camps and be surprised when the toilets back-up and they are not allowed to leave. The hard-scrabble boys won't leave their neighborhood. They might move in with a buddy, a brother or an uncle but they do the calculus of "It is hard here where I have resources and people know me. Why do I assume it will be better elsewhere?".

The calculus shifts if you have a solid job-offer elsewhere...but getting moved to a random sports stadium or to camps...not so much. 

A concrete suggestion

Eat a bowl of plain oatmeal or cornmeal mush* tomorrow for breakfast tomorrow morning. Have one hardboiled egg (salt is optional) and an apple on the side. For beverage, have black coffee or tea or water. Take any medicines that you have to take.

That is all it takes to reset your expectations. Doing something very simple and doing it voluntarily. If you find yourself forced into that kind of austere simplicity, you can shrug your shoulders and say, "Been there. Done that" and get on with life. 

* Bring one cup of water to a boil in a pan. In a separate container, add a half cup of cornmeal and a half cup of water. Stir contents of the container until it is well mixed and then pour it into the boiling water. Stir contents of the pan continuously until the water returns to a boil. Remove from heat and cover the pan. Let sit about five minutes. Serve.

Sunday, September 20, 2026

The "joy" of running

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake...

Psalm 23, KJV. Perhaps the most comforting and lyrically beautiful language that has ever been translated into English.

Sheep and shepherds didn't live in barns or hoop-houses when this was written. There were no 800 pound bales of alfalfa hay stacked up for feed. The shepherd watched the rain clouds and knew the treacherous pathways he had to navigate through the thorny desert to get to where the rain fell. He led the flock from oasis-to-oasis and protected them from lions, leopards, bears, wolves, jackals and humans. He did not bed them down in wadis where flash-floods are a possibility.

The joy of running

After the runner has accumulated enough "miles" of training, casual running has almost the same "apparent effort" as walking. The runner can look around and see the ripe berries and mushrooms, he can find the bird nests and watch the butterflies feed. He can hear the chickens in backyards and savor the aroma of his neighbor's barbecue wafting through the air.

And he can cover twice as much ground in the same amount of time compared to walking. 

Being an intimate part of God's creation restores the runner's soul. "...paths of righteousness..." becomes more than a metaphor. The lone runner experiences something close to what young David did while tending his family's sheep in the wilderness. He also experiences some of what David experienced as he fled Saul...A light load, minimal footprint on the land and a sojourner's existence.

Key point: "After the runner has accumulated enough "miles"..."

Random image

The ever-observant Lucas Machias informed me that massive numbers of birds are moving.
 

Boiled dinner

 


Carrots and rutabagas went into the bottom of the pot first. They take longest to cook. I added some chicken bouillon to the water for flavor. I put a cover on the pot and checked it after half an hour and then at five minute increments.

All amounts are "by eye".

When the carrots could be pierced with a paring knife, I added the potatoes and sausage. When the potatoes could be pierced by the paring knife, I cooked the red cabbage separately in a casserole dish in the microwave. I wanted the potatoes and other vegetables to remain brightly colored.

I added a dollop of butter and "tossed" the contents to mix the layers.

Mrs ERJ enjoyed the meal and the total amount was about 8 quarts of food. 

Saturday, September 19, 2026

Guten nacht, Onkel Horst. Schlaff Gut.

A sobering story.

"Mamma’s boys. You could tell right away who were the Mamma’s boys were", he nearly spat out of his mouth with disgust. Being young and naïve we asked how and he said"they’re the ones that died first". 

A five minute read. You might still be thinking about it five weeks later. 

Added the next morning, link to a Youtube short

Origins of Disney Princess names

Looking around at Quicksilver's play-date classmates, I see all kinds of apparel that sport pictures of the Disney princesses "Anna" (pronounced On-ya) and "Elsa" from the movie "Frozen".

Their mothers think that Disney invented the characters because they didn't grow up with anybody who had those names.

I grew up in the 1960s. Gangs of kids swarmed the streets. Unlike the Boomers, EVERY parent from the Greatest Generation named at least one of their kids Elsa. 

Elsa was one of the first non-gendered names. There were both boys and girls who were named "Elsa". The reason none of us chose to name our children "Elsa" is because the boys and girls with that name was always the most defiant and contrary brats.

But let me back-up a little bit. Elsa was always their middle name. Their first name was always "Or". Maybe you grew up with a bunch of kids named Elsa, too.

"YOU get your butt over here, Or Elsa I will paddle your bottom!"