encyclopedia of madtoms

Today I was productive at work. I do best with a running "to do" list. Tonight my wife had an AAUW meeting, so I stopped at Pancho's, the chain Tex/Mexican buffet place, for dinner. I had too many sopapillas, but I excuse myself slightly because I just love the honey I put inside the bread.

When I was a kid, my father's father, whom we called Pappy, once had really rural local honey in the jars with the honeycomb still in. Pappy, a railroad telegraph man, frequently had railroad salvage, like mass stores of broken peanut patties, but I cannot remember if this honey was salvage or merely home-grown. That honey, "comb in" was divine. I wish I had some now. We do have two jars of really good regional honey, though, and they'll do.

I came home and watched Veronica Mars, which I still think is the best reason to own a television right now. Then I watched NYPD Blue, which is going out just in time, but perhaps still has some strength. I logged into Magnatune and ordered two CDs, and
then logged into Amazon and ordered three books. Fortunately, I managed to avoid a full scale shopping spree. I went to Wikipedia, and made entries about bullhead catfish, channels and madtoms, sunfish, and the Ouachita River. Last night it was Ernest Holmes. "Speak to what you know", is my motto, when my motto is not "figure it out as you present". I wrote a review on Amazon on Ruth Moore's "Speak to the Wind", a charming provincial novel of Maine I lingered over virtually all winter, after buying it for a dollar at a book sale.

I find it intriguing that I would never read National Enquirer, but I do read Wonkette and Underneath Their Robes (the former, irreverent, rumour-filled political gossip, the latter, a tongue in cheek fangirl site devoted to federal judges). If it's on the internet, it can't be a tabloid, except that it so often is, really. I find myself once again giving out career advice over at vault.com, as yet another everyperson message board poster. I had stopped doing that, although the vault.com folks were in the main very kind to me, in a dual reaction to a few trolls on board and to a new policy that tried to make a "paid feature" out of all the archived posts all of us contributed. But I found that my interest in helping impart advice overrode my sense of offense.

I joined a freestuff yahoo board for my area, thinking that I would soon be clearing out my garage to deserving folks. But I'm struck by how many more "WANT" ads exist than "OFFER" ads. eBay does have a refreshing "sweat of the brow" feel about its participants. But I fear I get judgmental about the very people I should be most understanding about--people who need things from others.

I go to a good old fashioned wedding this weekend, with punch and cookies in the church basement for a reception. I hope they have Oreos.

small towns

I like reading the history of small towns. Today I went to blueridgetexas.com, to read about the history of that town of 673 residents. Although in a prior time, the town "boomed" bit more than now (serving as a place for farmers to shop), the town never has had more than about 500 residents. I like that so many small towns' history is roughly 'John Doe got/bought a land grant and moved here', 'we used to have a cotton gin', and 'the grand old Blue Ridge Hotel burned'. I wonder if, when all the gasoline is no longer affordable, grand old small town hotels will arise everywhere for travellers making their way by bicycle.

I want someday to take a simple bicycle tour, no more than forty or fifty miles covered in a single weekend. I'd start in the middle of nowhere, and end up twenty five miles from the middle of nowhere. I'd see fields and small towns and little cafes. One thing I like about my part of Texas and all of Arkansas is that once one gets a small way out of the city, life dissolves into tiny little towns, five miles apart, but each a separate microcosm.

This weekend, I believe, is the huge rummage sale in the town of New Hope. The town of New Hope has only a few hundred families, and they all hold their garage sale simultaneously. I may not make it to the sales this year, as I want to play dulcimer, but I like this kind of thing immensely.

I've been a city guy for nearly twenty five years now, but in my mind, I am still a small town boy.