Mood:  silly

A bad joke:



How did Hitler tie his shoesies? With little knottsies.

Sins and omissions of our male past
I recently received an e-mail from an old Air Force friend that said he found this poem I wrote and sent it to his grown boys. Others have mentioned the subject. Obviously it is a man thing, among males of my generation and before, and more prevelant than I would hope. Today's males are less gender conscious I believe and better able to convey their inner feelings than we males of the past. Now the test will be if the new generation has a sense of understanding or desire to understand their predecesssors.





Fathers, Sons and Grandsons
By Jim Kittelberger





If only, when I was young
I could have shown the love
I felt, as easily as I can now.


But some of us store our feelings
Deep down inside.
Then only too late do we understand,
The selfishness of such an act.


It seems especially important for a boy
To hear the words, "I love you", from a father,
And much more likely he won't.


It's so few words to say and seems so easy.
"Yeah, right."
The voyage of feelings from heart to mouth
Is a difficult journey for men to take,
But if you are lucky, life will give you another chance.


The sons of my son fill me with love.
I talk to them, I listen to them, I play with them,
I squeeze them and they respond with love right
Back at you.


I savor it, I feel free and open with my love for them,
But each time, I feel a pang of guilt.
I felt the same love for my sons, so why couldn't I show it?


The journey from heart to mouth for my grown sons is not as long
A journey as mine was.
Their mother probably taught them that.
As for me, I tell all fathers who have the same
Problem I had, "What the heck are you waiting for? Your
Sons want to hear it and you want to say it.


It's a journey you will be so glad you took.



Copyright 2001 Jim Kittelberger. All Rights Reserved.

the familiar is hard to break out of
Topic: Observations of a old guy
We decided that we needed a new computer desk. The room we have the computer in was once a breakfast nook off the kitchen, so it isn't very big. What we wanted was a corner desk so that's what we got. We got more room in the former breakfast nook but lost some in the storage devices in the new desk. I am having a little trouble getting myself familiarized with its limitations, but I am sure I will get the hang of it. One of the things that always amazes me is the miles of cables, plugs, and all that stuff that resides behind the computer down there on the floor. Luckily this desk also hides the mess. I really like the advertisements in the papers showing computer desks and how neat it all looks. But they don't show the linkages needed to get it all on the road. But it's all done now and I am sure I will soon get my body into a groove with my new environment.

The Circle, a poem
Topic: Poetry
THE CIRCLE
By Hazel Kittelberger

The infant's soft sweet warmth
Against my cheek....
Overwhelming love and contentment.

The small boy's scraped knee...a hug
And soft touch...back to play...
Tears forgotten.

The boy now leans over to hug...
Still gentle and warm...his rough
Man's cheek against my own...
He goes to serve his country...
Goodbye.

The groom and his bride...their
Warm breath against my cheek...
So much joy to come.

Their infant's soft sweet warmth
Against my cheek...overwhelming
Love and contentment.

In an earlier post I was bemoaning the fact that as you grow older, all the people you love are dying or in the case of our children have scattered to all parts of the country and have lives and children of their own. BUT this will be the second year for my wife and I of being 'orphans' in this world and as in everything it gets easier as time goes by. This holiday season all undue holiday pressure is gone and things have been completed in record time. Presents have been bought and sent to grandchildren, the house decorated, cards addressed, well ahead of crunch time. It is not to be recommended above the hassle of having young children still at home and all that that entails, but it is turning into something different and pleasant. As the saying goes, there is a time for everything under the heavens, and this is the take it easy and enjoy each other time for us. I like it.

WHAT WAS THE BEST PURCHASE YOU EVER MADE?
Topic: Books I'm Reading
What was the best purchase you ever made? Maybe I should define that a little bit, make the parameters a little more exact. How about comparing amount of money paid for the object to amount of hours of enjoyment it returned. Of course this is all a setup. I have a purchase in mind already. A couple years ago, at an annual used book sale I attend each year, I picked up a book and added it to my sack of other goodies. The rationale at used book sales is different than the rules buying at a bookstore. At a bookstore the costs are prohibitively high so your selection process is much more strict. If you're paying out twenty-five bucks and more per pop, you know you have to be convinced that you are buying the corresponding amount of enjoyment per dollar spent, not always easy.

But at a used book sale the fun is put back into the process. At twenty-five cents for a paperback and fifty cents to a dollar for the hardcover, it is all changed. You can buy a book because you once read something by the same author and enjoyed it, so maybe you will like this one by the same guy. Or perhaps the cover art grabs you, or the title interests you, whatever, if it grabs you, pick it up and toss it into your grocery store size bag, which are kindly provided by the hosts of the sale so you will keep browsing and adding to the bags contents. It is one of the best hours I spend each year rummaging through books that were once pristine and full of promise to the buyer. Now they are here among other much used or slightly used compatriots being once again analyzed for their worth. Which brings up another buying point; is a book in immaculate condition a better choice than the other which has obviously been much handled or ill-kept, is that a clue to its value? The answer is yes or no because, of course, there is no answer. But every once in a while luck enters the process and a book will be picked up by the person it was meant for. This happened to me once.

The best purchase I ever made, using the cost versus enjoyment-received criteria, was the book I mentioned in the first paragraph. It was the book titled, TO SERVE THEM ALL MY DAYS, by R.F. DELDERFIELD. I love this book. I have read it twice now, and the second reading was a good or better than the first. I suppose judgment of a books value is subjective and not objective. It meets your internal value system or it doesn't. It's as easy as that.

It is a book of over six hundred pages and I am a reader of each word, versus the fast reader who gulps paragraphs at a time, so the amount of time to read the entire book is not really calculable, but many, many hours to read the whole work is a fair statement. I enjoyed each and every hour I spent on it, each time, and all for twenty-five cents, picked up at the used book sale. This was the best purchase I ever made.

Rain
This is the time of year we include the statement/question, "how about this weather?" whenever we stop to talk to someone. We've had no snow yet, matter of fact it is getting milder and we could sit out if the rain would stop for a while.

RAIN


Rain, rain and more rain
a week of rain.
Will it stop today?


Through winters snows and ice
I waited
knowing that the sun would free me.


Not yet.


Not exactly right seasonally, I wrote it in the late winter, early spring, but it's all I've got right now so bear with me.

Mood:  silly
Topic: a chuckle
Why did the lazy zoo keeper get fired?
He sat on his 'ocelot'.

Power of Fred Langa's newsletter
My webpage, AT LEISURE https://jim2jak.tripod.com/ was one of Fred Langa's links on his weekly newsletter yesterday. I have gotten approximately 800 hits from that in one day. I don't know if that's good or not, but for me it's lights out. I doubt if I will get anyone to come back from time to time, but it was a lot of fun. Anyway if I did have a hight volume page, think of all the extra work and worry it would cause me. As it is I really enjoy doing what I do with it. I like the idea that someone might be reading one of my stories, I suppose that's ego, and maybe making a connection with some material I put up. If I could make a webpage wish, I would wish for a few more comments, letters, whatever you want to call them. It reminds me that there are other human beings out there.

Nostalgia
Topic: Nostalgia
The holidays are coming and it is putting me into a period of nostalgia for times past or perhaps never were but we wish they were. I have included some of my thoughts and others on the subject. But before you go on, if you are of a certain age you will remember these soda pops. My favorite was grapette which I am pretty certain is no more.





Memory is often less about
the truth than about what we
want it to be.


-David Halberstam, New York Times



Nostalgia: a longing for pleasures, experiences, or events belonging to the past. Oh those memories, they are brought on by an aroma, a song, a picture, and can send us back many, many years. The memories are not always pleasant. It may bring back a memory of a husband lost in the war or being hungry as the depression was ending. And as it is with nostalgia, it brings it back, fully staged and choreographed with the people and events of that time. Also, with the fullness of time, the rough edges, the not so nice things are sometimes minimized or forgotten. We are left only with a memory that can cause our eyes to glaze as a feeling of wellbeing comes over us. It brings that comfortable feeling of being again in familiar places with those people we loved.


____________________________________________________________________________
In the darkness of the night
light and shadow play
on the back of the front seat of the car
As we drive somewhere -
to some aunt-and-uncle dinner
or
back from some drive-down-to-the-coast day trip -
I lay on the back seat
of our '55 medium green and white two door Buick Special
and watch the sagging 'phone and electric wires shadow
play up and down,
and the light and dark
like a window shade opening and closing
as we travel between the telephone poles.
Oh, joyous memories, I am yours.
- David Komisar, 3/10/98