early morning

I don't know why some mornings come earlier than others. This one began around 5:30. I used to blame it on Robin who sleeps on the bed each night but that is unfair. This particular day I woke her as I do many a morning. There was a time, long ago when I could sleep til noon or even 2 in the afternoon. Of course that was in the teen years. I often wonder if those years were just a dream, but then I have less time to dream due to early awakenings.
These days my eyes open in the cover of darkness. Once those babies are open it's mandatory to get up. Lingering in bed is not an option. My body just won't stand for it. Perhaps it's the habit of rising year after year to prepare for work. It was my routine to get up immediately upon the alarm clanging away on the night stand. No snooze button here. Never was a snooze button. I awoke, I sat upright and threw my legs over the edge of the bed. My cohorts always spoke of the snooze button that they hammered with the heel of their hands in a 5 minute ritual for 30 or more minutes.
I don't know if it was a sense of duty, knowing I had to work that day, or simply a biological thing. I lean more to duty which was drilled into me. The job calls. It's a duty to answer the call. When married it was most vital to earn the wage to keep the family afloat. After divorce it was to keep two families afloat. When the kids were on their own it was a deeply ingrained habit. One I did not lose obviously.
In retirement it would be loverly to sleep in. Or to lie awake as the sun comes up. Yet here I am up and stumbling around looking for a second cup of coffee to bring around consciousness. I never said I was awake fully. I'm up. Like a zombie but without the taste for bbrraaiinsss.....
OK. Time for that secomd cuppa brown.

Westerns Eastern

I have always been a fan of the Western. Movies or novels and short stories no matter, the western told the tales that provided our heroes in my youth. The early heroes included Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry along with Lash Larue and Johnny Mack Brown. They all road across the screen filling a young boy's heart with eagerness to uphold their code of the West. Upright, strong, honest men who exemplified the best of America. The big screen brought us the James gang along with the Daltons. They were the good bad guys who fought for the the forgotten following the Civil War. The Civil War was not a part of our young minds, just the idea of robbing the rich and helping the poor, an idea as old as legend itself. Our heroes stood for ideals we absorbed without thought. Then came the stars who interpreted other legends out of America's past. James Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Robert MItchum and Burt Lancaster. The hats were gradually fading from black and white to gray, yet we continued to root for our heroes without thought to the alteration from the simplicity of black and white. The television took up the parading of heroes with new stories on Rawhide, Wagon Train, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Have Gun Will Travel being only a small number. We revelled in the stories of horse and gun. We were settling the West, wrangling steers, and righting wrongs. Indians stood in the way and we annihilated them. Rustlers keeping the beef from market? We shot 'em dead. Bad guys shootin' up towns? We Gunsmoked 'em to die in the street.
Our heroes upheld right whether or not the law upheld it. We fought righteous battles through our screen heroes.
With time the Western began to provide the anti hero. The time of the Western began to fade. Our heroes were fast disappearing into a miasma of right-wrong gray. There were no heroes we were told. Only men. With all there faults they were only men. Personally I wanted the old days and those guardians of the righteous path. Then the Western gave way to movies and books awash with dark choices made by "just" men.
Then in the 70's there came to the screen a movie that made the choice of good and evil simple again. It was the Western in dress up. STAR WARS crept across the big screen in a long interminable ship in deep space sliding quietly after a tiny ship hightailing it away. It was the wild west once again. Heroes were eagerly hailed once more. We could yell HOORAY for the good guys openly without the need to question the motive. This was black and white in color roaring with action.
Since a need of heroes is practially a necessity they had to be re-invented and, they were, with a huge bang. Yes, the big screen and the little screen are furnishing men and women who fight for right. This is all well and good, however, it has a hollow quality for me. Since Star Wars there have been so many more Western Dress-up dramas and all of them come from the confines of the comic book. Don't get me wrong comic books, or graphic novels as they are now called, are fine.
With the Westerns we had a basis in reality to hang the stories on. In the comic book, that basis of reality is gone. Super powers, flight, X-ray vision, morphing into animals remove me from the real life right and wrong. These days the hero must be manufactured through the creation of minds struggling to re-establish the idol for all of us. We need someone to look
up to and that person is not available in day to day life. Yes, America has heroes in those who work hard in their lives to keep our country from falling apart. Our soldiers who fight a war are, unfortunately, unsung heroes fighting an unpopular war. Every day heroes unsung by all of us. We would rather have the hollow hero on screen and on paper.
So where am I going with this? I don't know. I simply wanted to introduce another blog that I like which is called the Western Fictioneers. And it all begins with the fact that I like Westerns which are based on real times in our real past providing heroes that are more real than those of the present because the West was a foundation of our society. So, are we the Hollow Men T.S. Elliot wrote about? I wonder at times.

adding a blog

I read a few blogs on a daily basis. One of these is Rough Edges. James Reasoner gives a daily paragraph or two about writing and writers. He has penned numerous novels and is always at work on some story soon to be published. He provides good info on books and movies that he enjoys along with links to other authors he shares with his readership. If you have an interest in the days of the pulp story you will find his blog a wealth of knowlege. If you enjoy Westerns he is the man to read. If science fiction is your thing you will appreciate his suggestions. I have a soft spot for pulp stories and old movies especially Westerns. Rough Edges scratches that particular itch. I recommend it highly.
Right now I am sitting in the dark typing onto a glow screen. A loud noise woke me. I thought something had fallen from a shelf. I jumped up to look but nothing was out of place. Perhaps I was dreaming but it would be a shared dream because Robin was alert and staring in the same direction when I leapt from bed to the slight switch. It was odd. Now I am typing with a dull headache that says I need more sleep. Unfortunately when I awake I am unable to lie in bed. I remember the teen years when I could sleep until 12 or 2 in the afternoon without any problem. Perhaps I was more limber then or in need of sleep to grow to my full height of 5'5". Perhaps if I had slept until 5 or 6 I might have slipped up to 5"6" but it didn't happen.
I will be adding more blogs to Maybe I'm Wrong as time progresses. Since today is going to have a few extra hours added I may be adding a few more entries. Maybe I'll expound on the fear chickens foster when they gather around the back of the outhouse. NO! IOt's way too early and way to dark to resurrect that fear. I have to go turn on all the lights. Later.

It's an ongoing process

My good buddy Doug who writes the blog FROM THE LAND OF PALM TREES has given me some advice on how to spruce up the looks of a blog.  I recommend his daily thoughts for all those interested in the coastal town of Charleston, SC.  His writing often finds its way to food and the local restaurants not to mention his own special brand of cooking on the grill in the lazy afternoons here in the land of southern hospitality.  He came here from further north several years ago and has planted roots so that his grandchildren will be considered Southerners.  It's a well known fact that only descendants of those who fought in the Revolutionary War are true Southerners.  Neither am I a Southerner when that is the qualifier since I didn't come upon these shores until 62 years ago.  Not to mention the fact that I came form the "enemy" camp of that long ago war.  So Dougy and I are only Southern wannabes in the eyes of the South of Broaders, but that's fine because in my mind and in Doug's mind we are Southern to the core, me especially since I was born in Southern England.  Just a bit of one upmanship there my friend.
   I don't know that this will provide any new readership for my buddy's blog since there are no readers of this one but here is one fan who will continue to click on and read.  With this short entry I bid adieu FROM THE LAND OF PALM TREES and come to this quiet corner with my boring thoughts, but then MAYBE I'M WRONG.....

Blogginess

I've piddled around with this to try and present a blog of my own design which is simply a mix and match of what the blogging site allows and this limits the imagination for those who are computer stupid. Be that as it may I will continue to put words on line with or without readers. This actually replaces the books I used to buy and use for my thoughts. About once every decade I would read through those old ledger books and rip out a dozen or more pages of the more unsavory entries. This I did to cheat myself since I tried to eliminate those things that showed me for who I was. There was so much that I did not like about myself from those days I removed the words thinking I could remove the behvior. Behavior which cracked through the facadebuilt up over years of patchwork. Those pages are gone but the part of me formed by those actions are still there buried under the rubble.
I learned many things over the years about the world and about myself. All my experiences have brought me to the place I am now. I've mellowed. I've altered. So many things for which I am ashamed provided the basis for my present self. I have altered through those activities---we learn through our mistakes---to find that the things I understand now would have been so much help back then to work through the problems of old and change accordingly. They have said it for centuries-- Youth is wasted on the young-- and it is still true. If I had known then what I know now perhaps life would have taken a different path.
Well, whatever the reason for being the person I am now that is who I am. I accept it. I was the one who made the choices. What all this comes to is I am writing a blog to replace the paper and pen of yesteryear. Here it takes a simple delete button and I don't have to expend energy ripping out pages and striking matches. It is now easier to eliminate oneself. Just as the final journey will come upon me one day so in the twinkle of the eye and I will go as quickly as the writing on this page.
Reflection is healthy.

Hmmmm...

I thought I would have something to say on a daily basis but I guess not. Awoke to a cold morning which means Fall is coming on now. Down South here in SC Fall is a mysterious moment in the year. We usually have a two day intorduction to frost on the ground and then comes Indian summer with its daily warmth thumbing its nose at us. The trees rarely turn color as in the north. Our trees drop their leaves like a kid mooning grownups in a moving car. One moment they are full, we turn around and they are "bare choirs' for the birds heading further south. There have been a few Autumns in whch we shared the raucous color explosion of our upper state neighbors. They are fading memories of exceptionally beautiful yellows and golds and red spread against a pale blue sky but fondly remembered.
At any rate such mornings as this are a reminder of the beauty of our planet during times of forgetfulness. Our garden is fast becoming paved and built upon while we ever so slowly lose track of what we had. Roads, shoping centers and condos take away our nature along with nature. We destroy the homes of our fellow inhabitants who are ignored in our quest to make the buck. In so doing bucks and does are lost as their habitat is lost. To me it is sad. To our children and grandchildren it will be more than sad it will become total isolation from thier roots.
Funny the thoughts triggered by a cool morning.