You Really Had To Be There

by | Sep 15, 2010 | 0 comments

There is always music and color when Indian religion is in the air. I’ve struggled to make order out of everything we’ve seen, smelled, and experienced, but I’m afraid that’s well beyond my capability.  Two weeks is a short time and India is a big, complex piece of geography, history and humanity.  The best I can do is to share some of the impressions we take with us.  They are presented here in absolute random order.  That is to say I’m writing them down as I think of them which may, or may not, have anything to do with how or when they occured. I’m writting this as we’re on the way from Paris to Houston, a 10 hour daylight flight after a 9 hour night time...

The Truth That Everyone Knows

by | Sep 12, 2010 | 0 comments

One of the enduring questions of our time is “what caused our current financial crisis/meltdown/catastrophe/snafu/disaster”.  No one seems to know for sure, but everyone has a lot to say on the subject. It probably won’t surprise you, but I know the answer, and I’m going to tell you, but not right away.  First, you’re gonna have to suffer through a little erudite discourse before I get to the bottom line. Let me start by asking rhetorically if there really is a problem?  You may think it odd that I spend any energy on this question, but given the fact that we live in a society wherein some still think that Neil Armstrong didn’t really walk on the moon, that...

Happiness Is A Warm Puppy

by | Sep 12, 2010 | 0 comments

I was signing some Christmas cards last Christmas season and thought of the Merry Christmas and Happy New Year that we throw around so lightly, and started to wonder, as I often do, what do we really mean when we say Happy New Year.  Certainly we don’t mean it as an adjective modifying the noun, because it’s non-sensical to think that something inanimate, such as a new year, can be happy.  Everyone knows that only people or puppies can be happy. And I am happy.  Flat out.  No doubt about it.  If you would have asked me, I may have had a hard time defining happiness or even why I am happy, but there you are,  I am happy.  Having gone this far, however, I...

A Dog’s Life

by | Sep 9, 2010 | 0 comments

Buddy came to Lyday Farms as the property of an itinerant worker as we were just beginning to build the place.  The worker didn’t last long, but Buddy may outlast us all.  As you can see from the portrait above, Buddy is not exactly a work of art, and if he was of a breed, he would not be an outstanding representative.  Actually, all one can say about Buddy’s appearance is that he looks like a mongrel, which he is, and that he has about the ugliest ears ever seen on any dog of any breeding. Evidently his putative owner thought he was more of a Boxer than anything else and felt that clipped ears were de rigueur and got after them with his mama’s pinking...