Celebrate the New YMCA Pool

 * The swimmers are hand made from sugar!

A great advantage can be found in accepting hard truths faster than others. 

Shane Parrish

 a poem by David Shumate.

Passing Through a Small Town

 

Here the highways cross. One heads north. One heads east

and west. On the corner of the square adjacent to the

courthouse a bronze plaque marks the place where two Civil

War generals faced one another and the weaker surrendered.

A few pedestrians pass. A beauty parlor sign blinks. As I turn

to head west, I become the schoolteacher living above the

barber shop. Polishing my shoes each evening. Gazing at the

square below. In time I befriend the waitress at the cafe and

she winks as she pours my coffee. Soon people begin to

talk. And for good reason. I become so distracted I teach my

students that Cleopatra lost her head during the French

Revolution and that Leonardo perfected the railroad at the

height of the Renaissance. One day her former lover returns

from the army and creates a scene at the school. That evening

she confesses she cannot decide between us. But still we spend

one last night together. By the time I pass the grain elevators

on the edge of town I am myself again. The deep scars of love

already beginning to heal.

__________

Passing Through a Small Town by DAVID SHUMATE, from High Water Mark, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

Stories lightly disguised. If you see yourself here, you should have behaved better.

 Motto on the town newspaper header.

Blackridge Massachusetts

In this area using a turn signal is a sign of weakness as if one's masculinity could leak out onto the road with each blink, forever depleting the driver. All the men drive trucks.

The women on the other hand always use their turn signals. Many borrow their husbands trucks or drive Dodge Caravans or Subaru wagons. They do not want to crack them up.

The town of Blackridge has no laws except one. You can't park on the dead end of Ridgefalls Road to visit the water. If you do the dozen suburban Ring cameras are triggered and the residents call the one cop, officer George Mink. He immediately drives down on his police issued Harley Davidson motorcycle to ask what you are doing.

The  Blackridge residents are all escapees from nearby cities and fight hard for the illusion that they are in the wilderness. God help you if your dog barks or you put up a fence or hang out your laundry. If you break the illusion of wilderness you are scorned. 

Some battles have gone on for generations. The Wilder's turned a paper street beside their house into their driveway, a common practice in a town with no laws. The kids ignored the change but Old Man Wilder would come out in his plaid bathrobe waving his shotgun over his head when he saw them walking up his driveway. They just laughed. The McDugal's claim it's still a real street and the battle is ongoing to this day.

Bovines are a Blessing

 "I can't drink milk in a box. No way," says JP Sagahutu, who consumes about four 8-ounce glasses of milk a day.  He tries to think of the best adjective to describe the beverage. "I don't know the wording in English, but it's something sacré," he says — using the French word for sacred. Many Rwandans speak the language because the country was a Belgian colony until 1962.  Other customers nod in agreement: Milk is holy. In fact, as a sign of respect you must only drink it while sitting down. Bovines are a blessing  The sentiment comes from the respect people here have for cows, seen for many generations as providers of sustenance and prosperity.  "A very long time ago, there was no currency. To see if someone is rich, they were counting cows. If you have 10 cows, it means you are rich," Sagahutu says.  So precious is the cow, that in Rwandan culture, when you want to wish someone well, you say "may you have a cow" — kajirinka in the local language of Kinyarwandan.

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/g-s1-139914/milk-rwanda-milk-bar 

The Siblings

The siblings were in competition. They both thought travel was a virtue but it was merely a display of money spent. One more stamp on the passport, one more sticker on the suitcase. All for bragging rights. They never noticed anything when they arrived except how good the cocktails tasted. Secretly it was a pain in the ass and they couldn't wait to return and tell everyone where they had been. As if it mattered. As if it changed them. It did neither. 

The Countdown Clock for the OGRE

 is here.

Romanian Mititei

 https://www.thefooddictator.com/the-hirshon-romanian-mititei/

Mititei is street food in Romania The Famous Romanian Garlicky Meat Sausages

 https://www.ramonascuisine.com/homemade-mici-the-famous-romanian-garlicky-meat-sausages/

It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.

Dolly Parton

My weaknesses have always been food and men - in that order. Dolly Parton

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn't get some of that stuff out. Dolly Parton

I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else. Dolly Parton

I don't like to give advice. I like to give people information because everyone's life is different, and everyone's journey is different. Dolly Parton

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it's just depressing to me. The poor little kids. Dolly Parton

Fence-post's wife, Venus of Willendorf adopted a white teacup Chihuahua. She snuggles him on the patch of grass at the back door of the tenement. Venus lives over where the Tilted Lady and Willard just moved after the Feds tore up their drug ring apartment across the street. 

My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening. Alice Roosevelt Longworth

She had one of those wearable calculating devices only this one tracked her dreams and recited them back to her upon awakening. It also told her what to cook that day, what to wear, and the best route for today's dog walking. It also told her the weather and which windows were left open when she left the house. It was called her brain.

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it. Anaïs Nin