Top Ten of 2013...#1 The Pope

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My Favorite Pope of 2013. 

I'm not a Roman Catholic. I have been to Mass a few times with Karen Sue and my sister Darlene who both converted to Catholicism after starting elsewhere. 

When thinking about what should be at the top of my list, what made the greatest impression on me in 2013, Pope Francis quickly came to mind. Intimidated, I didn't feel it was appropriate for me, a lowly Thoreauvian naturalist to comment; it wasn't my place to be so bold. 

But then I started seeing Pope Francis pop up: the cover of The New Yorker, and Esquire's Best Dressed because of his penchant for simplicity—"The popular pope has been hailed for rejecting any hints of luxury or opulence," reported ABC News—and as Time's Person of the Year. I decided it was OK for me too. The world seemed to have come to an united consensus. (I half believe that when the Sports Illustrated editors got their choice of Sportsman of the Year down to Peyton and the Pope, they went with Manning because the pontiff is, after all, only a rookie, just nine months on the job.)

When most men or woman ascend to the top, assume a leadership role, they also assume the trappings, the folderol of the new job. It soon goes to their head, yet with Pope Francis, it's gone to his heart. But, apparently that is where it has been since he became a priest in the 1960s. He is trappings and folderol lite. Gone are the gold shoes, the fancy apartment, the expensive car.

The cardinals and bishops that elected him knew what they were getting, and wanted.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina has not changed to fit the position, the position has to change to fit the kindly priest. And his "no nonsense, keep it simple, no bling" approach has the materialistic world taking note. 

I feel he is speaking not only to Catholics but to the entire planet, even me. And I've never felt that way with any of the other 265 popes. Well, to be fair, I've only been around for the last six.

He speaks of love, charity, mercy; of reaching out and caring for the poor, the sick, the orphans, the afflicted, the wheelchair bound, the homeless, the young, the elder.

His homilies are part Christian, part humanitarian, part egalitarian.

When I hear of his deeds, I think of Thoreau, "In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness." I think of Whitman, "Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, hate tyrants." I think of Gandhi, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” I think of the Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy."

Pope Francis laments a society that spends more on its dogs and cats than on the hungry children across town, and a throwaway culture that ships its seniors away to live and die alone with strangers. The pope tweets, "No elderly person should be like an “exile” in our families. The elderly are a treasure for our society."

Blessed be the meek, for they will inherit the Earth. And from that lofty position they can do much good as peacemakers.

And the needful world will sit up and take notice.


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Top Ten of 2013...#2 Peyton

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It's that time of the year. Time for all the Top Ten lists. Many writers produce them and guess what, they're utterly unapologetic subjective filler. Something to plug into the space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands. So here are My Top Ten (plus a few) Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, but I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do holiday things.


My Favorite Sports Story of 2013. 

SI Sportsman of the Year

I grew up in a football family. Even though I played four years of high school baseball, we were still a football family. On weekends from September to January, my Dad Russell was conjoined to the TV or radio. If you spent quality time with Dad, you shared a game with him. 

The last thing we did together was watch Oregon play Michigan in the Big House at Ann Arbor. The Ducks won huge 39-7. And Dad died in intensive care 12 hours later.

But long before that, growing up, Sundays were for the pros. We all had to pick a team to root for. Me? The Baltimore Colts. Dad? The Dallas Cowboys.  Saturdays were the college games, and there was only one team, the closest: the University of Tennessee Volunteers. Dad's mood paralleled the Vols' losses and wins. He was either Dad, or elated Dad. 

Peyton shared his first SI cover 
with his more famous father

In 1994, a lanky and bit awkward new quarterback with a famous pedigree showed up in Knoxville. Vol fans certainly knew the name Manning. The 1969 38-to-zip drubbing delivered by the Ole Miss Archie Who? Rebels still haunted their sleepless nights. 

But that September, 25 years later, Peyton Manning started the season at UT as the number three or four QB. Yes, third or fourth on the depth chart. Peyton Manning! Yet starter Jerry Colquitt was injured in the first game and Todd Helton (of Colorado Rockies baseball fame) was injured in the fourth. Manning took over in the fifth game of his freshman year and he's been behind center ever since. Whether he wears orange, or blue, or orange again, for 20 seasons we have cheered for Peyton.

If Dad were still living he'd be elated again. This time by SI's Sportsman of the Year selection, I'm sure he'd say something like, "It's about time. He's been working his b--- off for 20 years." 

Dad always said, "If you work hard, son. Put in the time. Good things will happen and you'll get all that you deserve."

And that's the thing you admire with Peyton: his work ethic, his pursuit of perfection, his intensity, his preparation, his focus. Always looking for ways to improve. 

Even if it takes 20 years.

Or perhaps, it's his sense of humor. Dad would have loved having football on his phone.


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Ten Ten of 2013....#3 Vincent

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It's that time of the year. Time for all the Top Ten lists. Many writers produce them and guess what, they're utterly unapologetic subjective filler. Something to plug into the space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands. So here are My Top Ten (plus a few) Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, but I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do holiday things.


My Favorite Book Read in 2013.

OK, still serious. We have to finish my Top Ten.

Ounce for ounce, this is by far the best book I read this year. Weighing in at 3.2 pounds and close to 900 pages, it's by definition a tome.

Truthfully, I've read other smaller books about the hard life of this post-impressionist painter, including the popular "Lust for Life" by Irving Stone, so I thought "Why put in so much time again on mercurial Vincent?" But still, I was compelled. It's really hard to separate Van Gogh's life from his art. Would he have become such a beloved painter had we known nothing of his life struggles?

Finally, I decided to read one chapter of Van Gogh: The Life (2012) by co-authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, and I knew it had to be the chapter about the Yellow House he shared with fellow artist Paul Gauguin, and, pack my oils I'm headed to Arles, I was hooked. I flipped back to the beginning and waded in: chapter 1 of 43.

To say Vincent's life was tortured, troubled and tormented is an understatement. His struggles drive the book, but at the same time the co-authors make it an easy drive to take. It's a smoothly written page-turner but one you do have to put down occasionally because of the book's heft. My wrists got tired holding it.

If you know anything of Vincent's life, you know he became an artist late and only painted for 10 years. But during that one decade created roughly 850 oil paintings and over 1,000 sketches, watercolors and prints. That’s obsessive.
 
But everything Vincent threw his heart into was done full throttle. Here’s an excerpt by Naifeh and Smith:

“Vincent couldn’t help his vehemence. Every idea he ever seized, he seized to its furthest margin: every enthusiasm, wrung to its extremity. In his effort to capture 'a sense of life’s intensity.' Bernard wrote of Vincent’s painting, 'he tortures the paint…He denies all wisdom, all striving for perfection or harmony.’ Whether making his arguments in paint or in person…Vincent had to 'tear off his clothes and fall on his knees. 'When one has fire within oneself,' he wrote, 'one cannot keep bottling it up—better to burn than to burst.'"
 
If they had been making the "Fast and Furious" movies in the 1880s, Vincent would have been in the lead car.

Wheatfield with Crows. 
A print of this painting has hung over my fireplace for years.

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Top Ten of 2013...#4 Gravity

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It's that time of the year. Time for a plethora of Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly unabashed, unapologetic subjective filler. Something to plug into copy space so that the writer can take time off to enjoy the holidays. So here are My Top Ten (Plus a Few) Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do year-end holiday things. (Repeated intro from yesterday, more filler.)


My Favorite 'Actually Going Out to a Theatre to See a Movie' Movie of 2013. In the summer of 1968, my dear friend Jerri and I saw Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a space odyssey at the Capri-70 Cinerama on Kingston Pike in Knoxville. Shown in "Panavision" on a curved screen 72 feet wide and 21 feet deep, it was billed as "An astounding entertainment experience, a dazzling trip to the planets and beyond to the stars."

It was all that and more. 

We had never seen anything remotely like it and for two science-minded kids its impact was profound. Before Apollo 11 landed on the moon a year later, Kubrick taught us that space travel would be long and slow, quiet and often tedious, that is until things go bad. (As they did for Apollo 13 two years later.)

Flash forward 45 years and we get to experience slow, measured space flight again on the big screen, this time in 3-D. 

Many of the scenes in Gravity, directed by Alfonso Cuarón, reminded me of Kubrick's 2001. The former obviously paid homage to the latter. A free-floating pen, the majesty of Earth-orbiting space stations, an off-structure astronaut in peril left to their own devices, an innocent face in a bubble gazing down on planet Earth, wondering what to do next. 

Kubrick's film is more layered, more enigmatic, more out there, more—what the heck just happened?—weird. My own place in the universe was shifted. I scrambled to buy the novel by Arthur C. Clarke to see if it would help me fill in some of the gaps as broad as the rings of Saturn, and it did. Are we being watched? Guided?

Still today, every time I hear Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra," I turn expecting to see a mysterious black monolith pointing the way, a guidepost urging me to evolve into a higher form of being and seek the answers that await on the other side of the universe; to become a starchild.

Kubrick's starchild gazing down on planet Earth

With Gravity, we now know what a real space station looks like, and space walks are cumbersome. And that in that most unforgiving environment at 17,000 miles per hour, when things go bad, they go bad in a hurry. I half expected Sandra Bullock's Ryan Stone to say at some point, "Open the pod bay doors, please Hal." But, Sandy had to manage on her own wits.

Gravity is a thrrrrrrrill ride. Yes, I've heard the critics: there is no Chinese Space Station, the Shuttle didn't fly that way, Clooney's backpack hasn't been used since the Coolidge Administration, Sandy should have been wearing an adult diaper (Hello. I don't want to pay $10 to see Sandra Bullock in a diaper.) Picky, picky, picky. It's only a movie. The year 2001 has come and gone, yet, Pan Am isn't flying space planes, a monolith hasn't been found on the Moon buried in the crater Tycho—Geez Louise, we've not even been to Tycho—and, to my knowledge, there's not a wormhole stargate near Jupiter. But Kubrick didn't get his chops busted over it.

If you've yet to see Gravity, breathe copiously beforehand because you'll be holding your breath during and you don't want your O2 level to drop as low as Sandy's did. You get spacey and see dead people. I've already seen the movie twice, once with Eliot and once with Eliot and Karen Sue. But don't wait for the DVD, you have to see it on the big screen.

With this pick, I've gone mainstream. I'm sure Gravity is in a lot of Top Ten of 2013 lists.

Cuarón's Ryan Stone gazing down on planet Earth

 

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Top Ten of 2013...#5 Awe

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It's that time of the year. Time for all the Top Ten lists. Many writers produce them and guess what, they're utterly unapologetic subjective filler. Something to plug into the space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands. So here are My Top Ten (plus a few) Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, but I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do holiday things.


My Favorite Performance Philosopher of 2013.

OK. It's time to get serious with this. Philosophy was my Achilles' heel in college. 

There, I said it. Glad to get that off my chest. Five years of higher education and it was the subject that's been around since the Ancient Greeks—as was Achilles himself—that most stymied me.

Jason Silva

I scraped by, I understood not. I didn't know if my brain was too concrete and the subject was too ethereal; or if my brain was too ethereal and the topic too concrete. Others seemed to get it, the hip kids, but to me the professor was speaking in tongues. And I "no comprende" any of them.

"Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am, i.e. thinking about one’s existence proves—in and of itself—that an "I" exists to do the thinking."

Well yeah, but I never doubted my existence, my dorm room mirror told me that every morning.

Perhaps this is why Jason Silva has become my favorite performance philosopher. He delights me. It doesn't matter that he is the only performance philosopher I've ever known, he's still the best, the Michael Jordan of performance philosophers, in a league all his own.

I've seen him interviewed on CBS and Silva says he works without a script. He just takes off. Giving his thoughts wings. Watching him is in itself awe-inspiring.  You want to jump out of your chair and just go...be.

Thank you Jason for reawakening my five-year-old sense of awe. Here is one of his two-minute performance lectures, this one appropriately enough titled "awe"

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Top Ten of 2013...#6 Vest

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It's that time of the year. Time for a plethora of Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly unabashed unapologetic subjective filler. Something to plug into copy space so that the writer can take time off to enjoy the holidays. So here are My Top Ten (Plus a Few) Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do year-end holiday things. (Repeated intro from yesterday, more filler.)

The new vest looks darn good with the red-tailed hawk.

More frivolous filler to end the year.

 My Favorite 'Good Deal' of 2013. For a guy, a good deal is not only savored, it's beatified. I generally make very few adjustments to my wardrobe; adding a new tee shirt is more of a change of message than a change of fashion. I'm not really a clothes horse, more of a mule's blanket.

Enter Brothers in South Knoxville, a traditional small town, non-franchised barbershop like Floyd's back in Mayberry. "Brothers" is his nickname, he's had it since he was a kid and the funny thing: he has no siblings. So Brothers has no brothers, just fast trims with the news of the neighborhood. 

He works alone and his floorspace is so spacious, Brothers recently opened a secondhand shop in one end. 

While getting a haircut in October and talking old cars, I noticed a dark brown suede vest hanging on a rack. 

"How much for the vest, Brothers?"

"Oh. I'm asking five dollars," he replied.

Wow. An $8 cut, a $5 vest. Thirteen bucks and I leave the shop a new man, looking a little more like a graying Jackson Browne than when I arrived. And of course, even Jackson is graying a bit.

Time is the ultimate conqueror, especially if you've been running on empty since the early 70s.



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Top Ten of 2013...#7 Robin

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It's that time of the year. Time for a plethora of Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly unabashed, unapologetic subjective filler. Something to plug into copy space so that the writer can take time off to enjoy the holidays. So here are My Top Ten Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do year-end holiday things. (Repeated intro from yesterday, more filler.)


My Favorite Nature Book Discovery of 2013. Since this is a nature blog and being a naturalist is both my vocation and avocation I read and even write books about nature. 

This past year is no except and the book that left the biggest impression, actually forcing me to look at the birdlife around me in an entirely new way is Jon Young's What the Robin Knows (2012). 

Before this recent work, like many or most birders, I'd look past the ordinary cardinals, wrens, jays, robins, chickadees, towhees hoping to find something more exotic like a kinglet or warbler flitting about the treetops. 

Since this book, not only do I watch birds, but I WATCH birds. And just because they live in our neighborhoods doesn't mean they are uninteresting. Their day-to-day lives are ruled by two motivators: 1. Find food, 2. Not be eaten. And all of their daily behavior, vocalizations and interactions with their mates and other species are governed by those two imperatives. No movement is purposeless. Awareness is survival. 

On top of that, they have to produce clutches of crying helpless vulnerable nestlings in a world full of predators that eat crying helpless vulnerable nestlings. Even high above the ground, Carolina wrens have to be aware of local snakes. Click: home invasion!

Now, if I hear an American robin call "tuk, tuk, tuk," I look around to see what's got it on edge.  

For the birds in your backyard, every day is a life and death struggle to live another day. Who needs TV with all this drama just outside their window.

Merry Christmas!

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Top Ten of 2013...#8 Emmylou

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It's that time of the year. Time for a plethora of Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly unabashed, subjective filler. Something to plug into copy space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands. So here are My Top Ten Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do Christmas things. (Repeated intro from yesterday, more filler.)

My Favorite Older CDs Discovered in 2013. Scratching my head, looking around the front seat and console, under the floormats, I realized that the two CDs I discovered this year that I play most often in the car are both by Emmylou Harris, and both have been around awhile. But, like a good Chardonnay, it doesn't matter when it's uncorked. The cover alone of stumble into grace (2003) makes me feel better about the silver starting to stumble into my own hair. If my infiltrating gray becomes only a smidgen as comely as the silver in Emmylou's mane—Wait, do girls have mane? Perhaps coiffure is better—then 2014 cannot be that bad. If you are a man, as long as you have hair, then that's half the battle.

The 18-year-old Wrecking Ball (1995) is even longer in the tooth, but since the subtext of this post is aging, it's most apropos. Produced by Daniel Lanois who did the same on four other albums I've bought/liked: U2's "Joshua Tree," Peter Gabriel's "So," Bob Dylan's "Time Out of Mind" and even his own "Belladonna," why I missed "Wrecking Ball," I'm not sure. I don't seem to have a clear memory of 1995, other than President Clinton was in office and times were good, but as I said, my hair is starting to stumble into silver and as memories fade, pleasant discoveries are made all the time.

Here's my favorite track. Merry Christmas Eve!

BACK STORY: If you are curious about producer/performer Daniel Lanois, here's a second gift on Christmas:

 
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Top Ten of 2013...#9 BB

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It's that time of the year. Time for a plethora of Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly subjective filler. Something to plug into copy space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands. So here are My Top Ten Favorite Things of the past year. Some have been around awhile, I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do Christmas things. (Repeated intro from yesterday, more filler.)

My favorite Music Video of 2013, although it's a few years older than that. This one is neither frivolous nor subjective. I owe it my friend Dr. Guy Smoak. When we discovered we were both B. B. King fans, he made sure I knew how to find this video online recorded at the Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago on June 26, 2010. Up front with B.B. are Eric Clapton, Robert Cray and Jimmie Vaughan. 

Enjoy:

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Top Ten of 2013...#10 Yogurt

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It's that time of the year. Time for a plethora of Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly subjective filler. Something to plug into copy space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands. So here are My Top Ten Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do Christmas things. (Repeated intro from yesterday, more filler.)

Frozen cherry yogurt and my favorite spoon

My Favorite New Comfort Food of 2013. Ice cream and milkshakes are just not good for you, so I was delighted at how much I liked frozen cherry yogurt. Love it. Love it. Love it. Always in the freezer waiting on me when I get home. And yogurt is good for you, so frozen yogurt must be equally beneficial only a little more sedate. 

Let's look at the ingredients: 1. Cultured pasteurized skim milk, (cultured milk, sounds highbrow like opera); 2. Sugar, that's not good; 3. Corn syrup, corn sounds good 4. Dark sweet cherry puree, now that's healthy from a blender; 5. Dark sweet cherries, more fruit, that's good; 6. Buttermilk, butter's OK, isn't it? Margarine is now bad, right? 7. Whey, more dairy; 8. Cellulose gel, isn't that plant gel? 9. Mono- and diglycerides, (a glyceride consisting of two fatty acid chains covalently bonded to a glycerol molecule through ester linkages. Eliot, I need a little help on this one); 10. Guar gum, more plant gum; 11. Locust bean gum, more gum, but I think a lot of gum's OK. Like the bottom of my desk in the fourth grade; 12. Polysorbate 80 (a substance that stabilizes an emulsion by increasing its kinetic stability. Eliot, more help here); 13. Citric acid, i.e, lemons, limes, oranges, that sounds good; 14. Natural flavor, as opposed to unnatural. Well, OK; 15. Pectin, a gelling agent; 16. Cellulose gum, why do they need so much gum? 17. Carrageenan (a family of linear sulfated polysaccharides that are extracted from red edible seaweeds. They are widely used in foods for their gelling, thickening and stabilizing properties. Got that? Red seaweed!) and 18. Elderberry juice for color, OK, I have to admit it's a pretty color, but elderberries to make it look like cherries? What do they use to color elderberry frozen yogurt?

All this in a bowl of frozen yogurt? But why do they need all the gum and gel? It sounds like the yogurt and the cherries would fly out of the bowl in opposite directions without so many things to hold them together. 



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Top Ten of 2013...#11 Tshirt

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It's that time of the year. Time for all the Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly subjective filler. Something to plug into the space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands.

One cable channel actually produced a Top Ten Crimes & Trials of 2013. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Shouldn't we consider the victim's families? And give it a respectful rest.

So here are My Top Ten Favorite Things of the past year. Some have been around awhile, but I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do Christmas things.

More year-end frivolous filler. Top Ten Honorable Mention

My favorite T-Shirt of 2013, and I love to wear it. It makes me feel empowered even if I cover it with fleece. I'm actually wearing it as I write this post. Available online from woot! the text reads: "Rocket Science Club: Everything Else is Easy." And indeed, most things aren't as difficult as rocket science. They may not be easy, but if you put your mind to it, they're completely doable. 

Eliot, you go girl! The space-time continuum is on your side!

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Top Ten of 2013...#12 MAN stuff

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It's that time of the year. Time for all the Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly subjective filler. Something to plug into the space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands.

One cable channel actually produced a Top Ten Crimes of 2013. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Shouldn't we consider the victim's families? And give it a respectful rest.

So here are My Top Ten (plus a few) Favorite Things of the past year. Some have been around awhile, but I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do Christmas things. 


More year-end frivolous filler. Top Ten Honorable Mention

My Favorite Merchandising Trend of 2013. 

Man stuff! 

Finally, we MEN have soaps, lotions, shampoos, face scrubs and a detergent formulated for our rough and tough, gritty lives. 

D--- Right!

Grime, mud, sweat, watch out. My Tide for men is endorsed by no less than the NFL. (That's QB Drew Brees on the label.) Guaranteed to get a game-used, blood-stained linebacker's jersey clean! And the stink-em out. From now on it's two-a-days for my washing machine because when the coach says, "Rub some dirt on it!" I will.  

Tide stuck to its traditional orange packaging but Dove had a problem, the brand sounds too peaceful, too genteel. So its Men+Care soaps and shampoos are packaged in gray, like a truck's air filter that needs changing. Manly battleship gray, like iron. Nothing la-di-da here.

High fives guys, we no longer have to sneak around the bathroom and use our girl friend, wife and/or paramour's girlie products. "Darnation! Did she catch me using her St. Ives Fresh Apricot Scrub again?" Now, we have our own Nivea MEN Energy Face Scrub that strips away layers of campfire soot, garage filth and ground-in man grease. Crud's gone. Who needs it? Plus it tingles. That must be my face absorbing the energy.

Not to be outdone, my traditional grandfather's era—the brand has been around since 1938—man-only Old Spice deodorant and body spray (I don't think grandpa used body spray) now comes in Red Zone: Swagger. And the "Swagger" appears in an Old English font evocative of the brave and bold Knights of the Round Table. It also boasts of having "The scent of CONFIDENCE." And who can't use more of that. I've got my Swagger on as I write this, perhaps you've noticed.

And not to be outdone, Dr. Pepper Ten is a new "manly" bold diet soft drink. It's not for girls because in has TEN calories, and sissy girl diet sodas have no calories. We men need those ten calories 'cause we wrestle bears and rotate tires.

Clean and mean. That's us. Chest bump! 

Smoke 'em if you got 'em! 

Three cheers for the guys! Now, let's go dig a hole somewhere in the yard.  

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Top Ten of 2013...#13 ZZ Plant

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It's that time of the year. Time for all the Top Ten lists. Many writers produce them and guess what, they're utterly unapologetic subjective filler. Something to plug into the space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands. So here are My Top Ten (plus a few) Favorite Things of 2013. Some have been around awhile, but I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do holiday things.


More year-end frivolous filler. Top Ten Honorable Mention

My Favorite House Plant of 2013. This one tried, but it didn't make the Top Ten, but let's get real, it's only a houseplant. 

Known commonly as the Zanzibar Gem or simply the ZZ Plant after its Latin nomenclature Zamioculcas zamiifolia, this houseplant is only starting to become widespread indoors.

I have several houseplants. Nothing is more cheery in gray winter than a bit of green indoors. I got my houseplant gene from my Grandma Pearl. I guess it strokes the farmer part of me that wants something to tend and houseplants are easier than hamsters.

Native to East Africa from Kenya south to northeastern South Africa, the Zanzibar Gem requires little. (Hamsters are actually native to Syria, require lots.) The ZZ does well in low light and the only sure way to kill it is over-watering. I got my ZZ this year and I'm only just beginning to learn proper zz husbandry: how to treat it, or perhaps mistreat it. 

The ZZ can survive drought, losing all of its leaves, yet it'll bounce back to life once watered. Similar to another African native, Sansevieria trifasciata, a.k.a. mother-in-law's tongue, it can be neglected. I've had one of the latter for perhaps 20 years and we hardly speak to each other.

The one downside—and its a big'n—all parts of the Zanzibar Gem are poisonous if ingested, so it's not a good plant to have around small children or goats. Most don't keep such horned livestock indoors, but there are a few in the lonelier regions of the country that probably do. 

I'm keeping my zz away from my fajita bar and at arm's length down in the billiard room.

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Top Ten of 2013...#14 Asses

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It's that time of the year. Time for all the Top Ten lists. Many produce them and guess what, they're utterly subjective filler. Something to plug into the space so that the writer can take time off to finish his/her holiday errands.

One cable channel actually produced a Top Ten Crimes & Trials of 2013. ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Shouldn't we consider the victim's families? And give it a respectful rest.

So here are My Top Ten Favorite Things of the past year. Some have been around awhile, but I generally discover things later than most. I'm going to dribble them out one day at a time, many are completely frivolous because remember: they're filler so that I can do Christmas things.

 More year-end frivolous filler. Top Ten Honorable Mention




My Favorite Parking Lot Moment of 2013. This is number 11 in my Top Ten, but since it's only frivolous filler, bare with me. 

Walking across a crowded parking lot is always an adventure, especially if you have a white car and 50 percent of all cars parked there are also white.
 
Exasperated, I spotted the above family decal and thought, "How odd, even unfortunate. Their name is Ass. How do you live with that?"
 
I then thought of the group of animals know as the wild asses. You know..."Asinus, a subgenus of Equus (single-toed, (hooved) grazing animals) that encompasses several subspecies of Equidae commonly known as asses, characterized by long ears, a lean, straight-backed build, lack of a true withers, a coarse mane and tail, and a reputation for considerable toughness and endurance." (from wiki)

Noble animals often used as beasts of burden. Noble. So let's just think of this family in the best terms.
 
Then I read the back of the SUV from Florida further, and got the joke. Didn't realize it was a joke. Got me! But laughed out loud.
 
And you know, now that I think about it, I lack true withers as well.

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short day, long night

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Tennessee River, Downtown Knoxville: 18 December 2013

“There's a sunrise and a sunset 

every single day, and they're absolutely free. 

Don't miss so many of them.”   

– Jo Walton, science fiction writer

I'm not fond of this short day, long night thing. It tousles my sense of balance. I'm more of an equinox man. I could never live in Finland, not in the winter. If Hemingway had lived that far north, his 1926 novel would have been titled "The Sun Never Rises." Come to think of it, for the protagonist Jake Barnes, it never did.

But the one advantage of early nightfall is that the sun is often setting when I drive home from work over the South Knoxville Bridge and as the writer Jo Walton said, admission to watch it is absolutely free.


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