Tag You're It - 25 Random Things

A couple of friends sent me one of those e-mails that asks you to answer some questions about yourself entitled "25 Random Things About Yourself - Tag You're It!". Now even at age 54, I'm still enough of a kid to feel obligated to join in the game when somebody tags me "it". Here's the header on the e-mail:

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

OKAY, YOU GOT ME! I'LL DO IT BUT WITH THIS DISCLAIMER: I'm sending this because I got it from two people I'm very fond of and am flattered they considered me in their top 25. HOWEVER, in order to relieve anyone's sense of guilt over not forwarding this, let me say I will not have my feelings hurt if you don't send this back to me or send it on. I quit teaching in 1980 and except for my Primary Sabbath School class, I've tried to avoid assigning essays or any other type of homework ever since. That said, I'm going to do this and anyone who can bear to read it may do so. For those of you whose reaction was "Sweet Jumbo Dill Pickles, does this guy never get tired of talking about himself?", you have my permission to ignore this entirely. That said....

1. I am a trained Girl Scout, Pathfinder Master Guide and former Red Cross Canoeing, First Aid and Water Safety Instructor.

2. I was also a Water Safety Instructor Trainer and trained swimming instructors and life guards. My instructor, the famed East Texas Red Cross Aquatics Director Bud Bradley was trained by the legendary Commodore Wilbert E. Longfellow, the creator of the American Red Cross's Water Safety Program. I inherited one of Longfellow's original aluminum torpedo buoys - the less forgiving precursor to those red foam thingies that busty Baywatch lifeguards carry with them into the surf. I worked on staff at Lone Star camp 5 summers - two as waterfront director.

3. I own two complete telescopes and am building a six inch scope out of a length of sonotube and some plywood and stray pieces of telescope parts. I made 6 eyepieces out of an assortment of lenses, copper pipe, medication bottles and PVC pipe fittings

4. I have two canoes in my back yard, 14 life vests, two sailboards, 9 paddles and a home made canoe rack. In my driveway is a Hobie 16 catamaran badly in need of some paint.

5. I was the center bottom guy on a 5 and 6 man pyramid (that's me in the picture below bottom center man). I've attempted a jump start off a 10 foot tower, skied on canoe paddles, a 2x4, 6" long shoe skis and I once did a human torpedo routine which ended with my shorts dangling from one leg.



6. I co-hold the Lone Star Camp skinny canoeing record with my good buddy Mark Miller (4 laps, full moon - did not get caught). I can stealth paddle a canoe and have paddled a canoe with my feet (don't ask - I was young and foolish and the moon was full). I now have to paddle canoes and kayaks with XL weight capacities. I once sank a kayak I was testing simply by getting into it.



7. I play guitar, banjo, dulcimer, mandolin, recorder, bodhran, ukelele, harmonica and the bones - none well enough to "take it" when someone asks me to do a solo riff. I rebuilt a Goya classical guitar that I bought for $25 on eBay. I've got at least 3 guitars, two banjos, a dulcimer, mandolin, half dozen harmonicas, two recorders, a set of bones, a bodhran, electronic keyboard and a ukelele lying around the house.



8. I won two of these gold awards at the Worldfest Charleston and Worldfest Houston International film festivals in 1995.



9. I wrote and sold a book about charity golf tournaments. It came out last year.

10. I once shook hands with Dallas Cowboys Coach Tom Landry.

11. I once sat behind a podium where George Bush Sr. was speaking when he was Reagan's VP. I was across the street in a taxicab with a loaded pistol under the seat. I got out of the cab very quickly when I found out my friend had a gun under the seat.

12. I was saved from being run over by a motorboat by angelic intervention. No other way that boat missed us in a 20 foot canoe.

13. I don't have a favorite genre of music - my tastes run to the eclectic. Finding a broadcast radio station that plays music I like is nearly impossible.

14. My best friend and I used to run around East Texas to visit Adventist church services when they were having their regular potluck lunches. We often traveled up to a hundred miles one way in our sabbath clothes on his Harley Davidson 64 hardtail.

15. I'm a certified scuba diver. I once got an "oily" air supply at a tank rental place in the Bahamas and it made me sick. I threw up while 16' underwater, kept my head, cleared the regulator AND never had to surface, though I did have to move away from the reef because I attracted a giant school of small fishes.

16. I read a couple of books a week. I love sea stories like Horatio Hornblower, Captain Blood and Jack Aubrey, military history, action adventure stuff like Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series and hard sci-fi like Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov and Orson Scott Card's Ender series. I collect books I like and reread my library through every couple or three years. I read the Bible daily.

17. I like to bake bread in our bread machine.

18. I'm an amateur photographer, both digital and film. I've got two 35mm cameras, an old Pentax and a Canon AE-1 with long and short lenses and a digital. I work with Photoshop a lot.

19. I published some poetry in college and more than 20 feature stories and a regular column in local newspapers.

20. I collect toy soldiers.

21. I can say the Lord's prayer in perfect High German.

22. I've written a novel with my wife that we're shopping around to publishers.

23. I maintain 5 weblogs and a personal website and work full time as website director for Virtual-Village.org.

24. I'm a professional grant writer and nonprofit consultant. I've helped start 5 new nonprofit and educational organizations from the ground up.

25. I taught school for 5 years, was boy's dean at a boarding academy in Mississipi where I worked in a sawmill and milked cows, my wife and I owned and operated a day care center for 7 years and for the past 8 years I have taught Primary Sabbath School to 6-10 year-olds.

Tom King

Old Dogs and Alpha Males

I love beagles. We had one for 13 years. Sweetest animal ever. Beagles are pack dogs and if they think you are in the pack, they are devoted to you. As far as Suzy was concerned, I was the alpha male in the pack. She was the only creature in my particular pack, however, that saw things quite that way. It's probably why I was so fond of her.
She always met me at the fence with a big old goofy grin on her face. It was nice to always have one living being in the house that was glad to see me. The whole family took it hard when she died, me probably most of all. I held her head in my hands as she died and wept.

The day she died I lost my alpha male status!!!

When I was a kid we had an ugly little mutt named Pudgy that was definitely of the lone wolf persuasion. She pumped out puppies like a factory and loved to start fights among the packs of male dogs that roamed the neighborhood. She had no loyalties to anyone except a temporary one to whoever brought out her food bowl.

With Pudgy, I was always having to work to win her respect. The day she died, I was with her too. I cried then. Not for the alpha male status I lost, but for the alpha male status I never had with her.

Finally, there was Shags, an ugly brown mix between a poodle and a duckbill platypus. This dog had dreadlocks. A neighbor once asked me if I was ever going to pick up that pile of old rags out of the yard - it was Shags in his favorite sleeping place. Shags wasn't the alpha male either. Pudgy wouldn't give him the time of day. When he finally died of old age, I sat with him all day long as he drifted away and cried my eyes out. Neither of us were alpha males, but Shags was the only dog that ever was able to share that with me.

I'm just sayin'

Tom

One More Year to Go.....

Yesterday was my birthday, the last one before I become eligible for the senior citizen discounts at all the stores and theaters in town. Last week I took my sweetie (who is older than me by 3 months) to Taco Bueno for lunch. The youngster behind the counter gave us the senior citizen discounts without even checking my ID. He said he figured Sheila wasn't eligible yet, but he was pretty sure I was eligible enough for the both of us.

As that famous philosopher Indiana Jones once said, "It's not the age, it's the mileage!"

In a way, I'm looking forward to the special treatment I'll get for being "hoary with age". How cool is it that they'll knock a few bucks off my lunch just because I outlived my old man by a couple of years.

Of course, Dad didn't die of natural causes. A lot of the men in the King ancestry died hard and young. Great Great grandpa Thomas Archibald King got kicked in the head by a mule and died at age 49. Great Grandpa Joe Henry King pined away in a sanitarium scarcely a year after Great Grandma Doney died suddenly. He was 51. Grandpa Thomas Adolph King was 79 and he died of heart failure- the first male King in 80 years to die of natural causes. My dad, Adolph Wilmot King died at 52 of a shotgun blast at close range delivered by my step mother. My brother died at 16 of a shotgun blast at close range delivered by a friend who claimed it was an accident. So far, I'm running second in the longevity race.

I plan to live to be ancient and decrepit, but I'm told I need to lose about 60 or 70 pounds if I want to do that. I'm going to take a shot at it again. I lost 40 pounds last time I got serious. I'm going to eat only two meals a day and do a lot of walking to see if I can pull it off. This time I think I'll do it a little more slowly so I can keep it off.

I do have some good genes on other sides of my family. Grandpa Bell lived well into his 90's. My grandmothers both lived into their 90's. My grandmother King's dad lived into his 90's. There were a lot of really old folks in my family, so I figure I've got a fighting chance of living till Jesus shows up, especially if we elect any one of the three candidates we've got running for president of the U.S..

I just want to get my bunker built before it gets too rough. I'm calling it an "Earth House", but it's going to be a bunker complete with a moonshine still for fuel, a windmill and a generator, a serious garden and enough musical instruments to entertain myself when the TV goes off the air and that little target deal with the Indian comes on the TV screen to tell me I can find out what's going on by tuning to something called the Emergency Broadcast System.

I'm just going to wait on the porch and duck inside when the bright flashes start going off over toward Shreveport and Dallas.

I'll probably bring in the cat, but not if she's going to keep clawing up the furniture....

It's late. I'm tired and I'm job hunting. I should think about what I'm writing before I start typing.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom

New Happy Birthday Song

The issue of copyright infringement and the payment of royalties for "The Happy Birthday to You Song" has gotten ridiculous!! You know the song I mean. We all grew up singing it to each other on our birthdays. We've all sang, "You look like a monkey and you smell like one too!"

But I won't put any of the actual lyrics here since I can't afford the royalty payments and this could be considered use of the song for profit making if my readership ever gets large enough to support advertising. The movie The Corporation claimed that Warner/Chappell, the copyright holders charge up to US$10,000 for the song to appear in a film. The Walt Disney Company paid the copyright holder US $5,000 to use the song in the birthday scene of the defunct Epcot attraction Horizons. In a 1987 documentary about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eyes on the Prize, there was a scene in which Dr. King was feeling discouraged. In the scene, at a birthday party for him, there was a significant beginning of his discouragement lifting. The film was not able to be released when the filmmaker could not afford the $10,000 it would cost to include the sequence that included the "Happy Birthday to You" song. (cited in Wikipedia's article on the song)

The furor of copyrights has gotten ridiculous in some quarters. So, I propose we create a new birthday song. Now is the perfect opportunity for someone to make up a new Birthday Song to replace the old one.

So, today, I decided to write a new birthday song and promote it to replace the old copyrighted one. My Sweet Baboo helped me come up with this rather pretty one in the car coming home from Christmas shopping tonight. She's got a good ear for composition and we both contributed ideas.

I'd love to put the greedy Happy Birthday song hijackers out of business and send a message to ASCAP, BMA and RIAA that we're "Mad as an old wet hen and we're not going to take it anymore!"

So, here is Tom & Sheila King's "New Happy Birthday Song"

The Birthday Song

Lyrics by Tom & Sheila King

Tune by Alexander Hume - 1850

(a setting of Robert Burns' "Flow Gently Sweet Afton")

Today is your birthday

And we’re all gathered here

To say that we love you

And wish you good cheer.

Rich blessings and joy,

Happy birthday to you.

Happy Birthday dear (insert name here) .

May your dreams all come true.

Copyright 2007 – Public Domain (No one living or dead may charge anyone for the use of this song in any public or private gathering, on any type of recording, film or live broadcast.)

The tune we used is at this link: http://www.contemplator.com/scotland/afton.html

Now if everyone will just pass it on, we can make this song famous and strike a blow for free use of birthday songs (and maybe we can supplant that awful one they do in restaurants now!

Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

America the Inarticulate

Public school teachers face a tremendous challenge. They face, not only unruly kids, but also parents with lawyers on retainer who firmly believe little Beevus can do no wrong.

It takes courage to teach. When faced with an unruly class, you pick out the ringleader (there's always one) and you remove him fast and hard. Then you ask, "Anybody else?" Send as many as necessary to the principal till the class settles. Thank those who stayed out of the fray and thereby helped you do your job and THEN get busy and teach something; something besides this vapid, politically correct treacle we've been spoon feeding our young-uns for the past 30 years. Teach them from the classics. Make them learn hard words. NEVER ACCEPT A WRITING ASSIGNMENT THAT IS INCOHERENT! Make them rewrite it until it makes sense.

It can be done. One of the biggest problems I see in American classrooms is that teachers will accept incoherent writing and give it a passing grade. Kids are not learning how to organize their thoughts and use words so they make sense. If you don't know how to express yourself, how in the world can you be expected to think for yourself.

I see student work that looks like someone poured words out of a dictionary onto a page and the teacher seemed to be grading by how many remotely relevant words they accidentally put into the thing. If we accept gobbledy-gook writing from kids on the assumption that this is the best they can do, then we doom them to a life of ignorance.

If you can't form clear thoughts, you can't think them. Our minds are the sum total of what we put into them and if we let kids dribble vague disjointed bits of rap music, MTV segments, video games and Anime' into their skulls willy nilly and never make them sort out all that junk and make something intelligible out of it, our kids will gradually lose the ability to think. This is frightening. How will they ever understand how to listen to political or religious speech and be able to make a rational decision based on what they hear and read?

What we need are better English teachers. Unfortunately, teachers of English are a disrespected profession and it's no wonder. I asked my granddaughter what a sentence meant that she had written in an essay. She took two or three stabs at it and finally, after I made her lose the $50 words, she was able to do so. But she argued with me that her teacher wouldn't give her a good grade unless she used the big words.

It took me a while to shake that belief, but after working her through three or four essays that made top grades despite not having the bizarrely used big words in them, she realized she could write more like she talked and get better grades. The teacher was shocked. Her papers stood out from the pack because they were actually readable.

When did teachers surrender to mediocrity? When did they decide our kids were stupid and feeble and resolve to accept that standard of behavior? It's a pain to have to ride the little darlings, but somebody better do it or we're going to have nothing left but citizens who wander around with a vacant stare, an I-Pod in their ears and drooling on themselves.

I maintain a web page on another forum called the Banjo Hangout. I've noticed there is a high level of intelligent writing on the BHO. Apparently, people who are articulate are drawn to the banjo as a musical instrument; either that or playing the banjo makes you brighter. I've been to the guitar forums. The level of clarity of thought is not the same. Here, banjo players are bright, funny, articulate and quite fascinating to read.

Perhaps that's the solution. Let's introduce all our kids to the banjo at a very young age. I say we start them in 3rd grade or so - get 'em before they are corrupted.

Let's save America. Bring out the banjos!!!!!!



Just one man's opinion....

Tom King

For Tim

Moonlight streaming across a midnight lake
Stars sprinkled like buttercups on glass
Without taking my eyes away,
I slip the paddle alongside my canoe
And push myself along midst holiness

Look up...
For there is glory in the heavens
Look up...
For there is beauty beyond this earth
For though the mud is where our roots are
The mud cannot be where we remain
For though the water nourishes and fills us
We are not fish nor creeping things

Look up...
We spring toward the stars instinctively
For in us we know that mud and water
Is not all that there is
Nor all that can be....

Uncle Tom

Truth & Art: Storytelling & The Value of Repetition

I recently shared a story on my blog with someone who had been there when the actual event transpired. He expressed surprise that some of the details of the story appeared have been invented.

I expressed surprise that I had got as many details correct as I had. Between my faltering memory and a bit of poetic license some have found my stories entertaining. If you are in one of my stories and don’t recognize certain elements of the story, I wouldn’t be entirely surprised. As Mark Twain said, "When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, & soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it."

As I grow older, I live with rosy memories of things as I wish they had been. I used to could tell which memories were fact and which were, in fact, fiction, but if you tell a story incorrectly enough times, in an effort to be funny, witty or erudite, you soon forget what originally happened in the story. All really good literature and powerful biography is based on this principle. If you tell a story well and repeat it frequently, people who actually witnessed the event soon come to doubt but what the story was as you originally told it.

The story of "George Washington and the Cherry Tree" is an excellent example. It was repeated so many times over the years that soon practically everyone believed the story to be true though it might well have been made up - an early American myth. Then, historians, in a bid to excite public interest in their latest books, all began to tell everyone incessantly that the cherry tree story was, in fact, not true at all. With repeated repetition, soon everyone believed that the cherry tree story was made up and not true at all, even though it may very well have been a true story despite what the historians say. There were cherry trees at Mt. Vernon and George actually did chop some down as a kid.

So take your pick. Unless you can communicate with the late president, you'll never know.

Just enjoy the story. A good story is a powerful thing!

Just one man's opinion...

Tom

The Wonderful Wizards of Odd

I remember when personal computers and video games began to become popular. I remember columnists and television and print media pundits issuing alarming predictions about the decline of education, intelligence and western civilization in general. To hear them talk at the time, you'd have expected that the Internet and computers would, by this time, have reduced us all to disembodied brains in jars being pumped full of mindless government propaganda designed to keep us all cooperative and quiet. Turns out, the personal computer and the rise of the Internet has probably done more to promote human creativity, individuality and literacy than any tool yet invented. 

Don't believe me, google something you are interested in - anything at all. I told my kids that once and Micah, the smart alec child, bet me I couldn't find anything about "navel lint". In 5 minutes, I'd found 3 websites dedicated to the subject - complete with pictures of their own navels and embedded lint, contributed by viewers of the site. It's true, like television, you can find tons of garbage. Google recently listed "Paris Hilton" among the most googled words of the week. I'm not really surprised. It only proves we have a huge segment of the population that gets a vicarious thrill from peeking at the lives of shallow spoiled rich kids. It's the soap opera crowd and, sadly, there are always lots of us who want nothing deeper than that for entertainment. 

You can find plenty of pornography and illiteracy and stupidity on the net too - if that's what your hunting for. The good news is that a person with any sort of brains at all can find plenty of really good stuff with which to occupy his or her mind. Not only that, but bright or really determined people can create their own websites, contribute to encyclopedias from their own peculiar areas of expertise and become columnists and pundits in their own right. Ninety year olds can become rock singers and popular video-journalists almost overnight. Bloggers had their own booth at the political conventions last time - right alongside the network journalists. The mainstream media finds itself becoming more and more marginalized as the blogger nation grows. The music industry is losing it's hold on the musical tastes of America as we can download songs we like instead of buying expensive albums that only have maybe one track we want. Virtual unknowns can set up their own websites, build an audience, record, market and sell their music, movies or art entirely outside the mainstream. 

That's refreshing. It lets those that leftists refer to as "the people" enjoy a level of freedom that is unheard of the history of the world. Those who believe that a wealthy or privileged elite should have the power to tell ordinary people how to live, what to believe and how to spend their money are FRANTIC!!! The virtual world of the Internet is expanding rapidly and the fastest growing segment is outside the control of the traditional arbiters of public taste. We increasingly demand substance over style. When CBS canceled Jericho, fans set up a howl. There's even talk of running the show over the Internet at 99 cents a download to subscribers. The fact that we can talk about marketing a television show outside the networks entirely or on any one of 100 cable channels tells you something about how the world is changing. The big networks aren't so big any more. They fight for an increasingly smaller portion of the biggest segment of the audience pie - mostly, it seems, the "reality" television junkies. Meanwhile, the intelligent and individualistic segment of the public is drawn to other places for their entertainment and they are willing to buy what they want instead of wading through drek. I love folk music and weird songs. 

I found a website belonging to Joe Bethancourt, a 60 year old native of Arizona who does a version of "Benson, Arizona", the theme from John Carpenter's odd comedy space opera, "Dark Star". I love that song and right away found a copy on the Internet. Do you know how long I'd have had to look to find that song just 20 years ago? I made a CD that has songs I like to listen to when I'm walking:
1. Benson, Arizona,
2. Hallelujah - 2 versions (Cale & Buckley)
3. Mad World (Jules)
4. Faith of the Heart (Russel Watson)
5. I'm my Own Grandpa (Lonso & Oscar)
6. That's How the Yodel Was Born (Riders in the Sky)
7. Sail Away - Enya
8. As Time Goes By - Sinatra
9. Superman Song - Crash Test Dummies
10. If I Had a Boat - Lyle Lovett)
11. Pass Me By - (Theme from "Father Goose")
12. Grow Old Along With Me - John Lennon
13. Rainbow Connection - Kermit the Frog
14. Waltz Across Texas - Earnest Tubb
15. Waltzing With Bears - ?
16. Over the Rainbow (Izzy K - with ukelele)
17. Don't Fence Me In (Bing & the Andrews Sisters)
18. When I'm 64 - Beatles
19. Gilligan's Island Theme
20 Hobo's Lullaby - Arlo Guthrie
21. I Will - Alison Kraus
22. When I was a Dinosaur - Trout Fishing in America
23. Cover of the Rolling Stone - Dr. Hook
24. Mad Dogs & Englishmen - Noel Coward
25. Ape Man
26. All of Me - Sinatra
27. Sleepytime Cartoon - Trout Fishing in America

Weird selection, huh, and all available on the internet from 11 cents to 50 cents apiece. How cool is that? And I watched a Joe Bethencourt concert of selected songs for an hour for free on You-Tube. How utterly cool is that. I read the news on 10 right wing and 1 leftist blog and cruised a new music site for a folk musician named Josh Woodard who lets you download his music for free - how cool is that? He's pretty good too. I think I'm going to be a fan. As a kid who used to read encyclopedias for fun, all of this is like having a gigantic library at my fingertips. I can download the classics for free - even audio book versions..... Now that's what I call THE PEOPLE'S ENTERTAINMENT. 

You want to find out what entertainment is like when the elite are in charge, just check out North Korean television. If you don't like stories about how heroic Kim Jong Il is, you might just want to reconsider moving to that little worker's paradise. So when they start talking about reining in the Internet or "fairness" rules, WATCH OUT!!! They're going to mess up things sure as shootin'. In the meantime, I'm just tickled that all those wonderful oddballs, kooks and geniuses have a place to display their wares. It's like an informational farmers market and I think it's the healthiest thing to happen to this world in a long time.

Just one man's opinion...
Tom

Why Am I Blogging?

I’m starting this weblog to have a place to put all the stuff that rattles around in my head (and maybe yours too). It’s unlikely very many people will see this, but if you’re here, welcome. I’ll try to keep it short, but there’s no guarantee of that. My wife says I talk too much and nobody really wants to hear it. Since I have to talk or I will explode, this weblog provides me a less messy alternative to boring my co-workers or spontaneous combustion. If you’d like to respond to one of my ramblings, just drop me an e-mail and I’ll add your reply to this blog. I look forward to hearing from you.

Brief Bio:
I’m a native Texan. I’ve spent my 30-year career working as a teacher, counselor, fund-raiser, grant-writer and administrator in nonprofit human services working with children, youth, seniors, people with disabilities and homeless persons. I’m a member of the Texas DOT Public Transportation Advisory Committee and have been an advocate for improved public transit for seniors, people with disabilities and low-income families in rural and small town Texas for the past 5 years. I’m a conservative politically. Ronald Reagan was my favorite president. Camelot was my favorite movie. C.S. Forester’s Hornblower novels are my favorite books. My favorite TV series is Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek Enterprise. I play folk guitar, long-necked banjo and harmonica. I’m a Seventh day Adventist Christian. I’m on two nonprofit boards, am vice-president of the Tyler Homeless Coalition and work as a volunteer web-raiser for East Texas Virtual Village. I’m a published writer, poet and author of “The Charity Golf Tournament: A Survivor’s Notebook”. I’m married (31 years and counting) to Sheila Keen, a tall pretty Louisiana girl and together we have 3 children and three grandchildren. I’m a sailor, canoer and dabble in amateur astronomy.

Tom King
(c) 2005