The frog

a prince in waiting

Thomas Kincaid Chicken

 

Winter 2014 found our chickens hunkered down in their toasty warm coop.

 

Glad winter is over.

 

Now the tulips are in bloom!

Windgate Winery in Indiana County, Pa.

We drove seventy miles to Windgate Winery today. Windgate is located on an unpaved road tucked in the hills of Pennsylvania. It was a gathering of authors, approximately twenty five in attendance. It inspires a person to do such things and meet authors sharing their voice. Everyone we talked to offered suggestions and insights into the craft. The owner of the winery is a lovely and cordial lady. We have attended writer's conferences in the past but this experience offered the market end perspective and struggle. It is my hope that such venues become popular and duplicated. This was their fifth year and if they hold it again next year I will there! Had a ball, if you weren't there you lose.

Windgate Winery
1998 Hemlock Acres Road
Smicksburg, Pa. 16256


Has anyone seen Jim Fisher on facebook?

There will be new adventures posted, in the past Brave Knight lost his way but now he is on the path.

We met Joe F. Stierheim (author)

his blog and books can be viewed at joefstierheim.blogspot.com

we purchased a couple of his books and are finding them good reads,

'A Matter of Time' and 'Jeremy Willikins' Adventures in the Land of Little'

We post reviews on other authors and their works as we read them.

HAVASUPAI at   amazon.com

Mother's Day in America

My wife and I took my mother to where I grew up, for mother's day. We went into an Arby's to get some coffee and I noticed about 15 old men sitting around BS-ing. When we were walking out I said to my wife, I wonder if I went to High School with any of those guys? She looked at me and said, oh my, I saw those old guys and thought 'look at those old coots hanging out drinking coffee,' it didn't don on me that they were your age, you might have known them when you were young, WOW. My mother who has demenia said I was a lot older than her or at least looked it.

Those were my mother's day gems.


It occurs to me that I need to believe in something and what I have observed is that man fails at every turn. So, am I to believe in man?  In my own heart I know my weaknesses and observe my decline, as I watched my father before me so how can I believe in myself?  We are told over and over in our country that only fools and the weak minded believe in or need a God but for me I will accept their label with all the comforts that it has to offer and let the wiser and more knowing accept their darkness.

http://godlywarrior.wordpress.com/

No one ever comments.  The world is speechless.

 

BEWARE THE DRAGONFLY

HAVASUPAI at    amazon.com  

loss

2/11/2013 Little Needy Duck was killed by a hawk this morning, she roamed free and freedom is risky. We are sad.

I've written a flash fiction piece about our "Little Needy"and submitted it for publication.  I will post it here after the publication runs.  I may have lied about the previous post being my last.  There seems to still be interest in this site and I am going to watch the count on my views and determine if I will resume posting.  Thank you for your interest. 

http://godlywarrior.wordpress.com/

Wandering Dan,
 

What sort of man

Was wandering Dan?

Who always made due

With a hole in his shoe,

White in his hair,

Wild eyes in a glare,

Wire basket cart,

Wheels stiff to start,

What sort of man

Was wandering Dan,

When our Uncle Sam

Was lost in Nam?

What did you see

While setting us free?

What sort of man

Was wandering Dan?

We all should wonder

Wicked politicians blunder
While this enemy rose
With class envy it grows

Weak hearts walk by

Wanting not to pry.

Wrapped in his rags

With his collection of bags

What made this man

Wandering Dan?

May I refer you to this, our enemy is relentless, we need your passion

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Construction

                                                ...but then you say "who cares?"
                               Eventually we want to be off the grid and independent.

      We built our castle on a hill.  We were the general contractors and did much of the work ourselves.  We laid all the flooring (porcelain and hardwoods), installed the radiant heat tubing, finished the carpentry work when our sub abandoned us for work closer to his home, laid stone, built the fireplace, did all the landscaping, installed all the stairs, installed all the plumbing and helped my brother inlaw with the wiring. All this was accomplished in 14 months while working full time jobs.  We lived in our camper with a porta-john as our bathroom.  I give great credit to my wife for putting up with it.  The structure of the house is mainly reinforced poured concrete, we hired pumper trucks to pump the concrete up two stories. I was fifty-eight and my wife was forty-eight at the time.  I say all this not to brag, it is said to dispel class envy.  We live in our castle as common folk with a dream.
                                                            
                                                                I read this somewhere
                            "When you're a teen you worry yourself sick over what others think...
                             When you're in your thirties you don't care what others think...
                             When you're in your sixties you realize no one was ever thinking about you..."
                                                      
      Now, I am unemployed and looking for work. Having applied for about sixty jobs has helped me with my insight into the plight of so many. The National parks system has rejected my applications as well as my wife's for summer work stating we do not meet the minimum requirements for a laborer's position. College educated, experienced in manual labor, organised enough to follow through on the construction of our castle but we do not meet the minimum requirements ?  This summer my wife and I are going to visit some of the National parks to meet the people who meet the minimum requirements. Did I mention my wife is a veteran with eight and half years military service and a master's degree to boot. The construction of our blog site shall follow the pattern as the construction of our castle one stone at a time but we will have access to the masterbath in this endeavor. Well, life is good and we are happy. We have no regrets and hope you catch your dream.

     We built this place as a gathering point for Artists, Writers, Musicians and lovers of life...not the elite but for just plain folk.  You will find my paintings scattered amoungst my babblings.

     My brother once told me that when he was in Viet Nam my parents wrote him to tell him they thought I was insane, I have spent my entire life trying to let them be right.  All this may be the proof needed to put it to rest.  (HIPPIES UNITE !)

Mountain Goat

                                                                               Black Hills

Welcome Ukrainians from the Ukraine.

 

The old miner

     The wind had carried me into these hills, with the rumble of thunder beneath me and unlimited power released at the twist of my wrist. Adventure, wild women, rowdy bikers and booze had been on my mind. Now here I was with an eighty something old man, toting buckets of sludge from deep within a hole in the earth. The sludge might offer up our first pay check after a week’s work of adding new timbers to the shoring of the shaft. The tunnel is illuminated by the sun’s light diverted with mirrors, a lesson in low tech. My Heritage Softail sits by the old prospector’s cabin, silent for the week. The final twelve miles into Sturgis had yet to be traversed. The old man is a third generation claimant, originally filed in the eighteen hundreds by his grandfather. Touching history, I felt it, it had caught my imagination. This old man was real, the valley unspoiled by tourists. Our group had stopped to ask if we could camp in his yard.

     The intensity of the sun seemed accentuated at these higher altitudes or maybe it was just the contrast of emerging from the cool, damp mine shaft but never the less its rays were drawing on the exposed flesh of my arms and back. Slowly we descended the gravel path to the creek, two buckets of muck straining at my arms. Placing the buckets at the stream’s edge I scooped sludge into a pan. My boots kicked off, the frigid waters rushed around my ankles, my feet settled into the sandy bottom as I dipped and rotated the pan.  

     "Lordie son, ya move like an old woman!  If'n there were still hostiles about they'd have yer scalp!"

     Looking back over my shoulder I could make out the silhouette of my antagonist against the blazing sun.  The glare behind him blocked details of his eighty five year old frame. His broad shoulders were evident, the suspenders that draped over them weren't. His tattered broad brimmed hat formed a halo that shadowed his grizzled ruddy complexion. Crystal clear blue eyes were watching me from somewhere beneath that rim. They weren’t visible but I knew they were there.

    Across the grassy meadow, the Hills looked Black. The valley hadn't changed in eons; the sound of Custer's buglers mixed with the war cries of Sitting Bull’s warriors still hung in the air, at least so it seemed. The smells, light breeze, intense sun and this old prospector who had actually known men of Custer’s era, it was surreal. Never in a million years could I have planned a time like this, it just happened.

    "Git in the creek boy. Move like ya got ambition."

    "It’s freezing, this water is like ice. My legs are so numb I can't even feel the pebbles that I'm walkin' on."

    "It’s the truth, Boy."

    "What? What'd you say?"

    "It’s the truth. It comes down from the mountain. Look at it, so clear! You can see every rock and pebble in it, ain't it so?"

    "It’s downright painful, Gus."

     "They say it can be. Use it boy, take that pan I throwed ya, put yer muck in it, then dip and swish. That water will take away everythin’ ‘cept what yer lookin' fer. The truth has the same way about it. Ya gotta clear away the muck."

     "My hands ache from the cold."

     "Nobody said it'd be easy. Let the water do its work, be patient son."

     Looking into the pan I see my first glimmer of gold. I hear the old man snicker as he stumbles down the bank to see the glitter for himself. It was about a billionth of an ounce.

     "Sure is pretty son. Ya gotta wash off a lot of muck to find a little bit of gold like that. Ha, ain't that life? What ya just found is priceless boy…priceless."

     "It’s the truth, Gus." I look at the gleam in his ancient eyes, I breathe in the clean air and somehow the pain in my legs subsides.

     "How's them aching legs and hands doin'?"

     "Don't feel a thing." While looking at the old man whose scripture quoting had caused my buddies to avoid their camp site as much as possible, I see that his eyes still hold the sparkle of youth.

     "Well, ya wanna take yer gold and head over to Sturgis? It’s the perfect time to go find yer buddies and raise a little hell. Its yer pay for a week’s worth of work. Them boys are probably raisin’ hell. "

     "Naw, how 'bout I help ya stack some wood, Ol' Man?"

     “It’s up to you, Boy. You worked for about two cents an hour, you know.”

     “Ha, two cents, best two cents I ever made.” There truly was gold in these hills, I had found it.

     Based on a true event.