Life Activities & Ideas

I was in my mother’s living room telling about a short introduction I would give on Saturday to a group of veterans. I suddenly realized I had never written an article about my Navy service. That is a heck of an omission after writing almost 200 articles, many of them about my life. It’s time…

For many years I have had back pain which limited my ability to do a lot of physical work without taking pain relievers. Over time the pain got worse, but I could still carry 50-pound bags of chicken feed, which was the measuring stick of my strength and ability to tolerate the pain. One Sunday,…

In July, my brother and I started a project to capture some of the sun’s energy for use in helping power my household electrical devices. We have so many such devices that our bills were over $500.00 each of the summer months from our electricity supplier. Time to ask the sun for help. Fortunately, the…

By today’s standards, I grew up with multiple possibilities of being maimed, sickened, or dying waiting around every corner. It is a wonder any kid I knew grew into adulthood. Most children in my day had experienced actually having diseases like mumps, measles, chickenpox, impetigo, colds, and earaches and recovered from them well after a…

Beer! It all started with beer. Specifically, Coors Banquet in cans. In the early 1960s, we opened them with a “church key,” a hand opener that punched a triangular hole on one side of the top edge, then the opposite edge for glug-free drinking or for pouring. Most youngsters took an instant dislike to the…

I’m one of those rare people who actually like all snakes – every kind, even the poisonous ones. I don’t invade their space, but do observe them. I give a wide berth to wasps, hornets, skunks, and other creatures that oppose my getting up close and personal. In my early teens, I had a pet…

To “go whole hog” is a common expression meaning “to go the entire way” or “to the greatest extent” as far as something particular is concerned. Its origins, however, referred to eating and using the entirety of a slaughtered pig. As my dad used to say, “Use every part but the squeal.” Most people don’t…

Many folks up in arms about the human contribution to climate change have long held the opinion that a cow’s farting is a big, if not major, contributor to greenhouse gases. It’s been claimed the carbon footprint of a cow is as bad as an automobile or at least a lawn mower. I suspect there…