YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out my window on Main Street, and I must interrupt this column for an important announcement:
Your Attention Please!
During the period of time while we breathlessly await repairs to the stoplight at the intersection of South Main and Hempstead Streets, the Unofficial Downtown J-Turn Officer has been ordered to cease doling out tickets for J-Turn offenses no matter how flagrant.
That intersection was the second Main Street crossing in Nashville to get a stoplight — the Post Office intersection being busier, therefore first.
The stoplight was actually previously-owned, and our city got it by bargain-hunting. The light was so out-of-date that color lenses on two sides were in the wrong order, and this caused some problems for color-blind drivers.
However, that oldest light is long gone, making way for the newer one which was zapped out of commission by a lightning bolt in a recent storm.
Please note: Just because you will not get a ticket for committing a J-Turn does not mean you should commit that hateful dangerous manuever willy-nilly. It could become a bad habit especially if repairs to the light take a long time.
And even if he is the ‘unofficial’ officer and does not yet have his concealed automatic firearm permit, he could be accurately described as having an itchy trigger finger.
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Someone or something is noticing and listening and remembering everything.
Some time ago I was innocently surfing on YouTube and found ‘Ancient Dances’ with old old old Greek lyre music and some lovely ladies in long gowns doing the same kind of dance that was illustrated on a Greecian Urn.
The same dancers showed up on my Facebook next day. Without my bidding.
Those dancers have gradually changed. Also without my bidding, and some form of dancers are there every day.
First, they evolved into Sufi Dancers and Whirling Dervishes.
Then noble dancers from Caucasus gliding around on tiptoe.
Then street dancers in Thailand.
Then children learning tribal dances in Africa.
Then Native Americans in dance competition at pow-wows. I don’t think their wildly-colorful costumes were authentic.
Then they were twirlers in parades in Central America.
Then Irish tapdancers holding arms stiffly at their sides.
Who am I leaving out?
The Irish dancers became graceful swaying hula ladies from Hawai’i.
They became more vigorous hubba-hubba dancers from Tahiti.
Then fierce Maori dancers doing something called a ‘haka’ in which they grimace and slap themselves and bulge their eyes and shout angrily at opponents. They are flat-out scary.
Some of those New Zealand dancers have obviously been on Louie’s M&M Peanut Diet.
The saucy Tahitian dancers are obviously NOT on that diet.
Next, I suppose, I’ll have boot-scooters and Western swing music.
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DON’T LOOK, ETHEL! On Tuesday of last week an asteroid the size of Aunt Ethel’s living room couch zipped past Earth by about the same number of miles as it is from Nashville to Ft. Worth. If that unnerves you then you won’t be happy to learn that we (us Earthlings) have narrowly missed one that was even closer — about as far as it is from Nashville to Dallas during rush hour.
As we (us Earthlings) have gotten more knowledgeable about Space, and as our observation equipment has gotten better, we have become more aware of such close flybys. These close calls haven’t occurred just recently, I’ll bet. They were surely happening back before Columbus brought smallpox to the New World. Surely even earlier.
I was also alarmed to see an article (Space.com) that the sun was in a decline. WHUPS! The End Times? But, no, the sun is just in the decline of one of its regular phases. Our sun probably still has several billion more years before it goes out, so don’t be alarmed.
The decline of the phase, however, means more sightings of the Northern Lights farther south than usual. Maybe even visible in Mexico for the next few years, the article said.
I’ve only seen the Northern Lights once. It was on a cold November night driving home from a playoff football game in Mineral Springs.
Luckily I had a witness riding with me. “Honest, we were both sober, officer.”
The Northern sky was a beautiful red color. We drove quickly to my house and I got Jane to step outside to share the sight.
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MORE THINGS I LEARNED from opening an email: “The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.”
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HE SAID: “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” Willie Nelson, country music icon
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SHE SAID: “The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.” RIP Jane Goodall, British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
