@Raggedy Ann

Happy for the rain, desert blooming this morning?

Enjoy your get-together!

We finally got the rain we needed, last evening. It was a beautiful sight. In between the squalls that came, we checked the rain gauge to find almost an inch had fallen, so far, in this parched high desert. I'm anxious for the sun to come up so I can see the final result.

Meeting some girlfriends for a play date, today. It should be fun.

Have a beautiful day, folks!

@dkmich
Lake Huron, i've got Fenimore on my mind, who i enjoyed so much as a teen and am partial to the music from the D.J. Lewis film, playing it often. Incidentally much of the film was shot here in NC

Makes me want to wander, put a pack on back and stick out the thumb.

Good that the pipe is up, a metaphor of man vs nature

It's cool with rain showers predicted, hoping not so much, fall is in the air, love it.

Have a great day!

Had rain in northern Michigan too. I could hear Lake Huron roaring last night despite the house being closed up tight. There is a steady stream of rollers coming in on the beach. Turns out our well overflow pipe was placed perfectly for high water. Neighbors will just have to cope when the lake decides to return sand and grow the beach. We came up on third and will be leaving for "down below" on the 17th. I have one more trip up in September. I cannot believe how fast the summer is going.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. God, how I love retirement.

@Arrow

Just read that Mancora is famous for its ceviche, i'd be in heaven. Memories of a restaurant in Soho on the corner of Spring Garden where we frequented because of their marvelous recipe.

In Nice, i recall those large round ceviche-like fish sandwiches you could get from a cart near the beach and a jug of local red wine for about sixty cents.

May your days be sun-drenched and fancy free, our down-under friend!

Hope everyone has a pleasant day.
Getting ready to bug out to the coast. Going for a month to Mancora, Peru.
Gonna make like a surfer dude. I wish I had my "Old Guys Rule" tee shirt. It has a surfboard on it. Walks on the beach and Pacific sunsets for me for awhile. (Pictures at 11...or 8...or whenever the Saturday OT posts)
Going from high altitude and cool to sealevel and hot. We'll see how it goes.

@HenryAWallace
a good c99p bud, he is!

These simple thoughts and comments from our fellow travelers make my mornings rich, always a pleasure!

pickling friendship?

A genius way of saying you went to a brewery with a bud on a Friday night and had too much beer.

Wonderful, just wonderful.

Happy Saturday, caucusers and lurkers!

@enhydra lutris
Glad you enjoyed.

Fall is my favorite, but then, there is winter and skiing and the joy of spring, maybe a little Vivaldi is in order:

Have a marvelous day!

beem cool for about a week and a half now, 50s in the morning, 70s max later on. Obvious signs of fall and how far behind my yard work is - heh.

@riverlover @riverlover
sending hugs, wishing i could heal all pain emotional and physical, makes me want to escape.

Another dose of love to you this morning.

PS: pm me if you desire and i'll give you my number.

Had not seen her for about a month. She drove over and started screaming at me at entry and ragging on me. I will not tolerate that that in my house. She now wants to "take charge". I find that offensive. I would never treat my demented mother so much like a child. So I sent her away. Still sad, but I will not have her running my life. Tears and threats that "You will die!". Drama.

@Mark from Queens

much to digest, big thank you. A get together is a must, somehow, somewhere not in too distant future. Boy how would i enjoy a long stroll through the Village, Soho and dinner in Little Italy.

Emailing my friend, at Row by Row for a copy of "Rebal Souls."

What a great treat. Give regards to B'way.

Been reading a lot of Walt Whitman lately. You've got a bit of him in you, maybe with a psychedelic twist.

Thought you should know about this book about his time in NYC with a group of fellow Bohemians, called "Rebel Souls." Came to it via the author, Justin Martin, who wrote a biography of Frederick Olmsted I thoroughly enjoyed called "Genius Of Place." The writer's a native Kansan who now lives in Kew Gardens, Queens, not too far from here.

Review: ‘Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians’

Located on Broadway just north of Bleecker Street, Pfaff’s was owned by a man named, unsurprisingly, Pfaff. But its guiding light was Henry Clapp, an American wit who had spent time in Paris with the original bohemians (unless you count citizens of the actual kingdom of Bohemia): the down-at-the-heels painters and writers whose stories were to inspire Puccini’s opera “La Bohème.” The small-b term “bohemians,” Martin explains, derived from confusion as to where gypsies — long stereotyped as ne’er-do-wells — originally came from.

Clapp went home eager to found and nurture a salon, and Pfaff was happy to make his basement-level bar available. It was divided into two rooms, one for the salon-within-a-saloon of which Clapp was ringmaster, the other for gay men looking for others like themselves. The most illustrious Pfaff regular moved back and forth between the two sectors. His name was Walt Whitman.

Other denizens included Ward (real name Charles Farrar Browne); Fitz-James O’Brien, remembered today (if at all) for his ghost story “What Was It?”; Fitz Hugh Ludlow, who drew on personal experience to write a book called “The Hasheesh Eater”; and Adah Isaacs Menken, an actress who achieved fame by taking off as many of her clothes as 19th-century morality allowed and who produced her most thrilling effects by capering about in a flesh-colored body stocking.

Martin also wrote a book on the above-mentioned Fitz Hugh Ludlow. Seems like our kind of guy. Find myself with a huge affinity for that mid-to-late 19th century period. Am thinking of putting something together for an OT on Olmsted, who is such a fascinating character whose central core seemed to be that a social reformer, of which his crown jewel of Central Park is a testament.

Spring St, Soho. That surrounding area holds a big spot in my history. Years ago used to rehearse near there, and wound up meeting a very significant person whom I'd marry and divorce. Amazing and intense time of discovery, flowering and bittersweetness.

Like the image of the ceviche sandwich in Nice. Reminds me of finding great, little spots on Italian country roads, where good, fresh food is essential to life. Even the stops on the Autostrade are like 5 star restaurants, and a galaxy far, far away from the trashy dumps of greasy, fast food franchises that litter our highways.

Need to get us all together for a Meetup, somehow.