YouTube - geriatric1927's Channel

YouTube
- geriatric1927's Channel

I have a subscription to this gentlemen's video blog. I find it kind of like having an elderly grandfather talking about his life like my Papaw. Oddly enough looking at who subscribes to his You Tube list it appears a lot are young people. I have been reading a book based upon The Gazette the newsletter of the Nero Wolfe society who are like the Baker Street Irregulars for Sherlock Holmes last night between mouse trap clangs. We are up to over 22 deer mice captured in live traps and put back outside. Hopefully they are not repeat customers. I hope they are soon to have the population slow down so we can sleep or stop walking around checking traps. We have bait in a 5 gallon bucket with slick sides and a stick route to have them fall in to see if this will finally get the worst over for these noturnal mice. It makes you think that the ice storm lowered the predators and the prey are exploding. If we don't have owls, hawks, and coyotes this is what happens. There are only so many a cat can eat. With as many rescue cats we have, and as many that come on our front porch, it is rather amazing that there are this many in our house. I did find talking to some people at check outs and seeing how many traps disappeared that we are not alone with sudden visitors as spring has come. Have a good day.

YouTube - Tai Chi Sword Form 32 Yang Taiji Jian

YouTube
- Tai Chi Sword Form 32 Yang Taiji Jian

Tai Chi also has sword forms that are unique to each family of Tai Chi. This is one example on You Tube. It is not uncommon to have a student use a wooden sword. There are actually forms that use spears, and other weapons that go back to martial art history. The slow form I am learning still is linked to breath control and stress removal.

Deer mouse | Peromyscus maniculatus facts

Deer mouse | Peromyscus maniculatus facts

This is the mouse that ran over Diana's bare foot last night in the bedroom on its way to the kitchen after I spotted it first in the den. This is the third deer mouse in three nights we have seen and the first two were moved across the street on Mike's farm so it has a chance. Diana thought they were cuter in the trap than when running over her bare foot. Our horse had her feet trimmed so a sign of spring is in a country home the deer mice wanting to visit and the horse getting a pedicure.

Captain Phil � mikeroweWORKS

Captain Phil � mikeroweWORKS

I like Mike Rowe and his narrations on Discovery channels and after years of following Captain Phil on The Deadliest Catch show, losing him was a little like losing a friend you know down the street. I always admire good writing and this captures the feeling of many who watched the show and got to appreciate the good Captain. May we all love life and cherish our friends.

Everyday Tai Chi - Tai Chi exercises for everyone, any time, any place

Everyday Tai Chi - Tai Chi exercises for everyone, any time, any place

I took my MCC class on Tai Chi with snow outside again last night before taking Diana to the Cracker Barrel for supper before the fire place. I ended up with a smaller class working on Snake Creeps down and Golden Cockerel standing on one leg a lot. One nice thing of group meetings is you can fine tune and work on pushing skills. There is nothing as good as having a trained eye be able to watch your movement so you can get feed back. It helps prevent getting sloppy in a movement and even after months of practice I still work on getting better at it. Now its muscle memory. I did read a study once that said to get muscle memory you need about 1000 repetitions so I have a way to go and in a 24 form you end up with lots of variables. Just changing weight on a foot changes center of gravity issues. I am off to Fitness Formula to see about knee rehab for a while. Live long and prosper. Peyton

Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Conrad Dobler, more NFL news - Peter King - SI.com

Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Conrad Dobler, more NFL news - Peter King
- SI.com

Even if you do not follow sports, I like good writing and I find Peter King to be someone I read regularly and look forward to coming out with something new each week. I liked his writing so much I bought his book off Amazon.com. I can recommend him to anyone who likes good writing even when you do not agree with something he says. I think he says things so well you will find you will enjoy his writing. We also lost Dick Francis the jockey and mystery writer who had real talent in two professions and kept writing in his second career longer than some folks work in their first.

Peyton

The Old Corral at b-westerns.com

The Old Corral at b-westerns.com

One of my regular favorite web pages is this one on old cowboy movies and stars. I have the complete Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Hopalong Cassidy DVD collections. As a Saturday morning boy I liked Roy the best, but as I grew older and learned of Gene's support for Ken Maynard and other stars as they aged and got on hard times without telling anyone I appreciated him a great deal. Now I have several mp3's of Gene's singing and the Melody Ranch, Roy Rogers show, and Hoppy radio programs as mp3's. They are quite good and hold up well. When I am at the Fitness Formula on a treadmill, even though they added TV sets, I tend to like to listen to old Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, or Green Hornet or Shadow radio programs. Have a good snowy day and you will find this web page is wonderfully detailed and will answer everything from the names of horses to who made the holsters, but my favorite section is when it covers character actors, henchmen, or the person behind the star in the frame. Many 1940's stars ended up in 1950's TV shows and some even were on 1960's shows still.

Rip Kirby - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rip Kirby - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am reading a book from Amazon.com on Rip Kirby a comics strip from Alex Raymond's artist pen in the beginning from King Features of an early detective. I have a special place inside for this strip because as a young boy when my Papaw went to Manitou from the farm, he would rock away reading me that strip aloud when I visited him, tobacco pipe from Prince Albert tobacco cascading over the Madisonville Messenger, and its one of my early favorite memories of my Papaw. I get my first name from Albert Loily Parkest. Papaw would wear flannel shirts, read time off a pocket watch with a screw off glass front you used to set the hands, use a Case XX pocket knife, and loved to hunt. His farm was on Happy Lane and it was to me, and now the only thing remaining is the well that used to be on the porch, and a tree out front. The rest of the farm is different and now sits not across from a quiet sorghum patch where mules would circle a mill to create molasses, but a speedway that roars and can be heard for miles. When I dream of what you might call my happy place, I dream of Happy Lane days visiting where mules Mike and Sam at 17 hands high were used for farming, and water would freeze at Christmas over night when the grates burned down. When you are a city kid it was an adventure, but they were hardy folks of that generation. Papaw left the farm as an old man to be a nurse to his wife after she was crippled with arthritis in a home Uncle Vance built for them with LP gas heat with lights and that was were he was found two weeks after we buried Daddy, lying in the kitchen with his match in one hand and his pipe in the other and I hope he went so fast he did not know it. Today is my Mom's 93rd birthday and the first without her and I have had them on my mind a lot today. I saved Rip Kirby to read special out of that book to remind me of those memories. The stories hold up well. Oddly enough I was trained in Bioterrorism, homeland security, and such for being on the Environmental Response Team for Kentucky and one of the first articles in 1940's was about bio-warfare agent being stolen by a crook wanting to use it to force his way. He was called the Mangler as a villain, but even so it was ahead of his time. The artist who was a Marine in WWII, prior to service was the developer of Flash Gordon, Ming the Merciless, and Jungle Jim. I actually have mp3's I listen to of the radio programs based on those characters. I am going to put a rose on Mom's grave monument in her memory today even in the snow. Have a safe day out there.

Chemicals in Food Can Make You Fat - The Early Show - CBS News

Chemicals in Food Can Make You Fat - The Early Show - CBS News

This is a very interesting article about side contaminants in food as obesogens or compounds that help get obesity. Some of this in effect has to do with how the body would use a compound to impact hormone and use of nutrients for energy. As an example this would be such things as leaching certain plastics out of a tuna fish can lining separate from the plastic that is in tuna pouches. It also reflects such things as use of dyes in farm raised salmon to mimic the pink color the consumer expects in flesh from healthy salmon. This is similar to the use of saffron in feeds to industrial raised chickens to imitate the color to the skin wives expect to see when buying a chicken for the family. The saffron if left out would have a white skin to the chicken. In effect you get more ingredients in farm raised salmon for marketing reasons to appear to be more healthy than the wild level.

I was sorry to hear Captain Phil Harris had died of a stroke from the Cornelia Marie from the Discover Channel the Deadliest Catch after a close call seen on the show in a previous season. Its a hard dangerous life to be 53 and the skipper of a boat in the Bering Sea to get crabs to the American consumer's table. Its one of the reasons I respect the family farmer so much. I was saddened to hear the Amish and Mennonite communities in Christian County had been under attack by three robbers. To mean that is like killing a Mockingbird since those folks are hard working, generous, peace loving, and would have helped the robbers if they had come asking for aid. Its kind of like stealing from a church. I liked on article in the Kentucky New Era that said the punishment should be to have to work off the costs to those people since the Amish start early, work hard, live outside a lot, and work late at night. In such a life style, an urban thief would not do well I think. It is hard for those folks enough without being preyed on by someone able to work themselves. I have often found every thief is especially mad if they are robbed. I don't know if that is a measure of a feeling it is lack of professional respect as it were, but I have always been surprised by that kind of reaction when catching folks in environmental crimes.

Live long and prosper.

YouTube - Traditional Yang Simplified Tai-Chi 24form JUNKO

YouTube
- Traditional Yang Simplified Tai-Chi 24form JUNKO

I study at Madisonville Community College a different form of Tai Chi that has elements of this style. Tai Chi has many family styles like Chen, Sun, Wu, Yang etc. and some forms go up to 104 and some include weapons like spear and sword. All have emphasis on chi, breathing, centered movement, slow flowing patterns, and have scientific background studies showing aid for balance, fall prevention in the elderly, better lung capacity, blood glucose improvements, and arthritis aid. Since I rehab a torn medial meniscus in my left knee still from an errant hay bale I was taking off a pick up truck for someone else's sake, it has helped me with blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and balance. I am by no means an expert even after months, but I did find it was useful after 4 rounds to feel differently with stress control, and I found it was energizing inside. I have several books, and DVD's now, but I follow only the form I was taught by my professor out of respect and frankly because I think it would detract from what I still learn. In group sessions I still pick up as a person who tends to be analytical on why things work, what leads to the next movement, why is my hand out, where should my eyes go, what periphery should I expand, when do I inhale in the movement, and how to transition smoothly to the next movement in the form. I do see variations among the You Tube folks that do it better than I can in their own form and its kind of neat to see Repulse Monkey done by different styles or Wave Hands Like Clouds. I do see this girl tends to be lower in center of gravity, sometimes seems to push the front leg knee just a little in front of toes where in my style I try hard to never let my knee extend past an invisible line from my big toe to the sky. In my case it may be my knee injury makes me sensitive to it, but I try to always lead with the hip before the knee to reduce stress on it. Dr. Scott Vander Ploeg is our sifu in Tai Chi at MCC in Madisonville Kentucky and I could recommend the class to anyone. It is typically taught at 5 pm on Tuesday's at Glema Mahr Center for the Fine Arts and is well worth it. You also get a DVD with the class to do study at home when not in class. As many times as I view it I still tend to pick up things the more I do the study I missed before, and I find its just simply more fun in a group setting where there is no judgmental folk issues, you go at your own pace trying to not have any pain by over extending, and as you learn you can try to help the beginner around you. Since I have lived a lot lately as an elderly care giver, and visited a lot with new friends I made in patients in multiple nursing home settings, I think Tai Chi done when you are younger has even added benefits as you age. Kentucky has 6 inches of snow in my front yard right now with blackbirds pushing aside the cardinal pair to get to my bird feeders. On a snowy day it is good to be warm inside still with power and to have Tai Chi to warm your inside. I like to spend the time doing things like looking at You Tube forms to see how others study and what the other forms provide. My teacher was taught by a sifu and out of respect for him tries to keep the form the same. I kind of like that aspect of it. I still like to see what other forms are like, how folks do them etc. I also can recommend anything by Dr. Paul Liam you can find on Amazon.com or his books. He is very good on senior Tai Chi benefits as a doctor. I have also been looking at Qiqong or Chi Kung movements that are linked to Tai Chi on things like breathing and movement as a method of stress reduction. In English there are variations on how the word is written from a Chinese character. For example there is something called the dan tien in Chinese medicine that has a lot to do with center of gravity and core use breathing. I like James Shaw's book on Tai Chi for Equestrians because it combines something I get from dressage horse riding lessons from Trinity Stables on how the horse reads how I ride from the core, seat bones, pelvic girdle without me doing a verbal cue. Learning Tai Chi made me a better rider, but riding made me sensitive to balance and core use issues that helps me with Tai Chi. Live long and prosper and have a warm internal core today in the snow. My wind chimes on the front porch are ringing off and I notice the birds are not bothered by the sound since they are used to it.

LOL: The Life of Leo

LOL: The Life of Leo

Leo Laporte is one of my favorite tech stars from the old Tech TV days and I like to listen to his shows on podcasts like Twit TV to keep up with tech developments. He has a great radio voice and is always interesting to listen to on line or on the radio. I recommend him to anyone interested in tech developments.

Sherlock Holmes on the Web: the Sherlockian.Net Holmepage

Sherlock Holmes on the Web: the Sherlockian.Net Holmepage

I have been reading the Handbook at night since I have had this favorite to view for years. There is a depth of scholarship on the Victorian Era that is a good complement to the knowledge of what the Strand reader of the era would have been thinking and known about the era and taken for granted. One of the best things about Sherlock Holmes is the friendship with Watson which is why I think Rathbone and Bruce movies hold up well after all these decades as do the radio programs. I am blessed to work out at the Fitness Formula on the treadmill listening to mp3 of radio programs of Sherlock Holmes from the 1930's to 1940's. It makes for a fast work out and I actually enjoy the commercials for the gleam of history you get of the era. This is a time of WWII with Victory Gardens and Bond Drives and welcome the soldiers home eventually to save your fat to Nigel Bruce asking 16 year old boys to spend the summer helping farmers bring in the crops due to labor shortage due to the war. It was a great generation. I played some for my Mom who could remember Uncle Marlin listening to a crystal radio set on the farm as a boy where you would drive a ground wire outside the window to make it work and listen to static filled Nashville stations and thinks like Fred Allen and Jack Benny whose comedy holds up because it was anything but topical. Most of the humor had Jack as the butt of the joke and it holds up well. Sherlock Holmes has many good series on DVD and one of the latest of all things is listening to a series in Russia using sub titles. The production values are quite high and you can follow the stories like watching a silent movie. I found the boxed set on Amazon and it works well. I am also watching lately Tom Corbett in space DVD since the star Frank Thomas also wrote a series on Sherlock Holmes I discovered written as pastiches that hold up well. I read that Frank Thomas was buried in his Tom Corbett costume and somehow that reminded me of Bela Lugosi and how he was buried with his cape. I was blessed as a student to attend a lecture by Vincent Price at Western as an old man who was so fascinating I wish there had been a series. He was great friends with Peter Lorre and when they went by the casket supposedly Lorre asked should they poke him just in case! Lorre also made a series of radio programs with his distinctive voice and many hold up well even today in the Suspense genre.

NASA’s Next Space Suit & a Look Back at U.S. Space Suits | Decoded Stuff

NASA’s Next Space Suit & a Look Back at U.S. Space Suits | Decoded Stuff

I took my Mom to every Southeast NASA site on vacations as a boy and have a jacket with every Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and Soyuz patch on it. I think Mom was most impressed that the space food ice cream was not cold and how you handled going to the bathroom in a space suit. I was always impressed by how fragile Mercury capsules appeared and how tight the room was for those fellows. Space, the final frontier, was never more true than then.

The Duncan Banner - SLIDESHOW — Winter Storm 2010

The Duncan Banner - <font color=red>SLIDESHOW</font> — Winter Storm 2010

I love my Aunt Alma Adams very much and was glad to hear this storm that hammered her area and forced her to evacuate to a shelter from assisted living at her age is better now. This seems to be the storm that much gentler got to Kentucky. I used to say if I talked to Aunt Alma I knew the weather I would have the next day or so. I was lucky to have Aunt Alma who is a retired school teacher at Duncan in my life and she is a measurement of some of my happiest childhood memories when my Oklahoma relatives came to town. I was lucky enough to tour Tom Mix's museum with my Mom, the Cowboy Hall of Farm, Woolaroc at Bartlesville, Gene Autry as a town, Fort Sills, Anadarko, the prairie dog town near Fort Sills and near the Meers Oklahoma hamburger plate sized restaurant in an old ghost town. I got to tour Henrietta, Ardmore, Duncan, and Lawton on trips to Oklahoma and have nothing but good memories of Oklahoma.

It is good to have good memories with good people like my Aunt Alma who married my dad's brother Buford who worked for Continental Emsco and repaired oil field pumps in the field house. It was thanks to him I had a head start on understanding how to inspect a crude oil field and tank battery in my career in Kentucky Division of Water work. You never know what you learn in your childhood that may pay off later when you work.