For LifeLessons’ Photo Prompt

So Judy/Remi, over at Lifelessons, asked us to post the most recent photo we’ve snapped. I am embarrassed to report that I have been looking for an excuse to expose my latest self-exposure, so here ’tis. Some of you may know that I go by a few names other than (OKC)ForgottenMan. One of those monikers is Duck/Duckie/Dux. Judy posted a blog a couple days ago titled Duck and Cover. When I saw that title I just KNEW she had come up with an extraordinarily clever name for my new selfie. But, nope. Still, I steal that title for this photo. So, without further ado:

A Hamburger for Breakfast: Fishing With My Father (Part 1 of 2)

Welp, Remi/Judy over at LifeLessons just posted about murdering a cricket (Oh, yes, I nudged her! (To blog it, not to the insecticide itself.)), and that stirred my recollections of going fishing with Dad when I was a kid, since we often murdered live crickets for bait. (Update: her post was days weeks ago. I started writing this post that night, but it has taken me this long to finish. I should not try writing a novel. I’m 68. I’d never finish.)

So, on to my story:

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Dad and I were apparently very close when I was a baby, based on the photos my mom took. But the disengagement came later, when I was about three, when Mom took control. Control.

Jimmy Cliff – Many Rivers to Cross

I was so privileged to see and hear Jimmy Cliff at the New Orleans Jazz Fest in 1980. I lived down there then, and was trying to assimilate. I recall that he did not perform this song in his set, and I was so disappointed. Oh how I wish I’d been at this performance!

Music defines me. Songs like this say more about who I am than I can say about myself.

Beau Talks About Climate Change

If you follow me here, you know I love Beau of the Fifth Column. Well, not always, but often. I don’t post many of his videos here, but I do when they resonate with me. This one does. Spoiler?: If you’re not familiar with Beau, and you love AOC as much as I do, you may be kinda annoyed at his tone in the first 2 minutes and 22 seconds or so. I beg you to keep watching.

A Burger Tip I Never Imagined Blogging

Remi/Judy over at LifeLessons insists that I repost this response I made on another site, a local chat board based on the shores of Lake Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico, where she makes her home. Here ’tis:

I’d never shared this before, but I do two things that I’ve never seen/read in making burgers at home.

First, growing up I learned that sometimes it helps to put dried bread crumbs in the mix to help hold in moisture, and sometimes to keep the leaner ground from falling apart while cooking. I’ve found that using stovetop stuffing mix works wonders instead. (I prefer Pepperidge Farm Herb Seasoned Chicken flavor myself.) It works well for me.

The Sharecroppers Strike of 1939, Missouri Bootheel

On January 10, 1939, my dad turned 18 years old. Born and raised in a slightly patrician white business family in Arkansas, he came to the Missouri bootheel (that little hangy-down uvula-like part of the southeast corner of my state) two years earlier when his father (my grandfather – Big Dad) secured a deal to rent and farm a half section (320 acres) of rich Mississippi River ancient alluvial dirt, which Big Dad would plant fence-row to fence-row in cotton.

Dad had helped out on the plantations his dad worked on in Arkansas. He rode a horse he loved as he roved through the fields checking out the operation. I don’t know how the white workers addressed him, but the black workers called him “Mr. Doug”. He was only 14 or 15 years old. He told me that a few times in his later years, and it always seemed to me that it was a confession of sin, of regret, of guilt. But he never took it further. Yes, he grew up racist, as did my mom. (You know how little kids tend to put things in their mouths (“choking hazard”!) ? When I would pop a coin into my mouth, Mom would say “Take that out! A ~n-word~ might have touched that!”)

Beau Again! “Let me break this down into crayons…”

I love when Beau gets justifiably riled up. His responses are so focused, fact intense. Just spot-on. (In an earlier video (below) he said “…no matter how much the right wants to squelch free speech, we have to defend it as much as we can….” Apparently that spawned LOTS of indignant comments from said right-wingnuts who felt his comment was, um, unjust. Hence this video in response:

HERE is his earlier video which sparked the one above.