GOOD NIGHT VOLTERRA

My last night in Volterra, the moon is not quite full, but it's close enough. 

I need to go for a walk around this olive farm. I have been trying to find time to do this since I've been here. We have finished dinner, Gabreal was kind enough to take my laundry off the clothes line after the rain and hang my clothes up inside, then during dinner brought them out to me all nearly folded and ready to go. I slipped him 10 Euro which he promptly refused until I begged then insisted he accept. 

Bag and backpack all packed and thoughts of the next adventure in Monarola, Cinque Terre in the back of my mind. 

In the front of my mind is the here and now. Here is Pondere San Lorenzo Agriturismo, now is 5/23/13, 22:00 hours. 

Until recently I thought Tuscany was just a town in Italy. 

Instead I found it was a region made up of many towns in an incredibly bella landscape of rolling hills and mountainsides painted with olive groves, vineyards, herds of sheep and ancient towns.

Volterra has become our home for these last 4 days, well on the outskirts of Volterra, close enough to walk to. And close enough to hear the drumbeats and the bell towers in among the dogs barking and the breeze blowing through the olive trees this night.

 Sitting here on the kilometer long steep drive that connect a few houses to the main road. 

I just needed to soak some more of the Tuscany mountain view in before I retired for the night. 

I could make out the mountains dotted with lights from a few scattered houses and Agraturismo's and the night sky behind them. 

Off in the distance just above the mountains a light show was going on, cloud to cloud lightning, or as we used to call it back home "heat lightning". Not much heat here though. 

Been pretty cold "frado!" the last few days. But it's the warmth of the people that will be the memory that I take back home with me.

That is after 4 days in Cinque Terre and 6 days in Rome. 

But for now I have my rear end firmly planted on this narrow lane and I know that the camera on my IPhone nor the camera in my pocket cannot capture this moment. Only the camera in my mind has even a prayer of taking this all in and replaying it somewhere sometime when I will need a few minutes of the pleasure I'm feeling right now. 

Tomorrow morning I will wake early and see the dawn shining through the cracks of the door shutters.

I will have plenty of time to make this same walk in the daylight. But I don't know that now. For all I know tonight this is my last chance to take this in so I'm making the most of it now. 

Tomorrow we will leave this wonderful place and there will be hills to climb in Manarola to reach our apartment that hangs precariously over the edge of the sea. 

And I think I will be a little less sad as I was when I had to leave Venice for this place. 

Ciao

WHAT SHE SAID

The day has come and check out little http://ihavearighttospeaktoo.blogspot.com/sisters blog to see our destination!
Maybe in my place Renee will contribute a few posts. She has so many adventures in her past she may take my vent over, at least till she starts her own.
I had some old posts I wanted to regurgitate, like MADE IN VIETNAM and WHEN EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR WRONG and THE LAST CALL, but maybe some new stuff would be better.  Ok see you all next month!
Rumbles

ON WALDEN POND inspired by Renee

A recent acquaintance likened my little getaway down here at the lake to Thoreau's little cabin on Walden's Pond.
That maybe is a stretch, but she made be think of my little shack in a more romantic frame of mine. 
Thoreau had just a touch more room in his little cabin, 10x16 as opposed to my meager 10x12. But did he have a loft as mine does?
My Homes By Kaczynski, shares the same floor plan of the Unibomber's home. 
 
I know Thoreau didn't write with an IPhone as I do now sitting on the steps of my little fishing cabin and I doubt he would have even if he lived during our times. 

Our political views most certainly would not have been shared, though I would hope we could sit on an old hand hewn bench and debate our philosophies over a drink like civilized men. 
We could find common ground when we talked of our love for nature and the peace we find sitting out front of our cabins at night looking to the heavens in awe. 
We definitely would have shared his Abolitionist stand.

I came down here today with the idea of getting a little 
work done before I leave for Italy. Over a year ago I bought a pallet of Brown County stone to build a pathway from the steps of my cabin to the gangplank that leads to the dock. 
I had to halt the project due to a shoulder injury and operation to repair the damage. 
I have been sitting writing and alternating looking at the page of yellow paper on my iPhone and looking up to the stone pathway trying to decide which stone looks like it would fit in next. I just laid this one in, a large one that I carried up from my walk in the woods earlier. 
I could judge that my pallet of stones would not be sufficient to built the walkway and the floor of my outside shower so I have made it a habit when returning from the woods to select a stone from the creek bed and carry it home with me. 
This is my woodland workout and I think my body agrees with this exercise. And I think Thoreau would agree with this slight adjustment of nature. 


I hope my little place of reverie will stay in the family long after I'm gone and my grand kids and some day their kids will put away their IPads or whatever device the wizards of Apple will come up with and come to papaws cabin. 

I like the idea that these children some of who I have not met and will never meet, will walk down this pathway Im building to the dock and jump in the lake for a good old fashion swim. 


 My path ended up taking some unexpected turns, both of them. But I guess it was just supposed to be that way. 

RAINBOWS FROM THE VENT

Walking in the park I shut the iTunes down. Matchbox Twenty got me to the park. Now I want to hear the stream and the birds. 
It's a cool morning but its a beautiful day and I feel happier than I have in a very long time. 
I have just enough time to get my walk in and get home before my conference call with my Edward Jones guy and the retirement people from work. 

Got some other errands to run in preparation for my trip this Thursday and then hit the gym. 
Wow, life is good and I'm trying to get used to this strange feeling, what is this, I don't know how to identify how I feel right now. Contentment ? Serenity ? Relief ?
No I'm not skipping through the park and singing Walking On Sunshine, but if I was oriented that way I probably would be right now. 

I want to write something today for the Vent and I was going to write on Benghazi-gate but Geeez already covered that and IRS-gate in one fantastic post. I can't write it any better so go  read her if you haven't already. 
So the problem is I got nothing to vent! 

My Lord, will I always feel like this? Will I ever be able to produce any rumbles again?
Will I have to change the name of my blog? 
I mean what kind of volcano spews rainbows and unicorns?
This is bad, this is real bad. But I don't feel bad. 
Did you ever see the Star Trek where Kirk got separated into his good self and his evil self and neither one could function without the other. 
The good side was weak and couldn't make the hard decisions required to command a Starship. 
Will that happen to me? Will I not be able to command my Starship? Ok Rumbles From The Vent is not exactly as cool as a Starship. Bad comparison. 
Anyway, Kirks good self realized he needed his evil self to balance out and he found him and gave him a big hug till they melded back into one. 

Now I'm starting to wonder is there an evil me running around loose somewhere. If so, what kind of mischief might he be enjoying? Pulling the wings off of flys? Burning ants with a magnifying glass? Scoring with women of ill repute?
I must go find my evil self. Why should evil me have all the fun? 

TRAVELING ABROAD FOR DUMMIES

Thursday me and some family members will be "traveling  abroad" to Italy.
Traveling abroad, I always wanted to say that. Sounds kinda snooty so I will not overuse that phrase. The thing about traveling abroad is they don't talk the way we do around here. They talk foreign talk over there. The thing is if talk regular American talk to them, you have to talk loud to the foreigners then they can usually understand you.
Now if you go down in the Mexico country which you don't have to traveling abroad to get down there, you go south until you get to a big fence or river and you wait till you see a bunch of Mexico people walking in a group and you just go the opposite way they're going till you are surrounded by foreign talkers.
Now the thing about Mexico talkers you not only have to speak your American talk loudly, you need to put an el before your American word and an O after the word. Let me example you, imagine if you will, your in a Mexico eating place and you want to try the local cwazine.

You can just say "hot tamale" and they will know tamale cause its a Mexico word and they're all hot so you don't need to convert the hot to Mexico speak.

But, and this is a big but! Say after you eat your hot tamale and it has a bad reaction in your nether regions you need to get to a bathroom fast!
Look your Mexico guy right in the eye and say loudly "whereO is the Elshitter!"
You don't need to convert the small America words to Mexico,  just the important big words. The little words is just fluff anyway.
Now when I go traveling abroad to the Italy place you can't use the O or the El.
When you talk Italy talk again you talk loudly to your Italy person and you just add an "a" to the end of your word and it converts it to an Italy word.  Now this is not an "a" like in caaake, it's an "a" like in faaaaart. You see the difference.
Like say you see a pretty Italy lady and you wish to make time with her, you say
"Ia havea mucha Viagra" And she will like you.
You see what I did there? In Italy talk you need to put the "a" after every American  word even the small not important words. Now the Viagra word doesn't need converted. It already has been converted for your convenience.
Ok that's enough for to day as you know I am traveling abroad soon and Ia havea mucha Viagra toa packa.





Sent from my iPhone

WHEN EVERYBODY “KNOWS” YOU ARE WRONG.... but you!

Repost, this was supposed to post while I was in Italy, stupid Google

NASA, the mission: land American astronauts on the moon and return them safely back to Earth before the end of the decade. 
The task would test the ingenuity and determination of some of the best scientific minds on the planet. Led by the most brilliant and accomplished rocket scientist in the world, ex-Nazi and lead engineer of the V1 and V2 rockets that rained hell down on London during WW2, Werner Von Braun. 
The first task of the grandiose vision was to conceptualize the vehicle that would carry the precious cargo of humans and equipment to the moon and back, a mere half a million mile journey. 
There was no frame of reference, no previous mission experience to draw knowledge from. This mission would be blue-skyed by a room full of geniuses. 
One lone reticent scientist stood at the blackboard and diagramed his unorthodox plan for the mission. 
It must have been excruciatingly embarrassing for the normally quiet scientist to have his carefully thought out proposal dismissed and somewhat ridiculed by his peers, but having his idea panned by the great Werner Von Braun must have been an unparalleled humiliation. 

During another era, in another place, a young immigrant inventor faced his own bout with humiliation and rejection. 
His promising start in the new world must have seemed like a dream come true working for the famed Thomas Edison. 
This young unknown inventor had a special understanding of the properties of inductance and electromagnetism. 
His knowledge of coils, transformers and the armatures of motors and generators were ahead of its time. 
Nikola assured Edison that he could vastly improve the efficiencies of his electric motors and generators. 
Edison told him that if he could do that, he would give him $50,000 bucks.

A pretty nice bonus by today's standards, in the late 1800's it would be the equivalent of roughly 1.3 million dollars.  
After Nikola had completed his work, it’s hard to say who was more shocked, Edison when he came to the inescapable conclusion that Nikola had indeed  done what he said he would, or Nikola when Edison told him that he had only been joking about the 50 thousand dollar bonus. 
Edison got his new greatly improved motors and generators and Nikola got a job digging ditches after he stormed out of Edison’s laboratory. 
This would not be Edison's last conflict with Nikola.

The next conflict would evolve into a major pissing contest that would change the dark world forever. 
Nikola would not spend the rest of his career digging ditches. He would team up with George Westinghouse in a competition against Thomas Edison, both sides vying for the same goal of creating a method of delivering electricity to America and eventually the world. 
Westinghouse and Edison shared the same vision of creating the first practical electrical grid, but Nikola and Edison had complete opposite methods in mind as to how to how to go about it. 
Edison would even go on a bizarre and sometimes macabre tour demonstrating the dangers of Nikola's method of power transmission. The Wizard of Menlo Park was attempting to show the world that the uneducated Serbian immigrant was out of his depth. 

The time is now. And I am being told by Obama and his minions, by the Hollywood elitist, by the radical leftist media, by the indoctrinators who call themselves educators and by the crooked union bosses that they “know” I am wrong about my belief in Capitalism, American exceptionalism, Christianity, patriotism, family values, the 2nd Amendment, hell the whole damned Constitution for that matter.  
They all will tell you and me that they “know” we are wrong. 
But we are in good company. 

Thomas Edison, The Wizard Of Menlo Park “knew” that his DC (direct current) was the only practical method of transporting electricity from his power plants, to the world.

He even went on a tour electrocuting dogs, cats and even an elephant with AC current in an attempt to demonstrate the inherent dangers of Nikola Tesla’s AC delivery system.

 
Problem was Edison’s DC requires electrons to make the round trip from the power plant through the grid, to the point of use, then all the way back to the power plant.

That dog just won't hunt. The friction of DC current causes a huge amount of line loss as wasted heat on long runs.

Power plants would have to be built every mile or so and the only way to offer different voltages to a home or business would require multiple lines ran for each different voltage need.
Nikola Tesla was the father AC (alternating current) and with the backing of George Westinghouse set out to show the world who was really right. 
The "War of The Currents" would prove Tesla was right. AC current does not require electrons to make the round trip from power plant, to load and back to power plant.

Tesla’s electrons reverse direction 60 times (60 hz) a second.

This produces transfer of power by means of eletromagnatism, electrons pushing each other back and forth.



AC can be transmitted long distances with manageable line loss and much smaller electrical conductors. It can be transmitted at very high voltages and stepped down or up with transformers to meet the need for the various load requirements of different electrical appliances.
Tesla was right, the Wizard was wrong. 

Werner Von Braun “knew” his idea of building a single massive spacecraft to fly from the Earth to the moon, land on the moon, take off from the moon and land back here on Earth was the correct method to achieve President Kennedy's challenge.

John Houbolt the lone voice in the wilderness did not back down from his idea

of multiple task specific vehicles to achieve that same goal.
The LOR (lunar orbit rendezvous) worry expressed by Von Braun turned out to be a non-issue. Houbolt didn't let Von Braun's stature at NASA sway him from his belief and went over Von Braun's head with his idea. Eventually Von Braun came to realize on his own that Houbolt was correct. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, Von Braun turned to Houbolt and said, "you were right John, we wouldn't be here without you". 

If two geniuses like Edison and Von Braun could be so completely wrong about something that they “knew” was right, how much more likely is it that Obama and his minions are completely wrong about everything they “know” to be true about me?
They are not even close to genius.

DOCTOR NO

IT'S ALIVE !!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Back from the abyss and have been chomping at the bit to write. So much so that I have been boring the hell out of someone with my Rumblings through email one at a time. So now I thought I would get back on here and bore all of you! All nine or ten of you.
Lets see where was I? Oh yeah spewing venom and bitterness from the vent. I deleted the last post As Bad As it Can Get, it has served its purpose. Update, the divorce is final and went as smooth as the maiden voyage of the Titanic. We have no more entanglements or reason to ever have any more contact and that's the way I want it.
On a positive note, I am leaving for Italy on Thursday. My final checkmark to mark the end of this saga of my life. This divorce like the last had to be chopped up into smaller pieces or tasks so as not to overload my circuits and cause me to go postal.
I mentally checked them off one at a time. The last checkmark is to reward myself for surviving this divorce from hell without the use of a hit man.
The X did everything she could to make this divorce as difficult and painful and hateful as she possibly could. I will try to ween myself off the drug of bitterness in my newer posts, this road I have traveled these last 8 months have been paved with angst so bear (is it bear or bare, I forgot, I looked it up once) bare bear with me and I promise that I will emerge my happy go lucky self once again. My outlook is really great! Through a series of misfortunes and serendipity I was able to retire while I'm still young enough to enjoy my waning years.In the last 8 months I have also improved my health enough so that I may live long enough to piss some x wives off!
While recovering from the accidents and all the operations I had gained a lot of weight. In 8 months I have lost 55 lbs, I keep reaching my goal weight only to set the bar lower and lower. I haven't been this thin in many decades. I feel great though I will always have to deal with problems from the wreck. I still get blurred and double vision when I look too far right or left, when I take my walks or stand too long my back kills me. I am restricted to a 20 lbs maximum overhead lift and still have occasional bouts of dizziness after a workout.

The back issue is the most troubling because it was never addressed after the wreck. The surgeon who did my cervical spinal fusion on two levels assured my that the back problem was reactive to the two ruptured discs in my neck. He said once the neck was repaired it would take care of the back issue as well.
After months of rehab for the neck and rotator cuff surgeries my back still gave me much grief. I remember my last checkup with, I'll call him Doctor No, because I kept asking him to MRI my mid back and he kept telling me No!Anyway I went to see Doctor No one last time and I told him my back was still giving me hell. Guess what he said.
"Well your back problem doesn't have anything to do with you neck" ??!!???
Huh? I had signed a document giving this hack permission to strap me down to a table, administer a date rape drug, slash the front of my throat wide open like Jack The Ripper, slide my esophagus over, take a set of Craftsman looking tools and grind and cut and gouge out 2 little worn out shock absorbers, jam two pieces of some dead guys, or gals bones in the gaping sections of neck vertebrae, run a Black and Decker cordless drill microns from my spinal cord and fuse 3 vertebrae together with a Titanium plate and now he tells me that my neck repair has nothing to do with my back problem?!?!
Damn that was one long sentence huh? But you get my point right? This guy told me for months that if I allowed him to earn 40 grand my neck and back would be good as, not new but not in agony.You know what I told him? Yeah you guessed it, I didn't say a damn thing, I just walked out of his office, my brain reeling. I should have dropped his ass, or at least told him what a quack and liar he was. Instead I slinked out trying to wrap my brain around what just occurred. I should have gotten clued in the first post-op visit when he had a side view and front view X-ray taken. When he pulled up the front view, I looked at it and the damn titanium plate holding my neck bones together was crooked as hell!He saw it too and quickly got it off the computer screen to show the side view. Post-op visits after that only had side view X-rays taken.
Hmmm, what do you think? Something's amiss? Months later I wanted to take it up with him and demand answers.Fast forward, to last October, I'm living with Mikey at the shelter, Mikes Halfway House For Battered Xhusbands lol, we are taking care of our cousin who is slowly dying in the bedroom next to where I sleep, or at least try to sleep.I am sleeping on the floor of Mikes computer room on a mattress that is shoved half way under a computer desk. I'm laying there one night still in disbelief of the turn my life has taken, still hurting from the betrayal by someone I thought I knew.My phone makes the you have a message ding. I pick it up and see its from Doc Todd. Doc is a personal friend and also my doctor. The message from Doc read "Doctor No axed himself. Wow. Stay strong."
I laid there in my little dormer bed trying to adjust the focal point of my IPhone. Surely I misread this, no glasses handy I read it over and over trying to see a different message.
No I would not get the satisfaction of grilling Doctor No.Seems I was not the only other human on the planet in divorce hell.There was at least one other person in the world going through his own personnel hell. A spinal surgeon going through the same thing I was couldn't see past the Petition For Dissolution Of Marriage order, the trips to the court, the endless visits to the lawyers office, the endless forms to fill out, the possessions to list and all the small details that that lawyers dwell on as Don Henley sings of in End Of Innocence. Doctor No will never see what I'm seeing now. I can see that I am so much better off without this person in my life. This person did me a huge favor. If Doctor No would have toughed it out just a little longer, long enough to emerge from the haunted woods where lions and tigers and bears lurked, oh my!Lightweight !Hell I'm an old pro at this stuff, lawyers come to me and ask for advise.
Italy is just the beginning, Key West is waiting and so is my dive gear, hiking Yellowstone is on the horizon. Flying lessons and someday my pilots license, something I've always wanted to do.I still think about Doctor No, the guy who had his scalpel a whisper away from my spinal cord, the man who couldn't see past an ugly tomorrow, the guy who put a gun against his head a blew apart a million dollar brain.When I pass through this life I'm gonna look up Doctor No, I want to ask him if he still thinks she was worth it. Then I'm gonna ask him why my damn back still hurts!