ANOTHER TORNADO WARNING

 

Two tornado warnings in the past week. In December. Go figure.
As if I didn't already have enough problems to contend with - Mother Nature seems to be uprising against me, too. It's been a strange week.

Yesterday (Friday) I forced myself to make the harrowing excursion to town. I desperately needed supplies. It was a dank, dismal, rainy day with mild temperatures. Christmas shoppers were sparse. A sense of lethargy and  indifference seemed to prevail.

I spent too much money and didn't get half of what I need - but that's a usual occurrence. The worst part is driving home and suddenly remembering the things I forgot to buy. There's no chance in hell that I'll be driving a zillion miles back to town any time soon.

The unending joys of rural life. 

Severe weather and high winds were predicted for Friday night.  At least I was safely back at home with lots of groceries.

My oven still doesn't work. I need to order a new baking element (that's what it's called) from Amazon. It should be easy to fix.
Fortunately, the broiler still works. Yesterday I broiled some thick, boneless pork chops and they were delicious.

The winds really picked up late Friday night - furiously sifting through the trees. There was distant thunder, occasional lightning, and restless packs of wild dogs. Frequent visits from the coyotes never bother me - but for some reason, wild dogs unnerve me.

By midnight the temperature was still only 61 degrees (Fahrenheit) which is eerie, especially in December. I went to bed fairly confident that the impending storms would be minimal. 

Sometime around 4:00 a.m. the weather really got nasty. The wind was shrieking and the flimsy house was shaking. Rain poured in torrents and the lightning was brutally bright.

The tornado warning happened around 4:45 a.m. My only source of weather information comes from my computer. You're on your own in this friggin' rural area.

 I don't generally scare easily, but this storm was horrendous. I just stayed in bed - petrified - watching the lights blink on and off. The wind screamed and the loud, odd noises outside were truly frightening. There was an incredible rushing noise that sounded like the whole forest was being demolished. I kept waiting for the house to be swept away and carried to the Land of OZ.

To make a long story short (which was never my forte) the chaos didn't subside until after dawn. Me and the cats survived and (so far) I've only seen minimal outside damage.

According to weather accounts, the massive tornadic storm swept through four states and traveled over two hundred miles. Damage was extremely extensive and at least fifty people were killed in Kentucky. Entire towns were destroyed.

I'm thankful to have been spared - and my heartfelt sympathy goes out to the thousands of people who were affected by this bizarre monster storm.

 

MAY ROARING

 

May? Roaring??
Roaring like a lion, or perhaps even worse. Torrential rain. Biblical rain. Ark-worthy rain.
Last night and early this morning severe thunderstorms.
I stayed in bed, listening to screaming winds and ark-worthy rain. Listening to house-shaking thunder. Watching lightning explode in blinding flashes outside the window. Lightning so fierce that it expelled a lifetime of sins and instilled a fear of the Almighty.
Then I said "To hell with it" and went to sleep.

Naturally there was a power outage. If I had a dollar for every power outage here in rural Tennessee, I could probably buy a castle in Transylvania.
That's where I want to go. Land of the Magyar vampires.

So how have I been doing?
I'm profoundly depressed, disgusted with absolutely everything. Physically, I feel like I died three weeks ago. Mentally I'm far over the edge.
What edge, you ask? The edge of extinction.

Isn't it amazing that I write so well even when I'm mentally and physically kaput.

Remember last week when the snake was in my house? (read my previous blog post to savor the excitement). I heard noises and crashes in the living room. Well, the nasty serpent knocked some things off of shelves. And he knocked down a row of colored glass bottles that I had on a windowsill (my cats never touch them). Fortunately nothing broke.

Snakes really aren't bad, Jon. They do a lot of good. Snakes are our friends.

Yea, right. Tell that to Adam and Eve.

I'm cute. Even when I'm miserable.

I made a new piano video.
(don't you DARE go away - - you're my captive audience).

My piano rendition of music from the operetta The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar (1870 - 1948). A Hungarian composer.

My original video contained six songs and was way too long, so I cut it down to three.

The month of May always reminds me of The Merry Widow. The very first performance I ever saw of it was in May - - long ago, when I was intensely romantic....and in love. Fond memories.

The Merry Widow is the story of a first love that went awry - and a second chance to rekindle that love many years later.
The music is emotionally appealing and intriguingly beautiful.

My piano arrangement on the video was an impromptu endeavor - performed without any rehearsal - and without much thought.

Almost everything I do is without much thought.
It's scary.

                Cheers, Jon

Video best watched full-screen

RAIN-DRENCHED WEEKEND

First day of Passover.
No, I'm not Jewish - but the Passover season has a special personal meaning for me. No need to elaborate.

Erratic weather. March (much like my life) has been filled with major inconsistencies. Storms and a Tornado Watch last Thursday night.
Friday was sunny, mild, and 70 degrees (Fahrenheit, for those of you in Mozambique).

Today (Saturday) was chilly (in the 50s) and perpetually stormy. Thunder and heavy rain all day. One brief power outage. Thank goodness it was brief. I have dinner in the slow cooker. 

Warm, sunny thoughts of Easter and spring - - mingled with dark, stormy personal worries. My mind is annoyingly contradictory....like the weather.

Photos to ponder

 I noticed yesterday (Friday, the mild day) that some of the trees are beginning to blossom.  That would be wonderful news, but the blossoms in my neck of the woods are ALWAYS killed by late frosts. Happens every year.

 A view from my front porch. Those hills over yonder will be completely obscured once the trees get their leaves. In the summer you'd never know the hills were there.

Kitzee and Bosco yesterday on the back porch, savoring the 70 degree weather.

Kitzee (left) will be sixteen yrs. old this summer. Bosco will be seven in April.

Today my mystical back yard is drenched in fog and rain. A stark contrast from yesterday.

MELANCHOLY AND THUNDER

I retreat deeply within myself when I'm depressed - existing in a satisfying  realm of private, impenetrable melancholy.
I don't want to communicate with anyone other than myself. I don't want interlopers invading my thoughts.

No need for alarmists to be concerned. This melancholic retreat has been a life-long habit. I eventually emerge, unscathed and reasonably intact.
A plausible theory is that my Hungarian Magyar blood and artistic soul are the main culprits.

I've never been uniform nor mainstream. And, strangely enough, I'm extremely glad. 

I've lost count of my problems and maladies  - which are increasing drastically and mercilessly with age. Each year is more complicated than the last, until there comes a point where the web in which I'm enmeshed becomes inescapable.

We all weave are own private webs. Mine is a vastly complex labyrinth of eminent destruction.

I'd be surprised if I'm making sense.
I'm talking to myself, which - if done too frequently - becomes a bad habit.

Last night:
long, sleepless, endlessly humid. No coyotes, but frequent packs of wild dogs - which, to me, are more disconcerting. A few distant gunshots in the woods, then silence.
The silence eventually became alive with restless crickets and rowdy owls.
My suffocating room swarming with insolent mosquitoes. 

Today:
Up extremely early to do some work outside. Sleepless and physically ravaged, I forced myself to dress and venture out. 
Within an exhausting hour, black clouds were quickly accumulating. When I hurried inside it was darker than midnight's shadow. Unbelievably violent claps of thunder shook the house with Herculean force and the rain descended like a Biblical torrent.

My two cats retreated to safer realms. My mid-day meal was much more unpleasant than I initially anticipated.

Why am I writing this? I have nothing interesting or important to say. I have no desire to be entertaining or congenial.

Why do I blog? It's a useless and thankless endeavor.
I'm not in the mood to reply to comments......or to comment on other blogs.
But this mood will eventually pass.
Eventually.

I value those few people who still remain and put up with me. 
The number is dwindling quickly.

As for those who flee.....alas, it's their loss....

WILD NIGHT

Easter went on a rampage in the southern states. Devastating tornadic weather swept through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, parts of Tennessee.

The news media hardly mentioned it. They were too busy force-feeding you an overdose of the Virus Bullshit. 

Easter always crowds my mind with appealingly sweet thoughts of spring: pastel flowers, fragrant blossoms, soft blue skies, ripe green fields - bunnies and baby chicks.

Here in the wilds of Tennessee Easter Sunday was drenched with torrential rain, dark with dismal skies, and chilly enough to make me hibernate under winter blankets.

It was a joyless day, but the really  wicked weather waited until dusk before it arrived. The winds whipped up with such incredible force that I thought I was back in Texas. 

I tried to ignore the howling gusts until suddenly the front door blew open all by itself!
To condense a long story, the dead bolt was installed improperly by the previous idiot who lived here. I have been meaning to fix it for an embarrassingly long time, but procrastination kept getting in my way.
The door-opening incident has inspired me to put the dead bolt on my lengthy ''To Do'' list.

Fortunately the lock on the doorknob works, and I barricaded the door with a chair.
During my five-and-a-half years in Tennessee I never felt wind this strong. A wooden ladder blew off the back porch and a metal chair soared off the front porch. Heavy things kept hitting the roof, which inspired my Gothic imagination.

I always worry about those tall trees that I like so much. They are only about twenty feet away from my bedroom. If they ever topple over, I'll be toast.

Since I'm surrounded by a forest, I could be pelted by trees from any direction. The thought curdles my blood during high winds.

In a cowardly attempt to ignor the foul weather, I crawled into bed and started to watch the old movie Easter Parade. Judy Garland didn't even finish singing her first song when the lights went out.

The power outage happened just at dusk. It was going to be one helluva long night.

Admittedly, I'm very ill-prepared for these nasty flukes of nature. I have oil lamps but no oil. I have transistor radios but no batteries. I don't know where the heck the battery for my laptop is.    
I have one feeble flashlight and a few candles.

It's almost impossible to describe how dark it is out here in the proverbial middle of nowhere. Blacker than the darkest shade of black.
The wind raged with sinister screams,  rain poured relentlessly. Unknown things outside kept banging and crashing. 

The thought that it was about ten hours until dawn inspired me to do a search with my feeble flashlight - looking for ANY item that might connect me with the outside world.

I found an old transistor radio in a drawer. Batteryless, of course.

A long extension of my search finally yielded an ancient cassette player that fortuitously had batteries in it.

Aside:
I don't often get to use the word "fortuitously".

By the feeble light of the flashlight, I transferred the batteries from the cassette player to the radio.
They worked!
Sort of.

The radio is lousy...and the radio reception out here in the Tennessee Boonies is far beyond appalling.

I could only pick up jumbled fragments of distant stations, undecipherable smatterings of words and music - - all sandwiched between rude, jarring static.

Note:
Is this blog post getting too long? Relax. You won't find this quality of free entertainment anywhere else.

To make matters worse, the only way the radio would work at all was if I put one hand on the station dial, put my other hand on top of the antenna, and pointed the radio toward the east.


(no, I am NOT exaggerating or kidding)

So I crawled into bed (accompanied by my two timid cats) with my feeble flashlight and the exasperating radio.

And all through the black night I kept one hand on the dial, the other hand atop the antenna, with the radio pointing east.

I managed to pick up a hillbilly station that was playing extremely morbid Gospel music about dying and going to Heaven, which I suppose was a redneck version of Easter joy.
One agonizing song after another - with no commercials or breaks whatsoever.

After about the forty-fifth song, I moved along and FINALLY found a station from the local town (which, from where I  live, is about a zillion miles away). 

At around 3:00 a.m. they finally gave a weather report: high winds, flash floods, but no tornadoes.
Three thousand people were without power (that's about the entire county) and dozens of trees were uprooted. 

There were uprooted trees on the street where my cousin lives (she lives near town).

By dawn, the wind started to abate and I was exhausted. I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the power was back on and there was no discernible damage outside. 

Thank God for small favors.
And unnecessarily long blog posts.

OF MICE AND TORNADOES

Friday Night
It's after 3:00 a.m. and I'm snuggled in bed with my laptop (no sexual implications intended). I feel rotten and can't sleep, so I'm  watching a documentary about World War I. 

Just when I'm somewhere  in the midst of Gallipoli, my cat Bosco comes running in the room, making spooky squeals, and jumps on the bed. He has a big mouse in his mouth!

"Holy crap, don't bring it here!" I yell, while leaping out of bed.

Bosco leaps down with me - still clutching the rodent - and takes off for regions unknown.
I don't know what the hell happened to the mouse. 

A few years ago one of my cats left a dead mouse in bed on my pillow!

That's nothing. I have a friend whose cat left a dead bird in her bed.

There's no purpose or satisfactory resolution to this story, but I figured I'd tell it anyway. 

Change of subject

The first day of spring was nearly 75 degrees (that's Fahrenheit, for those of you in Wuhan).

I naively thought that the frigid winter weather would kill all those pesky Asian beetles that plagued us last autumn. To my consternation (and disgust), the sudden warm weather revived the beetles and they were everywhere again. 

Today (Saturday) the temperature has plummeted and it's 38 degrees. The Asian beetles.....and spring....have vanished.

An Aside:
Is it racist to call them Asian beetles? After all, I wouldn't want to offend anyone.


Yesterday (Friday) was bleak and dreary - like a monochromatic painting - with bouts of torrential rain....and several foul weather warnings.

Flash flood warning. Severe storm warning.

The tornado warning  came while I was eating an early dinner. I checked the radar on the computer and was relieved to see that the tornado was several miles south of my location and heading east.
I wouldn't be in danger unless it decided to suddenly reverse its course.

In a moment of courageous abandon, I grabbed my El Cheapo camera and  wandered outside for a brief walk. Everything was colorless and cheerless but at least no tornado was in sight.
A downpour eventually encouraged me to head back to the house, but not before I took a few extremely unimpressive photos.

 Two views of the front "yard"

(above and below)

.....and the cow meadow at the end of my property

(I know that will impress you)

I have to make the dreaded trip to town next week and I'm more than slightly apprehensive.

Let's put it this way:
During the very best conditions, shopping at Walmart scares the royal crap out of me. Most of the people who haunt the store look like they're carriers of deadly diseases - - and a few of them look like they died several weeks ago.

Hell, I don't need a surgical mask. I need a Medieval suit of armor.

STURM UND DRANG

What to write about?
My mind gravitates towards the controversial and the illegal.
Better stay in neutral territory, Jon, and avoid being shot.

I'm in one of my notorious dark moods - - my Heathcliff Mode, but there's no need for alarm. As with all of my emotional storms, the clouds will eventually pass.....

Was that a plausible ploy to talk about the weather? 

When I first moved to Tennessee the summers were mild, brief, not too humid. A pleasant change from the blistering eight-month summers in California and West Texas.

This Tennessee summer, however, is a persistent bitch: broiling hot every day with high humidity. My house absorbs heat like a sardine can on a campfire.
Sorry. It's the only analogy I could think of.

If it's 85 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside, it's 150 degrees in the house (only slight exaggeration).

I no longer have central air, like I did in Texas. I have three ceiling fans and a couple of floor fans.
When I first bought this place there were two window air conditioners but I removed them immediately. I'd rather die of the heat than have those gigantic, unsanitary monstrosities hanging from the windows.

Anyway, this summer has been plagued with eternal humidity and endless storms. Not to mention mosquitoes, flies, and furious wasps.
Thanks to the frequent torrential downpours, the weeds and brush on my property have grown to Jules Vern proportions.

This is only a very timid sample of what it looks like (above).
I've been valiantly attacking it with shears and clippers - - but what I really need is a tractor, a plow, a dozen field hands....and Divine Intervention.

I managed to "clear" a small part of my front "yard" (above) but almost passed out from the intense humidity.

Late yesterday afternoon there was another dramatic storm.

The storm clouds gathered quickly.

And after the storm there was a dramatic amber glow (photo taken from back porch)

What else is there to tell?

I've been eating lots of hamburgers, corn on the cob, and ice cream. And cantaloupe.

This probably doesn't look too fancy or appetizing, but it tastes great.

I always cut the cantaloupe into chunks, then refrigerate it. It's really sweet and refreshing......

.......kinda like me, only better.

 

LIGHTS OUT IN HICKVILLE

Summer has unofficially arrived. Nearly 90 humid degrees yesterday (that's Fahrenheit, for those of you in Scandinavia). By late afternoon the house was hotter than a Coney Island hoochie dancer.
My knack for spontaneous imagery amazes me.

Irritable and exhausted from my usual lack of sleep, I opted for a nap just after dusk.

About an hour later, a gigantic clap of thunder jolted me out of Dreamland. Lightning flashed menacingly. My desktop computer (which was turned off) inexplicably beeped (yes, beeped) and turned on by itself. No lie.

The lights in the house blinked on, off, on......off..... 
Bingo! Another power failure. I lit a few candles while stumbling over an annoying trio of wayward cats.

There's not much one can do in the dark (when one is alone). I couldn't read. Couldn't write. Couldn't mess with the computer. So I located a transistor radio and took it to bed.

It's tricky trying to get any decent radio reception here in the Daniel Boone boonies. In order to pick up the "local" station I have to conduct a complex series of strategic maneuvers:

Keep my left hand on the Volume dial, with index finger firmly pressed against the AM switch.

Hold the antenna with my right hand in order to generate reception.

Point the radio south-east in the exact direction of where the town is located.

And pray. Pray for reception to be generated - -
and pray that lightning won't strike the antenna while I'm holding it. 

These maneuvers eventually allow me to pick up the "local" station, which is in the process of having a bluegrass fest. That's okay. I like bluegrass. Soon they switch to playing hymns.

Hell, I like hymns, too - but it's slightly unnerving listening to songs about dying and meeting my maker during a severe thunderstorm with intense lightning when you're holding an antenna.

Seems like everybody's going to heaven. It must be damn crowded up there. Kinda like Atlantic City on the 4th of July. I personally want no part of it.

After the hymns, they start reading the local obituaries. 
I've mentioned this before and I'll say it again. These hillbillies are obsessed with death. Every time I turn on the radio, somebody's reading a casualty list. They must have more stiffs here than London did during the Black Plague. Or was it the Red Plague?
Heck, I can hardly remember my own name, let alone the colors of plagues.

Anyway, the power came back on around midnight.....
.......and went off again around 3:00 a.m.
I've never seen a darker night. The rain stopped. The storm was gone. It was completely quiet and still. The only discernable light came from a few random fireflies drifting in the dark.
Power was restored - again - this morning.



Change of subject:
I thought my previous post would generate more attention, but it fizzled like a damp firecracker. The title - Music From the Civil War - was probably a turn-off. Perhaps I should have called it Naked Civil War Soldiers.....

One of my old blog posts, entitled Elizabeth Taylor's Pussy, got over 7,000 hits. Don't panic. I merely posted some photos of Liz with her cats. 
Another post entitled  Gay Hollywood Hunks (on my other blog) got 5,000 hits.

So what's my point?
People don't want intelligent blog posts. They don't give a rat's ass about my piano music.
They want sleaze.
 

STORMY

 Photos by Jon

I won't mention the unrelenting agony that I went through with my back recently. For four days I couldn't walk or even stand. The pain was so excruciating that I thought I'd have to call an ambulance.

I won't mention the boring details. It's a herniated disc compounded by several spinal fractures that never healed properly. I keep re-injuring old injuries. Over and over and over.....

I finally gritted my teeth, tried to get some much-needed rest, and said "The hell with everything." (I was MUCH more graphic than that, but I'm giving you the Disney version).

Yesterday I was finally able to stand on my feet and walk - not without difficulty, and not without the help of a makeshift cane and some frighteningly out-dated aspirin.

I don't like to complain. I'm not a sissy. Whining and bitching is extremely unbecoming. I clumsily plod onward-  - between frequent curses and sheer determination - knowing that if I ever drop dead out here, no one would find my body for a dozen years. At least.

But no need to worry, boys and girls. I'm here to talk about stormy weather. Several severe storms swept through the Tennessee boonies late yesterday afternoon and early evening.

Despite being crippled and unrelentingly despondent, I grabbed my El Cheapo camera and hobbled outside to document the excitement.

The following photos were taken by me on Wednesday (which, I'm assuming, was yesterday).

Actually, the day began beautifully and the sun made a rare morning appearance.

 A few of the trees are blossoming, but the wildly fluctuating temperatures haven't been helpful. It's 80 degrees one day and 40 the next. More frost is predicted tomorrow night.

 By late afternoon we were under a Tornado Watch and clouds were gathering (this is the view from the front porch).

 There was a tornadic storm to the west and it got extremely dark. Soon the first storm arrived with a torrential downpour and fierce winds.

 The first storm ended with an eerie glimpse of sun rays.

The second storm, just before sunset, was much more dramatic and beautiful. These photos don't do it justice.

 I hobbled out the back door and climbed up the steep embankment at the edge of the forest to take these pics. There was lots of lightning.

Overlooking my house.

 This looks similar to my header photo. It's a view of the same trees that were blossoming in the photos I took in the morning.

The temperature has dropped drastically (again) and today (Thursday) is raining, windy, and freezing.

I just deleted a few photos because there were too many.

RUMBLING FOURTH

This post is going to be bland and uninteresting. You're forewarned. I suppose I need a break after writing two good posts (Wild Ride 
and Echos of Distant Summers).

I haven't written anything caustic, controversial, or nerve wracking in over a week. I figured I'd give everyone a breather.

I just heard a big collective sigh of relief from my apprehensive readers - - who are sweating blood and have bitten their fingernails down to the quick.


Rumbling Fourth?

Yup. The thunder is rumbling tonight as I write this and had been intermittently rumbling all through Independence Day. There was a severe storm warning just as I was eating my 4th of July dinner. Now, late in the evening, an eerie fog has rolled in and it's raining furiously with growls and groans of thunder. No fireworks tonight, except those provided by Mother Nature.....
.....or Father Nature, if you want to be politically correct.

I've been in Tennessee well over a year and a half, and have never felt the humidity more ruthlessly intense. This was a cheerless and miserable holiday.

Despite the storms, I had a seedless watermelon

So, how did I spend my cheerlessly miserable holiday? Working around the house, cursing the rain, watching the weeds grow, swatting insolent wasps and flies, and dealing with three rambunctious cats - who have been intent on chasing a hapless but quick and evasive mouse.

After an extremely long period of depression, indifference, and an I-don't-give-a-crap attitude, I'm finally making the house look decent and livable - - or as livable as a small place with a trio of felines can look.

 The weeds yield curious flowers

I spent part of the afternoon going through my sizeable collection of piano music and arranging it on shelves - - - rejoicing over the ones the movers didn't "lose" and lamenting over those I'll never see again. 

Most of my personal music manuscripts are intact (I think about a dozen are missing).

All of the piano music that had belonged to my mother and grandmother is gone. Well over 100 pieces - mostly first editions. This loss, to me, is a death.

I haven't touched either of my pianos since I moved here. I've been too depressed. They are battered and out of tune - much like myself. This has been my longest absence from the keyboard. Ever.

It is difficult to convey the fact that music once was my entire life. The piano, in essence, was my spouse. I was a professional. I had an extremely vast repertoire. I seldom write about this on my blog because - - I feel so completely disconnected from my musical past. 

Rather than bore you with my words, I'll bore you with some photos.

 This is my oldest piano, which my parents bought when I was ten. It's the piano that my mom always played, and the one on which she gave me lessons.

 An old photo of my mom by that same piano.

Here's a bunch of my music manuscripts, photographed yesterday afternoon. Please try to contain your excitement.

 Some of my Schirmer editions

 I have a huge collection of the G. Henle Verlag editions......and the Edition Peters.....

 

....and, of course, the colorful International Music Company editions

 My cat Scratch, completely overwhelmed by the music, finally rolled over and went to sleep.



I appreciated all your comments on my previous post. I usually like to respond to them, but this time I was too lazy.
Don't be duped by my indifference - - I still love you.