Vincent Andrew Sanders

Rick Wilmeth's Retirement Party - Jamaica Beach

To know them is to love them.

My two favorite people sang John Prine's white trash love song and did a pretty good job too considering they'd been drinking tequila all day plus the normal one case of Busch beer for breakfast. It took me all afternoon to catch up with him.

Happy "rest of your life" Rick! Love you. (you bum)

Think. Simplify.

Death by PowerPoint

From: thecroaker, 10 months ago

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Fighting death by PowerPoint... How to make a presentation and not to bore your audience to death.



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Sam Hall

I was doing some quick research on the origins of the song "Sam Hall" that Johnny Cash recorded on his 2002 CASH cd.

Ask me sometime when you come by and I'll try and sing you this song about a man cursing the crowd while he's about the hung from the gallows. I've been practicing. :)

I stumbled upon this text written of a slave turned free after forty-seven years who's name was also Sam Hall. It's a very interesting, authentic and intense read. (Wow, I just described my personal ideals)

Poetry

The first poem I ever learned:

here I sit

all broken-hearted

tried to shit

but only farted

Facinated by this little diddly that I read on the inside wall of some truck-stop stall as a kid. Stuck in my mind so elequoently. I still think it's a near perfect poem. It's pretty much the only poem I could ever quote.

Remember those days when scratchings, nasty drawings and phone numbers were scrawled all over the stall walls? Those were fun days. And then you could come out to wash your hands and gawk at the little dirty machines promising sexual satisfaction for her that only cost like $.50? I always kind of wondered what little things were in there for only two quarters.

I was always curious to call one of those phone numbers and see if anybody really answered, too. I pretty much figured it was all a scam though and didn't want to waste the money or take the chance of making a call. I was always curious though. It was fun being curious and facinated about what things might lie beyond these numbers and machines and in the hearts and activities of the people who did these things.

I usually didn't stick around in these bathrooms too long. They were always kind of scary and dirty.

Now-a-days in big cubicle-ridden corporate professional America, there are no scrawlings on the bathroom walls. At least not here at my work. Grown men go into these stalls and fart big and loud and make disgusting sounds and nobody there snickers or laughs or says a thing. We all quickly do our business, wash our hands, and quickly come and go with very sober faces.

One of these days I'm going to shout out to one of these stall members, "Hey, keep it down in there will ya!?"

Then I'll have to hold my snicker as I rush back to my cubicle to hide.

13 Things I've Found to be True

1. What you decided at 10 years of age is pretty much who you are now.
2. Beauty is more important than truth.
3. All the hard questions can be answered by looking at the context of the question.
4. Better to listen than to speak.
5. Those concerned about the existence of God are on the left and right sprectrums of the bell curve of wealth - those without are hoping for good to prevail, those WITH have the time and freedom to wonder is Good prevails, and those in the middle are struggling in the balance (thereby consumed by the world around them.) (not REAL sure about this one either)
6. If you spill your drink, you've already drunk enough.
7. If you walk sideways, you know you are drunk.
8. The purpose of life is to have as much sustainable joy/fun as possible. (? - This one I'm not sure about.)
9. Its ok to cuss if no one's around to hear you.
10. Everything that lives fights to survive - even hummingbirds.
11. There is no good and evil outside of the context in which it is discussed.
12. The context above is usually time or the subjectivity of the experience.
13. To get a cramp out of your leg calf, get out of bed, stand on that leg and force your heel to the ground. It will ease.

Know What You Mow - Hill Country Grasses

The last couple of years I've been learning my hill country grasses. As I've been selectively taking out my cedars, I've curiously seen several bunch grasses sneaking up in these clearings. I resisted the temptation last year to mow these down. Believe me it was not easy. I spent most my life in suburbia and learned to mow, trim, and edge the front and back yards neatly and squarely like my suburbanite peer pressuring neighbors.


After a while these fresh grasses coming up got pretty tall and a bit weedy looking to my culturally derived suburban tastes. I let them grow anyway - to the slight dismay of my wife. During these summer months I had been learning about the four great prairie grasses. You know - the ones that the pioneers said covered the buffalo prairies as far as the eye could see? The grasses that stood as tall as the covered wagons such as Little Bluestem, Big Bluestem, Switchgrass, and Canadian Rye? I imagined these beautiful swaying waves of grain someday being a part of my own little five acre hill country spread. This was when I went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center native plant sale and bought a several pots of Little Bluestem.


I planted these grasses throughout my property and nourished and watered them hoping they'd take hold. While these potted grasses were being babied these other natural grasses that I was watching grow were getting taller and taller in lots of places throughout where I had cleared the cedar. I never learned what kind of grasses they were till late fall when it dawned on me that these were all Little Bluestems! The same grasses I had planted. I was over-joyed as I walked about touching and admiring these native gifts of nature that had been laying dormant in seed for years waiting for me to give them the opportunity to grow. I also found some Big Bluestem that came up that by the end of the year stood over six feet tall!


The Hays County Master's Naturalist class of 2008 did a site evalutation on my property this week and pointed out to me several other grasses I didn't know were growing on my property, including beautiful Switchgrass, Eastern Gama, and Silver Bluestem.


Today as I drove my borrowed John Deere riding lawn mower over my bottom land property I had to stop and start and go in reverse a bunch and sway and drive this way and that to avoid all these interesting clumps of grasses - that I now what to give a chance to grow so I can see what they turn out to be. Riding mowers don't seem adept to dart and dodge individual clusters of grasses. They're meant to go straight and cut - everything! It was harder than if I had been cutting in squared right-angles. But I realized nature just isn't very straight nor square. It is complex and varied like a crystal or a river or a spider web. By the time I was done, my wife thought I had forgotten how to mow. I said, with a sheepish smug look, "No, I did it that way on purpose."


Now that I know what it is that I am mowing, I am more more particular about what I slice with my mechanical toy wonder. I've come to enjoy the mix and match of grasses that are now growing everywhere on my property. It takes work, but I'm developing a taste for these prairie grasses that give me just a little hint of those great tall prairies that my forefathers experienced. I think even my wife is enjoying them too.