May 29, 2003: Ray Eubanks again. I would never have gone to school if it hadn't been for Ray. He lived about two blocks from me, and when I wouldn't go to first grade, my mother arranged for him to walk by the house every morning and get me. So I walked to school with him for a good long time. We were walking together the day my grandfather (my father's father) died. His house was separated from ours by one other house, so we had to pass it every day. In fact, we walked along his curved driveway nearly every time. I remember seeing his body (it was covered with a sheet, but I knew what it was) being put into the hearse. At the time, I didn't think that much of it. I knew he'd been very sick, and now he was dead. No big deal. At the age of six, what did I know about death?

May 28, 2003: I was thinking about Ray Eubanks today. I don't know how memory works for other people, but I don't seem able to remember long uninterrupted stretches of the past. I just remember vivid moments. One of those is of sitting beside Ray in church. I don't know how old we were, but it's about my first memory of being allowed to sit with someone other than my own family. One of the songs was "Since Jesus Came into my Heart," and I was amazed that Ray knew it by memory. I was impressed by his singing of the high part on "floods of joy o'er my soul like the sea billows roll," mainly because I didn't know what a sea billow was, and I doubt that Ray did, either.

Ray was my age, or a little older. He's been dead now for ten or fifteen years.

May 25, 2003: Last night we watched OUR TOWN on Showtime. I first read the play more than 40 years ago, and I thought it was great. It's probably one of the things that made me want to be a writer. I later taught the play to the students at Corsicana High School, but after that I didn't read it again. I was amazed at how well I remembered it, considering that I can hardly remember a book I read two weeks ago. I was also amazed to recall how deeply I felt the play when I was just a kid. Sometimes I don't think my understanding has deepened at all over the years. Anyway, it was great to see a performance of it and to find out that it still had the power to affect me and make me think again those old thoughts.

May 24, 2003: We saw THE MATRIX RELOADED yesterday. It occurred to me after the movie that I didn't have a clue as to what was going on during the "philosophical discussions." Obviously I'm not as deeply into this stuff as a lot of people are. I do, however, understand Neo's decision at the end to save Carrie-Ann Moss instead of the entire human race. Given a choice between the human race and Carrie-Ann Moss in a leather suit, I know I'd do the same thing.

May 22, 2003: I guess the latest move in Iraq is the change from "We're going to let them form their own democratic government with a few months," or words to that effect, to "We're going to become an occupying power, stay for a zillion years, sell their oil, and hear the lamentation of their women." But people still think George W. Bush has never told a lie.

May 19, 2003: Well, let's see. I thought that by now Iraq was supposed to be moving right along toward democracy, its people having greeted us as liberators. Instead, we're starting to talk about shooting to kill the looters. Instead of getting better, the looting's getting worse, or, as Rummy would put it, more untidy. And al-Qaeda terrorists seem to be striking again, though they're supposed to be "marginalized." Of course we're going to find them and give them a sample of American justice, according to George W. Bush. We can't find Osama bin Laden, we can't find the anthrax killer, and we can't even find Saddam. So how are we going to find these terrorists? Maybe Dub can spot them as he flies a jet over Saudi Arabia.

May 15, 2003: It's looking more and more as if there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Here's a quote. "In his dramatic presentation to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 6, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States 'knew' that Baghdad had dispersed rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to locations in western Iraq." Well, if they had 'em, why not use 'em? And if they had 'em, where the hell are they? We were lied to, pure and simple. And the scary thing is that Dub is going to get away with it. Nobody has the guts to call him on it.

May 12, 2003: I spent Mother's Day weekend in Mexia and Thornton. On Saturday I went to the memorial service for Louise Carr and saw several members of the Carr family whom I hadn't seen since my college days: Aletha, John Wesley, and Judy. Joe Carr was there, of course, but I see him and his wife (Judy Kennedy) every now and then in Austin. I also saw Nancy Ann Dillard for the first time since she graduated. I recognized her immediately, even though that's been nearly 50 years.

On Sunday I mowed the yard for Judy's mother. Angela and Allen drove up for lunch, and we had a nice little family gathering.

May 8, 2003: I was mowing the lawn this morning (one of my least favorite pastimes), and an old song kept running through my head. It was one my parents had on a 78 when I was a kid. "The Sidewalks of New York." It's about Sweet Rosie O'Grady and me and Mamie O'Rourke, who tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York. It occurred to me that I was probably the only person in the entire United States, if not the world, who was thinking about that particular song and that when my generation passed away, nobody was likely to think of it again. When kids these days are old guys mowing the lawn, I guess they'll be thinking about a song that goes, "I got a ho whose name be Sue, she can whip you ass and you ho too." Somehow it's not the same, but, hey, for all I know Sweet Rosie O'Grady was a ho.

Bill Crider

May 7, 2003: I turned in the grades today for my "distance learning" course. Two students completed all the work. Not a good percentage. Also worked on MACAVITY, producing four more mailing comments. Only six or seven to go.

As for the political world, let's see: Dub's budget director quit because he wants to run for governor of Indiana. Or so we were told. The next day it turns out that the guy is being investigated for insider trading. Hmmmm. We're told that Dub had to fly to the carrier to make his speech because it was too far from shore for him to reach it by helicopter. Turns out that it was right on shore. Ho-hum, just another routine lie for Ari Fleischer, who spins them out daily. And what about those WMDs?

May 6, 2003: Went to the DAV store and bought three LPs, two by Connie Francis and LAST DATE by Floyd Cramer. Went to Wal-Mart and bought some paving stones that I plan to put on the graves of Speedo and Jeoffry. A busy day for the old retired guy!

May 4, 2003. We're slowly recovering from the loss of Speedo, but we still keep looking for him. Sam, the youngest cat, doesn't seem to notice that anything's changed. Geri, the one we call "Baby," was with Speedo all the time. She looked for him every day and slept right beside him, as close to him as she could get. She seems a little puzzled and lost, but who knows what a cat's thinking.

April 30, 2003: I've been away for a while, but I'll try to do better.

Speedo was a gray tabby who showed up at our house late in March 1988. We didn't know where he came from, and we didn't realize how lucky we were that he'd chosen to live with us. He was one of the best cats ever. He wasn't “like a member of the family.” He was a member of the family. He eventually grew up to weigh around 18 pounds. There was a lot of him to love.

For the last couple of years, Speedo had arthritis in his spine and back legs, but being a cat of great courage and spunk, he was able to get around remarkably well. He never complained, and he seemed to be doing fine.

On Wednesday evening, April 23, Speedo went downhill suddenly and fast. By the next morning, he could hardly move, and I rushed him to the vet. The vet did a lot for him, and when I picked him up on Friday, he was almost his old self.

It didn't last. On Sunday, he went down hill just as suddenly, but even faster.

I had a dream about him last Wednesday night. I dreamed that he and I were both in the house where I grew up. Speedo was young and lithe and fast. So lithe and fast, in fact, that he ran straight up the wall, nearly to the ceiling. Then he turned and jumped to the narrow ledge that ran above the windows. He walked along it without putting a foot wrong, front or back. His head was high, his spine straight. When he reached the end of the ledge, he jumped to the bed, light as air, and purring as loud as only Speedo could purr.

Very early on Monday morning, Speedo left us. I hope that when he went from the light to the dark, he was having my dream. I hope that somewhere along the way he entered into it and that right now he’s running lithe and strong and fast and purring as loud as only Speedo can purr.

April 9, 2003: I really need to do better about this blogging. But I have so little to say. Now, however, I can admit that all my fears about the Iraq war seem to have been unjustified. Easy victory, no great loss of American lives. (Tough about those Iraqi civilians, though, not to mention a few journalists who got in the way.) Now I can start worrying about the economy again, but since Rush promises it will "explode" when we declare victory in Iraq, I guess I shouldn't worry about that, either. Except that we've won, and the market is down today. That can't be good.

April 1, 2003: It's April Fool's day, and so here I am. I guess there was not Shiite rebellion in Basra, after all. Do the Brits have control there yet? I mean, it's been a while. I guess the cakewalk never materialized. But then the radio talk show hosts are all saying now that nobody ever promised this was going to be easy. Too bad they don't post transcripts of their programs. Or, from their point of view, it's lucky they don't, because they're lying like rugs. That's fine, though. After all, they're radio talk show hosts. Natalie Mains had better keep her damned opinions to herself, or get a radio show. Then she could spout them for three hours a day to her adoring listeners like Rush does.

March 25, 2003: First we hear that there's a Shiite rebellion in Basra. Then we hear there's not. Sort of makes you wonder.

I read an interesting article that says the largest importer of Iraqi oil is, you guessed it, the U.S. I wonder what all those "Freedom" Fries idiots think of that?

March 24, 2003: It's been a while. I've been busy, and I haven't really felt like blogging. But I'm back.

I heard Rush Limbaugh crowing today that "all our reasons for this war have been totally vindicated already." Or words to that effect. Why did he say that? (1) There was an al-Qaeda training camp in northern Iraq. (2) There was a big "chemical weapons plant." Of course what Rush didn't mention is that everybody has known about that al-Qaeda camp for months, and there's no connection between it and Saddam. It's in the Kurdish-held territory. Rush knows that, but he must also know how stupid his audience is. They'll think the al-Qaeda were training in one of Saddam's palaces. The "weapons plant" was first mentioned in 1991, so I wouldn't call it a big discovery. And there were no weapons found in it, another little point Rush failed to mention. But to the Dittoheads it doesn't matter. Rush never gets it wrong, so we're totally vindicated.

March 12, 2003: Haven't blogged in a while, but today I was listening to some moronic talk show host telling me how good I had it, now that Bush has driven the market to near its five-year low. "We've in touch with ourselves. We're more real!" I guess what we really need to put us in touch with our real selves and show how we handle adversity is another Great Depression. This moron probably thinks so.

March 7, 2003: Here's my take on the whole Iraq mess. What do you do when you're faced with a massive (and record) deficit, when unemployment is rising, and when a double-dip recession is staring you in the face? You use the "Great Satan" defense, as I'm naming it in honor of the Ayatollah. You're the leader, and you have people who are likely to blame things on you, so you give them someone else to hate instead, an easily identifiable enemy, a Great Satan, who'll take their minds off the fact that gas prices are soaring, that the economy is in the tank, and that things are looking worse, not better.

It's working for Kim Jong Il in North Korea. He's just using us the way we're using Saddam.

And it's working for Dub. But I don't know how long he can keep it up.

I thought the press conference last night was a mess. First of all, he didn't call on Helen Thomas, becoming the first president to ignore her in about half a century. He didn't call on the Washington Post guy, either. When asked about a cost estimate for the war, he didn't answer, implying that he didn't know, which, of course, isn't true. I'm sure they have estimates galore. He repeated the same catch phrases over and over. (I counted four times for "If Saddam doesn't disarm, we will disarm him.") I guess his handlers pounded certain "talking points" into his head. He said at least twice, "if this war is forced on us." Nobody is forcing us into a war except George W. Bush, as I see it.

He also said that "it's up to North Korea's neighbors" to handle that situation because Kim is more of a threat to them than to us. But a part of one of their missles is in Alaska, not part of one of Saddam's. Today, one of their top guys says they're willing to "put the torch to New York." I don't recall Saddam having said anything at all like that. It would seem to me he's much more of a threat to his neighbors than to us, but Bush hasn't said it's up them to handle things.

And his "neighbors" comment caused the Japanese stock market to fall to a 20-year low this morning. Dub isn't content with destroying our economy; he's going to work on the world's. Speaking of the economy, gas prices aren't going down any time soon. They're going up. The job figures were awful this morning. I think we're in for that double dip, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Dub ramped up those terror warnings to red to take our mind off that.

As you can tell, I'm very depressed about all this, and I don't see a good result from any of it. Maybe Dub will pull it off and prove me wrong. I really, really hope so.

March 5, 2003: You know you're thinking too much about Iraq when you wake up in the morning and the first thought that pops into your head is: "How long has it been since Dub mentioned the Iraq and al-Qaida connection?" The answer seems to be that he hasn't mentioned it since Colin Powell tried it out on the UN and pretty much got laughed at around the world. The connection was so tenuous that nobody believed in it, mainly because (in my humble opinion) it never existed. So Dub has finally dropped it. I guess his propaganda team now thinks the idea is firmly implanted in people's minds, so they don't need to tell that lie, er, make that excuse any longer. Dub's latest line seems to be that we're going to commit a huge war of agression to bring democracy to the Middle East. Yes, that's what America has always been about: forcing our form of government on everybody else because it's good for them.