Conservative Conversation and Community
Yes, it continues to rain cat and dog songs. Now we are getting gusts of popular tunes. Let’s start with Big Mama Thornton and her 1952 “Hound Dog:” More
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We are all aware of a certain musical about felines’ feelings, or some such thing. Perhaps it is one of our guilty pleasures. But were you aware of a canine counterpart, of a sort? In the great tradition of This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, and the unforgettable And God Spoke (the Making of…), a short […]
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It was raining, cats and dogs (well, a witch’s cat and a sort-of werewolf with bones for brains – she really shouldn’t say that, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, but bless him it was true) were taking cover, and she still had to finish this blasted potion. Never, never, never, the dripping young woman thought to herself, brew a potion from a recipe book that actually specifies it be made ‘on ae righte blasted heathe on ye first true dark midnight after th’ full moone, and thatte at the height of ae summer storme’.
But here she was, soaked to the skin and getting more and more drenched by the moment, frantically stirring a bubbling cauldron with a long hazel stick (‘exactlie five foote in lengthe’), as the wind blew against her trailing black cloak and threatened to take her with it. She’d already seen her hat go whistling away over the horizon. ‘I tried to tell you,’ said a voice from under a pair of wet, flattened-down ears somewhere in the undergrowth.
MoreSo your friends called again, Urging you to slip the chain. More
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So many videos, so little time. I’ve found a few open days. Nature abhors a vacuum, so brace yourselves! We’ll start with a classy take on cat songs. No, there will be no show tunes from a certain alleged musical…unless you drive me to it! Aaron Copeland wrote a short piece for piano entitled “The Cat […]
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Who plays it best? Black Dog is a blues rock song composed and first performed by Led Zeppelin. It was the first cut on the A side of their fourth album, creatively titled Led Zeppelin IV. Heart, fronted by the Wilson sisters, Ann and Nancy, have the strongest cover version, decade to decade. Hey, don’t click […]
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Oh, how I hated those words! Nothing so annoys a young kid in a fit of anger or sadness as being told “Don’t smile!” by one’s mom. It ranks right up there with “Now shake hands” or “Hug it out.”
Dag nabbit, no, I want to pout! I want to hold a grudge. I want to cry or complain. Maybe I could even get revenge! Maybe I could languish or indulge. Hey, I’m hurt, so the world owes me a bit of selfish time!
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While brainstorming about about this month’s Group Writing Theme, It’s Raining Cats and Dogs, I asked my millennial and teenage kids if they knew what the phrase meant. “Yes Dad”, they answered smugly, “it means it’s raining hard”. That got me thinking about other rain related idioms and how I could incorporate them into conversations […]
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Your friendly Ricochet weather forecaster here, announcing a projected long dry spell ahead. After a lovely set of summer showers to start the month, we have only scattered showers ahead. But there is hope for those who want to go splashing in puddles or singing in the rain. We’re looking for a series of cloud-seeding […]
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I used to run out in the rain when I did more honest work. God’s mercy on the working man. Head back soaking up the welcoming cool. In the spring seeds need just a few drops to break the earth and reach toward the sun. Acres wake up and millions of invisible seeds swell and […]
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This isn’t an account of Raining Cats and Dogs as much as it is a story of the flooding that resulted.
Mr. Cowgirl and I had both been raised in a world of animals. His family did cattle ranching, and mine did dairy farming, and that world always included cats and dogs. Our barn cats had an essential role in keeping the cow grain safe from rodents. Beef cattle and milk cows will follow directions from dogs much more quickly than directions from humans.
MoreSome photographers enjoy storm chasing. They track tornadoes, ambush the lightning and rolling supercells, or fortify a hurricane post. I photograph dripping branches.
I double-dog dare you to top the first few posts under the August 2019 Group Writing Theme: Raining Cats and Dogs! Lots of days left, if you’re not a scaredy-cat! Don’t be a wet blanket, come in out of the rain, especially if you’ve not written here before, or in a long time. There are plenty […]
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I thought I knew what a hailstorm was. I’ve seen hail fall everywhere I have lived. It tends to be pea sized. It might sting a bit if it hits you. Ah, but everything is bigger in Texas. Over a three year period, I had the honor of serving with a great group of Army […]
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It is monsoon season in the Desert Southwest. Monsoons, in the American Southwest? Yes, indeed. While the desert, by definition, gets little rainfall, rain tends to arrive in bucketfuls, rather than sustained showers over longer periods. The way rain falls brings blessings and, in this fallen world, curses.
Visitors, and new residents, will be surprised to hear “monsoon” applied to the summer rains in the American Southwest. We all carry images of the far shore of the Pacific Ocean attached to “monsoon season.” If you lived for a time in the western reaches of the Pacific, monsoons are absolute bucketfuls, indeed water towers worth of water delivered from the sky. Add wind and you set sideways sheets of water, utterly drenching everything. You could say it was raining Great Danes and tigers.
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Writing is a form of playing God. One takes the clay of words and molds and forms them and breathes life into one’s characters. Oh, but perhaps that is the sixth day of creation? One starts with a void, a blank page, and separates the land of plot from the waters of possibility. Or, perhaps one licks one’s world or one’s characters into existence from the ice as Audhumla licked out the first frost giant, Ymir? Perhaps each author of fictions has his own method, and yet, they boil down to the same in the end. One has to have plot, characters, and the other elements of a story to build the story from.
I have a series of Science Fiction/Alternative History books I have been working on. They are not truly novels. They are more a group of short stories in a family saga grouped around a historical period and events with history gradually changing and distancing itself from the history we know and have experienced. The premise starts with a genetically-modified human showing up in rural North Carolina in 1700 and builds from there with his descendants inheriting his modified genes, reproducing, and spreading further and further around the world in a ripple effect.
More“Dogs and cats are falling from the sky!” That’s how the phone conversation began with a Chinese man learning idiomatic English. Idioms, like passwords, require precision. They are a dime a dozen, not a penny a pair. On the Gulf Coast, “raining buckets” is an apt expression for the heavy tropical rains we get occasionally. […]
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That is the headline that this statement from the new White House Press Secretary calls to mind: Statement from the Press SecretaryIssued on: July 25, 2019 More
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No, not that sort of brew, at least not first thing in the morning. Yes, yes, of course it is 5 o’clock somewhere. While true for one time zone each hour of the day, assuming you don’t count 05:00 in your understanding of the phrase, five in the morning is really better marked with coffee […]
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I’ve had “Chill out!” in my head all month.
I expected to be in Utah for Pioneer Day, a day almost as anticipated there as Independence Day. And they do July 4, bigly. Celebrated on July 24, the day in 1847 the Latter-day Saint pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley and declared it home. In my time there, I saw promotions for rodeos, parades, and parties in nearly every city.
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