Eric  Ramsey

It's that time of year, indeed it is. Spring Training. Baseball begins anew. When I was a kid growing up in Kansas right about now I'd be prepping my old glove, inhaling the heady aroma of leather and mink oil, looking for any signs at all that spring was truly on its way - buds on the Elm tree, an early crocus in my mom's flower garden - any hint of the season to come. 

I was a baseball kid. 

Spring Training still awakens in me each year that same sense wonder and the giddy expectations of the summer to…

They had a chance to do the right thing. Our elected officials, I mean. There was evidence aplenty for all to see. We all saw. Even they saw. But they chose something else - what, politics? agenda? - those elected officials, those public servants did. Something else besides the truth. 

And so we have no closure on the national (and one could argue global) nightmare that was our last four years. Any thoughts we might have had about coalition, actual honorable governance for the people by the people were…

Although yesterday's Super Bowl was kinda crappy, from National Anthem through whatever the Halftime show was to the game's end, upon reflection two things stand out to me: 

1.Tom Brady, love him or hate him or don't care or don't know who he is, is the Greatest quarterback Of Our Time. I hesitate to use the honorific G.O.A.T. because All Time is just so, well, ongoing and, well, eternal.  

2.The NFL got it right in naming Sarah Thomas as its first female official in the Super Bowl. Here's another shining…

Well, not at the moment, of course.

Someday, though, we all hope, life will return to some semblance of pre-COVID normalcy. What exactly post-COVID normalcy will look like is anybody's guess, but I think we can all agree that being able to travel again without fear of contagion or burden of quarantine will be a wonderful thing.

Here's a demo of a new tune for your perusal called - you guessed it! - Travelin' Man. Stayin' one step ahead of my sins....

We here at the House Of Strays wish you a pleasant…

Yes, Virginia, there really IS a Santa Claus! And it rains in the desert, Well, of course the former is not true, just another lie perpetuated on the young by people in authority - get used to it, Virginia. However, it really does rain in the desert. I saw it. With my own two eyes. 

It had been 100+ days since we'd had any measurable precipitation - this in what is nominally called our 'rainy season" when we might expect to get half of our annual average of 9 inches. The remainder usually comes in our…

Honoring Martin Luther King is an easy thing to do. He was, after all, the figurehead of the PEACEFUL civil rights movement. Not that the civil rights activists of the '60s were met with peaceful opposition. Oh no. That's not the American Way. Or should I say that's not the Entitled White Majority Way. Well, we know what happened. Eventually Peace won. That time. Or so it seemed.

Remember back when PEACEFUL protest was an acceptable form of dissent? But that's not the Entitled White Majority Way.

What…

Where do we go from here? You saw it, watched it on your 60" flat-screen TV. Or heard it on NPR. You watched the replays, are still watching the replays, listening to the pundits debate about the end of "democracy" (no caps, intentional). Where do we go? In another era the "patriots"(no caps, intentional) storming and violating the the halls of the Capitol would have been rounded up and summarily shot. As would those who fomented and incited the mob have been. Obviously that can't/won't happen now, but what…

Maybe it's just me. This new year seems to be picking up where the old one left off. Maybe my expectations were too lofty to begin with. My optimism unwarranted. We still have a Pandemic surging across the country. We still have a substantial portion of our population unwilling to to be inconvenienced in any small way to help mitigate its spread. We have a vaccine, but its dissemination has been bolluxed by our dysfunctional government. We have a lying, Pouty Lout in charge, whose minions are trying every…

Good riddance to 2020, say I. It's a if a snarling pack of Rabid Jackals has taken up residence in our collective neighborhood. Enough already. 

I hope your upcoming year is filled with health, prosperity (however you define it), music (however you define it), happiness (ibid) and grace. 

Please stay well and safe, wear your mask, do unto others and be a light for someone (however you define it). Until next year....

And just like that we begin our journey back into the light. Days will be getting longer, although the nights will doubtless remain cold and ... dark. Tonight we can observe, weather and location permitting, a conjunction on Saturn and Jupiter. The two largest planets in our solar system will appear together as one in the southwestern sky. Two disparate, enormous celestial entities, in actuality vastly distant from each other  - and us - will appear to our eye here on Earth as a single source of light. Go…