April 17, 2008
Much cooler out this morning. Low fifties when I went for my walk. I had two therapy sessions yesterday. The first with my family appointed counselor and then I met at two at our house with with Gail Peterson and her Lutheran Pastor Roger Thompson and his wife Cheryl.

Roger and I have a lot in common. Rock bands for one, but he also had a heart attack, when he was fifty and so we compared notes and he told me about the road to recovery. We also talked a bit about my guilt tripping which I don't think he really enjoyed hearing I ascribed to my Lutheran upbringing. He had some good advice about letting go of the past.

Every year I donate two or three BBB illustrations and paintings for a charity auction they have.

"Art for Health!" year 5
at Grace Lutheran Church, Hope Hall
Friday, May 2, 2008 6:30 to 9:30 pm
1124 N. 3rd Street
Phoenix, AZ 85004

Roger's band, "Social Graces", will be playing. Also free food.

Tales From the Crypt
"After reading Steve Paroni's entry I read some of the early TW Business Timeline myself...fascinating, terrifying and eerily familiar all at once."
—Lance

Yes, I'm tempted to go read it myself, but with my heart condition I better not.

Last night I caught Buster Keaton's silent classic "The General" on Turner Classic Movies. I have heard about it forever but had never seen it. It's about a squad of Union men in the Civil War who steal a rebel locomotive and attempt to disrupt Southern supply abilities. The movie had great trains and in one scene an entire engine plunges off a burning bridge into the water. I wondered what that cost? Leave it to Thom Ross to know the answer:

"Yeah, that Buster Keaton version.....he wanted to film it on the original
tracks through the original countryside BUT when they (the SOUTH) found out it
was going to be a comedy they denied Keaton's request.

"So he found the area around Cottage Grove, Oregon (ouside Eugene) and filmed
it there. The train that crashes into the river (1927) lay there until World
War II when it was removed and reduced for scrap metal! There is a large
mural in downtown (?) Cottage Grove showing Keaton and the 'GENERAL.'"

"Keaton was quite the baseball nut and during production of "The GENERAL" he
would halt filming when the weather was good and they'd all play baseball

"You missed a wonderful time [at last weekend's Old Westfest in Georgia], but for the amount of times your damn name came up you'd think you were THERE. For instance, your name was used as:

A Deity: "God damn, Bell!"

A part of anatomy: "Bell is an azzhole!"

An object of lust: "F**k Bell!"

A Misplaced location: "Where the f**k is Bell?"

When confused with a lady: "Bell is a c**ksucker!"

As a bad historian: "Well, don't blame ME....Bell wrote that!"

As an artist: "Christ, Ross, Bell is better then YOU!"

And as a missed bar partner: "If Bell was here we'd make him pay!"

Hope you are on the mend and feeling better. Gotta be there next year and
we'll tour some Civil War sites.

I offered your doctors my heart in the event a transplant was needed to save
your useless life.....but our blood types were incapatable....my blood type is
"MERLOT".

—Kid

"In a recent survey, only 43% of American teenagers knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900."
—Kenneth Davis, "Why Don't We Know Much About History?"