The Top 40

An excellent choice; the partitas for unaccompanied cello are the perfect example of sparseness suggesting baroque architecture, like a Picasso pencil sketch of a string quartet.

Although I would suggest the recording of Maurice Gendron from the '70s....

Ever seen an excellent painting with an horrendous frame? Distracting and annoying.

Same with observing nature, through a window or otherwise. If that nature has live elements and there is no glass between you and it, then it is providing it's own "music".

As I have aged music has lost it's importance. For much of my life I was consumed by it, from classical lessons at age 8-11, to hordes of rock devices for the following 30 years. I still play loud assed guitars now and then (or quiet acoustics) but now a days music is mostly annoying and distracting. Porch sitting is for thinking.

Fun nostalgia for an old romantic like me:

https://youtu.be/Ru2tsT32pHA

When I was 13 and living in a foster home, I ran away. Got caught, of course, and punished. My punishment was cruel: I had to sit on a metal folding chair and look out the window - on a Saturday - during the most beautiful season of the year, on one of the most beautiful days of the year - during the county fair...My punishment was only ameliorated by the companion of a tape recorder which had Dvorak's New World Symphony in it. Which, having never heard it before, was astounding in its beauty. Absolutely cruel. The perfect punishment.

Jewel,

When I had the audacity to complain about abuse in the early '50s, I got sent to my room. Ah, but I had a radio...

You 'n me, Miss. We fooled 'em.

I'm with Ghost on the music. Not that I don't appreciate fine classical or fine rock, but nowadays silence is precious for me.

Each morning, after I shave and shower, I sit in the front room with a cup of coffee before heading off to work. In my youth, my mother taught me to read scripture each morning until I found something to take along through the day. So, I read a little scripture and then whatever else suits my fancy ... all while looking out the window from time to time across the field.

There are better chairs with better views in the front room, but I've left the best view to the missus. She likes to look down the road at the neighbors. Not that we get much traffic, but we get a little and I don't need to see it coming from a half mile away.

I look across the field and I read and I think. I keep a journal, mostly for recording events for the kids when I'm gone, but also to capture whatever I might be meditating on that day. There's lots of insight that comes from reading scripture, especially Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Solomon wrote a lot about fools and there seems to be an abundance of them nowadays.

Yes, a window is a great thing. I've seen those pictures of apartments in New York City where they look out over the city. If that was the best I could do, then I suppose I would adapt. But, there is nothing compared to looking out a window at God's creation each morning with the sun coming up and it coming to life.

The world would be a much better place if people spent more time looking out a window and pondering what they might give in exchange for their souls.

Sat on a friends porch yesterday and watched the plethora of hummingbirds, maybe 15-20 of them, dive bombing each other, pit stops at the many feeders to reload on sucrose. It was hot, dry, and the shade was nice. Sometimes we'd speak but usually not, just look and observe and think. His 2 big dobermans, Kai (male 165lbs) and Riley (female 130 lbs) stretched out on the cool deck boards. Maybe 100 feet of green well manicured lawn ending in dense, lush forest and who knows what beyond. The house is 1/2 mile off the road so the couple vehicles per hour of traffic was barely heard and never seen.

It was time to go so I reached in my pocket and drew out a cookie for Kai and another for Riley then I walked the 3/4 mile downhill to our house. I sat in my desk chair and my own Shannon came to me, she wanted a cookie too and she got one, and she smelled the neighbor mutts on me and was not jealous, just curious. I hit the send and receive button and an email from my neighbor said that 5 minutes after I left Kai dropped over dead apparently from a heart attack. He had been doing poorly for the past month but seemed chipper when I came around. Before I left I knelt down on the deck and stroked Kai's enormous head and looked into his yellow eyes and saw his soul. I told him he was a good boy and to stay well. Then I left, and so did he.

Later we used the Kubota to dig the hole and lowered Kai into it wrapped in his favorite blanky and the wife and 8 year old son weeped. I said a few words and walked home, plopped down in my porch chair and just sat there, and thought.

The birds, the squirrels, the chipmunks, the pileateds, the racoons and the bunnies did their floor show but I was way deep lost in thought. Yes, out here there is little difference between our 2 legged and 4 legged friends and when one leaves a void is left and it instantly starts filling with memories but there is no satisfaction . In time the memories and dissatisfaction will fade but never disappear and across the way I hear the great horned owl emerging.

That beautiful story, ghostsniper, is Bachworthy.

It was a nice story until Ghost got all anthropomorphic. Dogs.DO.NOT.HAVE.SOULS. Humans do. They were given to us by God, thus making us supreme to dogs and liberals, neither who have souls.

If you reduce humanity to "dog-hood", then you'll suffer the consequences when the left decides that dogs are a privileged class and humans must be put down.

RIP Kai. To the rest of you anthropomorphic-believing idiots , Ruff-Ruff!

The *left* nor anybody else, gets to decide anything at all about me.

Maybe you like being their pull-toy but some of us have our own lives to live.

You should consider taking some of your own advice.

The *left* nor anybody else, gets to decide anything at all about me.

Maybe you like being their pull-toy but some of us have our own lives to live.

You should consider taking some of your own advice.

What kind of anthropomorphic-believing idiot would you write "RIP" to a creature with no soul?