Sunday, February 26, 2023
Friday, January 27, 2023
Old and Obsolete Camera(man)
Gunnar Berg
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Heimdall the Watcher
In Norse mythology Heimdall, watchman of the gods, dwelt at the entry to Asgard. He required less sleep than a bird, could see 100 leagues and hear grass growing in the meadows. Heimdall kept the ringing horn Gjallarhorn which could be heard throughout heaven, earth, and the lower world to summon the gods when their enemies approached.
Over the ages, one by one, the old gods eventually retired to the south of France. Heimdall fell on hard times, eventually retiring beside the spring which is the source of the mighty Oakwood Rivulet, where he landed a job as a watchman protecting 1410 from all evil.
Monday, July 4, 2022
Dust in a Baggie - Billy Strings
Methamphetamine has got a damn good hold of me
My tweaker friends have got me to the point of no return
I just took the lighter to the bulb and watched it burn
Well, it's got me back in prison once again
I used my only phone call to contact my daddy
I got 20 long years for some dust in a baggie
I wouldn't be locked up in prison, troubled in the head
I took that little pop and suck until my mind was spun
I got 20 years to sit and think of what I've done
Well, it's got me back in prison once again
I used my only phone call to contact my daddy
I got 20 long years for some dust in a baggie
These old jailhouse blues have got me singing this old song
My life is a disaster, Lord and I feel so ashamed
In here where they call me by a number, not a name
Well, it's got me back in prison once again
I used my only phone call to contact my daddy
I got 20 long years for some dust in a baggie
I got 20 long years for some dust in a baggie
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
And on the third day God created...
I do not necessarily believe in a God Creator, but if I did I would imagine he is mucking around tweaking and changing things (evolution?) ... like moving Victoria Falls 102 feet to the left so it looked right to him .... or her (heaven only knows).
(The mountain range and gulch on the horizon should shift a corresponding amount.)
Monday, May 30, 2022
WAY pedals for a 1950 M.Bonvicini
Johnny Pergolizzi showed up with set of really clean Way-Assauto pedals. The original pedals (and stem) are the only original things that a little rough on the bike, so I bit.

- Gunnar
Thursday, May 12, 2022
1410 Migrating Warblers: 05-10-2022 & 05-11-2022
All taken from the same location on our garden bench with "The Beast", my heavy, obsolete old camera.
Saturday, January 8, 2022
The White Rose Bouquet
I love song lyrics that tell stories and blur the line between lyrics and poetry. Initially I fell for this short phrase "... Irish poets, raconteurs and libertines". I found the writing style interesting, capturing a vague feeling of a past time.
I then went to Google to learn about "card squeezers" and "blistering the Bees". It seems before cards had number/suit designation in the upper left-hand corner, players had to spread their hand to see the pips or faces and an opponent could somewhat judge the strength of the hand by how wide is was spread. A squeezer would never spread his hand, merely remember the card on top then shift it to the bottom. "Bee" was the primary brand of fine playing cards and of course "blistering" was card marking. I knew "the gambler's fallacy" from flipping quarters. The probability of an event happening does not depend on what has happened in the past - each flip is still 50-50%.
I also checked out the .32-20, which was a Colt .312 diameter round with 20 grains of powder. It was a heavy, slow velocity bullet; poor distance kill, but deadly at close range.
I was smokin' cigarettes at age thirteen
At seventeen I was drinking in the taverns
With Irish poets, raconteurs and libertines
At twenty-one I was a full-time gambler
A card squeezer who blistered the Bees
I carried a .32-20 in my pocket
And I heeded not The Gambler's Fallacy
Thereupon I was asked to be a procurer
By a young woman of desire named Olivia Mae
So for mutual financial benefits
We opened the House of the White Rose Bouquet
Olivia was a beauty and quite flirtatious
She enjoyed the company of rakish men
And we fell deeply in love with each other
And prospered in our house of ill-repute and sin
And even though I was in love with Olivia
There were other girls and indiscretion
A patron of the house was a physician
And he gave me a cure for my transgression
One night Olivia found my hidden blue bottle
With tablets shaped like coffins inside
How my heart died when I found her
In her green beaded dress, dead on the floor
At her service, I cocked my .32-20
For I could not stand the sorrow anymore
The House of the White Rose Bouquet
Fell into disarray and was torn down
The place is now a beacon of decency
For it's a theatre known as The New Amsterdam
At night after the audience has departed
Never knowing where they were was once a brothel
A figure walks across the darkened stage
In a green beaded dress, carryin' a blue bottle
https://youtu.be/draMuAxlp5s
Monday, December 27, 2021
Christmas With the Old Norwegian
Lorna and I were spending Christmas with my daughter Adena and her wife Nicole in the Cooper neighborhood of Longfellow in Minneapolis. It is a pleasant neighborhood on the buffs above the Mississippi gorge - a good neighborhood for walking with or without a dog for an excuse. A fifteen minute walk south of their 1925 bungalow is the Seven Oaks Oval, a two acre 35 foot deep wooded sinkhole in the middle of a ring of classic craftsman homes.
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Wind
- Gunnar
As I lay in bed, wind tired and worn, drifting through the hallway between half-asleep and half-awake, a song drifted in, "When death comes a knocking will God open the door?"
And for some reason, the Four Horsemen came riding through the dream mist: "Death? Pestilence? Famine? Death? ... or was it Margadant, Grinley, Hurst, Westrum, Berg? No, that's five."
"Oh yeah, that's right, Dock became a Republican"... as I drifted off.