My Palm Itches

Maybe I should get a lottery ticket for Wednesday night??? It could be a sign....

Hundreds of Chipping Sparrows

Me and my baby Grand were looking out the window yesterday watching the birds, and I noticed alot of activity on the ground and in my flower pots. Looking a little closer, I realized it was at least a hundred chipping sparrows, foraging for insects on the ground and in the pots! I think the flocks have officially arrived to spend the Winter with us:) Quite a beautiful site if you like birds as much as I do.

I am gonna make a birder out of my Grandbaby yet! We sit at the window every day and look out, and I point out the different birds to him, even though he's only 18 months old:) I told my daughter by the time he's 2, he'll be able to name every bird and point them out to her!

Now if I can just get the rest of the family interested....

Happy Halloweenie!

Here are my two little men dressed in their Halloween Costumes:

Cute, aren't they?

Winter Birds

I'm starting to see the various birds that Winter in Texas. Just in the last few days, the goldfinches are slowly trickling in and the chipping sparrows are noisily making their presence known.

Over the weekend, I saw a new bird I've never encountered before, and found out they are called White Throated Sparrows. They are beautiful little birds, with dark striped heads, a yellow streak down each side of its head, and a distinctive white throat. They scavenge on the ground under leaves and pine needles, looking for bugs to eat.

It's almost time for my second year as a Project Feeder Watcher. I'm excited...I love to count the birds every day and submit my data to be counted along with other birders from all over the place.

More bird reports coming soon...can't WAIT for the Cedar Waxwings to make their appearance!

Colder Than a Well Diggers Ass

If you don't like the weather in Texas, just wait 5 minutes...it'll change! It's been in the mid to upper 90's this past week, but we got a cold front and it struggled to get to 60 today. Now it's 44 and headed down lower.

I think Old Man Winter is fixing to show himself..snow would be nice....

Kennedy Assasination Witness Speaks Up

My Dad is famous! He made the front page of the local newspaper. He was right up front when JFK got shot, and he has quite a story to tell..

John Templin is one of only a handful of living eyewitnesses to the assasination of John F. Kennedy, but more than that experience, he values the bond he shares with fellow eyewitness Ernie Brandt.

Templin and Brandt make an effort every year to attend the anniversary commemoration of JFK's assasination at Dealey Plaza. Templin missed the event last year because he was ill, but he is determined to attend this November.

"I've learned to like going down there every year," he said. "I get to spend time with old Ernie. We only talk four or five times a year and we don't see each other very much."

Brandt, he said, was the publicity hound after witnessing the shooting. Templin was more "private about it," he said.

November 22, 1963, Brand suggested that he and Templin take a long lunch so that the two could watch the President's motorcade drive through Dallas. Templin was 25 and just married.

"It was an experience I'll never forget for sure," Templin said. "I was sure enough an eyewitness to history."

Templin and Brandt were just acquiaintances at the time. Brandt would take Templin to lunch and Templin would agree to use Brandt's services to ship appliances for his employer.

"Ernie just casually mentioned if I'd like to see the President, so I said well, I'm already late for work," Templin said. Besides, Brandt knew the perfect spot to watch the nation's leader pass by.

The two men stood on the curb in front of the infamous grassy knoll, just feet from Abraham Zapruder, who's amazing video of the shooting would become a much studied document of one of the most distinct and significant moments in American history. Both men are visible in several frames of the film.

He (Kennedy) was smiling and waving, and about 25-30 feet past us, we heard a shot, a boom," Templin said. "At first we thought it was a firework. Then I noticed the President slumped over, with his shoulders and his elbows kind of pushed up. I thought he was playing..kidding."

"Then the second shot hit him in the head. Killed him," he added. "And we knew he was dead. No one could have survived a shot like that. His hair stood up, and we didn't see him again."

"However," he said, the Warren Commission determined that the third shot hit Kennedy in the head." Templin is convinced that it was the second shot and the third shot hit nothing.

"Maybe it was different. When something like that happens, the sequence gets confusing, but in my mind, I'm sure it was the second shot," he said.

Templin also said that he is sure the shot came from the Texas Schoolbook Depository, not to the right of the grassy knoll, as conflicting accounts claim.

"I don't agree with the conspiracy theorists that claim it came from the picket fence," he said. "That would have been to the right of me. Any hearing person could tell where the shot came from. To my left and from above."

He said that upon hearing the shots, Brandt ducked behind a tree. Templin remembers seeing police immediately jump off their motorcycles, letting them "put, put, put" riderless down the street.

Templin looked towards where he thought the shot came from.

"My first thought was.."I hope you get the S.O.B!" he said.

Then panic broke loose. Upon realizing that the President, popular and handsome, had been murdered in front of their eyes, people ran. They screamed and wept.

"As Ernie said, it was pandemonium," Templin said. He went back to work immediately because he knew that the police would soon rope off the area and interview witnesses, and he wouldn't be allowed to leave for hours.

For 29 years, Templin stayed away from Dealey Plaza and rarely spoke of what he witnessed. A year before the 30th anniversary and the dedication of a new plaque at the spot where Kennedy was assasinated, Templin was waiting on a train near the spot and decided to kill some time by visiting the plaza.

He and Brandt met for the first time since the assasination at the 30th anniversary and spoke with other witnesses and aficionados.

"I'm amazed that people are still that interested in something that happened 40 some years ago," Templin said. "Those people get Ernie and me cornered and we can't get away. I like arguing with the conspiracy theorists. I tell them, "You show me one shred of evidence there was a conspiracy," "and sure enough they can't."

Though Templin doesn't speak much about his experience, Brandt does.

He speaks at colleges and keeps memoirs about it. He has extensively researched the subject, talking with other eyewitnesses and granting interviews to news outlets and historians.

Brandt wears the same blue snap-brim hat he wore on the day of the assasination to the anniversary commomorations.

"That's the one thing that makes me stand out in the film," Brandt said.

His and Templins accounts differ on some of the infamous day's events, but they agree on the important aspects.

Brandt, unlike Templin, believes that the third shot hit Kennedy in the head, and he insists that one cannot be certain that the shots came from above the two men and to their left.

"I did not know where the shots originated," he said. "It was so loud and unexpected. My first thought was that it came from a motorcycle backfiring."

Also, both men agree that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter, and they both enjoy arguing with the conspiracy theorists at the anniversaries.

"We get into it pretty deep with the conspiracy theorists. Some people get pretty sassy, but for the most part people are polite about it," Brandt said. "They gather around us and want to hear our story."

However, he agrees with Templin that the event kickstarted their friendship.

"The experience has kept us together as friends for all these years," Brandt said. "It's something that not many people have seen in their lives. It just kind of bound us to each other."


My famous Dad...I'm proud of him for finally coming forward and telling his story to the world after all those years of silence...

Tag Mom...You're it!

Ok Mom...I finally got up off my a** and wrote a few blogs..now it's YOUR turn...

Tag...You're it!

:)

Waiting....

2 weeks later, and I'm STILL waiting on word from the magazine publisher about my children's story. These pins and needles I'm sititng on are getting pretty painful, LOL! Why does time fly all of the time...EXCEPT when you're in a hurry?

Most publishers take at least 8 weeks to let you know anything, so I should know by Christmas...what a great gift that would be!

Birds in the Azalea Bush

Every morning, while I'm sitting in my office working on Ebay and sipping my coffee, I am greeted to the most beautiful birdsong I have ever heard. There are at least 2 Carolina Wrens that sit in the Azalea bush and sing to me. Sometimes they perch on the window and look in to see if I'm listening:) If you have never heard a Carolina Wren sing, come to my house and sit in my office with me...they put on quite a show.

On that same subject, just what the heck are Carolina Wrens doing here in Texas? Shouldn't they be in the Carolinas? We have Carolina Chickadees too...not Black Capped ones, but Carolina...I think I'll rename them both Texas Wrens and Texas Chickadees...

Ah, life in the boonies...wouldn't trade it for a million dollars!

Where Did it Go??????

As I sit here on this crisp Fall day

Feeling the cool wind blow

I have but one thing to say

WHERE THE HELL DID SUMMER GO???

Happy Birthday to my Little Sis

Happy Birthday to You

You Live in a Zoo (you really do, don't you? LOL!)

You Look Like a Baboon (I'm running out of zoo animals with all the august and september birthdays!)

And You Smell Like One Too!!!

Happy Birthday to my Sweet and Precious little Sister..may this be the best year you've ever had!

I LOVE YOU!

Sissy

Pins & Needles

I finally sent off my first short story manuscript to a children's magazine yesterday. Now I get to sit on pins and needles and wait to hear from them...

Ouch!!

Sunday Turtles

My dog Caligula gets to take a walk around the trails every evening with Bill. We have lots of turtles on our property, but he hardly ever finds them, except on Sundays:) When we take him on Sundays, we always say "Find us a Sunday Turtle, and sure enough, he digs one up somewhere on the trail. Yesterday Bill was down with a pulled muscle in his back, so I took the dog for his walk. He not only found one turtle, he found TWO! He was so proud of himself...prancing around with a turtle in his mouth. We always let him carry it a few seconds, then we take it away from him and bring it to the front to watch it come back out of its shell. We usually mark their shells with nail polish, and several times we've come back with one of the previously marked turtles:)

Ahh, life in the boonies....

Ebay Cafe Dallas Jamboree...What a blast!!

Me and Ashley went to the Ebay Cafe Jamboree in Irving a few weekends ago, and I've got to say..

I HAVE SOME CRAZY FRIENDS, LOL!

I haven't laughed that much in a long time, and it felt so good:) I had met a few of the ladies before, but I also met alot of new friends, and we had a blast. We got there Friday about 1:00, and didn't leave until late Saturday evening. Stayed in a nice hotel in a room with my sweet friend Liz from Oklahoma. We stayed outside by the pool until 1:30 AM talking and laughing...us "old" folks wore Ashley out and she was the first to go to bed, LOL!

Saturday was the official "Party", and we had some great food, more good friends, and lots of laughs. The highlight of the day was when some kid pulled the fire alarm right in the middle of our dinner. The firemen had to come check it out, and before they left, they posed for pictures in some fancy red hats that my friend Jan had given us (Red Hat Society type hats). Those firemen were grinning like possums and you could tell they were enjoying themselves posing for pictures with the lovely ladies:)

I wanted to stay forever, and when it came time for us to leave, I had tears in my eyes as I hugged everyone goodbye. I hope we get to do it again next year:)