Introduction

I've decided to start a new blog, this one just for me. Like the tomcat in the title, I'll be able to howl as loud as I want on any subject I want.

The country, the world, is again confounded by what happened in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. What causes someone to do that? What makes otherwise normal human beings as well as misguided terrorists want to kill people, any people or what the terrorists think of as infidels? I look forward to the day when we can fix crooked minds like his before their crookendness lashes out. I don't think it will be like Big Brother infringing on our civil rights. I think we will have then achieved enough medical knowledge to fix all human problems, both physical as well as mental. I won't see that day but I hope my children or their children will.

The wind is up, and the arbor vitae are rocking and rolling. And it's hot. The forecasters keep saying we'll get rain each of the next four days, but they're wrong so much of the time, I won't count on any rain falling. Too often we get virga, a term I'd never heard of until we moved here. Virga is rain that falls but evaporates before it reaches the ground. Sometimes I feel like virga, falling but not quite reaching the ground. That reminds me of my fall when we were in Mobridge. I'd crossed the street in front of Doris's house to sit in the park for a forbidden cigarette. When I came back, I stepped onto one of the rocks acting as park curbing, not a big rock and not very much above the road surface, no more than a foot. But it was set at an angle, tilted slightly toward the road, and when I stepped off, like a dead man, I went down on my left knee and sprawled out, catching myself on both hands just before my head smacked into the asphalt. How stupid. How foolish I felt as I pushed myself upright and checked to see if anyone had seen me fall. Just like the time I was up on a ladder at the back of our house in Lakewood, New York, the ladder foolishly standing on an icy back deck. The ladder slipped backwards on the ice and I came down from eight feet flat on my face. That time I also checked to see if anyone had seen my fall from grace. I was more embarrassed than injured, just like this fall in Mobridge. I had a skinned left knee and two skinned palms, but nothing more serious. But at my age, I could just as easily have broken a hip or knee, broken one or both wrists, or suffered a concussion or even death if my head had hit the roadway. Lucky and stupid , that's me.