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The alarm goes off at 4:50 a.m. for our trip to Utah. I called for a taxi to the airport. We wait. And wait. The taxi finally arrives and then drives right past the house in the rain. No problem, I think; we live on a dead end street, so he’ll be back in a minute. We wait. And wait. It starts to pour rain. He calls on the phone. He’s lost. The fact that a taxi driver can get lost on a dead end street should have been my first clue. He finally comes back and picks us up. It’s still pouring rain, ponding on the streets. The taxi driver is riding the high center of the road, avoiding the water on the sides, or so I’m thinking. He starts rattling on about the UFO he once saw in our neighborhood. It isn’t until we get onto the interstate that it’s clear he’s under the influence and nearly plows into a guardrail. And he’s still going on about the UFO. Fortunately he seems to have been to the airport enough times to find it even in his condition. Next time I’ll be sure and ask for a driver who is not drunk.
Despite this inauspicious beginning, we get on the plane without incident, and fly to DFW. Breakfast in the airport, and then off to Salt Lake City. Looking out of the airplane window as we crossed into Utah, I couldn’t help but survey the bleak and barren landscape below and conclude that the Mormons must have been very, very unhappy back east to settle here.

Tonight we carved pumpkins.

It’s August, and that means another trip to the Kentucky State Fair.  It dawned bright, beautiful, and considerably cooler than usual this morning as we got up and headed to the fairgrounds.

First, we went to where the horses were practising for the show that day.  We saw several impressive animals.

Then we went to see some more animals.  My favorite, of course, is seeing the rabbits, but they are only exhibited the first few days of the fair, and so we were going to miss them this year.  We followed our noses through the halls until we came upon the dairy cows.

There were some very pretty bovines there, even to my untrained eye.  CVH, who spent time in dairy barns as a small girl, pointed out this potential ribbon winner. (Those spots are lens flare, not cow deformities.)

We followed another fellow leading a lovely Brown Swiss to be milked.  Here is the shower room where the cows are washed off before being milked.

Leaving the dairy barn, we came to where the rabbits are shown.  Much to my surprise and delight, the rabbits were still there!  Although this was the day the rabbits moved out, they couldn’t leave until that afternoon.  We saw award winning Rex, Polish, Angora, Lop, Dutch, Harlequin, Flemish Giant, Nederland (or Netherland, depending on how native you wanted to go), Dwarf, Cinnamon, Florida White, Tans, Lionheads, and others that I can’t remember.

CVH said said she couldn’t believe how many darn rabbits there were.

At one point we overheard some exhibitors talking about how the night before some criminals had sneaked in and purloined some of the pets.  That is, filched some fur.  Copped some coneys.  Lifted some lapines.  Borrowed some bunnies.  Kidnapped some cottontail.  In other words, rabbit rustlers!

Next to the rabbits were dairy goats.  I watched one being milked.  CVH said it looked a lot easier than milking a cow, but she gamely posed for a portrait anyway.

By now we’d worked up an appetite and stepped outside the rabbit barn to the best eats at the fair.  No, not the “sloppy doughnut” or fried kool-aid, but the freshly hand-dipped corndogs at the Kentucky corn producers Corn Shack.

With food still on our minds, it was off to the food exhibits.  There were the usual giant pumpkins, huge bell peppers, and so-so looking eggplant (I keep saying one year I’m going to enter my eggplant, as they always look better than the fair winners).  The most impressive displays were the combination displays of multiple vegetables, as they require both gardening and artistic skill.  “How do they do such lovely arrangements?” CVH asked.  “They bought most of that at Kroger,” I whispered.  “It’s the dirty little secret of the fair that no one wants to talk about.”

We did get to see the champion Largest Beet.

But time was fleeing on its winged path, and if we did not get back to the other side of the fair, we were going to miss the Amazing Dobermans.  The Amazing Dobermans is a small (real small) circus of some dogs doing cute tricks.  It was fun, and I did get my picture taken with them.

You can see me in my new cheap sunglasses that I bought at the fair.  They were sold as John Lennon style, but they make me look more like Dr Strangelove.

We went through the health fair on our way to “The Pride Of The Counties” and got this photo outside the Humana booth.

On the way out, someone was making ice cream.  The churns were powered by an old hit-and-miss engine, one of my favorite machines.

The eye surgery is complete, and I returned to the office today.  Before taking off for the surgery, I was joking around with one of my co-workers (he’s approximately my age), about how I might never see him again and that sort of thing.

So when he came in this morning, I greeted him with “Mister Clooney!  What a suprise to see you here!  You must be back in Kentucky visiting family?  Listen, my wife is a big fan; could she get an autograph?  Just a Love, George?”  He seemed to appreciate that.

As we mature and become older and wiser, we must learn to gracefully surrender the things of youth.  Today I surrender the lenses in my eyeballs.  I am no more apprehensive of this than anyone would be about a stranger digging around in their eye with a sharp stick.

My wife came to bed last night, and I confessed that I was somewhat nervous about this procedure.  She said that they would give me something to calm me down.  I noted that I had spoken with several people who had gone through cataract surgery, and none of them mentioned that.

“Well they’re going to have to give you something to keep you under control,” she said.

“You make it sound like Civil War surgery,” I replied, “HOLD HIM DOWN BOYS! I’M GOING TO START CUTTING – I’LL SAW AS FAST AS I CAN!”

Earlier, I did some reading on the internet, and discovered that cataract surgery has been going on for thousands of years.  The ancient Greeks practiced cataract surgery, and in much the same way as it is done today: they scratched around in the eyeball with a sharp stick.  When I mentioned these results of my reading to the surgeon, he told me that the ancient Chinese were treating cataracts even earlier, by just whapping the eye with a hammer and knocking the cataract right out.  He quickly pointed out that he would not be using that technique.  However he did say that he had the surgery down to where he can get it done in about five minutes.  I’m not sure if that was supposed to be reassuring or what.  I’d just as soon he take his time.

The Dalai Lama came to town this weekend to bless the local Buddhist hangout, and among other things, give an all-day lecture on Buddhist philosophy. The blessing and other appearances were a invitation-only events and we were not invited, but they sold tickets to the lecture, which was held at the arena downtown.

The venue, the arena, was okay; it was very cold and you could tell who had been there before – they were the ones wearing jackets, sweaters, and hoodies. Now we know. They also did not turn on the lights in the audience area. Come on! It’s a lecture! People are going to want to take notes. They did have a couple of nice big monitors so that you could see close-up images of Mr. Lama as he spoke and pulled his robes around him to try and stay warm.

The first hour and a half or so of his talk focussed on the general purpose of religion: spreading love and compassion and all that stuff, and how the major religions have this in common. He spoke about how the acquistion of material goods does not produce peace of mind. Interestingly, he did not recommend that people in non-Buddhist countries convert to Buddhism.  “Stick with your own traditions”, he advised; it will avoid a lot of problems.  He used the simple sixth-grade-level English that we’re used to from political speeches. It was beginning to sound rather pop-psychology, like something you would hear from a Doctor So-and-So on TV, and I was wondering if this was all we were going to get.

But then he started discussing “our text for today”, which was Atisha’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. This is a treatise of about fifty stanzas that was written in the ninth century. At this point, the Dalai Lama switched from English to Tibetan and put his pedal to the metal. He covered the basic tenets of Buddhism before lunch and when we came back he tore all the way to the doctrines of noself and emptiness. It was an impressive performance, especially for a seventy-seven year-old man.

During the breaks, they played music by flautist Nawang Khechog. When they flashed his name and picture up on the giant monitor, I asked CVH, who was working email on her phone, to email me his name. “Who?” she asked. “The guy playing the music. I want to see if he’s on Spotify.” “He’s playing down there?” she asked as she peered down at the empty stage. “No, he’s not here! That’s just a recording. Email me his name; I want to see if I can find his music online.” She went ahead and emailed me his name just in time for a fellow to come out on stage and announce that it was his great pleasure to introduce the Grammy-nominated Nawang Khechog, who then came out and played a piece for us. 

I have to mention that the Dalai Lama has a great laugh, as all Buddhist monks seem to have. I think they study this in the monastery.