Opus 500

It is hard for me to believe that this is my 500th post on An Arkies Musings.  Blogging has become a part of my everyday life.  Just a few short years ago I had never hear of blogging and had no idea what a blog was.  Since I started writing this blog in the fall of 2008 over 246,000 people have read at least one post.  I have had visitors from 193 countries. 

One day back in 2008 my friend Laurel was visiting in our home.  She showed me her daughter's blog, Winter's Day In. Because she lived so far away from her daughter, she kept up with her through the blog. I had no idea what it was all about.

As I was reading the blog, I noticed at the top of the page that it had a link that said create blog. I had to see what it was all about, so I clicked it. In a few days I had my own blog, and I enjoyed writing and posting pictures to it. I had written a little before starting the blog, but definitely not regularly. I would occasionally write a column for the religion page of my local newspaper, and I had posted a few articles on the writing website Helium, but I had never had a "reason" to write before.

I have been asked why I call my blog, An Arkies Musings.  I have to admit that very little thought went into the name of my blog. As I was looking at the create blog page in Blogger, just trying to figure out what it was all about, one of the first things that had to be filled in was the title. I spent about thirty seconds thinking, and typed An Arkies Musings. Arkie is slang word for someone who lives in Arkansas.

We used to be officially called Arkansawyers, but now the term is Arkansan. During the Great Depression of the 1930's, Arkansas and Oklahoma were some of the hardest hit states. Many people moved to California trying to get jobs. The terms Arkie and Okie were disparaging terms used by the Californians for people from Oklahoma and Arkansas. Now the term Arkie is most often used to describe a native Arkansan and is often still a bit disparaging. It seems to indicate that someone is unlearned and backward.

I have lived here for over 30 years. Though I'm not a native, I am proud to be an Arkansan or even an Arkie. You have to admit that An Arkansan's Musings just doesn't roll off the tongue.

What I enjoy the most about blogging is the people that I have met, around the world and close to home. It helps me have a greater understanding of the world as a whole. Most of us associate with and are friends with people who are very similar to ourselves. Blogging has broadened my horizons and really made me think. Before my blog, I had never experienced internet friendships before, but reading and commenting on people's blogs does help you get to know them.

My very first post was on  September 6, 2008 and was titled Shelter From The Storm, and told the story of our experience with Hurricane Gustav.

 

My 100th post was on January 29, 2009 and was titled An Icy World Part Two.  An ice storm here in Mena, Arkansas provided the opportunity for some icy photos.

On  May 23, 2010 I uploaded post number 200, Ready To Kindle.  I was excited about purchasing a Kindle e-book reader.

Post number 300 was the story of an afternoon trip to DeGray Lake, on in October 2012.  The fall colors were beautiful and we closed the day with a sunset cruise on the lake.

During the summer of 2013 we attended my Aunt Opal's 85th birthday party.  She gave me some memoirs that she had written, and I turned them into blog posts.  Post number 400 was posted on August 1, 2013 and was titled Aunt Opal's Memories-Chapter 1-Part 2.

I have found it interesting over the years to see which post are the most popular.  Here are the top 5 An Arkies Musings posts.

The most viewed post is from May 8, 2009 and is titled I'm So Sleepy.  Over 10,300 people have viewed the post about the fatigue that set in after a tornado hit Mena in April, 2009.

With over 7,100 view, the next most popular is the January 11, 2009 post titled Christmas In Jamaica.  We took a cruise and ended up being in Jamaica on Christmas Day.

The popularity of the TV show Duck Dynasty helped make my D is for Duck Dynasty post of February 5, 2013 the third most viewed post with over 6,100 page views.

The post titled U is for Unicorn has had over 4,200 visitors putting it in fourth place.  It features the Unicorn Song by the Irish Rovers.

Over 4,100 people have read about the itsy bitsy spider and what the rhyme means in the post I Is For Itsy Bitsy Spider making it An Arkies Musings fifth most read post.

I can only wonder what the next 500 posts will bring.  Life experience brings many possible topics for An Arkies Musings.  I hope you will continue on the journey with me. I will close this Opus 500 with what I feel is the most heartfelt post of the 500.  This was written in the early morning hours a few hours after a tornado ripped through my hometown of Mena, Arkansas on April 9, 2009.



Tonight at around 7:30 the tornado sirens sounded here in Mena. Gina and I went to the safe place in our house, the downstairs hallway. About that time our electricity went out. The storm passed without damage here at the house. We were thankful that we were spared.

After the storm passed and the stars came out, I decided to drive into town to see if anyone had electricity. When I got to downtown, I started to see storm damage and saw that the authorities were not letting people proceed to the north side of Mena.

I drove to my parents house to see if they were OK, and they were fine with no damage to their house or property. I drove on to the church but saw no damage their. I thought that the storm may not have been to bad, but by the time I returned home, the phone was ringing off the hook with reports of severe damage.

The first news reports stated that the Polk County Sheriff's Department reports one person was killed after a tornado swept through the town Thursday night.

Severe storms moving through the area shortly after eight o'clock tonight spawned the twister.

As damage assessment began, KARK was told a 25 block area that included the Polk County Courthouse and Mena City Hall took a direct hit from the tornado. There are 12 minor injuries in the city.

Governor Beebe has sent 30 National Guard members to the city for help.

The Arkansas State Police tells KARK 4 there is extensive damage to homes and businesses throughout the city of Mena.

We received a call from a friend telling us that our good friend Deanna had a lot of damage to her house, and her car was totaled. Just before the storm hit, Deanna was on the phone with Gina telling her that she was in the closet and she was scared. We have not been able to talk to her since. We don't know what we will find when we are able to get into the the area. Just a couple of blocks from her house, there were 20 or more people in the Masonic Lodge when it collapsed. There is one known fatality on the street where Deanna lives.

We have had friends staying with us this evening, because they were not able to get home. The National Guard is in town and not letting anyone into the severely damaged area. There was damage at RMCC, the community college, and at Wal-Mart. There is damage at U.S. Motors where Gina operates the Credit Union. We have not been able to find out the extent of the damage.

I need to go to sleep, but probably sleep won't come. I don't know what tomorrow will bring.

Unread

U is for unread.  I love books and the way they feel and smell and look. I collect old books.  It is so much easier to buy books than it is to find the time to read them.



When I was a kid my favorite place was the Public Library. During the time I was in school I read just about every book in the kids section of the public library in the town of Longmont, Colorado. I still remember being disappointed that I was only allowed to check out three books at a time. I also didn't understand why I couldn't check out books from the adult section on my kids library card. I would take my three books home and have them read in a day or two and then begged my Mama to take me back to the library. I kept a flashlight handy for reading after I was supposed to be asleep. The Longmont Public Library was my access to knowledge.


My house is full of books, many of them unread.  I have resolved to stop buying books since I have so many unread books already.  Even though I have slowed down on buying books, a few years ago I bought a Kindle e-reader.

Buying the Kindle only made my unread book problem worse.  There are a huge amount of free books that are available for e-readers. There are over 6 million free books that are available to read on my Kindle. There were so many books that I have never even seen a copy of, yet are now easily available. I love history, and the amount of historical material that is available is staggering. To get an idea of what is available go here.

I'm  not sure what I can do to solve my unread book problem.  There are too many books and not enough time to read them.


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Amazon

A is for Amazon.  When I was growing up if someone talked about Amazon they were referring to the river in South America, or a nation of all female warriors in Greek mythology.  Today, if Amazon pops up in a conversation it will most likely be in reference to the world's largest ecommerce retailer.

The company currently employs more than 43,200 people in 18 U.S. states and 14 international locations. Its headquarters are in Seattle, Washington.  Amazon's goal is to become the world's most customer-centric company where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.

I am an Amazon customer.  The problem with Amazon is that they make it just too easy to spend your money.  Cd's, movies, books, printer ink, cameras, etc, etc.  Just about anything I could want I can buy on Amazon.  

My favorite Amazon product is my Kindle.  I have been a Kindle reader since I purchased my Kindle in 2010.  You can read about my first thoughts about my Kindle here.  

I love reading about history and my Kindle has made it so easy to find books on topics that interest me.  One of the books that I found combined my love of history with my interest in automobiles, and was set in the Amazon.  It was the book, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin.  

In the 1920's Ford Motor Company was producing over a million cars a year. Henry Ford needed rubber to make tires, hoses and other parts for the cars. Rubber does not grow in Michigan, and European producers enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the rubber trade because of their Asian colonies. So Henry decided to grow his own. In 1927 he decided to get it by carving a plantation and a miniature Midwest factory town out of the Amazon jungle. He called it Fordlandia.

The site chosen for Ford’s new rubber plantation was an area of some 2.5 million acres on the banks of the Tapajós River, a tributary of the Amazon about 600 miles from the Atlantic. It took Ford’s agents approximately 18 hours to reach the place by riverboat from the nearest town. Ford’s vision was a replica Midwestern town, with modern plumbing, hospitals, schools, sidewalks, tennis courts and even a golf course. There would be no drink or other forms of immorality, but gardening for all and chaste dances every week.

Ford tried to use his knowledge of mass industrial production on the diversity of the jungle. But the Amazon is one of the most complex ecological systems in the world — and didn't fit into Ford's plan. Ford was so distrustful of experts that he never even consulted one about rubber trees. If he had he would have learned that plantation rubber can't be grown in the Amazon. The pests and the fungi and the blight that feed off of rubber are native to the Amazon. Basically, when you put trees close together in the Amazon, what you in effect do is create a feast for the pests. The Fordlandia plantation actually accelerated the production of caterpillars, leaf blight and other organisms that prey on rubber.

Just like the rubber plantation didn't work, neither did Henry's idea of creating a utopian society in the middle of the jungle.  Although he built nice homes for the workers and built modern schools, his work force was never happy.  There was tremendous turnover.  He didn’t like drinking, so he prohibited alcohol.  He tried to regulate the diet of Brazilian workers. He had very rigid thoughts on healthy food, so he had them eating whole rice and whole wheat bread and canned Michigan peaches and oatmeal. There were riots over the food.  He also tried to regulate their recreational time. He introduced square dancing to replace the samba.

The Brazilian workers resisted the heavy attempt to regulate every aspect of their lives, not just the industrial regime, but also their diet, their sanitation and medical regulation. And during one riot in particular, they smashed all the time clocks.

Ford spent about a billion dollars, in inflation-adjusted dollars, on this project, and not one drop of latex made it into a Ford car. It was an absolute failure. In 1945 it was sold to the Brazilian government for $244,200.

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