Cold!

It's actually not bad here in Arizona. Right now (at 11:30 a.m.) the temperature is 43 degrees and the forecast high today is 56. But most of the rest of the country is abnormally cold. For example, take a look at Charleston, South Carolina, where my pal Joan has had her camera out this morning.

Reminds me of that old pirate line: shiver my timbers!

Back where I grew up, in North Dakota, the wind chill this week was 50 degrees below zero! Now I can remember going out to ice skate when the real temperature was 20 below but that was 60 years ago and now I'm feeling cold at 43 degrees. I just have to try to remember last summer when the temperature was in the 90's and I was wishing for the cooler weather to arrive.

Movies and more

I've been on a movie watching jag lately. I just watched "Donnie Brasco" with Johnny Depp and Al Pacino, among others. Yesterday I watched "Nick of Time" with Depp and Christopher Walken. Both were quite good but after all the violence I think I'm now ready for a chick flick. My movie aficionado, Reed, had never heard of the "Nick of Time" film so I actually got one up on him. He's a true movie maven so has usually already seen everything I see. I don't know how I'd missed these two Depp films all these years.

Speaking of film, look what I found:



Looks like paradise, doesn't it. And I only live a half-dozen miles away. Meantime, just up over Mingus Mountain, maybe 15 miles away in the opposite direction is one of my favorite towns: Jerome.



As noted, Sedona and the Red Rocks are only 25 to 30 miles beyond that. Not a bad place to live, here in the heart of Arizona.

Birthday Day

David Bowie and my pal, Reed, both became 63 years old today.

But the big marker is for Elvis Presley. Were he still alive, he'd be 75 today. If you want to celebrate that milestone, you might go no further than The New York Times Dining Blog. Click on the link for a truly Elvis recipe.

Damn that Maxine!

A song for the times

Do cats have memories?

I was struck by this question this morning just after I had let Smoke out the back door. I watched as he sniffed along the deck, then leaped to the top of a fence separating our yard from our neighbor's yard.

The neighbor has an un-neutered small black male cat. While he comes into our garage and apparently sleeps there from time to time and generally seems to get along all right with Smoke, there have been a couple of instances where apparently the hormones are raging and the two of them get into a spat. A cat spat. I'll hear the howling and when I go out, they are nose to nose. Smoke, as I have often said, is a very placid cat but in these instances he seems to become the alpha cat and in a very short time chases Blackie (as I call him) out of the yard.

I'm sure neither cat relishes these encounters. At least they don't appear to enjoy them. So why, I wondered this morning, does Smoke go over into Blackie's yard as if looking for him? Is it because he has no memory of the bad encounters?

Well. I am a man of the 21st Century so I did what all good modernists do - I went to the Internets in search of an answer. And on a site called "Pawprints and Purrs, Inc." here's what I found:

Cats have a memory that can be up to 200 times more retentive than dogs. The individual feline uses his memory only for what he regards as useful functions; therefore, a cat's memory is quite selective.

Now I would think that avoiding a contretemps with another cat would be a useful function but perhaps it's not as useful as remembering where one's food dish is located. If any of you readers have a better idea or more knowledge about this than I do, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Red Meat Rock

Thanks, Tom!