First Scotch Tasting With Friends Event (January 29, 2006)
For years I drink only bourbon whisky — no scotch whisky for me. Then in 2006, I was invited to a scotch tasting with several Rotary friends, led by a Scottish gentleman (second on the right). Everybody brought a bottle of single-malt scotch for the tasting event. Not to worry, our wives were there to drive us home.
“Whisky, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it’s time to drink.”
“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.”
Jerry, George and Kenne Toasting the Good Life During a Wonderful Hike Visiting a Series of Scenic Lakes Nestled in a Gorgeous Valley Surrounded by 13,000-ft Peaks in the High Sierras. (August 6, 2006) — Image by joy
I first met Jerry in the late 1990s when he became a member of our book club, The Society of The 5th Cave — A Reading Club for the Non-Discriminating Bourgeoisie. His first selection was The Future and it Enemies by Virgibia Postrel. “Postrel’s book stands out as one of the best popular defenses of the ideal of a free society precisely because she covers the skeletal principles of liberty with the flesh and blood of history, everyday real life, and examples of things around us that we take for granted. It is one of those rare instances of a well-balanced blending of theory and practice that may yet make free men and free markets a reality in the next century.”
In a dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: “How you been?” He grins and looks at me. “I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees.”
— Wendell Berry
3/11/22, 9:58 AM Col. Hoblit Obituary (1936 – 2022) – Conroe, TX – The Courier of Montgomery County
Col. Jerry Noel Hoblit, the greatest ghter pilot of all time, flew west on January 31, 2022, at age 85 in Conroe, TX. Pilots around the world were heard to say YGBSM. Some knew him as Hognose, but his call sign was Dragon. While no SAM could catch him, Dementia and Parkinson’s finally did. Aside from being a world-class fighter pilot, Jerry was a loving husband and father, doting grandfather, and generous friend.
Jerry Hoblit graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Class of 1958. During the Vietnam War, where he served three separate tours, he was awarded three Distinguished Flying Crosses and three Silver Stars, among others. Decades later Colonel Tom Wilson (USAF, Retired), who had been Hoblit’s “backseater” learned that Jerry had one less Silver Star and had been recommended for the Air Force Cross but never received it. Three and a half decades after his service in Vietnam, the Air Force awarded Col. Hoblit with its highest honor, The Air Force Cross. Jerry retired as a U.S. Air Force Colonel on June 30, 1982.
While his military career was marked with incredible success, he counted his marriage to Rosalie Ward as his greatest and most happy achievement. The couple was married on May 24, 1963, at Spangdahlem Air Force Base in Germany. Their family grew to include three daughters, Holly Virginia, Heather Elizabeth, and Heidi Noel. Jerry loved his three girls but found being a grandparent to Eric, Ethan, Rhegan, and August to be the most enjoyable.
A Memorial will be held at Metcalf Funeral Home in Conroe, Texas (1801 East White Oak Terrace) at 3 PM on Saturday, March 12. Chocolate Cake (of course!) and light refreshments will be served following.
This summer the family will honor his wishes and spread some of his remains at Lake Rosalie in the High Sierras. Date TBD.
Col. Jerry Noel Hoblit will have full military honors and yover at Arlington Memorial Cemetery at a future date (most likely in 2023 due to the waitlist). Following this ceremony, the family will honor his request and host a roast in his honor.
Jerry’s wishes were for donations to be made to
Shriner’s Children’s Hospital
Dinner with the Hoblits, the Boyles and the Turners at the Hoblit cabin in Mammouth Lakes, California (August 4, 2006)
Wait; the great horned owls Calling from the wood’s edge; listen. There: the dark male, low And booming, tremoring the whole valley. There: the female, resolving, answering High and clear, restoring silence. The chilly woods draw in Their breath, slow, waiting, and now both Sound out together, close to harmony.
These are the year’s worst nights. Ice glazed on the top boughs, Old snow deep on the ground, Snow in the red-tailed hawks’ Nests they take for their own. Nothing crosses the crusted ground. No squirrels, no rabbits, the mice gone, No crow has young yet they can steal. These nights the iron air clangs Like the gates of a cell block, blank And black as the inside of your chest.
Now, the great owls take The air, the male’s calls take Depth on and resonance, they take A rough nest, take their mate And, opening out long wings, take Flight, unguided and apart, to caliper The blind synapse their voices cross Over the dead white fields, The dead black woods, where they take Soundings on nothing fast, take Soundings on each other, each alone.
— W.D. Snodgrass
Kenne and W.D. Snodgrass (1999) — Montgomery College Writers In Performance Series
New Year’s Day With Friends, 2006 — Image by kenne
Those Were The Days
— Gene Raskin
Once upon a time there was a tavern Where we used to raise a glass or two Remember how we laughed away the hours And think of all the great things we would do
Those were the days my friend We thought they’d never end We’d sing and dance forever and a day We’d live the life we choose We’d fight and never lose For we were young and sure to have our way La la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la La la la la la la
Then the busy years went rushing by us We lost our starry notions on the way If by chance I’d see you in the tavern We’d smile at one another and we’d say
Those were the days my friend We thought they’d never end We’d sing and dance forever and a day We’d live the life we choose We’d fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days La la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la La la la la la la
Just tonight I stood before the tavern Nothing seemed the way it used to be In the glass I saw a strange reflection Was that lonely woman really me
Those were the days my friend We thought they’d never end We’d sing and dance forever and a day We’d live the life we choose We’d fight and never lose Those were the days, oh yes those were the days La la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la La la la la la la la la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la La la la la la la
Through the door there came familiar laughter I saw your face and heard you call my name Oh my friend we’re older but no wiser For in our hearts the dreams are still the same
Those were the days my friend We thought they’d never end We’d sing and dance forever and a day We’d live the life we choose We’d fight and never lose Those were the days, oh yes those were the days La la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la La la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la la la La la la la La la la la la la
Lowell Mick White Reading at the 2008 Walt Whitman Birthday Celebration in Conroe, Texas — Image by kenne
A Supermarket in California
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self- conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour. Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
Sonny Boy Terry and Michael Durbin In Conroe’s Corner Pub (04/14/07) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“The more one loves music,
the less music one loves.”
— Really?!!
I was going through some of my brother’s notes on music this morning and came upon the Roger Sessions statement, “The more one loves music, the less music one loves.” From my own personal experience, there is music I may not have liked but learned to love it.
So, I decided to research the context of what Sessions was saying.
“. . . this initial stage in listening to music is an entirely direct one; the listener brings to the music whatever he can bring, with no other preoccupation than that of hearing. This is, of course, what is to be desired; it is the condition of his really hearing. He will hear the music only to the extent that he identifies himself with it, establishing a fresh and essentially naive contact with it, without preconceived ideas and without strained effort.
. . . the listener’s reaction is immediate and seems, in a sense, identical with the act of hearing. Undoubtedly this is what many listeners expect. And yet, on occasion, one may listen to music attentively, without any conscious response to it until afterward; one’s very attention may be so absorbed that a vivid sense of the sound is retained, but a sense of communications experienced only later. It is this sense of communication to which I refer under the term ‘enjoyment’; obviously, one may not and often does not, in any real sense, ‘enjoy’ what is being communities. There is certainly some music that we never ‘enjoy’; experience inevitably fosters discrimination, and there is certainly some truth even in the frequent, seemingly paradoxical statement that ‘the more one loves music, the less music one loves.’ This statement is true in a sense if we understand it as applying to the experience of an individual, and not a general rule. But if our relation to the music is a healthy one — that is to say, a direct and simple one — our primary and quite spontaneous effort will to deny it.”
The more you learn about something you like, the more you will love it.
“Original Pat Green” (2004)– Photo-Artistry by kenne
Like so many people the past St. Patrick’s Day, we were sheltered-in-place and missed celebrating the 17th the only way it should be, with friends. So I turned to the many photos of St. Patrick’s Day I have taken over the years, and I have many.
At first, I was thinking about doing a collage, but then I found this one of a friend, Patrick A. Green. Starting in 1995, Pat and his friends would meet on the Court House Square in Conroe, parade around the Square, and party at the Corner Pub on the Square.
Pat practiced law in Conroe for 43 years, retiring in 2015. The “Original Pat Green” gave freely of whatever he had to whomever he met, a man of limitless generosity. With unbridled enthusiasm for his Irish and Cajun heritage, Pat could host a party unlike any other. Through his generous spirit and disarming humor, he possessed an extraordinary ability to bring people together.
Pat died on July 12, 2016. He was an original, and I’m blessed to have known him — somewhere in the universe, he is still partying!
Blues musician Bryan (Braille Blues Daddy) Lee has been a fixture on Bourbon Steet for
four decades. He was frequently a live music stop for us during our many trips to New Orleans
during our time living in the Houston area. We first saw him at the Old Absinthe House on Bourbon Street.
When Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, like a lot of New Orleans musicians he began
touring more through Texas and up into the mid-west. In 2006 we saw him and his
band at a live music bar in Conroe, Texas north of Houston. The above photo artistry
image was created from a photo taken during one of his stops in Conroe.
The Society of the Fifth Cave Christmas Celebration, December 19, 2009
The Society of the Fifth Cave, “A Reading Club for the Non-Discriminating Bourgeoisie,” has existed in one form are another, since 1983. I became a member in 1998. The last time I was able to attend one of our monthly meetings was September 2012.
— kenne
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.”
AJ Murphy past away 2003, a close friend
and the heart and soul of a young organization,
“Friends of The Blues, Montgomery County.”
In May of that year, the Friends held a celebration
at the Texas Arts Venue in downtown Conroe, Texas. Click here for an article that appeared in the Houston Chronicle.
Member of Bryan Lee’s Band Taking A Break Outside the Corner Pub (June 2, 2007), Conroe, Texas — Image by kenne
Computer Art by kenne
“I always thought that one man, the lone balladeer with a guitar, could blow a whole army off the stage, if he knew what he was doing. I’ve seen it happen.”
Sonny Boy Terry and Michael Durbin In Conroe’s Corner Pub (04/14/07) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
“Original Pat Green” (2004)– Photo-Artistry by kenne
Bryan Lee — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The Society of the Fifth Cave Christmas Celebration, December 19, 2009
Friend, 
Blue Bonnet Poetry Slam Winner, Conroe, Texas, April 2004 — Image by kenne
Member of 
Computer Art by kenne
(March 2004) — Image by kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 