A Lot of Shakin’ Going On

Play it again, Tina

A Lot of Shakin’ Going On

Reality

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            We’ve got a bay horse that relieves himself just before we load him in a trailer.

            He doesn’t choose to perform his trick while he is being groomed and saddled nor does he wait until we are loaded and going down the road. He pauses on the walk over to the trailer and does his business religiously.

            “Dadgum you,” is the colloquial outburst as he concludes the ritual and jumps into the trailer without a hint of resistance. A retrieval of the road apple scoop is then the order before other matters are attended.

            His main avocation, though, is a pretty good rendition of Houdini. He can open gates like a trained marine munitions expert can disarm a bomb. He will look at it, get another angle and review it, and then go to it. If it isn’t foolproof, he’ll get it open. I left him in the corral at the ranch headquarters one night with ‘pens’ (as in plural) of sorted calves. When we came in the next morning there was only one thing to do. Start over.

            Tim Richins smiles and proclaims him smart. Somehow that description just doesn’t work for me.

            He’ll also shake every time the cinch is released when he is unsaddled. He’ll do it immediately. I have learned to hold the horn or he’ll shake the saddle off. He will do it every time and you’d better be ready to hold it in place or pick it up off the ground.

            He’s been called lots of names and darned few of them are endearing.

            A Lot of Shakin’ Going On

            Isn’t it interesting how NASA, the world’s once preeminent space agency, has become the causal science agency? Of course, they have led the charge of the light brigade in the matter of global warming, but they are also becoming the go to crew in the science of shake, rattle, and roll as in the earth’s mantle convection.

            The fellows have spent a ton of money on new gadgetry to measure the earth’s wobble as it spins around and around on its axis. Why this is important is akin to that bay horse assessing locked gates from different directions. One important discovery can lead to a dozen more and another whole generation of agency professionals can be loaded into career and retirement paths.

            This wobble was once thought to be entirely caused by glacial rebound which suggested glaciers were growing and the concentration of buildup was throwing things out of balance. The earth was a’ shakin’ and wobblin’. Since this flies in the face of global warming (it doesn’t do much for global warming if glaciers are growing), new strategies had to be found and, voila, three reworked factors have now been arrayed. The first factor of the new hypothesis includes mantle convection. The second was, of course, melting ice. The third, well, the third had to stay with the phenomenon of glacial rebound. Too much money had been spent to disparage the previous, uh, scientific discovery of glacial rebound so a definition change was in order. Glacial rebound became the condition of the earth regaining its original shape as the glaciers melt.

            Here’s the good part and it comes from the words of the scientists.

            “Mantle convection is where humans are making their impact (you had to know that was coming). As (you) continue to release greenhouse gases and artificially warm the planet, ice on land is melting at an alarming rate.”  The NASA reasoning goes on to suggest that 7500 gigatons of melt has come from Greenland alone and “this transfer is causing the earth to wobble more than it normally would have”.

            Talk about progressive, outcome based science!

We have now been told water doesn’t seek its own level. The global warming molecules are migrating to some outpost to be with the other global warming molecules while the molecules belonging to the skeptic minions migrate to another place. The disparity is causing the offside and near paneers to be out of balance, and it’ll take more than a bottle of whiskey stuck down in there to solve this little problem.

                        By golly, this is real science!

            Play it again, Tina

            Having no idea how to top such profound logic, the practical place to go was to google lyrics of songs that have the word “shake”. Rest assured there are boatloads of songs with such lyric phrasing. In fact, one search revealed 17,460 lyrics with the word. Another came up with 120 albums. When rattle and or roll are added the numbers get even crazier.

            Actually, it doesn’t take too long to get bored reading through the various versions of Shake it, Shake it up, shake it down, shake it Baby, and shake it around to go on to other lyrics.

            Shake, rattle, and roll is a good example. The phrase was actually the title of a song.

            Shake, Rattle, and Roll” is a twelve bar blues-form song written in 1954 by Jesse Stone when he thought the pseudonym, Charles E. Calhoun, sounded more convincing. Big Joe Turner recorded it first it and it was a big hit. In fact, it ranks 127 on The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

            The big league shakin’, though, is best served by witnessing Tina Turner sing Rollin’ on a River when she was in her prime. My goodness! Strutting back and forth across the stage, lights flashing, backup singers in dance step cadence, sweating, tossing that mane of hair and screaming about selling ‘tane’ (or was it ‘tang?) in New Orleans all to that pounding beat that could actually move a stage. Incomparable is the word of choice.

            Let NASA sell its science somewhere else. Let’s keep the shakin’ and wobblin’ closer to reality.

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Bill Haley and his Comets also recorded Shake, Rattle and Roll and that is my favored version.”

For Steve. This might have been what that horse was humming as he opened those gates.

https://youtu.be/8B7xr_EjbzE