It's been a busy ten days for Peggy and me, but there are senses of accomplishment and satisfaction and that indescribable feeling that comes from being in two rooms full of love. And, against all odds, I wore the same white dress shirt to two weddings in 6 days and befouled it not. No gravy, salad dressing, chocolate syrup, beer, pasta sauce or cheese spread found its way onto the front of my shirt, and so it shall be taken to the dry cleaners for laundering and starching, to await its next foray into the social world. Normally, one could have gotten long odds against any white shirt I wear to an event where food is served coming home with its front still as white as the snow that I wish had fallen around here last winter.
Do you ever sit and ponder, whom could you call upon if you really needed help? For instance, if I ever get word that a pack of enraged mountain men has vowed to "git" me, I know two distant relatives, both the size of Coke machines, who would be hearing from me. For any sort of eye question, I have the greatest optometrist in the world, Dr. Connolly, and she patiently explains my ocular situations to me, and helps me work out solutions. Last summer's cataract surgery never would have happened had it not been for her amazing kindness. I have never known a medical professional as kind as she.
And then you really need to ask, if I needed someone to run to the all-night Drug Town and pick up a prescription at 3 am, whom could I call?
Or, if I needed a hand with something, what friend could I call upon? Our friend Frank was just that sort of guy - genuine, down-to-earth, a great guy. And living proof of the adage that the good go young, because he passed away in April of '06, leaving his wonderful wife Cindy and their four amazing kids. I don't know any other way to put this, except to say that there are families and then there are FAMILIES, and these good people are the most together family you could hope to meet.
Not long after the world lost Frank, the highly-regarded cinematic classic Jackass Number 2 came out, and Cindy told Peggy that their younger son wanted to see the movie. Peggy said that I had already seen it and would love to go again, so we two guys went and guffawed as only guys can do. It was the reverse of the time Peggy and I went to see the stinkeroo of all time, The Bridges of Madison County, in which we are supposed to think it's ok for Meryl Streep to hop under rickety Clint Eastwood just because her husband, who only worked sunup to sundown as a farmer, was not as romantic as an unctuous traveling photographer. This gave Streep's character license to be licentious, you see, because the poor hick was out of town, taking the kids to the State Fair to show off their hogs or something, so naturally Meryl is open for business all weekend. It made me sick. So when that movie ended, I stood there, basking in the relief that, much like a proctological exam without the benefit of anesthesia, it was, at long last, over. All about the theater stood other guys, similarly buoyed by the blessed unspooling of the final reel of that waste of celluloid, and as we checked our watches and made plans for dinner, we noticed that all the women were still in their seats, sobbing and daubing at their eyes. Just the reverse at the end of the Jackass movies, for those paltry few of you who have not seen them. Guys stand up, punching each other in the shoulder and reviewing their favorite segments, while women remain in their seats in a sort of goggle-eyed shock. Clearly, the solution comes to mind. The Jackasses of Madison County! Bam Margera is now the traveling photographer, and he talks the woman into letting his crew bunk over for the weekend, and then darts around setting off fireworks at 3 AM and brings in all sorts of local fauna to do what local fauna do in every locale.
I simply must do something about this digression. Anyway, Frank and Cindy's younger daughter was married last week to a fine young man, and she will begin her teaching career this fall - at the same school where my beloved niece-in-law used to teach, this being Baltimore and all, where all things and all people are intertwined like a Kevin Bacon movie. We had a great time at the wedding, and one could feel that Frank was there in spirit. I believe that the dearly departed are still with us in many ways, and I believe that love lives forever. Yes, love forever changes, but true love only changes for the better, according to Heaven's plan for us all.
When I transferred to the Health Dept in '01, my new boss's assistant, Lois, really helped me out. My boss's idea of training me was to hand me a key ring (20-some keys, none labeled), show me my desk, and let me run things as I saw fit. While I liked the hands-off approach, I did need some illumination into some dimly-lit corners of my new job, and she helped me time and again, and we became good friends in the bargain. She's since moved along in the department, with a well-deserved promotion and lots of new responsibility, but I still love to talk to Lois and get her take on things and, yes, walk up to the wall of her cubicle and loom over the top, gazing at her as if I were a giraffe eating mulberry leaves while she recovers from the awful shock that must come from seeing my mug over the top of one's cube wall. Last night, her son married a young lady who works in my building, and we were invited to share in that special joy as well. Such a nice wedding. The priest gave the young couple such great advice, and once again, the room was full of love and happiness, and I wish them all the love their sweet hearts can hold. Theirs is another family filled with love and support for each other - the kind of people that one feels better about everything just by being around them! Her new daughter-in-law, just like last week's bride Laura, is a beautiful young lady through and through, meaning that she is as lovely in her heart and soul as in her beaming countenance. We had a wonderful time at both weddings, and today is a very special day for me and Peggy - 'twas on this very day in 1973 that we met on a blind date that is still going on, so what a week to be surrounded by so much sweet love. And thanks to both brides and their families for being wonderful parts of our lives - the best parts!
But I was wondering how did it come that when the DJ played Journey's Don't Stop Believing, the young people at the reception went wild? I was stunned to hear them all singing out loud..."Just a small town girl....living in a lonely world....she took the midnight train goin' anywhere...." After all, that song was a hit three years before the bride and groom were born! But a little Wikipedia research taught me that it was used in The Sopranos TV show, and has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. That resurgence would seem to be missing for onetime Baltimore reception favorite The Chicken Dance, but I can hope that one comes back too.
I'll tell where I know I could round up a whole bucket of Chicken dancers, and that's the retirement community that Mom moved to amidst all this white-shirt wearing. (I must mention here that Peggy looked her usual stunning self at both weddings, and, with the ladylike grace that she exudes, she also had no bibdrops on her pretty clothes.) Yes, every 53 years, Mom just gets the urge to move, so she is selling the house to the nephew of the neighbors across the street, and the furniture moving to the retirement castle was done by the son of the people two doors down. This is Baltimore, remember. Everything is related! Mom's new condo is roomy enough for most of the furniture that Dad made, and for most of the mementos she has collected over her 4-score and 2 (and counting.) The view is of the woods surrounding Goucher College, so it will be almost like the old house in that regard, seeing trees, deer, foxes, semi-clad college students gamboling about (ok, cross out that last one, but still, the view is great, the chow is top-notch, the other residents are nice and some are even her friends - she ran into a woman with whom she went to High School the other day, so we're hoping this will be a good move.) We all did a lot of humping and lifting and hauling, all for a good cause. Of course, the phone company screwed up her order and she had no telephone for the first few days, but I made myself heard long and loud until - quelle surprise! - a tech suddenly cleared his busy toolbelt-hoisting schedule and got around to doing what he was supposed to have done in the first place!
Today I was mowing the lawn, listening to old country music cassettes, and one of the songs was Tex Ritter's "Just Beyond the Moon." Lyrics - for those who have never heard this one -
My mother and my father were in love for 50 years
So when dad died we wondered why my mother shed no tears
We asked her once about it but she wouldn’t tell us why
Instead she’d walk outside each night and smile up at the sky
Then just before she left us she called us to her side…
She told us what my father said to her just before he died
I remember when you said you’d never leave me
Through these golden years I’ve kept the same vow too
But now that I am going please don’t leave me
I’ll walk just beyond the moon then I’ll stop and wait for you
You can look up every night and you’ll see me light the light
Where I’ll watch for you to join me someday soon
We’ll go lookin' through the stars for the heaven that is ours
And I know we’ll find it soon somewhere just beyond the moon
I’ll walk just beyond the moon then I'll stop and wait for you
I’ll just sit there by a star and I’ll watch you from afar
Til I see you walking toward me someday soon
Then together hand in hand we’ll find our promised land
And we’ll settle down forever darlin’ just beyond the moon
I’ll walk just beyond the moon then I'll stop and wait for you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wish that much love for Cindy, for Frank, for everyone I love, and for the couples who so kindly invited us to their special days. The song makes me think of my Dad; he and Mom were married for over 50 years and he liked Tex Ritter and he liked John Ritter too, another good guy gone home too soon. Every day in which we are allowed to walk this earth, attend weddings, haul Mom's stuff to the retirement castle, listen to Tex Ritter: those are good days.
Listen to Tex: http://marybethwillemriper.homestead.com/files/
Tex_Ritter_-_Just_Beyond_The_Moon.mp3
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Kool Kid
I sure was a grocery clerk, way back in the day. Peggy loves to hear me tell what the price of a gallon of milk, 5 lbs. of sugar, or a bottle of ReaLemon was when Nixon was president and I worked for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co. (the real name of the A&P chain, which is now called SuperFresh around here.)
You might have read the short story "A & P" by John Updike (http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/). While Updike is both a fine writer of great renown and, along with Norman Mailer and John Irving, one of Tom Wolfe's three great enemies, I doubt that he ever worked at an A&P. He doesn't have the sense of purpose that came along with the hallowed red apron and name tag, from what I gather. But he did all right in his field, so perhaps a lifetime of Eight O'Clock Coffee, Jane Parker Spanish Bar Cake and Ann Page Fancy Salad Mustard was not for him.
Today I stopped at another supermarket for rolls and bananas. I had been at the bank, where the manager told me last week I needed a copy of a certain document to perform a certain transaction (which I can't discuss here; it's a matter of national security.) So I ankle in there today, and the manager is on vacation, and Miss Hathaway tells me that a copy won't do; she needs the original. And so the dance begins, before the NorthEast Baltimore area vice president in charge of the NorthEast Baltimore area finally rules, in a landmark decision, that I can have my $442.80. I parade down to the supermarket, and here is a verbatim transcript of what the (20-year-old, maybe) cashier said to me:
She: How are you today, sir?
I: Well, to tell you the truth, I am hot!
She: So am I, but I'm not bragging about it!
I: (uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter)
then
She: $5.56, please!
I: Here's a 5, and I thought I had two quarters in here....wait a minute...hold on
She: I took them out of your pocket while you were sleeping!
I: You are delightful; has anyone ever told you that?
She: You wanna buy me dinner? I mean, seeing as how you have five dollars and all...
Do you love it? I've been on that side of a cash register (when things got real busy, I stopped marking prices on cans of Vienna sausage with der kerplunker She: You wanna buy me dinner? I mean, seeing as how you have five dollars and all...
and took over a register, where I spent some time on the front lines of pure capitalism: separating people from their money in exchange for goods) and, while I would always try to chat amiably with customers, I was never so cool as to actually engage in an entire comic routine with a cooperative straight man (uh, me! in this case.) She was funny without forcing it, slightly impertinent without being impudent, and, altogether the perfect remedy for an afternoon of almost-100-degree temperatures and the officious assistant manager of the bank branch just an egg custard snowball's throw from the supermarket (and wouldn't I love to...)Young Ms. Ashley, I wish you a thousand years of brightening the days of others, I wish that the world and its carborundum ways will never dull your razor wit, and I hope you know I thank you for the smiles.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
It's The Cool Thing #2
Back in the days when the National Lampoon was really funny, they had a page of suggested license tags for each state. For my home state, they suggested a logo that read "Maryland: Cradle of Graft." People caught with their cookies in the hand jar are regular sights around here, and it takes above-average crookedness even to make the news in a state where onetime vice president and designated Nixon polemicist Spiro T. Agnew was still taking canvas bags full of money from paving contractors while he was vice president of the nation! So, in case you are thinking of pursuing a career in the lucrative field of being a crook, please be advised that we want you to Do The Cool Thing, namely, when you get out of your car and are met by a teeming horde of reporters, cameras, and sketch artists readying themselves for your inevitable indictment and trial, smile like a madman and wave confidently while carrying some manila folders, and your suitcoat over your shoulder, Sinatra-style. Ring-a-ding ding, baby.
Smile smile smile as if there were nothing wrong in anyone's world! That one look says, "I couldn't have done anything wrong, for if I had, I would look contrite and repentant and all sorts of sad for letting people down, no? "
Nah. What the heck. I will tell you a really cool thing though. There is a woman at work, with long flowing beautiful flaming sorta-blond sorta red curly wavy hair. I mean, this is shampoo-ad hair. And you add to that, she is one of those naturally enthusiastic, always-cheery, super pleasant types who just elevates the entire room just by entering it. I saw her the other day and noticed she had cut her hair to a chin-length bob - still a great look, and I said so. Later on, another woman from her workplace told me that the lovely one had given up her hair for Locks of Love, the organization that makes human hair wigs for children who have lost their tresses due to cancer and radiation. And when I had commented on the new way she had her hair, she just said, "Oh, it's just something sporty for the summer." Generosity and modesty! Can you imagine how wonderful some people can be? That was my feel-good story for the week, yea, the entire month!
Someone please tell me why when two groups oppose each other by pulling on a rope, they call it a Tug Of War? Shouldn't it be a War of Tug? I have to know...
Smile smile smile as if there were nothing wrong in anyone's world! That one look says, "I couldn't have done anything wrong, for if I had, I would look contrite and repentant and all sorts of sad for letting people down, no? "
Nah. What the heck. I will tell you a really cool thing though. There is a woman at work, with long flowing beautiful flaming sorta-blond sorta red curly wavy hair. I mean, this is shampoo-ad hair. And you add to that, she is one of those naturally enthusiastic, always-cheery, super pleasant types who just elevates the entire room just by entering it. I saw her the other day and noticed she had cut her hair to a chin-length bob - still a great look, and I said so. Later on, another woman from her workplace told me that the lovely one had given up her hair for Locks of Love, the organization that makes human hair wigs for children who have lost their tresses due to cancer and radiation. And when I had commented on the new way she had her hair, she just said, "Oh, it's just something sporty for the summer." Generosity and modesty! Can you imagine how wonderful some people can be? That was my feel-good story for the week, yea, the entire month!
Someone please tell me why when two groups oppose each other by pulling on a rope, they call it a Tug Of War? Shouldn't it be a War of Tug? I have to know...
Monday, May 26, 2008
I rate the fours!
It all started earlier today when I told Peggy that of the entire cast of "I Love Lucy,'' I found Lucy to be the least amusing. And then she told me how for years, the antics of Lucy have left her convulsed. This might be some sort of Rorschach test: what does it say when I rank the cast of "I L L" in this order of how-they-made-me-laugh?
#1 - Fred Mertz
#2 - Ricky Ricardo
#3 - Ethel Mertz
#4 - Lucy Ricardo
And I'm not about to say that Lucy wasn't funny. Just not as funny as gruff old Fred, exasperated Ricky or frumpy Ethel.
Beatles, you say? All right, then:
#1 - John Lennon
#2 - Ringo Starr
#3 - George Harrison
#4 - Paul McCartney
I don't think there is any question that John Lennon is tops. And who couldn't love Ringo, with his (as Tom Wolfe called it) "curious backwater adenoidal voice" ? And when Lennon was killed, George Harrison wrote "All Those Years Ago" and said he always looked up to John. Mr. McCartney, eyebrows hoisted, said "It's a drag, innit?" when asked about his late partner.
Ask me to rank the four seasons, and of course Frankie Valli is the top. But if we're talking solstices and equinoxes, please give me
#1 - Fall
#2 - Winter
#3 - Spring
#4 - Summer
I love the fall colors and the fact that fall leads to winter, which, although noticeably short on snow around here for the past several years, at least has bone-chilling cold going for it. Spring means pollen, and as soon as you get finished sneezing and infusing eye drops, better go get your shorts and your t-shirts out. Spring leads to summer as inevitably as July 4th means another Will Smith blockbuster is coming to the Googolplex.
#1 - Fred Mertz
#2 - Ricky Ricardo
#3 - Ethel Mertz
#4 - Lucy Ricardo
And I'm not about to say that Lucy wasn't funny. Just not as funny as gruff old Fred, exasperated Ricky or frumpy Ethel.
Beatles, you say? All right, then:
#1 - John Lennon
#2 - Ringo Starr
#3 - George Harrison
#4 - Paul McCartney
I don't think there is any question that John Lennon is tops. And who couldn't love Ringo, with his (as Tom Wolfe called it) "curious backwater adenoidal voice" ? And when Lennon was killed, George Harrison wrote "All Those Years Ago" and said he always looked up to John. Mr. McCartney, eyebrows hoisted, said "It's a drag, innit?" when asked about his late partner.
Ask me to rank the four seasons, and of course Frankie Valli is the top. But if we're talking solstices and equinoxes, please give me
#1 - Fall
#2 - Winter
#3 - Spring
#4 - Summer
I love the fall colors and the fact that fall leads to winter, which, although noticeably short on snow around here for the past several years, at least has bone-chilling cold going for it. Spring means pollen, and as soon as you get finished sneezing and infusing eye drops, better go get your shorts and your t-shirts out. Spring leads to summer as inevitably as July 4th means another Will Smith blockbuster is coming to the Googolplex.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
It's The Cool Thing
#1 in a series...
And not that I am considered cool by any standards, but as a longtime observer of the scenes we live by, I have a graduated scale to measure ostentatious actions. For instance, when all of a sudden our parched celebrities became conscious of the need for rehydration, every time you saw a picture of Jack Nicholson, he was carrying a bottle of water and walking around with his eyebrows raised. The actions of Nicholson are pretty much a good way to gauge what is and is not cool.
But here's a move currently being employed by singers, American Idol contestants (and there is a difference), politicians and others who enjoy moments in the spotlight as applause rains down on them like hotdog wrappers at a ballpark on Safety Patrol day: Walking through the crowd as the tumult reaches its apogee, you point your finger or chin out toward a certain person in the audience. This doublecoats the image of adoration, because it leaves the viewer thinking "wow, all those people screaming for him/her and he/she spots a good friend in the crowd and gives them a fingerwag and a little personal smile and headnod." I don't know; it's like one of those shrinkwrapped deals where you buy a bottle of mouthwash and there's a tiny sample tube of zit cream attached at the bottleneck. Here's the Famous One, awash in a sea of love, and yet there is time to acknowledge someone from the home town, or their first parole agent, or the guy who has the keys to the car outside.
And a bonus cool thing: you get a dip recipe put out by some food manufacturer...let's say Kraft...and it calls for Worcestershire sauce, cheddar cheese, sour cream and Italian seasoning. The recipe will say, in boldface, that you should use French's Worcestershire sauce and Kraft cheddar cheese and Land O'Lakes sour cream and Spiceland Italian seasoning, because their integrated horizontal marketing strategies tell them to make you feel like a cheater for using Lea & Perrins, Cracker Barrel, Safeway brand, and McCormick...but go ahead! They can't stop you! There are no brand inspectors knocking on your door! And if anyone asks why you dared to stand up to corporate America, tell 'em you did it because it's the cool thing!
And not that I am considered cool by any standards, but as a longtime observer of the scenes we live by, I have a graduated scale to measure ostentatious actions. For instance, when all of a sudden our parched celebrities became conscious of the need for rehydration, every time you saw a picture of Jack Nicholson, he was carrying a bottle of water and walking around with his eyebrows raised. The actions of Nicholson are pretty much a good way to gauge what is and is not cool.
But here's a move currently being employed by singers, American Idol contestants (and there is a difference), politicians and others who enjoy moments in the spotlight as applause rains down on them like hotdog wrappers at a ballpark on Safety Patrol day: Walking through the crowd as the tumult reaches its apogee, you point your finger or chin out toward a certain person in the audience. This doublecoats the image of adoration, because it leaves the viewer thinking "wow, all those people screaming for him/her and he/she spots a good friend in the crowd and gives them a fingerwag and a little personal smile and headnod." I don't know; it's like one of those shrinkwrapped deals where you buy a bottle of mouthwash and there's a tiny sample tube of zit cream attached at the bottleneck. Here's the Famous One, awash in a sea of love, and yet there is time to acknowledge someone from the home town, or their first parole agent, or the guy who has the keys to the car outside.
And a bonus cool thing: you get a dip recipe put out by some food manufacturer...let's say Kraft...and it calls for Worcestershire sauce, cheddar cheese, sour cream and Italian seasoning. The recipe will say, in boldface, that you should use French's Worcestershire sauce and Kraft cheddar cheese and Land O'Lakes sour cream and Spiceland Italian seasoning, because their integrated horizontal marketing strategies tell them to make you feel like a cheater for using Lea & Perrins, Cracker Barrel, Safeway brand, and McCormick...but go ahead! They can't stop you! There are no brand inspectors knocking on your door! And if anyone asks why you dared to stand up to corporate America, tell 'em you did it because it's the cool thing!
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Love Forever Changes
This will be a rather short diatribe, as my posts go. It's just that I feel like Frank Sinatra in that movie where he comes back from wherever he was and goes to his hometown and no one recognizes him.
Actually, it's not like that. I recognize people all the time and I run into friends, acquaintances, and far-flung kin (and I fling them again, if need be) and that's the great part about living in The Biggest Small Town On Earth. Just yesterday at Giant Food I ran into a fellow from my class in high school. We both admitted to putting on a few pounds and letting our hair gray gracefully.
No, the lack of recognition I decry is for the great band LOVE, whose legendary 1967 album Forever Changes
was recently released in expanded form, with alternate versions, outtakes and extra cuts. I feel terrible that the genius behind the band, Arthur Lee, died in August 2006 without ever receiving the acclaim that should rightly have come to him. I believe they are the best band ever because they fold so many types of music into one...rock, soul, blues, mariachi, classical - all there. Their three first albums, LOVE, Da Capo, and Forever Changes were revered by my buddies and me all through high school, and then when the band dissolved in a late-60's haze of drug troubles, crimes and misdeeds, their public support waned with everyone I know but me. Stubborn to the end, I urge you to visit http://love.torbenskott.dk/default.asp andhttp://lovearthurlee.com/ and check it out. I am also available to proselytize for the band at any venue you choose. Ask any friend of mine - I WILL play their music at the very slightest drop of a hint.
Because I never know when I'll find another convert to the cause, someone to discuss the band's lyrics, their exquisite musicianship, Arthur's vocal stylings, the whole magilla. Peggy no longer makes me listen to them with headphones only! That's progress, right?
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Dayf of future paft
Back in Baltimore! Always good to be there. Peggy and I went to Williamsburg VA last week - this summer marks the 35th anniversary of the day we met, and this December will mark the 35th anniversary of our gala wedding and honeymoon in Williamsburg VA. 35 years. I love Williamsburg, if only for the olde-timey signs that tell you where the gunfmith shop or the beft jeweller
is.As does every sixth-grader from here to Montana, I went to Williamsburg in the fall of 1962, and then, a scant eleven years later, there I was, a married man, back in town. We arrived on a Sunday, and I remember the man who showed us to our room. Ever the swanky boulevardier, I asked him how I could score a six-pack of beer (apparently it would have been easier to purchase Thomas Jefferson's original legal pad than to buy six cans of suds on a Sunday down South) and he regarded us curiously, asking, "Y'all just weddin'?" You bet! came the reply, and he said he'd be back. Back he was, in a trice, and he handed me a crumpled paper sack with six different frosty cans of lager and his best wishes for marital happiness! Thank you, sir! Things are still going fine.
So off we went, down the road less traveled. Route 301
begins, for us, just south of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and takes you all the way down into deepest Virginia, and then you swing off 301 in an enchanting little burg we call Stanktown and pick up rte 30 right into Wmsbg. (I have decided, after years of going back and forth on the topic, to be one of those guys who says "we picked up 30 and took it down to 33, and then took that new cutoff..." It just sounds like you know what you're doing when you talk that way!) Now, the real name for Stanktown is West Point, Virginia. It's situated at the confluence of the York, Mattaponi and Pamunkey Rivers. If you'll recall the story from Animal House, Faber College 
was located near a grove of eraserroot bushes, a stand of pencilwood trees, and deep graphite mines, which gave rise to the pencil factory that endowed the college which educated Bluto and D. Day, among others. Well, right upstream from where all those Virginia rivers come together, there are forests just full of stenopad trees and soupbox elders, because the main occupation of residents in West Point seems to be the production of cardboard. 
Unless you have driven through Stanktown, you can't/won't believe how bad it smells. It's as if a hundred flatulent wet dogs were chased by two hundred skunks and then rolled around in wet cardboard, as I wrote to a friend last night. But, like people in some zombie movie, the people there seem unaware of the possibly-lethal stinkarama that envelopes them and renders air freshener and deodorant useless as we know them. The locals stroll through the miasma, playing golf, buying hair products at RiteAid, wolfing down Italian food at Maria's Italian Food Restaurant and wondering why so many cars with out-of-state tags roll up their windows as they career through town. What must it be like to sell real estate in that town, when out-of-towners get out of the car and cry, "What the hell is that odor??"
It happened again a couple of times, and I think it's time for some sort of national debate to occur on a topic that threatens to rend the fabric of America. I'm not talking about the rise in gas prices and the concomitant rise in oil company profits, assuming, as I do, that the good people in the Bush "administration" are doing their best as selfless defenders of the public weal, and turning their backs on their friends in the oil business. Surely, even as we speak, the president and his top advisors are working on a plan to lower the price of gas, just like right before the 2006 midterm elections when...what? He's not running again, nor is Cheney? Oh well, there goes that notion. And I'm going to leave the matter of the "racy" "topless" photos of Miley Cyrus
to her family to sort out. I call for a national discussion on why so many people sit in a restaurant and bellow their business out so loudly. I mean, are there so many people with hearing loss that people speaking to them have to be so clangorous? On the way down, we hit a Popeye's
in Waldorf MD. Friends, if you're like me, you love that chicken from Popeye's, and you buy it and take it home and put it down your neck with alacrity, and also red beans and rice. But there is nothing like fresh Popeye's right out of the Popeye's pressure cooker! Lord have mercy, what a lunch we had, right in the middle of the town that Joel Madden 
of Good Charlotte calls home (and his ex, Hilary Duff, calls "a ghetto somewhere in Maryland.") (In happier days, here they were:) 
But among the other finger-lickin' diners in the opulent dining room sat a man of great knowledge and experience, and while he completed his toothy bowdlerization of a four-piece dinner, he occasionally paused to deliver, at stentorian levels, a rambling discourse which covered such topics as his friend who is in the Army in Iraq ("he can call home most every night"), the performance of his truck ("she was a-stallin' on me but I took her down to the crankshaft and rebuilt her"), his experiences at a Jimmy Buffett concert ("you know the guy I mean, that 'Margaritaville' guy"), and the beaver who only recently was inhabiting his backyard pond ("my dog, she like to dive right in there after that gawdamn beaver, and then, the last time, she done lit out and I ain't seen her since.") I had to hang around for the end of the last anecdote, since I couldn't discern at first whether it was the dog or the beaver who "done lit out," but I am here to report that the dog is still around, and it was the beaver that left for parts unknown - perhaps to a new pond owned by someone with a greater understanding of pronoun reference.
And then at the Williamsburg Woodlands
where we stayed, there was a free breakfast every morning from 7 til 10:30, although Peggy pointed out that they really didn't expect guests to eat for three and a half hours. But you could! So here we were, toasting our muffins on that track-driven toaster where you place your baked goods at the upper aperture and hold your breath until, moments later, they tumble down, all golden brown from their journey through a land of red-hot coils. The hotel also served juices, cereal, fruits, coffee and tea and sweet rolls. There were a lot of middle-school kids around now, just as in 1962, but with iPods. I love kids for many reasons, one of which is they sit down and eat their breakfast and don't sit around yakety-yakking for hours on end. But some guy, a bit older than I, sat there holding court with his two friends, and again, daggone if he wasn't one or two decibels louder than that emotional man who talks about the stock market on CNBC. His talking points consisted mainly of relating whom he had spoken with last, and about what, but I lost interest, there being a total lack of beaver stories in his repertoire.
We had a great time in Williamsburg. For the most part, it's a quiet town, and from not one of the colonial kitchens did we hear "Kashmir"
blasting out as we dined. And I'm pleased to report that I fought back the impulse to purchase one of those three-cornered hats to wear around. That's one of those things that are pretty cool to do while you're there but once you get home and unpack it, what do you do with it? Either put it in the back of the closet or get a job as drummer for Paul Revere and the Raiders, 
and either way, you're out $27.50.
is.As does every sixth-grader from here to Montana, I went to Williamsburg in the fall of 1962, and then, a scant eleven years later, there I was, a married man, back in town. We arrived on a Sunday, and I remember the man who showed us to our room. Ever the swanky boulevardier, I asked him how I could score a six-pack of beer (apparently it would have been easier to purchase Thomas Jefferson's original legal pad than to buy six cans of suds on a Sunday down South) and he regarded us curiously, asking, "Y'all just weddin'?" You bet! came the reply, and he said he'd be back. Back he was, in a trice, and he handed me a crumpled paper sack with six different frosty cans of lager and his best wishes for marital happiness! Thank you, sir! Things are still going fine.So off we went, down the road less traveled. Route 301
begins, for us, just south of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and takes you all the way down into deepest Virginia, and then you swing off 301 in an enchanting little burg we call Stanktown and pick up rte 30 right into Wmsbg. (I have decided, after years of going back and forth on the topic, to be one of those guys who says "we picked up 30 and took it down to 33, and then took that new cutoff..." It just sounds like you know what you're doing when you talk that way!) Now, the real name for Stanktown is West Point, Virginia. It's situated at the confluence of the York, Mattaponi and Pamunkey Rivers. If you'll recall the story from Animal House, Faber College 
was located near a grove of eraserroot bushes, a stand of pencilwood trees, and deep graphite mines, which gave rise to the pencil factory that endowed the college which educated Bluto and D. Day, among others. Well, right upstream from where all those Virginia rivers come together, there are forests just full of stenopad trees and soupbox elders, because the main occupation of residents in West Point seems to be the production of cardboard. 
Unless you have driven through Stanktown, you can't/won't believe how bad it smells. It's as if a hundred flatulent wet dogs were chased by two hundred skunks and then rolled around in wet cardboard, as I wrote to a friend last night. But, like people in some zombie movie, the people there seem unaware of the possibly-lethal stinkarama that envelopes them and renders air freshener and deodorant useless as we know them. The locals stroll through the miasma, playing golf, buying hair products at RiteAid, wolfing down Italian food at Maria's Italian Food Restaurant and wondering why so many cars with out-of-state tags roll up their windows as they career through town. What must it be like to sell real estate in that town, when out-of-towners get out of the car and cry, "What the hell is that odor??"It happened again a couple of times, and I think it's time for some sort of national debate to occur on a topic that threatens to rend the fabric of America. I'm not talking about the rise in gas prices and the concomitant rise in oil company profits, assuming, as I do, that the good people in the Bush "administration" are doing their best as selfless defenders of the public weal, and turning their backs on their friends in the oil business. Surely, even as we speak, the president and his top advisors are working on a plan to lower the price of gas, just like right before the 2006 midterm elections when...what? He's not running again, nor is Cheney? Oh well, there goes that notion. And I'm going to leave the matter of the "racy" "topless" photos of Miley Cyrus
to her family to sort out. I call for a national discussion on why so many people sit in a restaurant and bellow their business out so loudly. I mean, are there so many people with hearing loss that people speaking to them have to be so clangorous? On the way down, we hit a Popeye'sin Waldorf MD. Friends, if you're like me, you love that chicken from Popeye's, and you buy it and take it home and put it down your neck with alacrity, and also red beans and rice. But there is nothing like fresh Popeye's right out of the Popeye's pressure cooker! Lord have mercy, what a lunch we had, right in the middle of the town that Joel Madden 
of Good Charlotte calls home (and his ex, Hilary Duff, calls "a ghetto somewhere in Maryland.") (In happier days, here they were:) 
But among the other finger-lickin' diners in the opulent dining room sat a man of great knowledge and experience, and while he completed his toothy bowdlerization of a four-piece dinner, he occasionally paused to deliver, at stentorian levels, a rambling discourse which covered such topics as his friend who is in the Army in Iraq ("he can call home most every night"), the performance of his truck ("she was a-stallin' on me but I took her down to the crankshaft and rebuilt her"), his experiences at a Jimmy Buffett concert ("you know the guy I mean, that 'Margaritaville' guy"), and the beaver who only recently was inhabiting his backyard pond ("my dog, she like to dive right in there after that gawdamn beaver, and then, the last time, she done lit out and I ain't seen her since.") I had to hang around for the end of the last anecdote, since I couldn't discern at first whether it was the dog or the beaver who "done lit out," but I am here to report that the dog is still around, and it was the beaver that left for parts unknown - perhaps to a new pond owned by someone with a greater understanding of pronoun reference.And then at the Williamsburg Woodlands
where we stayed, there was a free breakfast every morning from 7 til 10:30, although Peggy pointed out that they really didn't expect guests to eat for three and a half hours. But you could! So here we were, toasting our muffins on that track-driven toaster where you place your baked goods at the upper aperture and hold your breath until, moments later, they tumble down, all golden brown from their journey through a land of red-hot coils. The hotel also served juices, cereal, fruits, coffee and tea and sweet rolls. There were a lot of middle-school kids around now, just as in 1962, but with iPods. I love kids for many reasons, one of which is they sit down and eat their breakfast and don't sit around yakety-yakking for hours on end. But some guy, a bit older than I, sat there holding court with his two friends, and again, daggone if he wasn't one or two decibels louder than that emotional man who talks about the stock market on CNBC. His talking points consisted mainly of relating whom he had spoken with last, and about what, but I lost interest, there being a total lack of beaver stories in his repertoire.We had a great time in Williamsburg. For the most part, it's a quiet town, and from not one of the colonial kitchens did we hear "Kashmir"
blasting out as we dined. And I'm pleased to report that I fought back the impulse to purchase one of those three-cornered hats to wear around. That's one of those things that are pretty cool to do while you're there but once you get home and unpack it, what do you do with it? Either put it in the back of the closet or get a job as drummer for Paul Revere and the Raiders, 
and either way, you're out $27.50.Sunday, April 20, 2008
George on my mind
I've heard it said that all of us can be broken down into four groups:
1 - People who know, and know they know: Learn from them
2 - People who know, and don't know they know: Tell them
3 - People who don't know, and know they don't know: Teach them
4 - People who don't know, and don't know they don't know: Avoid them
Of course, all generalities are bad. Comparisons are odious, but not as odious as giving billions in war supply contracts to your chum's war supply firm, who in turn improperly installs water pumps on showers used by our troops in Iraq, which is why soldiers are being electrocuted in Iraq. Check it out, but it's sad:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/20/electrocuted.soldier.ap/
And before anyone gets all up in my grill for constantly picking on the person in photo 4, anyone should remember that unlike Mr. Garrison Keillor, Mr. Arthur Lee, and Mr. Forrest Gump, the cute little shaver above is responsible for the deaths of countless individuals the world over.
I've been thinking about knowledge and its all-too-often missing cousin, wisdom. We've all known highly educated people who do stupid things (stick a knife in the toaster, try to add 12 gallons of gas to a 10-gallon tank, cut self shaving) and we've all seen flashes of brilliance in otherwise dim lights (viz. any Matt Damon movie.) My father worked with a man of no-more-than average standing, a guy who hardly spoke to anyone as he slumped about. Little known to his co-workers was the fact that the fellow had been stationed in England during World War II and had become fascinated with the days of the Roman invasion of England, and read everything printed about those days and spent his vacation every summer touring English archaeological digs, digging that he was digging up artifacts.
My father, master of subtlety, told me about this one summer when I was fourteen and on vacation at the beach, trying to amass enough Skee-Ball
tickets to get a pocket comb. The lesson was not lost on me. In a recent comparison with every pre-schooler in my family, it turned out that I know much more about the Roman invasion of England than all of them! Ha!
It does take all kinds to keep this village raised. Knowing the steps to true enlightenment is valuable knowledge, yet when your carburetor malfunctions, you don't care whether the tech can find his way to Satori or not.
I see that Laura Bush will be "guest host" on "Today" the day after tomorrow. This, of course, places her maladroit husband squarely on the horns of a dilemma - should he watch The First Lady swap recipes with Natalie Morales after watching Ann Curry make sad eyes about a story involving a lost dog and then glad eyes about a story about a woman who found an original Van Gogh in a frame purchased at a swap meet, below a print of dogs playing poker - or should he stick with his usual morning fare of "Walker, Texas Ranger" on USA Network and that smart-aleck "Frasier" on Lifetime? Decisions, decisions.
Not many people even remember Senator Roman Hruska, (R., Of Course)
who is best known for responding to criticism that Harold Carswell, who had been nominated by "Dick" Nixon to the Supreme Court in 1970, was a mediocre judge, by saying, "So what if he is mediocre?There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."
Mediocre people everywhere still rally to the stirring words of Roman Hruska, and heeded them en masse in 2000 and 2004. I can't help but feel that we would have been better electing my father's long-ago co-worker. At least he knew something about the invasion of sovereign foreign nations, and why there are damned few English men named Julius Caesar Wilberforce-Humphreys III.
1 - People who know, and know they know: Learn from them
2 - People who know, and don't know they know: Tell them
3 - People who don't know, and know they don't know: Teach them
4 - People who don't know, and don't know they don't know: Avoid them
Of course, all generalities are bad. Comparisons are odious, but not as odious as giving billions in war supply contracts to your chum's war supply firm, who in turn improperly installs water pumps on showers used by our troops in Iraq, which is why soldiers are being electrocuted in Iraq. Check it out, but it's sad:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/20/electrocuted.soldier.ap/
And before anyone gets all up in my grill for constantly picking on the person in photo 4, anyone should remember that unlike Mr. Garrison Keillor, Mr. Arthur Lee, and Mr. Forrest Gump, the cute little shaver above is responsible for the deaths of countless individuals the world over.
I've been thinking about knowledge and its all-too-often missing cousin, wisdom. We've all known highly educated people who do stupid things (stick a knife in the toaster, try to add 12 gallons of gas to a 10-gallon tank, cut self shaving) and we've all seen flashes of brilliance in otherwise dim lights (viz. any Matt Damon movie.) My father worked with a man of no-more-than average standing, a guy who hardly spoke to anyone as he slumped about. Little known to his co-workers was the fact that the fellow had been stationed in England during World War II and had become fascinated with the days of the Roman invasion of England, and read everything printed about those days and spent his vacation every summer touring English archaeological digs, digging that he was digging up artifacts.
My father, master of subtlety, told me about this one summer when I was fourteen and on vacation at the beach, trying to amass enough Skee-Ball
tickets to get a pocket comb. The lesson was not lost on me. In a recent comparison with every pre-schooler in my family, it turned out that I know much more about the Roman invasion of England than all of them! Ha!It does take all kinds to keep this village raised. Knowing the steps to true enlightenment is valuable knowledge, yet when your carburetor malfunctions, you don't care whether the tech can find his way to Satori or not.
I see that Laura Bush will be "guest host" on "Today" the day after tomorrow. This, of course, places her maladroit husband squarely on the horns of a dilemma - should he watch The First Lady swap recipes with Natalie Morales after watching Ann Curry make sad eyes about a story involving a lost dog and then glad eyes about a story about a woman who found an original Van Gogh in a frame purchased at a swap meet, below a print of dogs playing poker - or should he stick with his usual morning fare of "Walker, Texas Ranger" on USA Network and that smart-aleck "Frasier" on Lifetime? Decisions, decisions.
Not many people even remember Senator Roman Hruska, (R., Of Course)
who is best known for responding to criticism that Harold Carswell, who had been nominated by "Dick" Nixon to the Supreme Court in 1970, was a mediocre judge, by saying, "So what if he is mediocre?There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."Mediocre people everywhere still rally to the stirring words of Roman Hruska, and heeded them en masse in 2000 and 2004. I can't help but feel that we would have been better electing my father's long-ago co-worker. At least he knew something about the invasion of sovereign foreign nations, and why there are damned few English men named Julius Caesar Wilberforce-Humphreys III.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Four things on my mind
Happy Saturday - and yes, there are more than four things on my mind, but let's go bloggin'!
The Baltimore area has had indignities heaped upon it like slag at a steel mill. If your home computer has been running a bit slowly of late, it might be because The Internets are too busy having videos of city school teachers being pummeled by their students downloaded onto them. These students, apparently driven mad by too much exposure to "enlightened" education (pause for laughter), are alerting their friends that they intend to smack the teacher down so that the cellphone cameras can be rolling. An art teacher at Reginald F. Lewis Academy was confronted by a student who asserted her plan to "bang" the teacher (terms do change their meaning over the years, it would seem) and so the teacher announced her plan to defend her space, if same was invaded. Moments later, the donnybrook was on, and yet the principal of this august academy of learning told the teacher she was inciting the student to violence by warning that she would be offering a defense.
And that's not even the indignity about which I planned to write, since educators are in their own little world about these matters. The indignity I had in mind is the imminent invasion of Jenna Bush (seen here in all her wedding finery :)
and her husband. News reports are rampant, indicating that the twin daughter of the dense man who refers to the world wide web as "the internets" and to himself as "the decider" is planning to move to South Baltimore with her new husband, following their gala May 10 nuptials in tony Crawford, TX. Almost certainly with no outside help or influence, her fiance, one Henry Hager, has landed a big job with Constellation Energy, the monolith which even at this moment is generating the power that supplies this computer with the juice that says welcome to town, you crazy newlyweds, you. That $400,000 row house you bought in SoBa would have been available for about $8,450 back in the days when your father was a cheerleader for Andover and your mother was blowing stop signs, but that's the sort of economic progress that your beloved republican party has wrought upon our land, so drink up, kids!Personal to all those who advised me to eat bananas to ward off the dreaded leg cramps - I have been eating at least one 'nanner per day for some time now, so I am loaded with potassium like a Penn Central rail car, but this morning as I lay abed, here came another one. The cool thing about my leg cramps is that I get this little signal that one is approaching - a little cramplet, one might say - a precursor to the biggie that feels as if some art student from Reginald F. Lewis Academy is running a bandsaw broadwise across my Gastrocnemius (Latin for "calf muscle that makes people hop like they just got a hotfoot.") As a former giver of hotfoots (hotfeet?) I see the karmic twist here. Advice to newlyweds or people who are just beginning to sleep together: if you suffer from nightly leg cramps, tell your partner, lest they be as stunned as Peggy that night, early in our marriage, when I woke her up, jumping around the bedroom as if the angels of death had come to call for me, several decades too soon. "Oh, I forgot to tell you!" I said, ricocheting off a chiffonier, "I get these leg cramps..." It was not to be the last big surprise of our marriage (see blog entry from August 1974, in which I was booked for suspicion as a Watergate co-conspirator.)
I was listening to Mr. Bon Jovi sing his "It's My Life" song, which has the line, "Like Frankie said, I did it my way." Francis A. Sinatra, a once-popular singer, did not write the song "My Way," and he was a bantam-sized man who kept himself surrounded by a coterie of henchmen. Anyone who incurred his bantam-sized wrath was soon set upon by Frankie's men. I'd rather do it my way, which means writing my own stuff and fighting my own battles. Just sayin'.
I feel that an important aspect of my life ended yesterday with the final broadcast of the "Don and Mike" Show.
What I love about blogging - the reality, the human contact of real unvarnished lives - was all there with D&M. Sure they were sometimes tasteless, occasionally cruel, wildly funny, all those things, but they were on the air here since late 1991, and over the course of almost 17 years, a lot happens to people. We were there when Mike O'Meara's marriages ended, when his relationships with his daughters flourished, when he opened and closed his restaurant/bar, and so much more. And Don Geronimo, whose real name is Michael Sorce, as newspaper articles about his travails inevitably said, has had a life of triumph and tragedy, and he shared every single second of it on the air. His son Bart was known as "the six-year-old weather boy" when they came to town; he would read the weather for his Dad. Next month he will be graduated from Clemson. But Freda, Don's beloved wife, was killed by some damned fool driver going 90 miles an hour outside Ocean City three summers ago, and Don was never the same. He had to give up the show because being with the same workgroup every day reminded him too much of his loss, and he chose not to continue in sadness. His woebegone brother Jim (who married a woman who worked for the Frito-Lay factory but betrayed him by doing it with some co-worker atop a mountain of freshly-made Fritos), his battles with upper management, utility companies, and people who talk in movie theaters, his dealings with his birth mother whom he located after a long search, only to have her say "I gave you away because I didn't want you then and I don't want you now," his rejection of his adoptive parents and reconciliation with his adoptive mom after his adoptive father died....all fascinating, and no longer to be shared with us.Good luck to Jenna's husband, any teacher who needs to don armor, and to Don and Mike.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Six-Word Memoir
I was tagged by a blogger I love, Kat, from http://katry.blogspot.com. Her blog is called "Keep The Coffee Coming," and I read it every day with never a trace of jitters. So I'll accept the tagulation, and here's the assignment:
Write your own six word memoir.
Rowan at Fortify Your Oasis challenged his readers to do this because he was challenged by Grannymar who was challenged by Alice.
Post it on your blog, including an illustration if you’d like.
Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so that it can be tracked as it travels across the blogosphere.
Tag at least five more blogs with links.
Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
Here goes mine:
Winter
cold
Spring
Peggy
love
blooms
Now, here's what's funny. If you know me, you probably hear me use words such as garrulous, prolix or voluble to define myself in terms of speech habits. Many might say, "He sure can talk." Or the always-popular, "He was vaccinated with a phonograph needle." I've tried my hand at haiku, but there's a real art in minimalism that escapes me completely. So I don't think this is such a good six-word memoir, but it rings true to me. Out of necessity, it omits a lot of chapters from my life and references only the pre-Peggy chill that life gave me, and the joy that love has brought me continuously since the day fate joined our hearts.
I tried to go for the Burma-Shave school of poetry one time and couldn't even shorten my spiel enough to turn out great verses such as: HENRY THE EIGHTH / SURE HAD / TROUBLE / SHORT TERM WIVES / LONG TERM STUBBLE
Please read the greatest memoir of all time when you get a chance. Genius neurotic anxious pianist Oscar Levant (hey! that's a six-word autobio for you!) wrote Memoirs Of An Amnesiac, which I re-read more or less annually, along with The Catcher In The Rye and On The Road.
The following beloved bloggers are tagged:
Laura
Jamie
Abby
Sarah
Anne
I'll email y'all.
Write your own six word memoir.
Rowan at Fortify Your Oasis challenged his readers to do this because he was challenged by Grannymar who was challenged by Alice.
Post it on your blog, including an illustration if you’d like.
Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so that it can be tracked as it travels across the blogosphere.
Tag at least five more blogs with links.
Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!
Here goes mine:
Winter
cold
Spring
Peggy
love
blooms
Now, here's what's funny. If you know me, you probably hear me use words such as garrulous, prolix or voluble to define myself in terms of speech habits. Many might say, "He sure can talk." Or the always-popular, "He was vaccinated with a phonograph needle." I've tried my hand at haiku, but there's a real art in minimalism that escapes me completely. So I don't think this is such a good six-word memoir, but it rings true to me. Out of necessity, it omits a lot of chapters from my life and references only the pre-Peggy chill that life gave me, and the joy that love has brought me continuously since the day fate joined our hearts.
I tried to go for the Burma-Shave school of poetry one time and couldn't even shorten my spiel enough to turn out great verses such as: HENRY THE EIGHTH / SURE HAD / TROUBLE / SHORT TERM WIVES / LONG TERM STUBBLE
Please read the greatest memoir of all time when you get a chance. Genius neurotic anxious pianist Oscar Levant (hey! that's a six-word autobio for you!) wrote Memoirs Of An Amnesiac, which I re-read more or less annually, along with The Catcher In The Rye and On The Road.
The following beloved bloggers are tagged:
Laura
Jamie
Abby
Sarah
Anne
I'll email y'all.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
I Love You Because
I am a man who appreciates what I have been given in this life, and that's a considerable amount of things. I realize that I am luckier than I deserve to be, and I want to stop taking so much for granted, so I am vowing to tell people of my appreciation. Just for instance: there is a group of people with space in my building who are doing such noble and good work for a group of deserving individuals, and with their skill sets and abilities, they could go for the big bucks elsewhere, but, thank God, they are here among us every day. I see the faces of the people they help. I've seen their faces in times of no hope and now I see what adding a little hope, a helping hand, and a little encouragement can do for people. I won't go into more detail except to say that these caregivers are not out there talking about themselves or telling others what they ought to be doing; they're just doing something noble and good and life-giving.
Not long ago I heard someone mention the period immediately following 9/11. Remember how people would allow others to merge in traffic, how they would say "excuse me" and "thanks" and "you go first" and other nice things? There was an upsurge in patriotism, but even more important to me was an upsurge in human kindness. It felt as if those of us who had survived that awful day were going to help everyone deal with the common grief. And of course, as a child of the era in which we all refused to believe in that incredible unanimal mankind described by cummings, I felt heartened enough to believe that the long-forecast days of peace and harmony were finally here.
I tend to relate to things in terms of things already experienced. I look back a good deal more than I look ahead, because I know more about history than about the future. Honest to Pete, when 9/11 was going on, the lines from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland came to mind: "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow, out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say or guess..." I was wrong when I predicted that a whole new time of peace and love and harmony would grow out of that stony rubbish, because I foolishly forgot that the man down at 1600 Pa. Av. DC would leap at the opportunity to help his friends in the oil, electronics, bullet, uniform, tank, rifle and guided missile industries become filthy rich on the backs of the same people who were saying "excuse me" to each other in the supermarket.
Another poem came to mind today. Peggy and I were at Trader Joe's, buying some appetizers for Easter dinner, and I cleverly decided to shake a bottle of Asian dipping sauce to see the sesame seeds dance about in the rich brown goo-goodness. This would have been a better idea had I not been holding, in the same hand, a little cup of the free sample coffee that Trader Joe graciously provides. Mocha goodness poured out of the little cup and cascaded onto the front of the frozen food counter. Peggy immediately put down the package of spinach whatsises she was examining, and did which of the following?
a) laughed and laughed
b) called the store cleanup guy
c) pulled a Kleenex out of her purse, mopped my caffeinated hand dry, wiped up the counter, and asked me if I needed a refill on the coffee.
Anyone who has ever met Peggy, or even heard of her, knows at once the right answer is "C." She amazes me with her love, even though she has blessed me with it for almost 35 years. The song that came to mind was "I Love You Because," an old country standard sung by just about everyone back in the day:
I love you because you understand dear every single thing I try to do
You're always there to lend a helping hand dear
I love you most of all because you're you
No matter what the world may say about me
I know your love will always see me through
I love you for the way you never doubt me but most of all I love you cause you're you
I love you because my heart is lighter every time I'm walking by your side
I love you because the future's brighter
The door to happiness you've opened wide
No matter what may be the style or season I know your heart will always be true
I love you for a hundred thousand reasons but most of all I love you cause you're you
Friends, I still believe in love, and I believe that much love is out there for everyone. I was lucky and found it, or, more likely, the cosmos could not bear the thought of me rolling through life unhinged. If you have found the love of your life, cherish it, please. If you're still waiting for it to come to you, I bless the day it will arrive. And I know it will!
Not long ago I heard someone mention the period immediately following 9/11. Remember how people would allow others to merge in traffic, how they would say "excuse me" and "thanks" and "you go first" and other nice things? There was an upsurge in patriotism, but even more important to me was an upsurge in human kindness. It felt as if those of us who had survived that awful day were going to help everyone deal with the common grief. And of course, as a child of the era in which we all refused to believe in that incredible unanimal mankind described by cummings, I felt heartened enough to believe that the long-forecast days of peace and harmony were finally here.
I tend to relate to things in terms of things already experienced. I look back a good deal more than I look ahead, because I know more about history than about the future. Honest to Pete, when 9/11 was going on, the lines from T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland came to mind: "What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow, out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say or guess..." I was wrong when I predicted that a whole new time of peace and love and harmony would grow out of that stony rubbish, because I foolishly forgot that the man down at 1600 Pa. Av. DC would leap at the opportunity to help his friends in the oil, electronics, bullet, uniform, tank, rifle and guided missile industries become filthy rich on the backs of the same people who were saying "excuse me" to each other in the supermarket.
Another poem came to mind today. Peggy and I were at Trader Joe's, buying some appetizers for Easter dinner, and I cleverly decided to shake a bottle of Asian dipping sauce to see the sesame seeds dance about in the rich brown goo-goodness. This would have been a better idea had I not been holding, in the same hand, a little cup of the free sample coffee that Trader Joe graciously provides. Mocha goodness poured out of the little cup and cascaded onto the front of the frozen food counter. Peggy immediately put down the package of spinach whatsises she was examining, and did which of the following?
a) laughed and laughed
b) called the store cleanup guy
c) pulled a Kleenex out of her purse, mopped my caffeinated hand dry, wiped up the counter, and asked me if I needed a refill on the coffee.
Anyone who has ever met Peggy, or even heard of her, knows at once the right answer is "C." She amazes me with her love, even though she has blessed me with it for almost 35 years. The song that came to mind was "I Love You Because," an old country standard sung by just about everyone back in the day:
I love you because you understand dear every single thing I try to do
You're always there to lend a helping hand dear
I love you most of all because you're you
No matter what the world may say about me
I know your love will always see me through
I love you for the way you never doubt me but most of all I love you cause you're you
I love you because my heart is lighter every time I'm walking by your side
I love you because the future's brighter
The door to happiness you've opened wide
No matter what may be the style or season I know your heart will always be true
I love you for a hundred thousand reasons but most of all I love you cause you're you
Friends, I still believe in love, and I believe that much love is out there for everyone. I was lucky and found it, or, more likely, the cosmos could not bear the thought of me rolling through life unhinged. If you have found the love of your life, cherish it, please. If you're still waiting for it to come to you, I bless the day it will arrive. And I know it will!
Saturday, March 8, 2008
"Hey Yogi, what time is it?" "You mean now?"
I am not the smartest man anyone will ever meet. A man's just got to know his limitations, right! And I know people ranging from someone who refused to eat corned beef because "they just keep these little cows in a pen, and all they let them eat is corn, and it's so mean!" to a guy who was driving north on I-83 and encountered a car heading south with a stuck horn blaring. Doing a bit of mental jotto from the Doppler Effect of the change of pitch of that horn, and factoring in his own speed, John was able to calculate the speed of the car heading south. That's brains, is what that is.
I know where corned beef comes from. I am simply mad about cows. But I can't even figure how fast I'm driving without a look at the speedometer - the device on my dashboard for holding coupons and sticky notes. However, I know another way to figure out how fast that car was going. Simply get off at the next exit, get back on 83 headed southbound, drive like a bastard and catch up with him, follow him home and then ask "Excuse me, but how fast were you driving on the interstate? I need to know this because....."
Done and done.
But in the interest of allowing everyone to gauge my relative IQ (right now, you're thinking it's somewhere between Stephen Hawking and the guy who told Mitt Romney "Don't change a thing - people like you the way you are!"), I have to be totally honest about one huge mental black hole.
Daylight Savings Time.
Oh yeah, I pretty much have that "spring forward, fall backward" thing memorized, But how does it come that every time we either spring or fall, I have to get a pencil and paper and calculate whether it will be darker or lighter in the morning, and then do the same figurin' thing for dinnertime? Then I get really confused, because I have come to associate nightfall with the time that the "King of Queens" rerun comes on channel 45. Now, nightfall will coincide with "Two and a Half Men."
I have a friend who works in Kansas City and I keep meaning to give her a call at work one of these weekend mornings, but there only are certain times she can get a call. I am so afraid that I can't figure out that when it's 8 AM in Baltimore, it's 7 AM in Kansas City. Or is it 9 there already?
When we drove to Pensacola in 2004 for Drew and Laura's wedding, I was momentarily distracted from blissful daydreams involving grits and waffles, the two foods that make traveling through the sunny South such a blissful daydream, when we passed a sign even more terrifying to me than the one that says "Now entering radiation zone." It was a rather small sign for the terror it handed to me: Now entering Central Time Zone. ! Well, I come through Alabama with a steering wheel on my knee, for I'm programming my Timex Ironman, the right time for to see, as Stephen Foster would have said, had he cared. The rented minivan careered* across the state line out of Georgia as I entered this whole new dimension in which Letterman comes on at 10:35, the late news is on during dinner, and Dios Mio, what would happen if you were driving across that state line at 2 AM tomorrow morning? What time would it be when you got to one of the 27 conveniently located Waffle House, Waffle King, Wafflemaster or El Waffle Loco restaurants in Opelika?
Time to join this group,
that's what time it is! Fight for your syrup amendment rights! I'll talk to you tomorrow...sometime.* To "careen" means to tilt or tip over and to "career" means to speed wildly out of control.
(I had to look it up.)
Sunday, March 2, 2008
This is what it's like inside my melon
Time for a blog where I just open up the sluice gates and let the stream of consciousness flow over the banks and onto the page. There are certain things I think about all the time, such as why books and bookstores smell so nice and paper factories stink up entire towns. But, the water that flows makes the trees grow, and then carries the trees to a paper mill. Someone needs to write a book about why paper mills are so shtinky. They'll need a lot of paper to print it.
Here are a few thoughts: the first is totally spurious, and the others merely whimsical. I think I'll have a whimsicle right now!
...Ennui-rich British popster Phil Collins
is largely responsible for ending a crime spree in the greater Brattleboro (VT) area. Bemused cops report that persons arrested on suspicion of having committed crimes were locked in a small interview room and forced to listen to an endless loop tape of Collins "classics."
" 'Against All Odds', " quipped Brattleboro PD spokesperson Gene Sis, "we improved our crime clearance rate by 36% by forcing miscreants to listen to 'Sussudio,' 'You Can't Hurry Love,' and the real heavy weapon that we only trotted out against the most recalcitrant suspects, the deadly 'In The Air Tonight.' "
...In many jurisdictions, the police sell off used squad cars
to two main buyers: cop wannabes, and taxi companies. Is it not possible that someone could be arrested, taken in by the police in a certain Ford sedan, be sentenced to jail, and emerge from jail some months later, only to hail a cab to get home. And is it not possible that the cab could be the same vehicle that took him off to the hoosegow?
Driven by a cop wannabe?
...Since the beginning of time, there has been only a certain, albeit high, amount of water on the earth. They just aren't making hydrogen and oxygen molecules any more; it's too hard to get help.
Therefore, it follows that the next time you guzzle some water from the water cooler at work, or sip a mocha frappuccino, or take a shower after a long day on the job when the guy in the next cube was playing Phil Collins CD's for so long that you went down to the boss and confessed to ripping off wite-out just to get away from the din, you might be in contact with some of the same molecules that once bore Noah's Ark on its voyage. Then again, you may not. Who's to say?
...In 1978, the movie "Animal House"
came out (and I'm still laffin'!) The movie centered on college hi-jinx at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis of November, 1962. So the movie was about stuff that happened 16 years earlier. Well, it's 30 years since the movie came out. Would you care to see a movie about the funny stuff going on at Faber College in 1992? I can see it now...the students are all moping around, listening to Nirvana's Nevermind on tape cassettes, lining up to see The Silence of the Lambs and cheering the lifting of US trade sanctions with China. Let's face it: recent history is nowhere near as much fun as it used to be.
...I worked at a grocery store in high school and college, so my food choices when it came to lunch time (and it always did!) were fairly broad. I loved the A & P
and being surrounded by an endless vista of ginger ale, Fig Newtons and Vienna sausage. But what if you work at a restaurant, and more to the point, what if that restaurant is limited to one cuisine? Even if it's the best burger, ice cream sundae or falafel in town that you're frying/scooping/whatever the hell one does to serve falafel, you're going to be sick of eating it really soon. I'm sure there are thousands of former McEmployees who can't think of eating a Big Mac or former fish house cooks who can't look a catfish in the eye. I think the Labor Department ought to look into this.
...We've all been here: you're in the mall, or on the street, or running with the bulls at Pamplona. Out of the corner of your eye you see a dude that you kinda know, but you're in a hurry, or you just don't feel like hearing 30 minutes about the cutting edge of software technology, or where the stock market is heading, or why the Orioles don't have a chance to win anything this year or anytime before the next century begins. You sidle away, like a defensive back getting ready to make an interception, and when you see a path, off you go! into the clear and you get that exhilarated feeling because you know with every step You! Could! Go! All! The! Way.
I admit to the escape-and-evade several months ago, and as I darted away, my nonchalance giving way to what was certainly red-faced sweaty guilt until I must have looked like James Cagney in "White Heat," I got to thinking - how many times has someone seen ME and done the same thing? Now, that's what I call neurotic!
Good night! Top of the world!
Here are a few thoughts: the first is totally spurious, and the others merely whimsical. I think I'll have a whimsicle right now!
...Ennui-rich British popster Phil Collins
is largely responsible for ending a crime spree in the greater Brattleboro (VT) area. Bemused cops report that persons arrested on suspicion of having committed crimes were locked in a small interview room and forced to listen to an endless loop tape of Collins "classics."" 'Against All Odds', " quipped Brattleboro PD spokesperson Gene Sis, "we improved our crime clearance rate by 36% by forcing miscreants to listen to 'Sussudio,' 'You Can't Hurry Love,' and the real heavy weapon that we only trotted out against the most recalcitrant suspects, the deadly 'In The Air Tonight.' "
...In many jurisdictions, the police sell off used squad cars
to two main buyers: cop wannabes, and taxi companies. Is it not possible that someone could be arrested, taken in by the police in a certain Ford sedan, be sentenced to jail, and emerge from jail some months later, only to hail a cab to get home. And is it not possible that the cab could be the same vehicle that took him off to the hoosegow?
Driven by a cop wannabe?...Since the beginning of time, there has been only a certain, albeit high, amount of water on the earth. They just aren't making hydrogen and oxygen molecules any more; it's too hard to get help.
Therefore, it follows that the next time you guzzle some water from the water cooler at work, or sip a mocha frappuccino, or take a shower after a long day on the job when the guy in the next cube was playing Phil Collins CD's for so long that you went down to the boss and confessed to ripping off wite-out just to get away from the din, you might be in contact with some of the same molecules that once bore Noah's Ark on its voyage. Then again, you may not. Who's to say?...In 1978, the movie "Animal House"
came out (and I'm still laffin'!) The movie centered on college hi-jinx at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis of November, 1962. So the movie was about stuff that happened 16 years earlier. Well, it's 30 years since the movie came out. Would you care to see a movie about the funny stuff going on at Faber College in 1992? I can see it now...the students are all moping around, listening to Nirvana's Nevermind on tape cassettes, lining up to see The Silence of the Lambs and cheering the lifting of US trade sanctions with China. Let's face it: recent history is nowhere near as much fun as it used to be....I worked at a grocery store in high school and college, so my food choices when it came to lunch time (and it always did!) were fairly broad. I loved the A & P
and being surrounded by an endless vista of ginger ale, Fig Newtons and Vienna sausage. But what if you work at a restaurant, and more to the point, what if that restaurant is limited to one cuisine? Even if it's the best burger, ice cream sundae or falafel in town that you're frying/scooping/whatever the hell one does to serve falafel, you're going to be sick of eating it really soon. I'm sure there are thousands of former McEmployees who can't think of eating a Big Mac or former fish house cooks who can't look a catfish in the eye. I think the Labor Department ought to look into this....We've all been here: you're in the mall, or on the street, or running with the bulls at Pamplona. Out of the corner of your eye you see a dude that you kinda know, but you're in a hurry, or you just don't feel like hearing 30 minutes about the cutting edge of software technology, or where the stock market is heading, or why the Orioles don't have a chance to win anything this year or anytime before the next century begins. You sidle away, like a defensive back getting ready to make an interception, and when you see a path, off you go! into the clear and you get that exhilarated feeling because you know with every step You! Could! Go! All! The! Way.
I admit to the escape-and-evade several months ago, and as I darted away, my nonchalance giving way to what was certainly red-faced sweaty guilt until I must have looked like James Cagney in "White Heat," I got to thinking - how many times has someone seen ME and done the same thing? Now, that's what I call neurotic!
Good night! Top of the world!
Sunday, February 24, 2008
I didn't know
Well, Saturday was one of those days in which the wisdom of the old axiom "You never can tell" came true. On Friday, our entire metro area was supposed to be plunged into a New Ice Age, replete with snow, sleet, sleety snow, freezing rain, rainy freeze, and sniffles. Even the normally nonemotional National Weather Service got all nervous - on Thursday, before I left work, the NWS sent a bulletin advising that travel would be "difficult if not impossible" on Friday. That turned out to be "wrong if not wrongest" when we had a little freezing rain that was easily vanquished by the guys and gals from the Highways department and their vast salt domes, and life somehow went on.
So on Saturday, after the usual breakfast-nap-trip-to-the-Food King triumvirate of fun, we took Mom's groceries over to her house, did a few chores over there at the site of my upbringing (see my autobiography FRONTIER DAYS: Boy in Buckskin for more details) and then Peggy and I looked forward to our culinary pleasure, my weekly break from dieting, that hebdomadal hedonistic Valhalla, the Old Country Buffet.
As I do with Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning, I revere the Frenchman Jean-Claude Buffet, the first man to realize that the best choice for dinner is EVERY choice. This is, of course, completely fake information. There was no Jean-Claude Buffet, just as, yesterday, there was no Old Country Buffet.
I thought at first it was because we approached Satyr Hill Shopping Center from the west, having just come from Mom's, and maybe the sun was playing tricks on me. At first, I noticed there was no price listed for gasoline at the Texaco right across the parking lot from the OCB, and I figured it was because finally the oil industry had finally achieved a measure of modesty and no longer saw fit to emblazon in the sky just how badly they are ripping off an entire nation -yea, all mankind - for their hi-test. But no, it turned out that they were installing new pumps. I figured,"fine; we'll fill up the car somewhere else after we fill ourselves." But no!
I thought, wow, this is great - there are so many parking spots on the lot! Yeah, buddy, that would be because the Old County Buffet was closed. I mean, shut down for good, Katie bar the door, 126 pages Dear John. Except, the doors weren't barred; they simply had the blinds drawn, and the Dear John letter was an inelegantly phrased Word Document advising that the Old Country Buffet had closed for business at this location, but we were welcome to drive 30 miles to Catonsville to visit their one remaining Baltimore location. I bet they didn't even save that consarned document after they printed out three copies, taped them up and locked the doors.
I reacted as would any fully-realized adult when his dinner has suddenly disappeared. I wept and wailed, and I'm fairly sure there was gnashing of teeth. We wound up going to the Towson Diner, which is quite great in its own way, but unlike buffets, diners have that one little difference. At the Old Country Buffet, it's all you can eat. At the Towson Diner, what they place in front of you is all you can eat. Owing to some sort of oddball policy, you're not allowed to go roam among the huge steaming tureens (I hereby offer that phrase as a band name for any musical aggravation willing to assume it) and giant beef roasts and ribs of the sort favored by Dino Flintstone
at the Bedrock Drive-In. And then there was the Taco Bar, the Salad Bar, the Soup Buckets, the Shrimp Boat and the Make-Your-Own-Damn-Dessert area, featuring soft-serve ice cream, carrot cake, oatmeal cookies, incredible peach or cherry "gobblers" and the whole American concept of come on in, sit down and spell, we're just fixin' to eat. You'd see people there every time - the same people, the same groups and families and couples. There was one man who used to read to his wife while they ate, a widower-looking guy going around greeting his friends, a woman who used to get her hair "did" at the same place we used to before our tonsorial expert chose a lifestyle of avid drug consumption, and buses of high-school and college kids, usually on their way back from something thrilling they had done here, just having a little dinner, a little of that and a lot of this, and some fun.
Old Country Buffet, Nos quisnam iam epulor alibi tutus vos! That's Latin for "we who now dine elsewhere salute you!" (I think the Romans are hinting that we should try Quizno's...) But I remember another use of the word "buffet" that we hear on the radio and TV during hurricane season (Jan 1 - Dec 31) around here. "Strong winds buffeted the Caroline Coast today as Hurricane Duane made landfall at 3 AM..." is something we hear all the time, when the electricity is on. In this case, buffet means, well, let's go to Merriam-Webster to see for sure:
(transitive) To strike or blow with a buffet or buffets.
I bow my head once again at the wisdom and foresight of the framers of our language. John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in their wisdom, knew that our language needed a word for a great place to eat, and how it felt when that place closed down suddenly. I've been buffeted! See you at the diner.
So on Saturday, after the usual breakfast-nap-trip-to-the-Food King triumvirate of fun, we took Mom's groceries over to her house, did a few chores over there at the site of my upbringing (see my autobiography FRONTIER DAYS: Boy in Buckskin for more details) and then Peggy and I looked forward to our culinary pleasure, my weekly break from dieting, that hebdomadal hedonistic Valhalla, the Old Country Buffet.
As I do with Willis Carrier, the inventor of air conditioning, I revere the Frenchman Jean-Claude Buffet, the first man to realize that the best choice for dinner is EVERY choice. This is, of course, completely fake information. There was no Jean-Claude Buffet, just as, yesterday, there was no Old Country Buffet.
I thought at first it was because we approached Satyr Hill Shopping Center from the west, having just come from Mom's, and maybe the sun was playing tricks on me. At first, I noticed there was no price listed for gasoline at the Texaco right across the parking lot from the OCB, and I figured it was because finally the oil industry had finally achieved a measure of modesty and no longer saw fit to emblazon in the sky just how badly they are ripping off an entire nation -yea, all mankind - for their hi-test. But no, it turned out that they were installing new pumps. I figured,"fine; we'll fill up the car somewhere else after we fill ourselves." But no!
I thought, wow, this is great - there are so many parking spots on the lot! Yeah, buddy, that would be because the Old County Buffet was closed. I mean, shut down for good, Katie bar the door, 126 pages Dear John. Except, the doors weren't barred; they simply had the blinds drawn, and the Dear John letter was an inelegantly phrased Word Document advising that the Old Country Buffet had closed for business at this location, but we were welcome to drive 30 miles to Catonsville to visit their one remaining Baltimore location. I bet they didn't even save that consarned document after they printed out three copies, taped them up and locked the doors.
I reacted as would any fully-realized adult when his dinner has suddenly disappeared. I wept and wailed, and I'm fairly sure there was gnashing of teeth. We wound up going to the Towson Diner, which is quite great in its own way, but unlike buffets, diners have that one little difference. At the Old Country Buffet, it's all you can eat. At the Towson Diner, what they place in front of you is all you can eat. Owing to some sort of oddball policy, you're not allowed to go roam among the huge steaming tureens (I hereby offer that phrase as a band name for any musical aggravation willing to assume it) and giant beef roasts and ribs of the sort favored by Dino Flintstone
at the Bedrock Drive-In. And then there was the Taco Bar, the Salad Bar, the Soup Buckets, the Shrimp Boat and the Make-Your-Own-Damn-Dessert area, featuring soft-serve ice cream, carrot cake, oatmeal cookies, incredible peach or cherry "gobblers" and the whole American concept of come on in, sit down and spell, we're just fixin' to eat. You'd see people there every time - the same people, the same groups and families and couples. There was one man who used to read to his wife while they ate, a widower-looking guy going around greeting his friends, a woman who used to get her hair "did" at the same place we used to before our tonsorial expert chose a lifestyle of avid drug consumption, and buses of high-school and college kids, usually on their way back from something thrilling they had done here, just having a little dinner, a little of that and a lot of this, and some fun.Old Country Buffet, Nos quisnam iam epulor alibi tutus vos! That's Latin for "we who now dine elsewhere salute you!" (I think the Romans are hinting that we should try Quizno's...) But I remember another use of the word "buffet" that we hear on the radio and TV during hurricane season (Jan 1 - Dec 31) around here. "Strong winds buffeted the Caroline Coast today as Hurricane Duane made landfall at 3 AM..." is something we hear all the time, when the electricity is on. In this case, buffet means, well, let's go to Merriam-Webster to see for sure:
- buffet
- Function:
- verb
- Date:
- 13th century
1 : to strike sharply especially with the hand : cuff 2 : to strike repeatedly : batter buffeted the shore> 3 : to drive, force, move, or attack by or as if by repeated blows intransitive verb : to make one's way especially under difficult conditions
(transitive) To strike or blow with a buffet or buffets.
I bow my head once again at the wisdom and foresight of the framers of our language. John Milton, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in their wisdom, knew that our language needed a word for a great place to eat, and how it felt when that place closed down suddenly. I've been buffeted! See you at the diner.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Sticks and Stones
With the Maryland primary election coming up on Tuesday (and here's a big shout-out to everyone who tried to vote this past Tuesday, only to find out that our Tuesday was just a Tuesday, nothing Super about it) the campaign ads are proliferating in just a couple of races. Maryland's 1st Congressional District - the entire Eastern Shore, and parts of Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford Counties - has a real barnburner going on in their Republican primary, as two candidates seek to oust the incumbent. They would want me to mention their names. The amusing thing about all this is the ads they are running on TV and radio. The entire focus of the ads of both would-be congressmen is "The incumbent is LIBERAL!" And as if to prove the point, they show pictures of the man that were snapped right after he sneezed or something, and juxtapose the photos next to images of Nancy Pelosi looking like something smells bad and she's wrinkling her nose. Very subtle stuff.
But when did it become such a sin to be a liberal? What is the definition of a liberal? Why don't we do what millions of truth-seekers have done over the years, and check it out in the good old Roget's Thesaurus:
liberal
NOUN: A person with liberal political opinions: liberalist, progressive. See POLITICS.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Not narrow or conservative in thought, expression, or conduct: broad, broad-minded, open-minded, progressive, tolerant. See ATTITUDE, WIDE. 2. Characterized by bounteous giving: free, freehanded, generous, handsome, lavish, munificent, openhanded, unsparing, unstinting. See GIVE. 3. Favoring civil liberties and social progress: liberalistic, progressive. See POLITICS.
conservative
NOUN: One who strongly favors retention of the existing order: orthodox, rightist, right-winger, Tory, traditionalist. See KEEP.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Kept within sensible limits: discreet, moderate, reasonable, restrained, temperate. See PLAIN, RESTRAINT. 2. Strongly favoring retention of the existing order: orthodox, right, rightist, right-wing, Tory, traditionalist, traditionalistic. See KEEP. 3. Able to preserve: preservative, protective. See HELP. 4. Clinging to obsolete ideas: backward, reactionary, unprogressive. See POLITICS.
Here's my point: I would much rather be thought of as not narrow in thought, bounteous in giving, and in favor of civil liberties and social progress than have people describe me as clinging to obsolete ideas or favoring retention of the existing order. I know that will likely cost me a treasured invitation to the Bushdaughter wedding in May, but I don't like obsolete ideas.
And, "kept within sensible limits"? Like, Dick Cheney only shot one guy in the face so far...is that a sensible limit on how many people can be shot by the vice-president? Bush only got us into one war so far. So what if it costs a little money or a few thousand lives...
Consider the costs...
But when did it become such a sin to be a liberal? What is the definition of a liberal? Why don't we do what millions of truth-seekers have done over the years, and check it out in the good old Roget's Thesaurus:
liberal
NOUN: A person with liberal political opinions: liberalist, progressive. See POLITICS.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Not narrow or conservative in thought, expression, or conduct: broad, broad-minded, open-minded, progressive, tolerant. See ATTITUDE, WIDE. 2. Characterized by bounteous giving: free, freehanded, generous, handsome, lavish, munificent, openhanded, unsparing, unstinting. See GIVE. 3. Favoring civil liberties and social progress: liberalistic, progressive. See POLITICS.
conservative
NOUN: One who strongly favors retention of the existing order: orthodox, rightist, right-winger, Tory, traditionalist. See KEEP.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Kept within sensible limits: discreet, moderate, reasonable, restrained, temperate. See PLAIN, RESTRAINT. 2. Strongly favoring retention of the existing order: orthodox, right, rightist, right-wing, Tory, traditionalist, traditionalistic. See KEEP. 3. Able to preserve: preservative, protective. See HELP. 4. Clinging to obsolete ideas: backward, reactionary, unprogressive. See POLITICS.
Here's my point: I would much rather be thought of as not narrow in thought, bounteous in giving, and in favor of civil liberties and social progress than have people describe me as clinging to obsolete ideas or favoring retention of the existing order. I know that will likely cost me a treasured invitation to the Bushdaughter wedding in May, but I don't like obsolete ideas.
And, "kept within sensible limits"? Like, Dick Cheney only shot one guy in the face so far...is that a sensible limit on how many people can be shot by the vice-president? Bush only got us into one war so far. So what if it costs a little money or a few thousand lives...
Consider the costs...
- $275 million per day
- $4,100 per household
- Almost 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed and more than 60,000 wounded
- 700,000 Iraqis killed and 4 million refugees
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Easy does it
First of all today, I have to ask why so many people are walking around wearing those Bluetooth earpieces. I mean, it would be one thing if the people we saw with these blinking devices stuck on their melons were at work, expecting an important message about the Harrigan account, or from the kidnappers holding their family for ransom, or urgent instructions for reporting to the hospital to donate a vital organ or a pint of O-negative. But no. I don't see them on people at work; I see them on people waiting for a table at Carrabba's, or filling the tank of the Biscayne at the Pump 'n' Pay, or running to the bakery for a dozen bagels.
And, you might think that people who feel they can't leave the house and simply plan to get their cell phone out of their pocket or purse in case it rings would have some supercilious smirk on their mugs, or that whole techie show-off aspect. Again -but no! I really feel that most of these people are just scared to death that it might take an extra second to hoist that cell faceward to take the call from Aunt Mildred about how much spice to add to the chili.
But I'll bet if people's employers told them they had to wear this teardrop-shaped earplug to the restaurant, the gas station or the bakery so as not to miss a call, people would balk and holler. Hey - maybe between calls, they are hearing important inter-galactic transmissions to which the rest of us are not privy!
Speaking of transmissions, there's a local radio show on the air here in B'more on which the host asks for your "list of 4" - favorite pies, worst highways, best reasons to eat more noodles, whatever. As far as I know, this is a list that has not been asked for yet, but herewith, my list of the Four Easiest Jobs in the World:
1. Jockey.
Be small, get on a horse, hang on, get off a mile and a half later.2. Photographer.
Get a camera, turn it on, look at the viewfinder, push a button.3. High-school cross-country coach.
Get some skinny kids in sneakers, tank tops and shorts, and tell them to run like hell!4. Director of movies featuring Jack Nicholson.
Tell your star "Just act like Mr Udall from As Good As It Gets again."There are other jobs - president of the United States comes to mind - that seem to be easy enough for the average George to do, but can you top these?
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