Good morning

As regular readers know, I try to walk for an hour every morning that weather and circumstances permit. That leads to an average of five days a week, nine months of the year. December through February get iffy.

Other than for the sake of the exercise itself, one thing I try to do while walking is to greet everyone I meet. It's interesting that a simple 'good morning' can appear to make other folks smile. I can't tell you how many people approach where you can see they're keeping their heads down, unsure whether they should make contact. Then I say "Good Morning!" and they invariably smile and say it back. I like to think it's good for us both.

To be sure, some do not respond, or respond surly. Yet I try not to let that bother me. I don't know what's on their minds or how their lives have been lately, so why make a big deal of it? Even if they are surly by nature, my good morning certainly can't hurt.

It all actually makes my walks better. I've never been much on psychology but I can see that when we choose a good attitude we tend to develop one. With that in mind I say to all of you out there, Good Morning!

Or good afternoon if you don't see this until then.

Red velvet conspiracy

Red velvet is only dyed chocolate!

Yes, I know that you probably know that. I also admit that red velvet is very good. Especially with the cream cheese icing. But it's only maroon chocolate! That's all it is folks. We're being played by the cake industry.

Sorry. I had to get that off my chest.

The Golf Channel and peace in our time

How old am I getting? Well, I woke up this very early morning and immediately began wondering how to spend this unexpected new time. And suddenly the decision became simple. I turned on the Golf Channel.

The European Tour was playing live from China. I am not making this up. Two-Twenty Five in the AM locally here in Detroit, Michigan, and I'm happily watching European Tour golf from late this afternoon from Beijing. Is life good or what?

Never mind that I'm watching someone whom I'm sure is an excellent golfer from Sweden, Alexander Bjork, and thinking 'Shouldn't he be playing in a swan costume?' I know. Bad form, Marty.

Never mind that the mind boggles at the thought of European golf in the Orient. It is what it is. Rather than infomercials or repeats from other sporting events of which I already know the outcome, I'm watching live golf.

Think what you will, and I know you will, golf will bring world peace. Especially as we age.

The diplomat in the family

Diplomacy isn't just for diplomats. Why, I bet we could get on a lot easier in life day in and day out with a little more tact.
I explain this with one example in mind. A few years ago as my son Frank and I drove to Pittsburgh to see both the Tigers and the stadium, there it was raining buckets. The folks in Detroit will remember it as the day the west side flooded. It took my daughter around three hours to get home from work, a trip which usually takes maybe 20 minutes, due to washed out streets. The rain was that heavy and constant over many hours.
So perhaps we should not have been driving, as the rain was like that all over the middle west. Instead, I kept on keeping on. But the volume and intensity of rain was a concern for my son.
Yet he didn't make a big deal of it. Rather he at one point opined matter of factly, "You know Dad, I wouldn't think any less of you if you wanted to pull over for a while."
I think I actually chuckled a little. He made his point without being shrill or demanding. In fact, I believe he was properly considerate of his old man.
And that's how diplomacy should work. Everyone should employ it.

Whole notes

I have listened several times over this evening to The Beatles' Hey Jude. It is a tremendous song, a true Magnum Opus for Sir Paul. It is perhaps my favorite tune ever.

In short, I kinda like it.

And what I like about it most is its magnificent simplicity.

We talk about diversity. We praise it, indeed beyond any worthwhile value. And I'm okay with such praise if all you mean is small-d diversity. But to anyone feeling only that I want to point out one small yet powerful value.

Whole notes.

We are all familiar with the four minutes or so of the na-na-na final, drawn out chorus of Hey Jude. It forces itself upon Jude's incessant pleas. But do you notice when it really begins? Do you notice the muted yet pronounced brass which begins with the fourth repeat of na-na-na?

Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, brass falling deeply in union from the treble to the bass clef it seems, drawing everything into itself. The whole song falling down to a unity which we all understand.

It continues beyond that, in the open background before fading away steadily, a trick used by editors to make a song sound as though it never ends. It makes songs fade into eternity.

Whole notes make that unity.

Age old ballplayers

They say, whoever they are, that you're as young as you feel. And there may be something to that.

I've spoken often about Grandpa Joe, and a couple times about his father, Great Grandpa James. I've spoken too about how Joe seemed to always make his presence felt, quite emphatically and quite often. Only his own dad appeared to have any influence on that.

A tale me Pops told me may illustrate the fact. Great Grandpa James lived on the same farm in west central Illinois his whole 92 years. Grandpa Joe was born there. Naturally enough, every summer Joe would load the family into some old wreck of a car and they would head out to see the extended family. The trip made further sense because Grandma Cosgriff, me grams, was from the same area too, so they could visit both sets of relatives.

One year when Pops was still in high school, him and a brood of his cousins were out in a large field playing baseball and shagging flies. Grandpa James, 85 at the time, noticed them, and went out in the field to watch. Eventually he asked if he might try hitting the baseball a bit. Now, he had a hernia, and the grandkids knew it. But they also didn't know how they could tell their grandfather no, so they dutifully let him bat.

He was hitting well by Pops' account, just another guy tossing a ball in the air and thwacking it with a bat as it came down towards earth. Indeed all them grandsons were impressed by the old man. But Pops noticed Joe watching from a ways off, by the house he was born in, as if deciding something but not sure how to proceed. Joe Cosgriff being uncertain about anything was very unusual.

Grandpa Joe finally muscled up his courage (he had to do that?) and strode out into the field where his father had yet to relinquish the bat. He walked up to Grandpa James and said timidly (Joe Cosgriff speaking timidly?), "Dad, do you think you should be doing that, with your hernia and all?"

His father paused a moment to reply plainly, "Joe, I believe I'm about old enough to do as I please." He then proceeded to hit another 15 minutes. Joe put up no argument. He simply drew on a cigarette and walked back to the house.

It was surprising, yes. But every man his limits, his parameters, things which hold him in check. Joe's was his dad.

Terror on the highway

You want to know what panic is? I'll tell you what panic is.

Generally home bound these days, Mom gets anxious to go out anywhere, even with me. As I had some errands to run yesterday I walked down the block to see if she'd care to tag along. Before my coffee could cool she had been to her room, combed her hair, put on a little makeup (she still frets about her looks) and stood in the kitchen doorway saying hopefully, "I'm not rushing you but I'm ready when you are." So we went.

As I said, she still worries about her appearance. So it was no surprise as we tooled down the highway that, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her pull down the sun visor above the passenger seat. She opened the mirror flap and began to touch up her lipstick.

Exactly as I was approaching a very rough patch of road.

But the left lane looked smooth. I took a quick glance over my shoulder, hit the turn signal, and slid into the better lane just in time to avoid the potholes and uneven tar patches which had seemed our destiny. Disaster averted.

And her lipstick was perfect.

Buzz boxes

Me dad and me Grandpa Joe got along well, despite the fact that Grandpa could be difficult to deal with (something which I will attest to from years of personal experience, and I really loved the old coot). Dad explained to me once that both he and his father had poor tempers, something I would never have accused Dad of having, but as Joe was here first, Pops had made up his mind early on that he would be the one to hold his tongue whenever he didn't see eye to eye with his old man. However, that didn't mean he couldn't get his point across when necessary.

Joe rented welding equipment and Pops worked for him. This was back in 1940s through the 1980s, before prefabrication, when a lot of fabrication had to be done right on construction sites. So Grandpa had for rent arc welders, torches, and things which I think were called buzz boxes. As that's good enough for the point of this tale, we'll leave it at that.

These buzz boxes were intended to make instant welds. As I recall, you would hold the thing up to a rivet on a steel girder and it was supposed to make three quick welds to secure the rivet in place. Supposed is the operative word here. The boxes were notoriously finicky, and it was Dad's job to go out to work sites to repair the them when they didn't work.

Pops hated them. They were as difficult to repair as they were to operate. Over a few years Dad learned to fully and completely despise them.

One day as he came in from a particularly tough repair of one of the buzz boxes, Joe could see that his son was not in a good mood. As Pops saw it, his father thought that maybe he could lighten things. He remarked with a slight chuckle, apparently trying to make a joke of it, "Those buzz boxes are tough to deal with, eh?"

As Dad told it, he replied quietly, firmly, and without looking up at his dad, "Old man, when you die, I'm selling those buzz boxes. Then I'll bury you." It's an old line, but used rightly, an effective one. Perhaps Dad had been holding it back, waiting for the teachable moment.

Joe laughed at it, but kind of nervously. The next day he began selling the buzz boxes.

Pops could let Joe know what he felt when he had to, and without the arguments Joe often had with others. And I think they respected each other because of it.

The jitters

Yesterday I experienced something I haven't experienced since I was a kid, if even then. I had a terrible case of the coffee jitters.
Up until about a year ago I drank coffee whenever I wanted, all day and every day. Then my doctor said I should cut down to two cups. So I've dutifully cut down, although I still generally have three cups or so each day. Before yesterday that hadn't been an issue.
Yet sitting at my computer going through e-mails and such and such, I went through four cups in an hour on an empty stomach. It didn't bother me at first, but by the time I got to my Shop I was nervous and jittery and talking a mile a minute. I know, that last symptom will draw a laugh, but I could actually hear that I was prattling on by then.
So it seems that my caffeine tolerance has gone way down. Stupid doctors.

The Shot Heard Round the World

On this day in 1775 the American Revolution began. The militiamen, the ordinary citizen soldiers of Lexington and Concord, turned back the more organized and more highly trained British, harassing them all the way back to Charlestown outside of Boston. The Shot Heard Round the World had been fired. April 19, 1775 had secured its place in American and World history.

The significance of this event cannot be underscored enough. To date, it is almost surely the only large scale revolution which has had any modicum of positive success. Most new nations sink into anarchy, more terrible tyranny, or simply the same old same old with a new face when a known form of government falls.

To be sure, even our Revolution was subject to severe trials early on. It was no certainty that a civil government based on popular will would result from the Revolution. Yet somehow it did; I believe that it was American Exceptionalism through Divine Providence that our nation rose from those battlefields as it did.

I do not mean this as an insult towards other people and nations who have or are now seeking similar freedom and respect. I know that we aren't and never have been perfect, and that there are and have been other rightly proud and blessed peoples and countries. Perhaps over time Libya will stabilize, Isis fail in Iraq and Syria, and the Muslim Brotherhood moderate. But I cannot help feeling that their story will be many more years playing out than the American tale. The fact is that popular uprisings need more than simple change. They need enlightened leadership. They need more than mob mentality. Any dictator with charisma and organizational skills can turn crowds to their will quite easily.

The colonists had rational leadership. The colonist themselves were on the whole reasonable people. They were able to overcome the occasional rabble to form a stable, reasonably free nation. And that's exactly what makes April 19, 1775 so memorable. Our revolution is truly unique in history. It was essentially founded 243 years ago today.

Burning the (comic) books

A friend of mine, a guy I've known since high school (I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name) did then and still does collect comic books. Let me tell you, if you think Catholicism is a religion, you know nothing about comic book collectors.

Cloyce buys two issues of nearly every major comic book every month. One he reads; one he carefully, oh, so carefully, slips into a hypoallergenic plastic sleeve or some such nonsense, for preservation. Yes, really.

I was talking to old Cloyce awhile back and I told him that when he passes, if I have any say in the matter, we're going to give him one impressive send off. We'll build this raft, see, and we'll lay his dead body upon it. Then we'll push it out into the ocean, westward, as the sun goes down. Then we'll have an archer fire a flaming arrow into it once it's far enough offshore to not be a hazard. You can see the arc of the fiery projectile gracefully heading to the air in the dusk, to descend purposefully on the raft. A sharp yet small puff of flame will set everything aglow. Then his funeral pyre will drift away into the reds, blues, and purples of the sunset.

"Wow," Cloyce responded, kind of caught up in my moment of description. But then he asked, "How will you fuel the fire?"

I answered, "With your comic books."

He began to stutter and stammer. I said, "Don't worry. We'll soak them in gasoline to make sure they ignite and burn thoroughly."

Cloyce hasn't spoken to me since.

Income Tax Day 2018

As I have said before, I've come to the conclusion that incomes taxes are in general immoral. I pay mine because there's no practical alternative. Yet they only exist because might makes right. In the case of republics like ours, what that means is fifty percent of the voters plus one authorizes the majority to dip into everyone's pockets however deeply they want to.

This isn't necessarily wrong I'll admit. Sometimes a crisis must be met with greater government intrusion into our lives. Yet by and large this is not the case; only extremes such as World War II demand it.

I know governments need money. But it should be gotten through user fees and sales taxes. And you know what? Such a system is automatically graduated. The rich will naturally pay more in taxes, the middle class less, and the poor nothing (I'd have no problem exempting them from any taxes) because those with greater incomes will buy and use more.

There are reasons I've cited before which support my point, but I'll stop here. Why? Because those agree with me know them, and those who don't have likely stopped reading anyway.

The doctor, the priest, and the undertaker

Father Hanrahan was a priest at our Church oh, about 35 years ago. He was a good priest if a bit gruff, but that was part of why I liked him.

As happens with many of us later in life, he developed heart issues. Once he had had a heart attack while driving. He was able to get his car over onto the shoulder of the road, and two good Samaritans stopped to help. One gave him basic medical treatment and both waited until an ambulance arrived, and they each even hung around with the good padre's keys until another priest arrived with a tow truck to retrieve the car. Father survived the episode and lived several more years.

What makes this tale humorous though was that of the two who stopped to help, one was a doctor. The other was a mortician. When the stricken Father Hanrahan found this out he rasped to the undertaker, "I hope your buddy is good at his work and that you're only here just in case."

He worked the story into a sermon, as many good pastors will.

She still has her humor

She hasn't lost her sense of humor.

I was sitting with my Mom in her kitchen, on my way to the Shop to play Saturday catch up. Being still pretty cold here in Michigan, I had on my old, heavy Carhartt coat. "Aren't you hot in that?" she asked as we talked over coffee. It was interesting question considering that she herself always complains about being cold.

"Nah, I'm okay," I responded. I then went on to explain to her, thinking she might be impressed by the thought, "Dad gave this to me years ago, well before he passed in fact. I think I've this coat about 15 years."

Mom nodded her head approvingly. Then she squinched up her face and asked, feigning disgust, "You have washed it since then haven't you?" It was clearly a motherly hint that it was rather dirty and in need of care. I could tell because she burst out with a hearty laugh right after saying so. That's how I'm taking it anyway.

For the record I have washed it since then. And that's all you're going to get out of me.

Me Grandpas

Me Grandpa Joe and me Grandpa Hutchins well, I wish I was just xacly between'em.

I loved 'em both and they was both mighty fine gentlemen. The one, he was fairly harsh and the other he was fairly gentle. Unless a bee stung him, and then that bee had to die, he had to. And I get that. That bee had to die. That's a'nother tale.

One took things far too close to home, the other took nothin' personal. That there's both a good trait.

Yet they was both mighty fine men. I'll fight ya if don't agree. They was mighty fine.

They was mighty fine gentlemen, they was. They was me Grandpas.

And say they was not and not and I'll fight you.

Presumption of guilt (an example of why I am conservative)

The City of Detroit has found me, or rather more specifically my business, in violation of Ordinance 22-2-61. I do not have a marked container for solid waste disposal at my Shop. If I don't contract with a private entity (or pay the City $450 per year) to remove my solid waste I could be subject to fines and costs up to a grand (and still have to get the serices anyway). So sayeth the city inspector who stopped by the Shop yesterday.

He was cordial so I was cordial. I explained to him that I have little solid waste to dispose of, maybe a thirty gallon trash bag a week, and that my neighbor allows (indeed he offered me the use of his refuse container on his own years ago) us to use his. On the occasions I have more than normal garbage, I take it two blocks and put it in with my own household trash. Boxes we reuse or recycle, scrap spring steel is picked up twice a week by a local scrap man, and other scrap material (non-spring steel, copper, and aluminum) we accumulate inside the Shop and take to the junk yard ourselves when we have a load. Why must I have my own container?, I asked him.

He explained that the purpose of the ordinance is to prevent commercial businesses from illegal dumping.

That trips my trigger. I stayed cordial to the man (no point in going off on him) as he handed me a citation and then left. But what upsets me, deeply and profoundly angers me in fact, is the presumption that as a commercial business I will illegally dump without my own dumpster. It is an affront to my dignity and I resent it.

I have not dumped my trash. The City of Detroit has no evidence nor compelling reason to believe I have. I simply have little and was seeing to its disposal in other proper ways and manners. I should not be made to either contract a waste disposal business or pay Detroit 450 bucks a year simply because the powers that be want me to. As it is, this is nothing but legal extortion under the guise of protecting Detroit and her residents.

And this is one small reason why I am a political conservative. So very many regulations presume guilt, which is wrong by itself and often is not there anyway. In this case I have been a good and responsible citizen. Yet that's not enough for the City of Detroit. I have to prove it at the figurative point of a gun. It is morally wrong for the government to treat me that way.

Older than what?

Teaching adult education for twenty odd years was fun, and occasionally rewarding. Yet certain moments are bound to stand out. I will never forget the two funniest incidents I have ever had in a classroom.

While grading a short essay for an Economics course, the student was asked the difference between stocks and bonds. In an obvious yet hilarious cut and paste off the Internet (a practice we frowned upon of course and graded accordingly), the answer began: "Stocks were medieval devices of public humiliation and torture." It went on to explain, in some, ah, fascinating detail, the exact nature of certain forms of torture. Reading this challenged my attempts to stay calm and professional, to not laugh out loud at my desk in a room full of students. I had no trouble keeping control until the last sentence: "Bonds are government issued interest bearing securities."

Well, the student was half right in his answer, and I was able to keep my professional wits. Barely.

On another occasion, I had an English assignment to grade. With that one, I did go on to completely lose my composure in peals of laughter which I tried valiantly to hide but to no avail. I had to leave the room for ten minutes initially, hiding in an empty teacher's lounge while leaving the other instructor (there were two of us at all times in our teaching arrangement) to lament my having abandoned him. Luckily it was a slow night.

The assignment was to make comparisons in the form of analogies. The first prompt read: "Tom's car was old." Expected responses were along the lines of, 'Tom's car was older than baseball.' Instead I was treated to, "Tom's car was older than a dead frog."

I was okay at first; I stifled my giggles, although it took it a few seconds of tongue biting to maintain myself. But I was good.

The next prompt was, 'Abby was hungry.' Harmless enough. Until I read the student's offering.

"Abby was very hungry, like a sad clown who had fell off his bike."

I immediately roared uncontrollably. Shawn, the other teacher, asked what was up. Giving him the paper I replied between guffaws, "Read the first two sentences and I'll be back in a few minutes."

On my return, finally beyond any wild laughter, the first thing Shawn said was, "I can see why you didn't give credit for the first analogy. The frog may not have been dead that long."

I returned after another twenty minutes. Good times.

Is it really all that odd?

I'm not sure that I should write this post, let alone publish it. I don't want to appear holier than thou, and on this subject one can slip easily into that mode. Neither do I wish to put down any of many friends, many of whom will know who they are if they read it. Further, though I don't think that I hide my religious beliefs I'm not comfortable waving them from the rafters either. The Holy Father is right: our actions should speak for our religion. Yet I find that I am bugged to write it anyway and let the chips fall where they will, and hope that readers understand my point.

I'm thinking of one of the weekends I spent at a curling tournament. Before I left home, I did a web search for Catholic Churches in the area where the bonspiel took place; it's an easy thing to do in this internet age. I found four within an easy drive from the hotel where I stayed and wrote down all their Mass times; not knowing when my team would be playing until the tournament got under way, I knew I would need options. As it were, we had to play at 9AM Sunday, and a Church just down the road had a Mass at 7:30. So that's where I went. I didn't even make it a point to tell anyone what I was doing. But when asked where I was going I answered honestly, because I'm not hiding from the fact either.

The response ran the gamut from respect to humor to, sadly, a certain condescension. The humor I get: Marty goes to Church? That was friendly enough and I accept it on that level. Yet much of it was an odd amalgam of incredulity, embarrassment, and even excuse mongering, though I don't believe I had intentionally laid a guilt trip on anybody. But it was at times somehow admiring (So you went to Church, eh? Good for you) laced with pity (I could almost hear the unsaid question: why did you waste your time with that?) to shy excuse making (though I never asked anyone for the reasons they did not go). I suppose what got me most was the number of people, at least a dozen on Sunday and even a few more during my Monday night curling league who somehow got wind of my churchgoing, who, it seemed, almost felt they had to come to me and say something about it.

I know that Church attendance and belief in God is down. But I never thought that it was all that unusual these days. The only time I felt similarly to last weekend (and it little if anything to do with Church) was back in 1989 when my daughter was born. She is our third child. My wife and I felt on display at the hospital. We actually heard the nurses whispering: See them? They're here having their third child. Together. And they've been married the whole time!

To the point, I find myself dismayed by it all. It just sounds very sad. Yet I don't see what I did to provoke it except to do what I always do: go to Church on Sunday. I simply don't know what to make of it.

Products on the cutting edge

I'm not always sure what to think about advertising or promotions. They can be timid; they can be strong. Yet often I'm just not sure exactly what they are.
I used to buy a beer at duty free coming home from Canada which enticed its patrons on the cigar band that it was 'remarkably drinkable'. I don't know about you, but I simply cannot imagine that as a good advertising slogan. "I say old boy, have you tried this? It is remarkably drinkable." Um, okay.
So today I'm having a spot of tea which commands that I *dare* to drink it. What, is the next step a double dog dare? Or might we skip the protocols and jump right to the triple dog dare? Really, I ask you.
I'm drinking the tea anyways. I never back down from a dare.

The telephone television remote

Technology, huh? Sometimes I giggle about it, I'm so impressed.
See, there are these things called "apps" which you can "download" to your phone, however that is, and apparently there's one for just about everything. My son even found one which acts like a remote control. Now I can sit in my bedroom and turn the channel and adjust the volume of my TV right from my cell. I'm so impressed with that that I giggle while I'm using it.
Can you imagine future phone conversations? "Sorry I hung up on you, I was changing over to Fox Sports Detroit." Or maybe you might go to turn down the TV and instead turn down the volume on your call. "Hello? Hello? You still there?"
Telephones. They're not just for conversation anymore.

Life's perks

You've had your morning joe, haven't you? I've had mine. But what's more, I make mine differently than most of you I'm sure. I perk it.

Yeppers, I'm old school with my coffee. I've heard, though whether I believe it or not, that the drip method is better. Not that I can taste. I've also been told that the French Press method is the best way of making your brew. Maybe so, maybe no. Yet that just sounds weird. Borderline disturbing in fact. Naw, give my perked pot of Chase & Sanborn any day.

Oh, I don't doubt that my preference is partly psychological. Me Grams always perked her coffee (okay, I suppose most everyone did before about 1970) using a glass, nine cup Pyrex percolator. I remember sitting in the kitchen and watching it work up to a boil, the hot water becoming coffee drip by drip as it brewed. She must have noticed my fascination, for our wedding gift was an exact duplicate of that large glass coffee pot.

I'm having a second cup right now, brewed from that same pot. I watched it perk the whole way too. Me Grams, she knew how to make coffee.

Bleeding Charity

“Then do. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.”

The above quote is from The Great Divorce, an intriguing novel from Mr. C. S. Lewis. It isn't about divorce as you likely might think, but about the divorce, the gulf, between Heaven and Hell. The quote comes in response to a soul which is rejecting the offer of Heaven due to his own pride. The scene is very fitting for this Easter Day.

God has offered us everything we could ever want, a happy and eternal life, if we would just take it. All we have to do is be sorry for our sins and try to make ourselves better. He doesn't expect perfection but He does expect the effort. And He is willing to help us make the effort. All we have to do, as the priest told us at Mass today, is receive it. Receive His love and we will be given it in the form of complete and total happiness. It is, yes, charity.

And that is my Easter message to you. Ask for it. At once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity.