Pops could hoof it

Tahquamenon Falls are a natural beauty found in Michigan's eastern Upper Peninsula. There are two falls a few miles apart. The walking trail between the two is around four miles long. I've walked it once, in 1994, with me two sons and me Pops.

We were vacationing in da U.P. as usual that summer and decided to see the Falls. Mom and Dad had come up for a few days and so went with us. While there I thought it would be cool to hike the trail. It was after the words expressing that wish came out of my mouth that I felt a pang of regret and concern. You see, Pops was between cancer treatments at the time and about six weeks ahead of scheduled surgery to remove a kidney. After I had opened my yap, he decided that walking the trail would be cool too. I surely would not have said anything had I thought he'd like the idea.

It was probably the first time I came close to confronting him seriously about anything as it was during the first period that I was really worried about his health. I told myself that maybe I ought to discourage him, with his cancer and all. The tumor was by that point diagnosed as inactive (I'm not sure the more expected term benign was accurate) and the MDs were certain that all other cancerous spots (he had them on his liver and lungs when the disease was initially found) had been eradicated. Still, I wasn't sure a 58 year old man dealing with such ought to be hiking a rough trail through the woods. And what would we do if something happened while we were out there? Yet as a son taught to respect his father's wishes, well, I said nothing and thought I'd just watch him closely. He likely wouldn't be denied anyway.

Damn but if that old man didn't hammer that trail. He more than kept up; he led the way more often than not. He always walked fast anyway, but I wonder if he took the hike to prove he could do it and was further determined to show us he could too. I had feared after his tribulations that his stamina would not allow the full journey. His stamina then proceeded to embarrass mine.

So I'm glad I suggested the hike and I'm glad he walked it with us. It's become a happy and proud memory.

 

He nearly did it

He's trying, but he hasn't got there yet.

Have you ever known someone who was nice as pie yet very demanding? It's as though they live right on the cusp of pushing you too far yet realize precisely where that boundary is and as such, don't push quite that hard.

Yesterday saw this guy in my life come into the Shop. And that time he almost made it to that boundary. He had a 3/4 cable but wanted to me to put a 5/8 fitting in it so that the cable would, by his logic, make turns easier.

It would not. I explained that to him until I was nearly blue in the face. He still had a 3/4 cable while the working end of the fitting was exactly the same size as the working end of the 5/8 fitting. The difference was in the side which threaded into the cable. You do not want the thing smaller there; it would not be secure enough.

After ten minutes of discussion he asked, "Are you sure?" and man, I nearly lost it. It was times like that where I fully understand me Grandpa Joe flying off the handle at people. I so wanted to channel my inner Joe. I wanted to yell, "Yes! Yes I'm sure, more certain of this than in anything else in my life! I've been doing this 45 years (old guys get to say things such as that) and the right way to do it is exactly what I'm telling you!" and so on and so forth.

But I took a deep breath, a really, unimaginably deep breath, and, blowing it out slowly and deliberately, responded quietly if perhaps with an undertone of exasperation, "Yes. I am sure."

So he let me do it my way. Yet I'm sure he doesn't realize how close he had crept to all out war.

Not shopping with Mom

On our usual Sunday ride yesterday Mom and I stopped by Meijer. After exiting the car, I went to the cart return to grab a shopping buggy. I like to have one for Mom so she has something to steady herself with when I'm grabbing items or what not.

"What's that for?" she demanded.

I replied playfully, "We need it. We're going to shop until we run out of your money."

"Put it back!" she ordered, stopping us in our tracks.

We have fun.

Whither disease

Road work is everywhere. That's okay though. The roads need work and it is the season.

The Davison freeway, which me Grandpa Joe and all those old enough always called the Davison Underpass, is no exception. It is having repairs done to it too. I drove across it just the other day, to be met with barricades. There was also signs announcing, Concrete Curing.

It makes me glad to know that even concrete is doing its part to help eradicate human ailments.

Look, you get what get early on a Sunday, ok?

Relative rant redux

To continue what I should not have started yesterday, I would love the opportunity to press my good and dear friends on their belief in morality being relative. Let's imagine someone, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who truly believes there is no right and wrong and actually puts it to work in his life.

Someone steals Cloyce's car and the police nab the perp. Yet Cloyce won't press charges. "Well, officers, I appreciate what might be your good work, because I can't actually know if it's good work, but morality is relative and his morality says thievery is all right, so I can't condemn his action by sending him to jail."

Cloyce's boss fires him unfairly after twenty years to hire someone cheaper, yet it doesn't bother him. "So loyalty isn't a value of his. What can you do?" he asks nonchalantly.

An arsonist burns down his house, but all Cloyce can say is, "He takes such delight in fire!"

Do you see where I'm going with this? Huh? Huh? Can you see? If nothing's right or wrong you can't condemn any action of anybody. You don't even have the right to hold it against them or seek retribution. Still, I bet that relativist who gets his house burned to cinders will yet try to argue that someone somehow wronged him. Yet in truth they could not have been wronged, if all is indeed relative.

Second. Rant. Over. 

Maybe.

It is the destination

There are folks out there who regularly say, it's the journey, not the destination, or some such as that. But, uh, it is the destination, actually.

Oh, you might have fun along the way, sure. You may meet some interesting people or see fascinating things. Memories could indeed be made. Yet when I'm heading up north into Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, I mean to get up north. Everything along the way is a sidebar. 

Upon coming to exit number 222 on northbound I-75 I pass Roscommon. Yet I do not revel in the fact that I am at Roscommon. There is nothing like wonder at the realization that I'm there. It's merely on the way, a small part of the journey. 

Nothing personal, Roscommon. I've visited you and you're quite nice. But you're not where I'm going, not where I want to be. You're not my destination.

So fine, enjoy the trip. Enjoy the journey so much as might be useful. But it is the destination and not the journey which really counts. Otherwise, there's no point making the trip.

A relative rant

You may as well put this rant onto the pile of I shouldn't even begin to write it. But ah hell, I'm going to write it anyway.

I believe I've reached the point in my life where I'm pretty good about not letting things bother me, and I'm kind of proud of that. You should not let things you cannot control ruin your day or, worse, your life. It's no good for your mental health or your relationships with the folks around you. Yet one thing which cuts me to the quick, which makes me instantly enraged and outraged, is when in the course of a conversation someone says something like, it's all relative.

That absolutely, immediately infuriates me. We're trying to have a decent conversation about something important, then some nit ever so casually, ever so blithely, lets roll off the lips 'morality is relative'. They try to make sophomoric simplicity out of great truths and then attempt to pass themselves off as proud proponents of profound philosophy. 

You like that alliteration? I do too, because I'm trying to mock them and their whole point. Mockery is all it deserves. How can anyone actually believe that such phrases, mantras which undercut all truth including their own (if all is subjective how can you know if even that's true?) could possibly have merit? They don't add to the discussion, they end it. If nothing's true on its own merit there's nothing to talk about.

The next time someone says that to me I think I'll respond, with a paternal pat on their head, "Honey, go sit at the kid's table and let the adults have a serious conversation." I hope you can read the sarcasm I'm attempting to drip from that.

So fine, there's no right and wrong. Everything's relative. Believe that if you like. But you better not be upset with me when I lift your wallet. 

Rant. Over. Until tomorrow.

Cars on vibrate

There are a lot of cool new things about cars and vans these days. I think me Pops would get a kick out of the backup cameras which are commonplace now. Hell, me Grandpa Joe might even like that too. But I'll tell you one thing that he would not like at all, and that's the vibration in the steering wheel when you're drifting out of your lane.

Joe was a drifter. I found that out first hand when, as a teenager before I got my license, Joe would drive us to job sites. He swerved from side to side on a road like he was an errant wave in the ocean. It could be, um, ah, disconcerting.

The vans I've rented lately have that feature: the little rumble in the steering wheel to let you know you're not right smack in your lane. Maybe that's good: I did drift once or twice last Wednesday in my rental. The first time I didn't actually realize what was up. I just felt the vibration and thought, what the hell? Then I saw on the dashboard the little symbol of a van rabidly out of lane, as hyperbolically sideways as the Ever Given when it blocked the Suez recently, and remembered what it meant.

Joe would have to figure some way to tear the mechanism which causes the warning out of the car. 

Three out of three ain't bad

I honestly don't know why it's illegal to tow a disabled vehicle with a tow rope. Yes, yes, yes, people will argue safety. But I think that that argument, while not entirely unfair, is nonetheless overblown. Hell, I towed cars for years with tow ropes and nothing bad ever happened. 

There's no doubt in my mind that it's a way for towing companies, a special interest, to get more money. Don't think, towers, that we haven't noticed all your 'contributions' to police societies proudly displayed on your office walls. Mandatory, legally obliged towing is a racket, and to hell with what anyone says. It's one of the micro reasons I'm politically conservative: another example of government and a special interest wrapping up in a tidy package with a pretty bow a good deal for each other which drives up the cost of a service and adds dough to government coffers (for these towers need to be licensed, wink wink). Talk about scratching each other's backs.

Rant over. Now I will talk about what I actually wanted to talk about.

If you haven't figured it out by now, we Cosgriffs towed a lot of cars and trucks in our time. We've towed them long distances, in some cases a couple hundred miles. If a vehicle broke down wherever, someone got a call and went on their way with a tow rope to fetch the marooned driver.

Once me Pops broke down in Kenton, Ohio, about an hour from Electric Eel as he was returning with a load of drain cleaning equipment. It's also about two hours from Detroit. He called my brother Phil, who dutifully went down to rescue him. But then Phil's car broke down, so I got a call.

And I did exactly what a good son should do. I went down into Ohio with my car and a tow rope and rescued them both.

So here we were with three vehicles, two being towed and one leading, one with a large round cable rack attached to its roof (I think it was Phil's Chevy Malibu), being towed around 125 miles up Interstate 75 into Detroit. We kept our blinkers on and never went faster than 35, and made it home safely.

Even I will admit though, it must have been a sight. 

Green key

We tore down our old back porch a couple of weeks ago. The job went well; destruction is so much fun. Actually more fun than construction, I think.

The find of the day was found by my son. After we had the decking removed and tossed into the dumpster he noticed a key hanging from a nail at the end of the porch near the basement door, but on the inside of the last joist so that it would be under the flooring. The key was green, so we assume it is copper. But the real questions are, how long had it been there, and what was it for? 

We've had the house since 1981, so it was before that. The previous owners had split it into four apartments and one sleeping room, so we figure it was hidden there for the tenant in the basement unit. 

Hey, I know! I'll see if it works in the basement door. We've never had to unlock it from the outside; we're always opening and closing it from inside. It won't mean a tinker's damn of course. But it will satisfy my curiosity.

It's only pasteboard

The little things in life, right?

I went down to the Comerica Park box office yesterday to get Tiger baseball tickets. As so many tickets now are electronic I fully expected they would be such. That's not a big deal as I have MLB app on my phone. I needed it for tickets at the last ball game I attended, way back in 2019. I don't like it but it seems the way of the future.

Yet I was given actual physical tickets. My heart truly jumped with joy, as absurd as that sounds. Walking away from the ticket window with honest to goodness pasteboard tickets, holding them in my hands like gold, made me immensely happy, almost childlike with glee. I have baseball tickets, not just an image of tickets on my phone.

I was nearly more excited about that than having the freedom to once again actually go to a game. I don't have a mere picture, I have the real thing.

I think that's pretty cool.

What good fathers teach us

Yesterday was Father's Day 2021. I readily accept that there are many men who are father figures in our lives and I would like to take a minute and recall several such good men in my life.

Not to begin with overstatement but first and foremost we should remember Our Father in Heaven, God the Father. Without Him we are nothing in the most literal and figurative senses.

My own father, me Pops, I owe a debt I can never repay. He taught me a lot but perhaps the greatest lesson he taught me was that right is right and wrong is wrong. No morality is relative nonsense ever came from his lips.

I had two grandfathers who were almost polar opposites yet had great auras about them. Me Grandpa Joe showed me that you can be rough around the edges yet still sentimental and reverent. Me Grandpaw Hutchins displayed clearly to me that you can (and should) be calm and sober in dealing with others.

The Dominican Friars who staffed St. Dominic Church in Detroit gave me a sense of how to comport myself with charity (a lesson which I, sadly, still struggle over) while providing the intellectual background to understand Christianity.

It was an absolute delight to have Dr. Carlo Grassi as a philosophy instructor at the University of Detroit. It is most emphatically not hyperbole to say that my entire college education was worth the three courses I took with him. He was the first teacher who ever inspired me to want to know. His enthusiasm did not escape me; he actually apologized once for perhaps being too delighted with teaching and understanding good philosophy, with being able to know the well from the ill, the good from the bad. No apology necessary, my dear man.

Another instructor at U of D, Dr. Norbert Gossman, showed me a similar love of history which inspired me all the more to want to study and teach it. I actually had him for five classes, which was a bit odd as he was the European History instructor and I was majoring in American History. But you want, or you should want anyway, to sit at the feet of good teachers.

There are many other who taught me well in more individual ways and manners. I hope they forgive that I have no time to mention them here. But they are well remembered too.

Father's Day 2021

We owe our fathers. We owe them a special kind of respect, a veneration which we owe no one else of this Earth save, of course, our mothers. 

Too often we don't remember that. Or, and this is truly sad, we don't think of it until it's too late. I am thankful I didn't make that mistake.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.

Break-fist

I'm trying. I'm very trying. Quiet Ron.

I'm trying my dead level damndest to break my left hand. Really. I've hit it several times over the last few weeks while holding some object and striking said object with a hammer in my right hand. Here I thought my hand to eye coordination wasn't all that bad too.

What makes it worse is that it never seems to happen when I'm using a rubber mallet or small hammer. It never happens when I'm merely tapping something. It happens when I have a large ball peen hammer and must actually drive something, like a piece of steel out of a holder. Things you must strike hard to move. It's like, bam! Bam! Bam! Damn it, that last one was my knuckle! Cue to Marty dropping hammer and shaking left hand wildly in the air.

The knuckle at the base of my left pointer is swollen this morning to the point I can't make a fist. Thankfully it doesn't hurt but only feels tight. I'll have to do a better job of self inflicted injury next time. Or, a germ of an idea is brewing in me head, or have me brother Phil hold the thing I'm hammering next time.

Buzzed

I'm wondering if perhaps the word has gotten out. Do the birds, and by that I mean birds in general, think I'm a threat?

A few weeks ago I wrote about the sparrow which kept flitting along a fence ahead of me as though I were invading its personal space. Maybe I was, but it was wholly unintentional I assure you.

Yet does that idea register with our avian friends? This morning as I hiked along the service drive of the John C. Lodge Freeway I could not help but hear the chattering of the birds above me in the trees. They were pretty obviously incensed and concerned but I didn't think a lot of it initially.

Then this one little blackbird swooped down from behind and buzzed right past my ear. It was close enough that I heard all too clearly and cleanly the buzz as it zoomed by. The little truant then soared back around to perch in the tree from which it came to stare down hard at me.

I assume it was protecting a nest. Perhaps I only startled it. It may have even been completely inadvertent. But I fear that the birds may be keeping a sharp eye on me.

They can go ahead and join the paranoids to spy on me as a group then.

Spewing maps

I love maps. I always have. I like seeing what's where, even though I'll never get to most of the places that I now know where they are.

Some of it is, likely enough, sentiment. Me Grandpa Joe and I would look over maps at his kitchen table as I grew up, doing what I just said: seeing what's where. But he would also tell me about the places he'd been and how he got to them. He liked to travel by road, driving himself as much as he could. His son, me Pops, did too (they didn't call him The Road Warrior at Electric Eel for no reason), and I do as well. So it's nice to know what's where.

It was honestly like buying a new novel when I treated myself to a new road atlas a couple years ago. I got to pore over maps and see how places had changed and what new routes there were since I last studied them. I tell you, I can get to the immediate vicinity of any part of the United States just off the top of my head until yet. It's trivial knowledge, but fun for me.

And then there's the shapes and figures a map offers. I was always fascinated with how states and nations looked on a map. I still think, as I first concluded years ago, that Wisconsin appears to have been spewed from the mouth of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Really. Vomited right out, a supreme act of regurgitation. Pull up a map these United States today and study it. You'll agree with me.

No offense, Wisconsin. Okay, maybe a little.

Predictability is funny

Some things just make your day. It can very nice indeed if your day is made early.

I know I'm a creature of habit in both my activities and my, shall I say, slogans. I like repeating several of me Pops common remarks such as 'Every day above ground is a good one', even though me sister hates that one. But I've developed my own sayings too. A common one when asked how I am is, 'Not bad for an old man'. It apparently has become rather well known.

As I finished my typical morning constitutional today I stepped into the local 24/7 gas station and party store for a paper. I still like the occasional morning news even though in this Internet age I probably know most of the expressed events as it is and as such what I buy is already dated. But it's still a paper and there's still comics and crossword puzzles which I don't know, thank you very much. I might also as I did this morning buy a coffee, especially as I had none ready at home. What says lazy worse than a man with a Keurig who buys a large coffee for a buck sixty-five because it's easier? In my defense I was of course already at a spot where I could get my java immediately while my Keurig and my percolator were four whole blocks away.

Gathering the paper and the joe I set them on my side of the glass enshrined counter. Reaching for my wallet I asked the attendant conversationally, "How are you today?"

I looked up to see a broad smile on his face. "Not bad for an old man!" he heartily exclaimed.

I laughed out loud. "Well, good for you!" I replied to the much younger than me guy. But I appreciated the humor, and it truly made my day.

Regular old Old Spice

They say choice is a good thing. Perhaps. But it strikes me that choice isn't necessary if you know what you want.

I like Old Spice deodorant. Just regular old, plain old, Old Spice. Simple as that. So while in a store yesterday I decided to buy a stick of Old Spice. Regular old Old Spice.

They had High Endurance. They had extra sweat protection. There was pure sport. They had dragonblast and wolfthorn. What in the blazes is a wolfthorn? Why would I care about blasting dragons? I want regular Old Spice. That's all.

They had something labelled Swagger. I'm 61. I haven't had swagger since I was 47 and I'm not sure I actually had it then. I just want Old Spice. Regular Old Spice, the one that's been around for decades. 

It was not to be found. I'm sure I can order it online, but it seems that I should be able to get it easily at places such as the Dollar General I was in. And damn all the choices anyway. They don't mean nothing when they ain't what ya want.

Verb Abuse

I regularly play an online dice game called Farkle. You roll six dice and score points according to what combination of numbers you roll. I won't bore you with details. I will instead bore you with my own sophomoric take on the matter.

If you do not get a roll which produces a score you are said to have farkled. And that simply sounds childishly funny to me. Think of it this way: he farkled. Doesn't that sound completely and utterly wrong? It's almost as though you might draw any number of obscure or vulgar meanings from it.

And here I am insinuating that into your mind just minutes before I prepare to go to Sunday Mass. Do I have to go to confession now?

Or do you?

4:30

Perhaps what I like best about being up north are the wee hours of the morning. If there's an advantage to not feeling well, as I did not feel well yesterday, it's that medicines can ease you into sleep. I slept from about Noon until 3:30 Friday afternoon, got up long enough to have a bite to eat and re-medicate, and was asleep again from 5 late in the afternoon until 2 or so this morning. I'm still a bit headachy though.

Be that as it may, sometimes a walk can clear the mind. A small headache I have discovered might actually break with activity. So at 4:30 I took a walk, just as the dawn was rising.

What you cannot see in the city you can see quite well in the country. Through breaks in the lowest clouds I could spy the first faint rays of the Sun creeping up from the horizon, the heavens through the clouds more gray than blue. I can't recall seeing much of early dawn while in Detroit; you can tell the Sun is on its way by how the sky overhead brightens but you don't see much horizon. I wished it weren't so cloudy so that I might have seen early morning color. Tomorrow maybe.

I went far enough out State Route 134, the major thoroughfare near Hessel, that I felt I should turn back. A storm was a brewin' - I had checked the radar online before heading out, as old men will do - and I thought I had best not stray too far. This had me headed west. I could make out low rumblings of thunder and the faintest lightning not more than ten degrees above that horizon: quick flashes chased by tiny rolls of grumbling sound. I watched the western flashes of light grow closer, heard the thunder rise in timbre as I neared home.

As I sat on the porch with a hot coffee the rain just began. It isn't so hard yet but I expected to be chased inside sooner rather than later. It is just as well. The bread won't toast itself.

Tired Cloyce

There was once this good ol' boy, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who considered himself the neighborhood innovator. Some of his ideas, to be fair, were kind of clever. But most of the time all he did was jury rig. That's okay too so far as I'm concerned, if it's a decent enough adaptation.

Cloyce had an old Chevy Bel Air, I believe it was a '65, and what it needed was a wheel alignment. It drifted sharply to the left (this is not leading to a political joke I assure you) and really needed front end work. But ol' Cloyce didn't want to put that kind of money into the car. So he looked around in his garage for what was handy and found an old snow tire for the Chevy. He put it on the car on the left front.

That stopped the drift. His theory was that the snow tire, having deeper tread, made up for the amount of space which had been created by vehicular wear which led to the drift. Based on the results, I'm inclined to say he was right, as he drove with that winter tire for about six months before he got rid of the car.

It was a jury rig. But hey, it worked for him, and who am I to argue?

Subject matter

You know, I think the next time somebody tells me that morality is subjective I'm going to grab a baseball bat and crack them over the head. Then I'll do a highlight reel bat flip before leaning over them as they writhe in pain on the ground and, with my hand on my chest, ask in as sarcastic a voice as I can muster, "Oh, I'm sorry, did I wrong you?"

But that's just what I'd do. I'd hate to force my opinion on anybody.

Cology

Me Grandpa Joe used to talk about the Cology. It was his colloquial shorthand for psychology. What he meant, as near as I could tell anyway, was that sometimes we let our own thoughts get in our own way.

He's right you know. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies, when we're overthinking or allowing fears to burden us. Right now my own cology is affecting me in a different manner.

I had my first dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine late yesterday. Now I'm dealing, perhaps a little too intently, with concerns about side effects. Is my left arm actually sore or am I just concentrated on it because that's where I got the shot? Am I vaguely nauseous because of the medicine or because of the bacon double cheeseburger I ate on the way home? Am I fatigued due to Pfizer or is it simply that I didn't get to sleep until nearly 11 and popped awake at 3:30 this morning?

I think it's the cology. But it gave me something to write about today.

COVID vaccine redux

I had an appointment this morning at 10:03 for my first dose of the COVID vaccine. But I cancelled it. This decision was made not out of stubbornness, a recant of my earlier resolve to get the shot. Yet it has all the markings of being all about Marty just the same.

My wife sent me a text yesterday that the Detroit Tigers along with Meijer and McClaren Health Services are opening a 'pop up' vaccine site before the next six Tigers home games. Anyone getting the vaccine there will be given two vouchers which can be exchanged for tickets to that day's or a future ballgame. 

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

Everyone will also get a Meijer $10 gift card. 

So you know what? I cancelled the earlier appointment and booked one for Comerica Park later today at 4:30. Because hey, I might as well get something for my efforts.

I tell you, it pays to procrastinate. At least sometimes.

Great Uncle Bill

Grandpa Joe once had an old Packard that he really liked. He also had an older brother whom he was close to, and one day the car and the brother came together in what even Joe admitted was a funny story.

His older brother was Uncle Bill. Joe thought enough of him that he named his first son, me Pops, after him. Uncle Bill was as quiet and reflective as Joe was loud and abrasive. But if you told Uncle Bill something you'd better mean it, because he would do it.

One day someone's car had slid off into a ditch, and Joe and Bill went with Grandpa's Packard to try to pull it out. They hooked up to the car, and Bill got in the driver's seat of the Packard because Joe thought he was better at things like pulling vehicles out of ditches. Uncle Bill revved the Packard up slowly, and gently tried to get into gear several times, with no luck moving the stuck car. Joe as was his wont become more impatient by the second, until he finally yelled, "Hell, rip the bumper off her!"

"I knew right after I said it I'd said it to the wrong guy," Grandpa admitted years later, retelling the tale with a laugh.

Uncle Bill's face drew into a huge grin. He raced that engine and dropped it into gear. The car leapt forward powerfully, as a 12 cylinder Packard should. And he ripped the bumper clean off.

As Joe readily admitted, "What could I say? I told him to do it."

He never did say exactly how they got the car out of the ditch though. But that really isn't the point of the story anyway, is it?

Infinite color

June is apparently pride month. Okay, whatevs. As you like it. That's a play on words by the way.

But if I may offer a suggestion: why don't you just go ahead with the pride flag and make every string it's own color? You're certainly headed that way.

What was once a rather simple flag of six colors has morphed. A triangle has been added to the left side, with another five colors. See where this is going? As we are all whatever we each are and totally and completely individual, just go on already and jump to where every string is a different color. Then we can all be proud of ourselves. 

You're welcome.

Gossip guy

Among my interests are The Beatles. I love their music. So in order to learn more about them I frequent an online website where you can ask questions about the band as a group and as individuals. People who know then offer answers.

Some of it is beyond my poor abilities to comprehend. A question I read this morning was about the difference between remastering and remixing what are now decades old recordings. It was far too technical for me. But I'll trust the expert's answer. It sure sounded good.

Most questions are of interest as curiosities. I even asked one myself, about their ability to harmonize. John, Paul, and George have some fantastic three part harmonies (The Sun King from Abby Road for example) and I wondered if there were examples of four part harmony with Ringo. Apparently no, although they did often all sing the melody together. The chorus of Yellow Submarine is an example of that.

I go to the site and spend really far too much time reading what's there. But lately I consciously try not to read any questions which strike me as too personal, things which border on gossip. One question I skipped past this morning involved why Paul broke up with longtime girlfriend Jane Asher. It's simply none of my business.

Gossip is wrong yet we participate in it constantly, myself included. Did you hear about so and so who did such and such? And all too much of it is merely prurient. A biography I read about a year ago on baseball's Ted Williams seemed to delight in his sexual endeavors; many questioners on this Beatles site are far too concerned with the lads' similar conquests. Why should we care, other than to revel in vulgarity?

I try to avoid such drivel about The Beatles. I need to be better about steering clear of it in real life too.

Small world dumpster diving

My dumpster arrived yesterday. I have some debris to clear and an old porch to tear down. So I ordered a twenty yard dumpster. But that's another story. Today's story is about how small our world really can be.

The delivery driver was a gregarious fellow, and we enjoyed a relatively brief conversation. It turns out he graduated from the same school as my oldest child, St. Alphonsus in Dearborn, MI. And he's from Naubinway in Michigan's Eastern Upper Peninsula. We have a place there, in Hessel as many of you know. Indeed Hessel and Naubinway are both in Mackinac County.

Small world. I find this all out over a dumpster.

Marty and the sparrow

Often as I enjoy my morning constitutional I walk past the Wayne State University baseball diamond, Ernie Harwell Field. Baseball and Ernie go together very well, don't they?

A fence runs along the third base side of the field, a regular old chain link fence. I would say it's about 400 feet long, ending at the service drive of the Ford Freeway. Tuesday as I hiked along the sidewalk outside the fence I was accompanied by a sparrow. Yet I don't think he cared to accompany me.

Chain link fences have all those little diamond shaped holes formed by the chain links, right? They're perfect for tiny birds to perch upon. Or within I suppose. So it wasn't surprising that this sparrow was sitting in one of those little holes as I approached from one end of the fence.

Birds however don't care for human company. When seeing me the sparrow left his perch, to fly about fifteen feet away and resit in another diamond link. Of course I kept on walking. I was on my morning walk after all.

As I drew closer the bird moved again, another several feet down the fence. My closing in on that position caused the little guy to move again. I got closer and he flit another few yards. This repeated itself the entire length of the fence.

I found it funny, the bird trying to keep its distance and me just plugging along. The sparrow however was likely thinking, 'The hell, dude? I'm trying to respect your space, why don't you respect mine?"

Birds, huh?

Wayne and Eastwood

Do you know what John Wayne and Clint Eastwood have in common? I mean, beyond being icons and movie heroes. Has it ever occurred to you that they're the same in every part they play?

As compelling as the characters they have played may be, they're really the same guy each time. Harry Callahan and Walt Kowalski are the same person, if only in different circumstances.

The same with Wayne. They don't act: they are what they are. And we like what they are. That's why we like their films. They're compelling people by themselves. It shows in their work. 

It's also why Wayne was a terrible Ghengis Khan. Yes, in one of the classic miscastings in Hollywood history, the Duke played the Mongol warrior on film. It did not go well. It just wasn't Wayne.

Some actors are able to put on a persona - Dustin Hoffman comes to mind - and do well with it. Others are just what they are but in front of a camera. I think that's what I like about the Wayne's and Eastwood's of the world.

If it kills me I will haunt you

Well, I did it. I made the commitment. I wasn't going to; I was going to be thoroughly bull headed and not be bullied (yes, I mean bullied, and in the worst, most repugnant sense of the word) into it. But I have an appointment for my first dose of the COVID vaccine for June 8 at ten o'clock in the morning.

People, and by people I mean society, and by society I mean all too many of you out there, play on fears. You have successfully played on mine. I don't want others to get ill because of me. Further, I do recognize the very valid argument that I should not allow pig headed spite to influence what may arguably be a rational decision. Yet I still don't believe for a moment that COVID was, is, or ever will be a serious threat to me or my family and friends. It posed the greatest threat to a small and well defined segment of the population, a segment we could have and should have easily kept protected.  Shame on you, governors Whitmer and Cuomo, for what you did with the nursing homes: you caused more death directly and immediately with COVID that I ever will or would have, all the while you sons of...mothers deigned to lecture the rest of us on responsibility. The threat to the general population was tiny, and almost certainly would have been taken care of through herd immunity. 

Yet we had to destroy a robust economy, kill numerous small businesses, cause many deaths unrelated to COVID which could have been prevented had we not panicked and made people afraid to seek needed health care for other issues, and affect an election outcome because of it. I don't give a flying...leap what you think of Donald Trump or how happy you might be that he's no longer President. You need to ask yourself: do we want elections profoundly affected by sheer and unwarranted panic? We should not.

I haven't even asked what ought to be the obvious question: now that the government (our servants, mind you, not our leaders) has seen how easily we may be cowed, how much more quickly and over how little else might they try to lock us down again? Believe me, they will try when they feel the right pretense exists. Because after all, they got away with it before. It will harder to keep them from trying it again.

So I will kowtow, I will genuflect before your almighty and self defined omnipotent will, powers that be. I will get my shots. And if I may sign off as the curmudgeon I fully mean to be here, You're Welcome.