Losing temper like Joe

Me Grandpa Joe, as I think I've well established, had a hair trigger temper. Most of the time, God love him, he should have never lost it. But damn, sometimes I wish I could lose my temper like he'd lose his. I think some people deserve to have someone blow up at them.

A guy couldn't find us yesterday. Now I'll grant that we can be hard to find; we aren't hidden or anything but our building does sit back a ways off the street and is easily overlooked if you don't watch closely. Still, he called three times, and I gave him the address each time with increasingly more specific descriptions of where we were. On the third call he said, "I'm right at the light at Warren and Rosa Parks, where are you?"

I can see the light at Warren and Rosa Parks from the Shop door. He. Was. Not. There. "Look behind you. Do you see a black van (mine) or a green one (me brother Phil's)?"

"I don't see no vans. But I know where your shop is."

That's where I wanted to blow up like Joe. I wanted to scream, like Joe would, "No, you do not know where my Shop is. If you did, you would be where my Shop is and not where you are and we would not be on the phone. But you aren't where I am, so you do not know where I am!" Instead I said, "Stay where you are and I'll come find you."

He was a half block south of me. He did not come past the green house as I told him to. He was not directly across the street from the Murray-Wright High School parking lot, despite my having told him we were immediately across from it and despite his having insisted he was. He was not 'right at' the light at Warren and Rosa Parks. He was entirely wrong about everything he said.

I spotted him as soon as I cleared that green house as I walked towards Rosa Parks. I waived him in. "See, I knew where I was at!" he exclaimed as pulled up to the old barn. 

"No you didn't!" I wanted to scream. Instead I said, through gritted teeth, "Here's your machine. It's $100. We'll load it for you." I wanted to add, now go away, but managed to avoid that too. But damn, I really wish I'd gone all Joe on him.

The parallels of city parking

If I may say, and even if I may not, I'm rather good to this day at parallel parking. When you grow up with it, indeed when you've parallel parked cars without power steering (that could be a chore), you can get good at it. And in this day and age where turning radius is nothing less than remarkable, parallel parking should be easy.

So that's why it's so fascinating to me when I see area newbies struggling to parallel park their cars here in Woodbridge, where I live. You can just tell, you can smell it in the air, that they're used to driveways and parking lots where you simply pull into a space. I encountered a young woman creeping back and fourth four times this morning desperately trying to center her in a space which I guarantee you was plenty big enough to park. She even once pulled out and started over.

Woodbridge, developed between 1890-1910 mostly, lacks driveways. Being built up when cars were nowhere near on the horizon, houses are too close together to allow for driveways now. We do have alleys and some homes have garages, a luxury even us neighborhood old timers admit we were jealous of back in the day. Those lucky few had convenient places to park while the rest of us hunted up spots on the street. Be all that as it may, it still has me shaking my head at the issues others have with parking.

Teasing Mom

As we sat together on her front porch yesterday morning, Mom asked if there was anywhere to go. I said I wanted to go to Adrian. "Can I go?" she asked excitedly.

Of course I had every intention of taking her; it's what we do on Sundays. So I answered, "Sure. But it's 90 miles away and we'll have to hitchhike."

"Ok, but I'll get there faster than you!" she cackled.

I simply laughed too. I am glad she can still joke.

Anyway, we leave for Adrian, driving through southeast Michigan farm country getting there. At one point she remarked, "A lot of farms around here. I grew up on a farm."

Now it was my turn to needle her. "Oh yeah. That was in South Carolina, right?"

She could not bark, "North Carolina!" quickly enough. And the look of utter contempt she gave me was priceless.

Mr. Mechanically Inclined

They think they're helping but they're hurting. If you can't fix something you should at least leave well enough alone.

A recent customer (I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name) brought me a drain snake for repair. In so doing he handed me the long screws which held the motor together. "I'm kind of mechanically inclined, Cosgriff, so I thought I'd try to fix it myself," he explained.

Why Mr. Mechanically Inclined didn't have it fixed was beyond me, if he is so well versed in objects mechanical. And why Mr. Mechanically Inclined didn't mark the motor before he took out the long, thin screws which hold it together is beyond me too. See, these particular screws aren't applied with nuts but rather thread into holes tapped out behind the facing of the motor. They run the inside length of the motor and you apply them blind, so to speak, by feel. When I take one such motor apart I put marks at each end of the unit as guides for putting the thing back together when I complete a repair.

Mr. Mechanically Inclined didn't see fit to do that. It took me forever to realign that motor, but, by gum, I got it. And Cloyce will pay for it. Especially since the fix was indeed easy, other than not being able to readily align the motor. 

Do you what Mr. Mechanically Inclined missed?

Do you know what he missed?

A broken wire going into the on/off switch up on the handle of the unit. Mr. Mechanically Inclined missed a bloodly stupid wire broken in plain sight. It had broken right off the switch and was hanging out into mid-air.

Mr. Mechanically Inclined is paying through the nose for a repair which should have taken me 15 minutes yet pressed two hours, I'll tell you what.

Mom would never say that.

During a recent road trip I made a stop at a rest area along the freeway. I never thought of them as rest areas. They're more like, O thank God you're here! areas for me.

As I entered the lobby the custodian was at the far end, clearly having just finished mopping the floor. "Man, I sure hate to step all over your work," I remarked to him.

"I wouldn't," the man replied. "Get it dirty again. That's my job security," he explained with a smile.

I laughed. But I also thought that me Mom never seemed to care about that kind of job security when I'd tromped into hall with muddy shoes. I'd probably get swatted with the wet mop.

The Negative Man

I have been regularly watching on You Tube one Father Mark Goring, a remarkable young priest in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. A recurring theme of his is to look for the positive good and to do positive good: it will make you good.

In college, and I really should find it to reread, a class assignment was to read Dr. Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Dr. Frankl was a Holocaust survivor. As I recall, a story from his book was how one prisoner gave a hidden potato to another prisoner who was (if this can be imagined in such atrocity) in more dire shape. I still marvel at such a moral good coming from any given man under the unimaginably horrible circumstances of a Nazi death camp. Dr. Frankl believed that part of survival was finding something to be positive about and to do positive good.

My overriding point here is that we should strive to find, act, and be positively good. This can be done without denying the horrors of what is negative and working all along to fight them.  Fr. Mark for example when he feels angry prays to find a moral good to focus on and to do, because they're out there even in trying times. Indeed, it may be all the more important to seek the good when evil, yes, evil, seems so prevalent. But the thing is, if you seek the positive you find it.

The corollary is that if you search for the negative you will find that. If you find it you likely will wallow in it. When you wallow in it you become the Negative Man. When you then look in the mirror, will it be a vision worth seeing?

The Brick Flag - Or - Being Up North

There's always been debate among folks in Michigan about where Up North begins. For those not in the know, Up North is a term used in general as vacationland for Michigan residents. It's where we go to get away from Detroit, or any big city in the southern third of the state.

A local joke is that people from Chicago and northern Indiana think Grand Rapids is Up North. Look at a map and you'll get it.

Bur where does Up North actually begin? For Yoopers, those who live in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, it doesn't start until you've crossed the Big Mac, the five mile long bridge which connects our two peninsulas. For some in the northern Lower Peninsula, you aren't Up North until at least Houghton or West Branch. Some few even argue that the Thumb qualifies. Yeah, a map might help understand this too. But for me, Up North has a very definite starting point. It's a large brick American flag on the west side of Interstate 75 about four miles past Bay City as you drive north.

One side of it is the Betsy Ross flag, the one with the thirteen stars in a circle on the blue field. The other is the current fifty star version. The brick flag is just after I-75 merges into only two lanes, another sure sign you're Up North. Most of the freeway is 3 to 4 lanes south of Bay City, with only a short two lane stretch in southern Gennesse County (which is decidedly, all will agree with  me here, nor real up north at all).

To be sure, it's still only one-third of the way to Hessel for us Detroiters. But the instant I see that brick flag (it was even constructed with a mild wave in it), I'm up north. I can't speak others, but it fits the bill for me.

Farewell Hessel 2021

About two hours after this posts I'll be leaving Hessel for most likely the last time in 2021. I suppose something might crop up which would allow me another trip to Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula - a drain snake delivery or the like - but I don't expect it.

The funny thing is that I'm not melancholy about it, which is odd for me. It's usually a downer of a trip, the last one of the year or season or whatever you want to call it, but I'm really trying to find and keep a better outlook on things. This includes the idea that, hey, life goes on. Enjoy what you have and deal with reality. Every day truly is a blessing.

So I'll let Hessel go for this year with one final observation. It amazes me how much less activity there is here after Labor Day. I mean, Hessel isn't exactly crowded by any metric in the summer save for a boat show which does draw around 10,000 for its single day. But other than that, there aren't all that many people here even in the height of summer. Yet I can still see, and it is very noticeable I assure you, how much the activity drops off after Labor Day.

Sitting on the front porch reading, I might not see another car in an hour. The number of walkers are down. The handful of stores and restaurants don't have anywhere near the activity they have from May until the first of September. The Presbyterian Church next door has fewer cars; the Catholic Church I attend significantly fewer people. It astounds me.

Ah, well. Such is life I suppose in a tourist area.

Hotel snob

I joke from time to time about wanting to become a curmudgeon. There are days however when I actually believe I'm becoming one. 

With my job I sometimes have overnight trips. When this happens I do not stay in dives but I don't stay in five star places either. I'm not going to name the places I'm talking about because I know how internet algorithms work and do not want to be inundated with pleas and queries about how to make things better. I don't want the bother and I recognize that it could all be just me.

Anyway, on one such overnighter this year I found the coffeemaker not quite right, and the shower water not quite hot enough, and the cable selection not quite what I would have liked, and the pillows not quite fluffy enough, and the this and the that and the other thing. But intellectually, I know there really wasn't anything wrong with anything. It was all good. Then at my next stay at a similar inn I found myself thinking the same things all over again.

So am I in fact becoming a curmudgeon or simply a hotel snob? Not that either are truly admirable qualities I suppose. I simply feel I can justify curmudgeonly behavior a bit more readily.

Doctor Marty

Believe me, you do not want Marty as your kindly old MD. Even I will admit that. For starters, I doubt I'd I'd be all that kindly. Then there's fact that I don't care for blood, which might just make being a doctor a tad difficult. But perhaps I could be mistaken for one.

I did actually play a doctor in the background of the movie Little Murder which was filmed in my neighborhood back in 2009. I was in two blink and you miss them scenes but I was in there, lab coat and all. So there's that. I could believably be mistaken for a doctor. In fact I was once mistaken for a doctor. Or more precisely, the doctor was mistaken for me.

Me Uncle Frank who lived up in Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula had to have surgery. He told me that as he was coming out of surgery and still very groggy, a doctor came over to speak to him. He thought that the doctor was me. All the while he was answering the surgeon's questions Uncle Frank said he was thinking things like, "Marty's not a doctor," or "Marty's not here, he's in Detroit," and the like. A funny story, in a cutesy kind of way. I assured him it could not have been have been me, for the reasons he cited plus one other. "What's that?" he demanded to know.

"You survived the surgery," I replied with a laugh. 

You know what? When he told the story the next time he added that reason to his list.

Square back

I'm pretty sure I've written about this before but, hell, why not write about it again.

Me Grandpa Joe was cantankerous enough. I'm not overly proud to say that he's the only adult family member I ever raised my voice to; one should never, ever, raise their voice towards a parent, grandparent, or adult family member. You simply should not. Yet I yelled at Joe a few times. The damn thing is, I don't think he cared. I doubt it mattered to him one lick. We were just both mad at each other for an instance, and that was that. To be sure, it never seemed to affect our relationship.

He was a considerate man, when all was said and done, I don't care what no one says. Some of my most sublime moments involved him, indeed, came about from him.

I lost my first grandparent when I was 19. Me Grandmaw Hutchins passed away suddenly, I believe it was June 1979, while Mom and Dad were down there visiting. I've always been glad that Mom was there, that she had the chance to see her own mother one more time before she passed. As I understand it, me Mom was on the phone with one of her sisters and had turned to ask her mother about something. Grandmaw turned to answer, but before any words came from her mouth her head head turned down and she was gone. The doctor said she was dead before her chin hit her chest, the stroke was that bad.

Me Pops called us, as the three oldest of us had not gone south that summer. I'll never forget answering the phone, as I was home from the Shop for lunch. "Your grandmother passed away," was the first thing he said. Funny, I suppose, but he sounded the same way in 1991 when me Grandma Cosgriff left us in June of that year. Art, the man we rented a cabin from at the time, came to our cabin with his phone (there were no cells then) and said me Pops needed to speak to me. I was sure it was about Joe but Dad said, in the exact same way as he had said 12 years before, "Your grandmother passed away." His mother had died suddenly late one Sunday night.

As my wife and I walked out to the end of the dock that evening, the kids already being asleep in the cabin and me wanting a minute, we ended up sitting on a bench at the end. "Well, I always knew Joe would be the last to go, " I said somberly. Me Grandpaw Hutchins had left us at the end of May 1987. Joe, he didn't take care of himself at all, so of course he'd outlive the others.

Anyways, when I got back to the Shop Joe was sitting with a cup of coffee, so I made meself one too. And it was quiet, very quiet, and still. We was just sippin' at out coffee. 

Joe was draggin' on a cigarette. In a minute or two he said, and he actually choked up, pullin' hard on a cigarette, "I'm sorry about your grandmother." Obviously me Pops had called him too.

"Thanks," I replied. "Well, I'm lucky," I continued. "Ain't many 19 year olds get to know all four of their grandparents." I was lookin' him square in the eye. He was lookin' square back.

"Yeah," Joe said, dragging on a cigarette. And we just sat, I dunno, for most of the afternoon, drinking coffee, him smoking.  I really don't know where Zeke, me Uncle John, was. Likely just sitting on his tool chest as he always did when nothing was up.

But you know what? I ain't never gonna forget just sitting there with Joe.

Joe's Mulberry Tree

I wrote yesterday of the high winds and storms which caused a power outage in Woodbridge, my neighborhood in Detroit. I was going for the joke then, but today I feel more serious. You see, one of the casualties of the storm was me Grandpa Joe's mulberry tree.

I've written here:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2017/06/mulberry-season-2017.html

of Joe and the mulberries. One of my fondest memories was watching him stop as he walked along the alley near the Shop and picked at the mulberries when they were in season. He was like a kid, he really was, in taking a minute and eating a few of those berries as he went by. I wonder what youthful memories it brought back to him...

That particular tree was little more than a bush in those days, and you could readily pick hundreds of mulberries as they were in easy reach. I still picked them until a year or two ago, when the growing process took the last of the easy pickings out of reach.

It was blown over by the wind sometime Tuesday night, and now will have to be cut into pieces and dispensed with. 

Joe was an ornery, cantankerous old coot in many ways. And the mulberry bush-then-tree simply a common sight in the alley. Yet the two together formed a lasting image which shall always live in my mind. It is a great insight into all which is good in the world. 

Marty the Ghost Hunter

A storm with high winds knocked out the power in my neighborhood late on Tuesday. That was frustrating on several counts, not the least of which was that it reminded one of how much he relies on electricity.

No power? Well, let me check on the status of repairs on the Internet...except with the power out, there's no Internet.

Well, then, I'll watch T...V...

All right, I'll nuke a quick bite of something. Oh, yeah. No electric, no microwave. And you want to leave the fridge and freezer closed anyway.

Okay, I'll read then. Click, click, click on the light switch before remembering, stupidly, no power, no lights.

So you just lay in bed. Of course, you might as well silver lining the outage, right? So I became a ghost hunter.

Whenever I did venture through the house, I used my cell phone to illuminate where I walked. Not the flashlight setting, because that would use too much battery power. I simply flipped on the screen light, which gave just enough glow to light my way.

It also gave the hallways, stairs, and rooms that soft gray green light which ghost hunting shows seem to have patented. Then my mind saw all the movement which managed to escape into the shadows right before I could really see it. I could the feel the cold air presence of the poor souls trapped, doomed to eternal, earthly dwelling. Near whispers emanated from all around me.

Of course I never actually found ghosts. And a good thing, because I'd have given them what for if I had.

No blog today

No new blog today. Power is out and I'm doing this from my phone and don't want to use a ton of battery life. That is all.

Meck-an-ick

Words. We all use them. Some of us actually use them well. Some of us give them their own special tweak.

I don't know why he said it this way. Maybe it was disdain for having to resort to one rather than fix a problem himself. Or maybe it was an ongoing little joke. Perhaps he didn't even realize he was doing it. I'm open to suggestion.

Me Grandpa Joe didn't say 'mechanic'. He said, meck-an-ick. "We better send it to a meckanick," he might opine when surrendering a car to a higher power. 

I think it was only that concessions to reality rattled him enough that Joe had to alter that reality just a bit. So he said meckanick. It eased his pain.

Dude, Where's My Car?

It's happened before and it will happen again, I guarantee it. Today, in fact, it's likely to happen. At least, that wouldn't surprise me.

Yesterday while out with Mom my van started running hot. We got home okay; so long as we were moving the temperature gauge stayed where it should, so once I saw that it was creeping up whenever I idled I just got moving as quickly as I could, taking more freeways than Mom would have liked. She likes to see both country and small towns and we simply couldn't do that. I truly felt bad for her. I hate like hell to disappoint Mom in any way these days. I mean, I never in any way, shape, or form liked disappointing her of course. But it's a more acute feeling now.

Be all that as it may we got home safely. But of course this morning I need to get my new old van to the mechanic. I know what will happen after that.

Once me brother Phil gets me home (he'll pick me up from Downtown Mobil, my most excellent mechanics) and I check my email before heading to the Shop, I will walk back out the door and look, as I always do, for my van. And not immediately seeing it my first thought will be one of panic and anger. I will gut wrenchingly lament, if only to myself, "Are you kidding me? Someone stole my van?"

Then I'll remember what happened Sunday and where my van in fact is this morning. I know that will happen because it has happened before. 

Isn't it amazing how quickly our minds leap to the negative? Or, worse, forget what just happened? Human nature I suppose. 

Amos and Joe feud over locks

Me Grandpa Joe and Amos Sheffield were great friends. I've wrote about that here:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2018/10/amos-and-alice.html

I've wrote about in other spots too but that should illustrate my point. But as good friends share many episodes in life, there are other examples with which to regale you. Here is one such other.

Joe and Amos once bought a car together. Now, Joe never was one to lock his car. I don't know why. I will not even conjecture as to why. Joe did what he did because that was what he done. That's just how it was.

Amos always locked his car doors. This included the car he owned with his good friend Joe. It would infuriate Joe whenever he went to drive the thing to find the doors locked. Granted, it was even back in the day a simple thing to unlock a car door. No matter to Joe; locking cars, again, was not what he did.

He finally confronted Amos about it, insisting his buddy not lock the car. "It's my car too, Joe, and I prefer to lock the doors," Amos insisted.

As a gentleman always seeking compromise above all (how many of my friends and relatives who knew Joe Cosgriff are snickering right now, I wonder?) Joe retorted, "Well it's half my car, so my two doors stay unlocked!"

You can't meet anyone halfway better than that now, can you?

Vaxing question redux

I addressed the question of mandatory vaccination for COVID and the potential for vaccine passports the other day. You can read about here if you like:

https://thesublimetotheridiculous.blogspot.com/2021/09/vaxing-question.html

It should not surprise anyone who knows me to discover I am against such ideas. But I want to take a moment to look at things a bit further. It was brought on when I read that uber-libertarian Howard Stern asserted that anti-vaxxers should not get health care if they fall ill with COVID. I think such cavalier, indeed reprehensible, attitudes express precisely why we as a society should be very careful about telling people what they can and cannot do.

If someone is denied health care because they didn't get the COVID vaccine on the mere grounds that they made an individual choice as a reflection of their personal freedom (no matter how insidious you might think that choice to be) then I must ask, what else may society deny a person who is acting in ways arguably harmful to the greater society?

Should someone who overeats not receive care? Someone who smokes like a chimney? Someone who drinks too much? Someone who races their car at 100 miles per hour on the highway and crashes horrifically? Surely such folks could or will cost society quite a bit in the long run. Arguably they care no more for their fellow man than the person who will not be vaccinated, if you believe that the anti-vaxxer has no concern for his peers. Indeed if we ever reach the point in the States where there are national health plans on a broader scale than we have it currently, there is a simple and easy to emplace rationale for denying health care: society is paying for it, so society has a right to dictate who gets it. Why? Because your actions can, quite obviously, adversely affect society.

Think that can't happen? Two years ago I never imagined so many freedoms being trampled on for an illness which is, I will say it again because I believe it needs to be shouted from the rooftops, relatively harmless. If it's justified for and accepted for COVID, it's more easily and readily justified for most other human actions. We would then, as Ben Franklin so rightly warned us, have given up freedom for security and will end up with neither. It is a trade we should not make.

Sales Glitch

In sales, you just never know what will happen. Chicken one day, feathers the next, me Pops used to say. There's a lot of truth to that.

I remember on June 1, 2015, I had 105 lengths of main drain cables in stock. That's a decent amount, an amount I typically direct sell (sell out of the Shop) in a month.

I didn't that time around. I didn't sell a single cable section in June. But July would be better, right?

Right. Didn't sell any of those cables then either. I was beginning to wonder if I was doing something wrong, if I had lost my touch.

August 4 was the first Tuesday of the month that year. Out of nowhere that day, spread over 7 or 8 customers, I sold all 105 of those cables in 90 minutes.

In sales, you just never know.

Vaxing question

I almost hate to step into what has become a quagmire. Yet, truth be told, so very much of what we face in this world is a marshland. Unless we wish to never express an opinion at all we cannot help but step in a swamp.

To vax or not to vax, that is the question. At least, it's the question dragging down a lot of civil conversation these days. I don't pretend to know the One Best Answer. But I am honest enough to admit it. Too many of my friends apparently walk on a plane of knowledge which I am not certain, by any measure, exists on this issue.

Talk of vaccine mandates are, quite honestly, obscene. The defense that the government makes us do all sorts of things so why not that fails to address the point. Quite bluntly, there are a great many things which government already compels us to do which it should not. That a government might try to compel us to act has no bearing on the morality of the act. 

Still, I will concede that a legitimate government has the moral authority under the right circumstances to force us to do given things. We couldn't have a single law without recognizing as much. So I will allow that even with vaccines those in authority over us might be within their rights to make us vaccinate. Again, without allowing for that we could not morally tolerate the vaccinations forced upon our children. The question then becomes, does the government have the moral authority to do that with COVID vaccines, or, worse, issue so-called vaccine passports?

I must come down on the side of the anti-vaxxers on that. With all due respect to those who will disagree with me, it is rather plain by any reasonable analysis that those who contract the disease by any means will almost certainly survive it. Then we have the fact that the governments don't actually seem to have a handle on it (masks work unless they don't; social distancing may or may not matter; you can live normally with two shots until you need a third; where does it end?) which leads to the legitimate question of whether we can trust government on COVID. And there is a difference, a huge difference, between vaccines being rushed through and the extensive, years long development of those against evils such as polio.

Part of the reason I'm okay with mandated vaccines against polio and measles and so on is that they are well established. It's pretty clear that we don't know all the effects of the COVID vaccines precisely because they're so new. There simply hasn't been enough time to have any real and final idea about their long term use and impact. Men and women are within their rights to be skeptical of them on that basis alone.

As a rule of thumb, acting without adequate knowledge is foolish. You get things such as health care advocates bobbing back and forth on issues exactly because the situation is still in flux. This leads to the rash, knee jerk actions which governments are so good at doing. If you don't mind a bit of a pun, governments (and their media hounds) need to take a pill and calm down. So do we.

Churchillianisms

 Ah, Winston. You could turn a phrase. In his more serious hours the great British Prime Minister could wax eloquent in inspiring ways. His Their Finest Hour speech is well remembered. 

Yet he was also known for his wit. A famous example was when Lady Astor told him condescendingly, "Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband I should poison your tea." 

He replied, "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it."

I came across a line yesterday said (supposedly) by Churchill, "The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list."

Ah, Winston.

Labor Day

I would like to take a moment to offer a shout out to all Mothers on this Labor Day 2021. Without their sacrifices none of us would be here today. Without their willingness to deal with the pains of childbirth, we could not be around to celebrate the holiday.

So, Happy Labor Day Moms!

Just rambling Sunday morning

Labor Day Weekend. Summer's last hurrah, eh?

Technically of course summer lasts until September 22 this year. Still, we feel the autumn approach and with it the need (funny that it wasn't such a need until recently) for pumpkin spice everything. 

We rush headlong into too much, don't you think? Many friends have been talking about Halloween for weeks already, and don't even get me started on the Christmas mavens. Why can't we really see things as Ecclesiastes urges us: take seasons and holidays as they come, enjoy them as they are. Makes sense to me.

Ah well. I'll take me Mom out this afternoon because that's what I do most Sundays, then grill some burgers and brats tomorrow on the actual holiday. To everything there is a season. They pass quickly enough without forcing them forward.

An irreverent take on a valid PSA

So driving home yesterday I saw a billboard with a public service announcement. It said, be sure to talk to your kids about the dangers of prescription drug abuse. Fair enough. 

I found myself imagining a father explaining to his son all the bad things about prescription drug abuse. Dad told his boy a lot of things, talking about horrible side effects and the like, ending by giving his son a pat on the shoulder and saying, "Do you understand son?"

"Yeah, Dad, thanks," the kid replies.

The two share a moment of deep felt appreciation. Then the dad continues, "But the high is incredible! Absolutely indescribable!" I mean, that is part of the danger, right?

Am I a bad man?

Love is not 'just' love

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've been told that Love is Love. If there is a more senseless defense of a concept I cannot imagine what it might be.

We may as well assert, Table is Table or House is House. While such statements may be technically true, they in fact tell us nothing about the table or the house. Perhaps the table has a broken leg and cannot stand on its own. The house may be in dire need of repair. If either of these situations exist, we work to fix the problems. Yet if house was just house or table, table, we would we leave them alone. We would have to if they are simply what they are and nothing more.

I believe the trouble is that to fix the table or repair the house we must have some idea of what a good table or a good house are. But for some odd reason we don't appear to have the same sense about something so important and critical to our well being as love. The only conclusion I can draw is that, under certain circumstances anyway, people don't want to have a judgment made about love. They simply want the kind of love which they happen to want, whatever that is, and without question.

Well, what's the value of love if we cannot question it and have a sound, robust defense of what it might be? What indeed is the inherent value of love at all if all it is is whatever the speaker wants it to be? Short of that, the Love is Love argument really isn't telling us anything at all. Or, perhaps, it's telling us something worse. It's telling us that selfishness and narcissism are the rule of the day.

Dance lessons

As I drove through Urbana, Ohio the other day I noticed that there was a dance studio and a gun shop. In the same building.

Now that's how you combine methods, if you ask me. "You call that a pirouette?" The instructor asks. Blam, blam, blam, shots fired at the feet of a nearby dance student. "Now that's a pirouette!"

Still, I can't imagine that that's how Fred Astaire learned.