2021: Don't let the Door Hit You

This is it, December 31, 2021, the last day of the year. What we're supposed to do now, if we are to be traditional about it (and I am generally traditional), is write a reflection on the year just past.

Well I don't wanna and you can't make me. It would only be a litany of what you already know. 2021 has merited about every negative adjective in the book and I don't wanna think about it no more. 

I have not stayed up to greet the New Year in about six years now but I might stay up tonight only to make sure 2021 leaves, and then I'm done with it. Finished. There will be no reflections of the past year by me. End. Of. Story.

This doesn't count as a reflection, does it?

Stretching A Buck

Me Grandpa Joe had his welder rental business, but he also owned a couple of rooming houses with single rooms and apartments for rent. With eight kids plus he and me Grandma Cosgriff, 10 mouths to feed and house and clothe required a decent income stream.

Joe's money rule was simple. He used the earnings from the welders to pay for the business. Me Grandma Cosgriff got all the income from the rooms and apartments to pay for the food and clothes and such for her and me Pops and his seven siblings. You know, the various household expenses. 

Now, me Grams was good with a buck. I'll likely go into more detail on that in another blog, but suffice it to say her reputation for handling money was well established. Me Grandpa Joe garnered no such respect.

One day Joe was lamenting to his older brother, me Great Uncle Bill who me Pops was named for, "Boy, a dollar from the room rents sure goes farther than a dollar from the welders."

Uncle Bill replied simply, "Look who's spending the welding money and look who spends the rent income."

Joe couldn't challenge that judgement. He knew it was true.

On The Other Foot

This may seem more melancholy than I intend it to be, but I'm really only trying to be observational. 

Watching the Ohio Cosgriffs drive off home yesterday morning, Christmas being over, I found myself reflecting on little things in life which had never quite occurred to me before. I was thinking of how me Grandpaw and Grandmaw Hutchins may have felt in years gone by as we would leave their home in North Carolina after our annual summer visit. Or even, perhaps, how me parents and grandparents up here felt when my family would make our exit after spending time at their homes.

With more extended stays it's as if you just get into the new routine and it's over. Several times yesterday after the family left I found myself expecting one of the dogs to be staring at me as I opened the door into the dining room, or to see my son or daughter-in-law or granddaughter sitting on the couch as I entered the living room. I expected those things so much that it took a second or so for me to re-orient when nobody was there. 

I believe I would rather be the one leaving than the one staying. The ones moving on are naturally occupied with that: the drive back home, returning to work, anticipating the usual day in and day out life. While I certainly had my routine coming back at me, there was still a rather marked change for me as all I had was that routine returning. There wasn't the relative distraction of a four hour drive home. There wasn't so much as a walk down the block to occupy me. I just went back into the house and locked the door as I closed it, changed into work clothes, and got back to normal. Poof. In the bat of an eye, nothing was different than it had been last Thursday. But it felt radically different, at least for the first few hours.

I suppose it does offer me a better sense of what my elders felt way back when. I don't really like it, but it is what is, eh?

You say potato

I was once trapped in this middle eastern marketplace, filled with individuals plying their wares. It was bizarre.

Or is that bazaar? I forget which.

A Christmas Tip

This may be too late to be of help to anyone this season, but you might keep it in mind for next year.

If you are wrapping Christmas gifts on the bed, take care not to cut the sheet while you're cutting wrapping paper. 

You're welcome. And Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Bonus

For really too many years as we've replaced burned out motors on drain snakes, we've simply thrown the old ones in a pile at one end of the Shop. There was an accumulation of easily 95 or 100 old electric motors as we replaced, I would hazard to guess, 4 to 6 a year. We didn't actually count them though.

The motors are heavy, having a lot of copper in them as well as what I think are steel armatures. Still, they have been in the way for a long time, the pile having built up to about three foot high. We've been saying we need to get rid of them. Yesterday, we did.

We piled them in my new old van as I had long taken the seats out to have room for equipment. I was hoping for maybe a nickel a pound, and to get perhaps a hundred bucks if we were lucky.

We were beyond lucky.

The scrap yard allowed us a quarter a pound and there was just over 2,000 pounds. Me brother Phil and I walked out with $545 (and sixty cents). $272.80 apiece made a nice little Christmas bonus for merely turning in scrap, wouldn't you say?

Happy Christmas Eve Eve 2021

Happy Christmas Eve Eve! If you remember, it's a new holiday which I created just last year. You can read about it here: Christmas Eve Eve

You forgot, didn't you? Or you only just remembered and was hoping I'd forgotten, right? Just for that, no Christmas Eve Eve gifts for you. And that's not because I never actually bought them either.

So again, Happy Christmas Eve Eve. We'll do it again in 2022. Be ready next time.

Chesterton on Science and Christmas

A little of Mr. G. K. Chesterton for you today. It may help you understand the punchline to know that he grew rather rotund as he aged.

I like how he, in that very British way, jibes the scientists for supposedly knowing more about what he was doing and why he did it than he did. He was simply looking for his lost coin, rescuing a cat, and celebrating Christmas.

"THERE is one very vile habit that the pedants have, and that is explaining to a man why he does a thing when the man himself can explain quite well — and quite differently.  If I go down on all-fours to find sixpence, it annoys me to be told by a passing biologist that I am really doing it because my remote ancestors were quadrupeds.  I concede that he knows all about biology, or even a great deal about my ancestors; but I know he is wrong, because he does not know about the sixpence.  If I climb a tree after a stray cat, I am unconvinced when a stray anthropologist tells me that I am doing it because I am essentially arboreal and barbaric.  I happen to know why I am doing it; and I know it is because I am amiable and somewhat over-civilised.  Scientists will talk to a man on general guess-work about things that they know no more about than about his pocket-money or his pet cat.  Religion is one of them, and all the festivals and formalities that are rooted in religion.  Thus a man will tell me that in keeping Christmas I am not keeping a Christmas feast, but a pagan feast.  This is exactly as if he told me that I was not feeling furiously angry, but only a little sad.  I know how I am feeling all right; and why I am feeling it.  I know this in the case of cats, sixpences, anger, and Christmas Day.  When a learned man tells me that on the 25th of December I am really astronomically worshipping the sun, I answer that I am not.  I am practicing a particular personal religion, the pleasures of which (right or wrong) are not in the least astronomical.  If he says that the cult of Christianity and the cult of Apollo are the same, I answer that they are utterly different; and I ought to know for I have held both of them.  I believed in Apollo when I was quite little; and I believe in Christmas now that I am very, very big.

~Illustrated London News, Jan. 1, 1910.

Wanted: Listeners

Bill Newman was a fella who used to come into the Shop a lot. He was a plumber and a gregarious sort. Mr. Newman liked to talk. Perhaps the best word to describe him was raconteur, a teller of fanciful stories. 

Now, me Grandpa Joe liked to talk too. I remember many days where Mr. Newman would come in and Joe would stop his work to visit. And, no doubt, swap tales with his cohort.

One day they were off to the side talking and things became animated. Not because they were mad or upset with one another, no. It was due to the fact they were each so wanting to tell their stories that they were constantly interrupting one another, making it hard for either to finish what they was sayin.

Finally Bill Newman, who was about a head taller than Joe, grabbed me Grandpa by his lapels and lifted him off the floor just enough that Grandpa's toes were all that was left touching the ground. He pulled Joe's face in close to his own. "Joe! Joe! Joe! We got a problem here!"

"What's that?" me Grandpa asked, actually laughing already at his predicament.

"We're both talkers! We gotta find us a couple'a listeners!"

Maybe you had to be there, but it was funny watching Joe being held by the lapels like that, and him just laughing along with it.

He Wouldn't Approve

Me Mom and I have developed a few running jokes during our Sunday rides. One of them involves me brother Phil, who's her primary caregiver.

At least once over the course of a trip Mom will spot a party store and ask, "Should we get our liquor?"

"No," I'll answer, "Phil wouldn't approve."

Yesterday while caught at a traffic light, she saw a tattoo parlor. "Park over there," she commanded, a twinkle in her eye. "I want to get me a tattoo."

"Oh, no," I replied, rather overdramatically,  "Phil really wouldn't approve of that!"

We may have found our newest running joke.

Old Style Christmas Candy

Time, it changes a man. It surely does.

When I was a boy, you knew it was nearing Christmas when me Grandma Cosgriff brought out the Christmas candy. For the holidays, there would always be a bowl of these odd hard candies on the dining room table. There was ribbon candy, and these odd little triangular things in striped colors, and little round, rock hard buttons with color on the edges and images on the faces, flowers or fruit or pictures of Santa even. Some even had what was soft, apparently fruit fillings.

I never cared for those candies. They weren't terrible, and certainly not inedible. Yet they didn't exactly entice you like candy should. You would roll them around in your mouth and suck on them until they, well, I won't say melted away. They more like wasted away. The tastes weren't anything outstanding at all. I might, might pop one into my mouth the entire Christmas season. I never wanted a second.

Yesterday I found myself in a store searching for anything but that candy. Indeed, I hadn't thought of it in ages. Nonetheless, as my eyes roved over a shelf of holiday delights, I discovered bags of Old Fashion Mix Classic Christmas Candy. They were just like what me Grandma Cosgriff set out on Christmas. And I said, out loud in excitement despite being alone in an almost empty store, "Hey! It's Grandma's Christmas Candy!"

And I bought a package of that candy which I never particularly liked.

It's stupid as hell, but I've almost got tears in my eyes from finding bland old fashion Christmas candy from Christmases long past. I guess sentiment trumps taste somehow.

The Toilet Bowls

It began yesterday with two. They were the first of forty-two. There were only forty-one, but they, the NCAA, had to, they simply had to, mind you, add another so that all eligible teams could play in one. 

Eligible teams are defined as those with 6-6 records. Current rules also allow 6-7 Hawaii to play another game.

I'm sorry, mediocrity shouldn't pay, and a .500 record is most certainly mediocre. At least half of these bowl games are simply participation trophies. They aren't merited.

It's really that simple.

Seeking the Transcendent

If you only want to be what you already are and to be taught what you already think, there’s no real growth, no authentic dynamism possible. You’re stuck within the limits of  “Me.”

- Robert Royal

Robert Royal is the editor in chief of a website called The Catholic Thing. I found that above quote in an article of his addressing the proposed renovations of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. You may read his opinion of that here if you like: Notre Dame Restorations

The words I lifted from his essay are among the most profound I have ever come across. In a nutshell, I think he speaks to what a good, real, and true education should speak to, and by extension it demonstrates where modern education fails miserably (at least, too often). When we stop seeking what is beyond ourselves, when the transcendent is shown the door, what too easily and readily replaces it? The "Now" or as he puts it, the "Me". 

But most people, I believe anyway, don't want simply the "Me". They are looking for the better thing, what C. S. Lewis among others refer to as the numinous, the other than me, that thing which might be called the Divine. We know in our hearts that we lack that transcendence. We visit places such as Notre Dame to actively seek it. It is not in our schools. Indeed, I rather think we've outright banned it in public education. In too many of our private schools, in fact.

At the risk of going from the, ahem, sublime to the ridiculous, I will compare transcendent feeling to our current modes of education based on what I found in, of all things, a book titled Baseball Haiku. Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry, and baseball being popular in Japan the sport has found itself the subject of haiku poets both there and here in North America. 

Stripped to its very basics, haiku is a 17 syllable poem in a 5-7-5, three line pattern. The first line has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third five again. The authors of the book, in explaining haiku, teach that it is much more than a rhyming scheme. Haiku is supposed to be the expression of deep and profound thought in limited words. It is supposed to open a door for the reader to the numinous, based on the poet's solitary, one on one connection with it. It is an attempt to express the nearly inexpressible.

When I was both a student and a teacher I remember giving and being given English class 'lessons' in haiku. Yet we weren't given that background, that essential understanding. In retrospect now I see that the idea of haiku was so dumbed down as to be genuinely insulting to the true point of it. That's because all we were told was, "See here, write whatever you want in this 5-7-5 pattern and look! You're a haiku artist!" The emphasis wasn't placed on haiku; it was placed on the student.

I assure you that my 11th Grade attempts at haiku were pathetic, and with all due respect so too were the offerings of my students when I was teaching. To the greatest degree it was due to one thing: no actual, honest understanding of haiku. Stripped to nothing but its mechanics, haiku is meaningless. As such, talking about haiku in class was meaningless. It did not have meaning because it could not, given such bare and rote instruction. The meaning isn't in the form: it's in the intent of the poet as he does his best to reflect transcendent truth. It's not something you simply 'do' for mere classroom credit. It's not a thin way of experiencing another culture. Haiku is about touching the eternal.

Even my poor explanation doesn't in any way get to the real point of haiku. That's greatly because you can't describe it so succinctly in one blog, just as you can't really understand it in one or two class sessions of high school. You're only playing around in a classroom and in fact not learning anything, about the style of expression, about yourself, about the world around you or the otherworldly. There's no connection made between the here and now and the not here and now, the eternal. The student's mind is not made to see beyond itself, and therefore cannot expand and grow. Our education today isn't about anything quite so mystical, despite our natural longing for it. Teachers are left with the mundane drivel of making you the best you you can be, without any true consideration of what might actually do you the most good. 

When education becomes only about you, well, quite bluntly, you will not turn outward but inward. You will surely have little but your own selfishness and self interest indulged. You will be affirmed merely in your base desires. You won't grow. You will only be, again as Royal puts it, trapped in the "Me". I don't see where that can bode well for our future.

Ghost of a Pepper

Recently a buddy and I, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, were sitting at the drive thru of a Burger King. The menu board offered something called Ghost Pepper Chicken. "What's that?" Cloyce asked.

"I dunno," I answered, "But I think it's a spicy kind of pepper, which goes on unseen."

"A seasoning which can't be seen!" Cloyce exclaimed. "I think it's a sham. I think they're saying they put a hot new spice on it but it's really nothing."

You know, maybe. Maybe it's the Emperor's New Clothes of chicken nuggets, and you're not smart or worthy if you can't taste it. Ol' Cloyce may be onto something.

Blah Blah Right, Blah Blah Wrong

Believe me, I have heard far too many times in my life What gives you the right to call blah blah wrong? Well, the best retort I know to that came from a Dominican priest, Father Jim Murray. He said you throw the question right back at the accuser: What gives you the right to call blah blah right?

He's, ahem, right. If I don't have the right, to the best of my knowledge and understanding, to call something wrong, why do you have the right to call it right? Or even just to assert it doesn't matter or is none of my business? Why can you use your judgement but I can't use mine? 

We're talking about an issue (in this case blah blah) about which I have as much right to an opinion (right or wrong) as you do (right or wrong). You're essentially saying I'm wrong for no reason except that you apparently don't want me to be right.

It's really a form of the ad hominem argument, attacking the speaker instead of the speaker's points. It dodges the question at hand by trying to claim I have no right to express my position. And blah blah is, I assure you, a critical question.

Sorry, But There Are Stupid Questions

Here's another log on the fire for you: I give thee another useless phrase, to go with the useless words I've spoken of in this very blog. It is: 'There are no stupid questions'.

To cut straight to the chase, there are indeed stupid questions. To be a bit silly about it, if someone asks, 'Why is the sky blue?" when we're talking about George Washington's Farewell Address, they've asked a stupid question. More practically, when an answer is obvious yet the question is put forth anyway, it's a stupid question. Quite a few of us I suspect have teased friends when they produced that sort of query, the one which begs for the 'Well, duh' response. I know I have been on both sides of that, er, question.

Then too, we've all, most of us, anyway, seen courtroom dramas where one attorney directs a question at whoever is on the stand only to have the opposing lawyer yell something like, "Objection! Irrelevant!", or "Objection! Leading the witness!" at which point the judge will either sustain the objection or overrule it. What is the judge in such instances doing? Essentially this: determining whether the question is stupid or not.

Oh, it could be worse than stupid. It could be evil. But as evil is a form of stupidity I'll take it upon myself to overrule that objection.

Maybe a question has no bearing on the issue at hand. Maybe it's a subterfuge, an attempt to distract or divert attention from what's actually being discussed. Maybe the asker simply doesn't know better. In those last cases we might have to tolerate his question for reasons of charity or decorum. But the question itself is still stupid.

There you have it. Put 'There are no stupid questions' on the fire with 'You can't judge a book by its cover' or phrases such as being for peace or education or freedom. When not in proper context to the issue at hand, a question can be stupid. That's simply it.

Mom Approves

I took me Mom out a little before Noon yesterday. Once we were in my new old van and pulling away from the curb she said, "Now, I'm with you. We can go wherever you want and do whatever you want."

With an invitation like that, I decided to be mischievous. "Cool. I figure we can find a bar, drink beer, and watch football all afternoon."

Silence.

Silence. 

Just a bit more silence.

Finally Mom responded, "Okay, maybe I don't want to do whatever you want to do."

"All right," I replied, smiling. "How about we go to Ollie's Discount Store and do some shopping, and then find a McDonald's and have cheeseburgers for lunch?"

With a bright smile of her own and a nod of approval Mom said, "That sounds just fine."

So that is what we did.

Bait Snake

As most of you likely know by now, I sell and repair drain snakes. They are the steel cable machines used to open various drains. 

We have a shop, colloquially called the Shop or the Old Barn, where we store new units and the ones left for repair. The Shop (or the Old Barn, if you prefer) is well secure. We have four locks on the door, an alarm on the building, and we even run heavy chains with locks through the machines we have on hand inside, all just to make things as theft proof as possible.

A few weeks ago I bought out the remains of an old plumbing store. There wasn't much, but there were some cables I could use or resell. And I bought an old drain cleaning machine which wasn't worth much. In fact, the company which made it is out of business. But I bought it anyway.

Back at the Shop me brother Phil asked incredulously, "What'd you buy that for? We can't get parts or anything. It's obsolete."

"True," I responded, "But you know how there was that old TV show called Bait Car, where the police rigged a car so that they could catch car thieves?"

"Yeah."

"This will be our bait snake. We'll leave it unlocked and if any thief gets this far into our building in a late night robbery attempt, maybe he'll just grab it and leave the rest alone, seeing them locked."

Yes, we have a Bait Snake. Think I can talk Tru TV into a new reality show?

It's Not a Miracle

Some people expect miracles. Now, I believe in miracles. Fervently, in fact. There is no doubt in my mind that I have had miracles happen for me and for others. But I make no claim that those miracles are or were in any way, shape, or form brought on by me. Indeed, I am quite certain that I had absolutely nothing to do with them. Still, there are folks who apparently expect the miraculous from me.

A plumber brought his drain cleaning machine into my shop at the beginning of the week. It didn't run. I explained that I couldn't look at it immediately as I was too busy. "Could I get it by Friday?" he begged. I said I'd see what I could do.

Thursday arrives, and I set his machine up on my work bench to look it over. The clutch would not turn; on that particular unit, you ought to be able to spin the clutch by hand with ease even when connected to the motor. That not happening, I removed the clutch, which spun freely in my hands. So I tried turning the armature of the motor where it stuck out to engage the clutch. It was so solidly tight that it wouldn't move. As with the clutch on a normal machine, you ought to be able to turn the armature by hand on that style of electric motor.

This all meant that I needed to look inside the motor. I removed the back plate: it was immediately obvious that the unit had been in standing water for quite some time. There was all sorts of greenish corrosion on the copper windings, and the water had caused the armature to weld itself to those windings. The man had no option but to replace the machine.

So I call him. "What's the good news for me, Cosgriff?"

"They ain't none, sorry. You have to replace the machine. You didn't tell me it had been underwater; it would have saved us both some trouble."

"No, no, no, it wasn't the water long, Cosgriff," he insisted. "Remember all that flooding a few months ago? It was only under water for a couple of days. I got it out real quick." Somehow, in this case anyways, I don't believe that the phrases 'couple of days' and 'real quick' quite gel. But he continued, "So it wasn't the water. And I cleaned all the slime. They was a whole lotta sludge come out of it too."

"Friend," I responded, my free hand, the one not holding my cell phone, rubbing the temple on one side of my head, "What caused the slime and sludge? This thing was obviously in the water a long time."

"So all I can do is replace it, huh?"

"Yes. That is all you can do." Because, I wanted to add but did not, I'm no miracle worker. I surely would not be working on drains snakes if I were.

Well, Water

Me Doctor has preached to me for years (you know how doctors nag) the importance of staying hydrated. That means drinking lots of water. But water is like, well, water (well water; see how I worked that in?). 

Well water is great. I still remember me Grandpaw and Grandmaw Hutchins having a well right by their back porch. It looked exactly like something from an old movie too: round and wooden, with a bucket and pulley to drop down into the water for a nice cold drink. There was even a metal ladle hanging on a hook just under the small roof of the well.

That was maybe the best tasting water I ever drank. And cold! You wouldn't believe you could drink it. But you could, right out of the ground.

Sometimes as a kid I would get a drink simply for the neatness of it, to lower that bucket and withdraw that clear water. It was kind of disappointing when the removed the old well and installed a pump. But so it goes.

$10.71

Ten Dollars and Seventy One Cents is not a relative term. It stands for exactly that: $10.71. However, the value of it in terms of what it can buy might vary.

Last Thursday I had to make a delivery to Grand Rapids, about a five or five and a half hour round trip from Detroit. I was sure I had taken the complete order.  Yet it turns out I had forgotten a three dollar steel clip.

The customer called me in the late afternoon that Thursday, almost as soon as I was back home. I promised to ship it first thing Friday. I did: for $10.71.

That seems like a lot to send a clip which hardly weighed an ounce. But that's where I began to wax philosophic. I have made mistakes in the past which have cost me far more than $10.71, and I certainly wasn't going to make a round trip to Grand Rapids for Ten Dollars and Seventy One Cents. So it wasn't nearly the most costly mistake of my life, and it bought me five hours of time. I can live with that.

This Ukraine Mess

Inflation, an iffy economy, vaccine mandate attempts which are totalitarian (and thrown out by the courts), calls for more IRS agents (who will go after you, not the rich), and now saber rattling over Russia and the Ukraine. War after all is the go-to to a leadership which is failing. It might be just what the doctor ordered to shore up the Biden Presidency and the Democrats' chances in the 2022 midterms. I am galled that some Republican senators appear to support them in that.

Say what you want about Donald Trump, but he had the economy purring and he kept us out of new war (while supporting the troops already in action), the latter (no new wars) unheard of in the last hundred years or so of American History. But we can't have that. We can't have peace and prosperity. 

This Ukraine thing scares me. I see no real US geopolitical reason to get involved. I'm not saying Russia would be right to invade. I'm simply unconvinced it's a situation we should stick our nose in. 

The Gaming Generation Gap

Their is a generation gap. It's always existed in one form or another. "You call that Elvis guy a singer? Now Rudy Vallee, that was a singer!" So it's patently false to say it's a recent development. It simply takes different forms.

For myself and my kids, it's in the video games we play. Theirs are all action packed, running around, role playing games with lots of flash and dazzle and sound. Mine are, well, video poker, with nothing at stake except pretend chips earned which have no actual value.

Pacing is everything for all video games. Theirs are, as I've said, running and shooting or racing around in carts as colors and all sorts of images fly by. With online poker, every player gets dealt two cards and then waits patiently for the next deal. Then we take our turns raising, calling, or folding - always patiently - until the next round is done. Then more cards are dealt and more things - patient things, I stress - happen, until someone wins. Absolutely no chance of seizures in video poker, I guarantee you.

Of course, there is action in my games. The background of the poker room changes with the seasons. Currently there's a Christmas train meandering about a simple oval track on a table behind the dealer. It's taking its time, and not difficult at all to spot, such as an enemy hidden behind a boulder would be in the kids' games. So while they're running around defending their turf amidst the flash and brilliance of their games, I sit at mine thinking: "Look! A choo-choo! And you can see the smoke puffing out of the stack on the locomotive!

The generation gap yet exists.

Save The Date

For all of you who are interested, Sunday December 19 at 7:30 on your local PBS station will be this year's free showing of the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special. Even though we have it on DVD and can stream it (though streaming, whatever that is, is still something I can't seem to wrap my head around let alone manage to do efficiently) I still make the effort to watch it on free TV.

Part of it is only the old school guy in me coming out. Many if not most of us remember, and quite fondly, how the TV Guide served as our entertainment schedule way back when. If you missed a special you were out of luck for an entire year as to catching it again. I'm not, or at least don't intend to, argue in any way that this 'streaming' thing is wrong or bad. On the whole it really is good. Still, sentimentality...

So anyway, I'm going to watch Charlie Brown, the good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, on PBS in thirteen days. The childhood vibes come shining through until yet watching a revered show at a scheduled date such as that. Undoubtedly I will watch it again with family on Christmas Day via DVD or stream. But if you want to experience something as it once were, mark December 19 on you calendar.

Beware of Internet Purchases

You gotta be careful what you order off the internet. 

To help protect my property I ordered attack trees. They didn't work out at all. Their bark was worse than their bite.

Aren't you glad you took a moment out of your life for this?

The Evil that Men Do

The recent murders at Oxford High School in Michigan were reprehensible, despicable, and, perhaps, totally avoidable. But not avoidable for the reason too many people will leap towards.

The go-to excuse is the availability of guns. Yet while that is an understandable reaction, it is ultimately knee jerk. It fails to address a great many issues, and the first and foremost of those is that there is evil in the world. Take away every powerful, projectile firing object on earth, and you will still have evil. And it will not rest.

This does not mean that we cannot or should not fight it. But notice that we must first acknowledge it, we must admit that evil exists. Without that, all talk of preventing tragedies such as Oxford must be muted. Indeed, without that admission I don't see how we can ever possibly defeat evil.

What are we fighting, if not evil, if we are to usefully work towards avoiding future travesties of justice? You may have noticed in news reports that the parents and the shooter were called into a meeting the same day as the murders, because of alarming ideas expressed by the shooter. Yet he was allowed to stay in school nonetheless, because the school district as a core policy didn't want to deprive him of the academic and social support which formal education, in the mind of modern educators, asserts is paramount. So paramount in fact that questions of evil and evil intent are set aside. So much so that what was taken as a credible threat could not be removed from the building.

They can hardly argue that such an event was unthinkable. It happens too often, and surely was in the minds of the school people or they wouldn't have called the parents in, pulled the student from class, and had that meeting to begin with. Yet despite that acknowledgement, they could not see it within themselves to remove the shooter from the premises. They could not recognize evil, or even the mere potential for evil, preferring instead to leave it to take four lives and seriously injure many more.

We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst, C. S. Lewis wrote. Similarly, when we do not see that evil exists, we will not fight it. It is because we cannot.

Emphatically Refused Service

Among many of the old plumbers and drain cleaners who've come through the old barn there was this one, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who related the following tale.

Cloyce was in a bar, actually snaking a drain behind the actual bar. A man walked in and sat at that bar. With him were five women, whom Cloyce referred to as the guy's concubines. They each sat at the bar with the fella, so that six barstools in a row were taken. 

The bartender, a grouchy old woman who Cloyce knew as the owner of the place, asked of the man, "Whaddaya have?"

The customer folded his hands and pronounced solemnly, "I would like a Budweiser." Solemnly, mind you, as if actually making a pronouncement.

The bartender reached into the cooler, grabbed a beer, and popped the top. It was then the man added, "...and six glasses."

Cloyce said the old woman bar owner exploded. "Get outta here! I ain't selling you one beer and having to wash six glasses! Get out! Go away!" He raised an eyebrow, huffily, Cloyce said, yet the entourage left quietly.

The woman turned to Cloyce. "You wanna free beer as a tip? I'd rather give it to you than sell it to him."

Cloyce finished the job, sipping on his beer tip. All the while, he said, the bar owner crabbing about one beer with six glasses. 

Tis the Season

Now that we are beyond Thanksgiving, let's welcome Christmas.

Of all the trappings of the Holiday season, what I like most is simply listening to carols. My favorite is probably (this is one those things which changes occasionally, depending on mood) 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'. That's greatly sentimental because the Peanuts gang sings it at the end of their marvelous Christmas special, but it's still a great song.

As we all know there's tons of celebrity Christmas songs out there, and most of them are at least ok. I just heard for example Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmas Time'. It's simple and sentimental, but infectious.

The Little Drummer Boy is classic, and let me tell you that of all people Bob Seger's cover is fantastic. He really nails the song. That's one that's on my list of maybe favorite. It's that good. And Bing Crosby and David Bowie's is right up there too. Talk about cross-generational; I don't know who's idea that was but it really works.

A list such as mine can't be complete without Silent Night. It's a carol which succinctly expresses what Christmas is all about.

I might ruminate more on this as Christmas grows nearer. But, for now, it's a good start.

Young Marty Schools Old Marty

Sweet gherkins. Sweet, sweet gherkins. You know, those little pickles that are soaked in some kind of brine and come out oh-so-sweet? I have rediscovered them.

As a small child, me Mom used to say that whenever her or me Pops came back from major grocery shopping (and with seven of us rug rats there were few minor grocery trips) and set the bags on the kitchen table, I would climb on a chair and begin unloading. Not to actually help, good Heavens, but in search of the fresh jar of sweet pickles which I knew were coming. When discovered, I stopped helping and waited, patiently, I assure you, for the one of the adults in the room to stop that nonsense of putting things away and open that jar for me.

Young Marty was pretty smart, at least about some things. As I have recently come back into a love of sweet gherkins, he's surely able to teach Old Marty a bit. Although Old Marty can open the jar on his own. 

Quiet Ron.