Alleluia! Alleluia! Blessed Jesus make us rise,
From the life of this corruption
to the life that never dies.
May we share with Thee Thy Glory
When the days of life are past.
And the dead shall be awakened
By the trumpet's mighty blast!
Happy Easter!
This afternoon the Detroit Tigers will play their second baseball game of the 2024 season. While I love the game and look forward to it every year, March 30 does feel early for the sport.
It used to start later. When they had regular doubleheaders the extra dates weren't needed. Skimming through an old 1971 Tigers yearbook I noticed 18 scheduled twin bills, two games on one ticket. Now they only play them when rain outs force it.
Doubleheaders were what I lived for as a younger fan. The instant the new schedule appeared I filled out my social calendar with whenever two games would be played at old Tiger Stadium. It was my summer guide; all else was plotted around those twin bills.
Hopefully rain will help me see one sometime this year. It did in 2022; I took a half day off when Detroit played two against Oakland. They actually played three last year, but I was just too busy with work to take advantage of the situation. I almost filed a grievance against my boss though.
Oh well. Play ball! It's the whole point of summer.
When me Pops was growing up, the neighborhood was more of a neighborhood. There were more stores, more houses, and religion still had a more direct effect on lives. So much more of an impact in fact that many stores and small businesses would close from 12-3 on Good Friday in commemoration of Christ's death on the Cross.
One day the Catholic school Pops attended had signs made up for the stores. They said simply, We will be closed on Good Friday from 12-3. Sister Principal called on two eighth grade young men to carry them around to neighborhood establishments and ask if they would like a sign for their window. Pops was one kid and a friend of his, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, the other. They didn't mind. Doing God's work got them out of school for a couple hours.
Sister instructed them not to try to talk anyone into taking a sign. Give them one if they wanted, go about your business if they didn't. In most places, Dad said, that's exactly what happened. They either took a sign or did not. Yet one small store owner decided he wanted to grill the two Catholic youngsters, and Pops himself felt the guy was being a little too pointed.
"You kids really believe all that stuff?" the man asked. He went on, and on, Dad explained later, knocking religion and what they were doing to the point where him and Cloyce felt truly put upon. Yet being kids, they weren't quite sure how to deal with it.
Cloyce soon determined a solution. After one too many snide barbs Cloyce said to the guy, "Look, mister, you can go to Hell for all I care. Do you want a sign or not?"'
He declined. Yet he obviously called the school to complain, because Sister Principal caught them at the door on their return. "Anything happen out there?" she asked suspiciously.
"No, nothing," Pops and Cloyce both answered. Dad said he didn't think she believed them; indeed, he was quite sure she had gotten a call. But she let things go at their assurance. Dad always wondered whether she knew the whole story and if in fact they had her tacit approval.
This is it: the real, one and only, true Opening Day in all of sports. Major League Baseball begins today. Well, other than the two games played in Korea last week. But let's not quibble.
Anaheim at Baltimore start it off at 3:05. My own Detroit Tigers face the Chicago White Sox in Chi town at 4:10. It's on.
Predictions? I won't make any even though it's expected. Everyone's a World Series contender on Opening Day and I won't spoil it. Let's simply enjoy the beginning of 162 games of the best sport there is, bar none. Baseball. The national pastime.
Let Summer roll.
I'm finding that I rarely sleep until my alarm anymore. I tend to wake well before I actually have to get up.
Me Grandpaw Hutchins used to rise at 5 each morning with no alarm. From what I've heard, many seniors require no help rising to greet the dawn.
For me, it's no longer as it was for years: the sudden, shocking, "I'm up! I'm up!" It's more like, "All right, I have now awoken. Proceed, day."
It's a Senior Superpower. I don't need no stinking alarm.
I did have to chastise Mom once. Mildly.
This past weekend Catholics had the Long Gospel, a standard practice on Palm Sunday where the Passion of Christ is gone over in detail. One part of that Gospel has always stood out to me. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus what his purpose was Christ answered, "I came to testify to the truth." Pilate responded with disdain, "What is truth?" This is exactly what the world says when confronted with Jesus, or with any idea of Truth.
Pilate represents the World, which wants no truth. Christ more than represents truth but is rather Truth Itself. And that is why the world rejects him.
The World wants to do what it wants to do and does not want to have to justify itself. Christ challenges that: certain things are what they are no matter what you think (or want to think). So the World mocks Him: What is Truth?
Save your tongue if your first reaction is to ask, who's truth? That's only childish gainsaying. The question is not and never can be that. The real question, to turn it around on you, World, is, What is Truth?
If you aren't seeking real, honest truth, you're playing to vanity, quite frankly. If you ask, like Pilate, what is truth, you mock and deny truth. Do so if you wish. But the price will be dear if you choose to, as the beginning of all the vice in human history can be seen in that small exchange between God and the World. "I came to testify; What is Truth?" Will you seek Truth, or will you deny it? There is nothing else.
Detroit Tiger Riley Greene hit an opposite field home run in a Grapefruit League game Thursday afternoon. Red Wing Andrew Copp scored an impressive goal later that evening in a hockey game. Each time, the respective analysts spoke of the mechanics and training that go into such home runs and hockey goals. Greene went with the pitch, as he was presumably taught, and sent it over the left field fence rather than try to pull it to right as a left handed batter might typically do. Copp managed to control a rolling puck for several strides and eventually slammed it past the goalie. It was taken as given that they were coached into their accomplishments.
Or were they? That's the question I almost always have in the back of my mind when the sports experts explain something. Did Riley Green really think all that through in the .15 of a second he had to decide whether to swing at the pitch, or does he simply have very good hand to eye coordination and more or less instinctively drove the ball the other way?
I'm not saying that as a bad thing. Talent after all is talent, and fantastic coordination the mark of a good athlete. I'm not even saying coaching or training does nothing. Still, can reactions like that truly be taught and learned, or are they just a reflection of pure talent?
The answer is likely somewhere in between, depending on the player. Yet I'm sure some athletes are simply good at what they do and that's all there is to it. I don't think Babe Ruth needed much coaching on the long ball.
You are all probably sick of my complaining about climate change and the weather. Well, click off this page or buckle your seat belt, because I'm about to do it again.
Being an old guy I'm also a weather wonk. That means that all this past week I kept tabs on the forecast, which assured me Detroit would have a little to no snow accumulation yesterday, Friday March 22. This prediction was still on about 12 hours before Friday dawned.
So imagine my surprise (not) when I found our cars covered in white in the early morning, and around a half inch of snow on the grass and sidewalks. This snow continued until just before Noon, and was heavy at times. I'm guessing we had a couple inches total, maybe three. This, again, after being told to expect no accumulation a half day earlier.
For the umpteenth time, this is why I do not and will not believe the climate change fanatics. You can't give me an accurate snowfall total the day before Friday but we're all doomed in 80 years.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Tell me one more time (because I didn't hear it the first two dozen times) that weather is only part of climate. Well, it's clearly the biggest part of it. If you can't get a forecast right in the near term I'm within reason to not trust your prognostications on the distant future. It's convenient too that your predictions are so far beyond your own expiration date that you ain't gonna be around to pay the piper.
But your kids and grandkids will. Rant over. For today.
Not that it's been much, but I remember blogging not that long ago about how me brother Patrick explained that we didn't shovel snow all winter in 1982-1983 but did the first day of Spring that season. Well, here it is the fourth day of Spring 2024, and I was out clearing snow and brushing off cars a little after seven. It's the first time I've done that since early January.
Sometimes it's nice to relive the past. Not this past, though. At least now we should really be through with snow until December.
We are aren't we?
On the road yesterday with me brother Phil in tow and having greatly overestimated the time we would need make an appointment in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we decided to get breakfast at a little diner in Napoleon, Ohio.
We sat down at a booth, and the server brought us menus and coffee. The waitress took our orders soon after that, then soon after that she brought our breakfasts. "Would you guys like ketchup?" she asked.
I laughed out loud. "You don't know the in joke, but yes, we would like it. Me brother here uses a lot."
She gave us ketchup in a large bottle. The young woman turned away as Phil took it and absolutely slathered his plate of food with it. Think an absurd amount of ketchup, and just a but more after that.
The waitress came by a few minutes later. "Is everything okay, oh my, that's a lot of ketchup!"
"And now you're in on the joke," I quipped.
Being up early in the morning means watching a bit of TV. Watching TV means watching commercials. Surprise, surprise.
I saw one ad this morning about a guy who had trouble with his hands cramping. As the script played out, he went to one specialist who couldn't help. Seeking relief, he decided to go to a second hand doctor. I thought, I'm not sure if that's a good idea.
I know, I know. I'll show myself out.
There was this drain snake customer of ours, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who might have been the penultimate re-inventor of the wheel. There wasn't a drain snake which was safe from his passion to do things different under the guise of making them better, which to my knowledge he never actually managed. His improvements tended to make things harder rather than easier.
Ol' Cloyce had a large plate installed atop a snake to turn the motor a hundred and eighty degrees around because it would then magically give the machine more power. It didn't, but it sure made working on the motor a greater chore.
He welded the power feed onto a machine, backwards too by the way, because that made it easier (he argued) to access the actuator handle. Not in the least, I tell you, but replacing bearings was then a true challenge because you had to take the entire feed apart to do it. Normally you take the unit off and set it on a work bench where, trust me, putting in new bearings was much more readily done.
Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was retrofitting a thirteen horsepower gasoline engine to his electric drain machine because he was absolutely going to destroy any root bed in any sewer which came his way. Those roots would never know what hit them.
There wasn't simply one thing wrong with that approach. There were many.
A typical electric snake has a 3/4 horsepower motor. Cloyce increased the power nearly twenty times the necessary strength. Overkill much, Cloyce?
Then the unit was too heavy and bulky to get into a standard basement in a private home. But that was probably just as well because, you know, toxic fumes from the exhaust just might be a problem in a small enclosed area. Maybe.
Professor Cloyce took care of that with an intricate series of detachable piping which could be run from an open basement window to the drain access. Of course, that put you as much as forty or fifty feet away from the job and left you blind to the work. I guess progress doesn't absolutely require that you see what you're doing, but still.
I'm sure he did rip those roots to shreds. I'm sure he destroyed a good many lengths of sewer pipe too. Ah well. Here's to Cloyce, the Thomas Edison of the snake world.
Or more honestly, the Rube Goldberg. But I'm sure the old boy had fun tinkering in his laboratory. Uh, garage.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! Get your Irish on. Listen to a few reels, dance a few jigs, and easy on the Guinness and the Jameson's.
Irish music really is good you know. Not just the sing alongs, but the reels too. And other than Danny Boy, they tend to be happy. But I suppose there has to be one cry in your beer song.
Yes, it's fun. But like with so many other fun things, it gets into overkill all too quickly.
This week alone we had Pi Day, March 14, or 3.14. An obvious math pun, following an entire day after 313 Day, March 13, celebrated (if you can call it that) in Detroit because our area code is 313. And everybody knows May 4, or May Fourth, as Star Wars Day. Our own dear Upper Peninsula likes September 6, or 906, since that's da UP's area code.
I'm sure more will be coming out of the woodwork, because that's exactly how these things work. Anyone busy 824? I hear it'll be a blast.
There was an old woman who used to live down the street, I'll call her Mrs. Cloyce just to give her a name, who regularly bugged me brother Phil for help. Now, I'm all for helping someone in need, especially the elderly. Phil is too. Yet Mrs. Cloyce had become extreme in asking for favors. It had become constant.
I don't recall details, only that the bulk of it was nonsense yet difficult stuff which me brother dreaded. He came to loathe seeing Mrs. Cloyce come up the walk.
She began to catch onto that, though. One day after asking Phil for yet another pesky favor Mrs. Cloyce opined, "I bet you'd rather see Death come along than me, ha ha!"
'You aren't far off', thought Phil to himself. Then he went on and helped the old woman.
I think one of the biggest mistakes we make today is the emphasis on feelings over reason. We ignore that feelings cannot be measured, but reason can.
I cannot know the intensity or trustworthiness of what you feel, nor you, me. We simply feel what we feel; in that sense mere feelings are amoral. We can't judge them. They just are what they are.
Yet we can judge reason through logic. We can look at how others act and make judgments for or against it. You might feel justified in lifting that hundred from your brother's wallet, but I can still assert quite rightly that you're stealing. Perhaps you, ahem, feel he owes it to you. Well then, make your case, that I might be able to see that you have one. Yet if all you've got is the feeling you deserved that Franklin, you need to give it back and seek forgiveness.
I believe our modern progressive friends trumpet feelings over reason exactly because feelings left to themselves avoid larceny and any other violations of right, wrong, or general propriety. They want to feel however they want to feel (and act on that) without recrimination.
Just don't tell them how you feel about it. Yes, I'm being snarky.
I am totally ripping off my son's response to a blog I wrote awhile back, lamenting that progressives 'worship' science, because I find his response more apt. Science, or more appropriately scientism, is another tool to alter society and nothing more. The original post is here if you care to reference it.
I agree with your post, but I'm also starting to come to a new conclusion: "science" was only a front, and there are no true science worshipers. Certain people found that "science" would allow them to try to discredit religion (at least in their minds). Evolution? No God! Heliocentrism shows the Sun at the center of the Solar System; therefore the Catholic Church is flawed, and nothing else it says is right!
But now we have moved beyond that, and the idea of science as the worshiping altar is pushed aside because it no longer benefits the current theology (the theology of "Me" or "I Want" or something along those lines). Science teaches us that a biological man is a biological man, and nothing, even the most serious of drug regimens and barbarous body alterations, actually changes that at its core. *Science* tells us that, but we conveniently ignore it. Science teaches us that babies in the womb can think, hear, feel, react, and have emotions (the same emotions we trump as the end-all in today's world), but again we ignore our centuries-old, stalwart champion.Jambalaya. I hadn't had it in ages. Truth is, I only had it once, probably twenty years ago. It was at an event at the Detroit Historical Museum. Why they were hosting an event featuring Cajun foods (or why I was even there) is lost within the misty halls of my memory.
Anyway, they had jambalaya and it was good. A tad on the spicy side, but that's fine. But the bottom line truth is that I hadn't thought a lot about it until yesterday.
It was close to Noon, and all I wanted was something different for lunch. For no better reason that to seek that something, I found myself trolling the aisles of the local supermarket. In the freezer section I stumbled onto single serve microwavable bowls of jambalaya. So I bought one. Why not? If I didn't care for it I was only out $3.79, much less than a fast food lunch these days.
Wow. I'm happy I did. It was rice and okra with pork and smoked sausage and a couple of other vegetables all mixed into a light sauce and boy, was that good. I do believe jambalaya is back on my radar. Of course that old Hank Williams song is now my earworm, but I can live with that. It's a good song.
Sherman used to clean drains. That means that we saw him a lot back in the day; he worked until about 1990. Sherman also used to preface every sentence with the word, see. 'See, I'm doing fine,' he would answer when you asked how he was.
One morning Pops was welding an end on Sherman's cable. When Dad finished he noticed Sherman reaching for the cable as he turned off the welder. "Don't touch that, it's hot!" he warned.
"See, I know it's hot," Sherman answered.
A minute later Dad heard him yelp. He turned to see Sherman rubbing his hand; he had grabbed the hot cable full palm. "Sherman, I just told you that was hot!" Dad admonished him.
"See, I didn't know it was that hot."
Pops went and got the burn ointment from our first aid kit. Squeezing some out of the tube onto the wound, Dad said as Sherman worked the goo into his palm, "Are you going to be okay?"
"See, I'll be fine, Bill. See, I didn't burn it that bad. See, I didn't hold it very long."
I imagine not.
I mentioned yesterday that in the curling bonspiel Friday we won one game and tied the other. Let me tell you, that second game was as tied as tied could be.
The final curling score was 4 - 4. Each team won four ends (ends are the rough equivalent of baseball innings). A single point was scored in each end. Both teams stole an end (a steal in curling is when you score at a least one point without 'hammer' or the last shot of an end) and each scored only one point in the three other ends that they had the hammer. Each team scored the same amount of points in the system used for determining the overall winner of a short bonspiel: 10 points per team for the tie, and one point for each end won for four points apiece, a total of 14 points (1/4 points are allowed for score differential, but we didn't have that). So we also tied the tiebreaker score 14 - 14. And incidentally, although we won our first game our opponents tied their other match.
I can't see how it could have been more tied.
All right now, I'm beginning to grow paranoid. Well, more paranoid, or paranoid in another direction, but that's beside the point.
Remember this and this blog post from not that long ago? I explained how I have been told that I have a distinct voice and laugh which makes me memorable. Well, it's happened again.
I played in a curling tournament in Chatham, Ontario yesterday. I haven't been in the Chatham Granite Club in 6 or 7 years. We placed second with a win and a tie. Beyond that, I had a local come up to me and say, "Good to see you again, Marty! I heard that laugh and knew you were back."
As I've said before, it's great to be recognized and remembered. I suppose I am happy that I can make that much of a (hopefully positive) impression on folks. Still, it can cause a guy to be self conscious.
Will it stop me? Nah. Might as well be known for something.
I might have one of them fish sandwiches from that roast beef place today. Arby's makes a great fish sandwich during Lent, which shows that Catholics still have some pull in our consumerist economy.
It really is good fish, deep fried and crispy. And big: those things are huge. Yep, I think I'll have one today.
I only wish I hadn't thought of it at 4:30 in the morning.
After all these years of having Internet at home (around 30 I would guess) I still haven't gotten into the habit of the Internet as a go to. This after many successful forays onto it for truly useful things and ideas (and a lot of time wasting). It may be information overload in a lot of ways, but there's good things out there.
I've struggled for months - months - trying to figure out the simple task of adding page numbers to my books, so that I might set them up on Amazon by my lonesome (those writings of mine available were not configured by me). I think it's a talent I need to acquire if I'm to write and look professional. But for a half year or better I simply could not get page numbers added to my new books.
This past Monday a thought hit me: are there numbered book templates I might find online? A quick web search for free book templates brought me such a thing in seconds - seconds - and a simple copy and paste along with a few formatting corrections gave me a fully set up book in about an hour. I was happy, yet I felt stupid that I hadn't thought of that before.
The Internet is your friend. If you focus on how it actually helps you.
Being an adult means having a conscience, right? Well thanks to that, I didn't curl this past Monday.
I had been fighting a cold of some sort all weekend. I felt bad on Saturday and really bad on Sunday. Yet by Monday I was coming out of it. I had graduated to feeling 'all right', though weak, still coughing, and with plugged sinuses. But I was going to curl. Yep, I was gonna.
Then along about Noon that voice in my head began taunting. Basically, it was saying if ya don't work ya can't play. I had left the old barn early to rest up for the curling match. But, Marty, if you're too sick to work you're too sick to play. I called me Skip and apologized I wouldn't make it.
Darn conscience. I suppose I shouldn't want to spread illness anyway.
Yeah, let's go with that. It sounds better.
I caught a few minutes of yesterday's Spring Training game between the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox from Lakeland, Florida. The Detroits have spring training in Lakeland. The Lakeland Flying Tigers are a minor league affiliate of their parent club. Their mascot is a tiger named Southpaws.
That tickles me on a couple levels. One, the actual Detroit Tigers mascot is a tiger called Paws. So it makes sense for a team affiliate from Florida, well south of Detroit, to be called Southpaws. Plus, it's a reference to baseball lore. Southpaws are left handed pitchers, because the original tendencies were to have ballparks set up so that batters faced east. Pitchers thus faced west when on the mound, placing their left arms on the south side of their bodies. Southpaws.
So we have Paws and Southpaws. I like it.
It is 2:50 AM as I write. I've been scrolling the Internet looking for nothing in particular, and I found it. An article I just finished claims that we are most likely to die overnight between 3 and 4 in the morning because that's when our bodies are weakest.
It's going to be a long hour, having read that.
About 20 miles out of Detroit on I-96 is Levan Road. The sign for the exit says Levan Rd. There's nothing unusual about that, is there?
Years ago me Grandpa Joe had a delivery driver, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who was a little slow on the uptake. Me Pops one day sent him out with a load of welding equipment intended for a place off Levan in western Wayne County.
About three hours after the scheduled delivery time, the company called asking where it was. This was the time before cell phones, so there was no easy way to track Cloyce. Dad had to wait to hear from him for an explanation.
Cloyce happened to walk into the old barn about ten minutes later anyway. "I couldn't make that delivery, Bill," he said.
"Why not? Pops demanded. "I wrote out exact directions." Surely the old man did, knowing Cloyce.
"Well, Bill, I drove all the way out past Ann Arbor (easily 40 miles beyond target) and I could not find Levanrd." Apparently Dad wrote the abbreviation for road too close to Levan.
With a heavy sigh Dad more precisely explained himself and sent Cloyce back out.
As a salesman, I keep an eye out for trends. For whatever reason, certain things sell at certain times, others at other times, and sometimes things simply come into demand out of the blue.
There is an accessory for the Electric Eel (Electric Eel: for all your drain cleaning needs!) called a feeding tool. It helps 'feed' the steel cable into a pipeline. You get one with every Model C machine purchase. Yet I've never actually sold many of them piecemeal. Indeed I had sold so few that I quit stocking them. Then one random day a random guy asked for one, and I ordered two. One for him, one for stock because, well, why not?
The gentleman picked his up and the other sold soon thereafter. I ordered two more.
Those sold in a New York minute. I ordered two more, which likewise moved out of the old barn in haste. So, methinks, there appears a trend hath developed. Yon feeding tool be in demand. I ordered six. Last May.
If you need a second guess how many I still have in stock today, March 1, 2024, you are denser than granite. I guess trends work in both directions.
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