The answer to the question is: yes.
When a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, it makes a sound.
Sound is the waves which are caused by the fall.
Our ears are only the receptors of sound, not the sound itself.
Annnnd go. I've stirred the pot. Let the debate begin!
Young kids, especially around 4 or 5 years old, can be very literal. It makes sense. They aren't old enough to appreciate nuances such as jokes.
As I sat on the bottom step of my porch handing out candy this past Halloween, a small boy in a serial killer costume approached. He was holding a clearly plastic chainsaw. "I'll give you candy if you please don't hurt me with your saw," I teased.
He stopped and pulled his mask onto the top of his head. "I won't hurt you," he told me with complete sincerity. Holding the chainsaw up for me to examine he continued, "See? It’s just a toy."
"Ahhh," I responded, trying to sound like I was comfortably reassured. It might have been the cutest thing I heard all night.
Wednesday, October 28, marked the end of a personal era. After 55 years, Cosgriff Sales made its last pickup at Electric Eel Manufacturing in Springfield, Ohio. The company is moving production to Niles, Michigan.
No offense to Niles. I'm sure my upcoming journeys there will bring their own enjoyment. There's even a truck stop restaurant in that direction which Dad liked and to which I will surely make routine visits. But I'm going to miss those Springfield trips. I've been making them myself or with me brother Phil, and occasionally with me son Charlie or me son Frank, at least once a month for 13 and a half years. Before that I was there regularly with me Pops, and even a few times with me Grandpa Joe way back (way, way back) when I was a teen. It was almost like old home, seeing the workers there who became friends.
Time marches on. I did allow myself to be a bit sentimental, taking about a dozen pictures in and around the Springfield facility and which I intend to make into an album. Here's one of the last pick up being made in my new old van.
I've often thought of that as the Cosgriff Dock, though I know others have resupplied at that door as well.
I'll miss the place. I'll miss the people. I'll miss the stops along the way. It was a good run.
It's always great to deal with folks who have a sense of humor.
Yesterday I paid a bill over the phone. I had my invoice and customer number right in front of me. After I rattled the numbers off to the woman who answered the call, she pulled everything up on her computer. "So, let's see. We're paying $738.19 today?"
"We are?" I replied with purposely too much enthusiasm. "Thanks!"
The agent burst into laughter. "It is right we get things straight, isn't it? You're paying $738.19 today."
"If you insist," I answered with a chuckle. But she thanked me for giving her a laugh.
I figure the money's due no matter what. Have fun with it.
I took the motor off the frame, and washed all the grime off both. I painted the motor gray and the frame royal blue, just as they painted them at the Eel factory. I rewired it and installed new wheels. All the bolts everywhere on that unit were new. When I was finished with it that baby looked sharp. She was dressed to the nines. I was truly proud of my work. Pops was too. That made me feel very good.
A few days later a regular customer, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, came by. I was busied at some project at a work bench in the middle of the Shop, the old barn where I still work. "Bill,' I heard Cloyce say to my father, "Have you got any used Models Cs?"
My heart sank right to floor. It seeped right through my boots.
You see, Cloyce was a great guy and a good customer. He never debated cost nor asked for better prices. He just bought what he wanted and said thank you. But man oh man, he was one lousy drain cleaner. He lost more cables in more sewers than you might think it possible for any one man to lose. I think he lost more snake cable in a given year than entire companies would in two. He abused his equipment in ways and manners unimaginable, incomprehensible to the rational human mind. In the museum of incompetent plumbers, yes, I mean this, is a solid gold, life size statue of Cloyce. He was simply not good at what he did. It remains a wonder to me how he ever got any jobs. Who, once they had seen his work, would refer him?
And Pops was going to sell him my Model C.
He couldn't not not sell the man the machine. I get that. We were, are still, in the business of selling new and used drain snakes, and Cloyce's money was as good as anyone else's. Plus, his poor skills weren't our fault. The old man had to sell the unit. As he took Cloyce's money me Pops, for likely the only time in his life, looked over at me with a sheepish, embarrassed, pained look which plainly said, 'I'm sorry, son'.
Cloyce wheeled that Eel out the door with a bright smile, while I was truly morose. You know those classic theater masks, the grinning one which represents comedy and the crying one which spoke tragedy? I learned that moment how tragedy felt. My youthful innocence was broken, its tatters strewn across the Shop floor.
Within a month Cloyce brought that Model C into the Shop for a switch or something. The front swivel caster was gone and the frame broken off so that the drive shaft had no support. The paint was scratched and grime covered my first child. I swear it looked up at me in despair and whispered pathetically, "Shoot me."
There's a Monty Python skit - bear with me, Ron - where John Cleese plays an oaf a soccer player who can hardly put a sentence together while Eric Idle is an interviewer trying to get into the intricacies of the game. Cleese answers a question, "I kicked the ball, then there it was, in the back of the net." That was in response to Idle asking about the positioning of the opposing players and blah, blah about what deep strategies led to the goal. It's clear that even Cleese doesn't get it. He's just a guy who scored a goal, a deer in the headlights of a self important reporter.
I feel like the Cleese character these days, when watching sports. When did they become so complicated?
Watching golf early this morning, a replay of an earlier event, the broadcasters were describing a shot where so-and-so was taking advantage of such-and-such by using a club with a 52 degree head angle rather than 51.5, which was surprising considering tons of various other factors including that the club shaft was a rare Uruguayan titanium alloy and it had rained six hours ago in northeast Ohio while a local woman delivered twins in the back of a taxi with the help of a well I won't go into that. All the while I'm thinking, about the golfer, "He hit the ball well."
I see it in other games too. A shortstop throws a batter out at first base and the announcers describe the play as though they're writing War and Peace. Meanwhile I'm slapping my son on the shoulder, shouting, "Did you see that throw?"
All right, players are looking for every possible advantage and reporters want to sound like they know what they're taking about. But it doesn't add a thing to the game for me, and I doubt most others. And I can't help wonder if any of it really makes a difference anyway.
I have this one customer, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who is annoying in small ways. Many small ways. He never does anything so bad as to allow me a reason to throw him out of the Shop bodily. That's an aggravation by itself; you almost want the guy to become outlandish and obnoxious enough that you can tell him to go hell. I'm sure you have such a friend too. Quiet Ron.
I remarked a few weeks ago on re-reading Less Than Words Can Say, a wonderful book on how stupid we've become about language in particular and education in general. One of the main points which the books makes is that we know how to teach, and we know how to learn. Stripped down to the very core, we teach by making folks Sit Down, Shut Up, and Pay Attention.
Why is this so? Because it really isn't that hard to master subject-predicate agreement. Essential scientific principles are pretty straightforward. Axioms of philosophy are readily comprehensible. Theorems in geometry are not difficult to understand. IF you sit down, shut up, and actually pay attention to the subject matter.
Yes, yes, yes, there may be individual, legitimate exceptions which require compassion, charity, and greater consideration. But by and large if you want to learn something you need to sit down, shut up, and pay attention to those who know the subject.
Richard Mitchell, the author of the aforementioned book, argues that we are willfully being stupid about how to teach and learn. I think there's something to that. I think we want (well, some of us, and typically folks who get prestige and money from the rest of us, not incidentally through the force of government) to make what we call education into a grand scheme of virtually religious proportions, understandable only to an elite class of specially deep minded and concerned people. Yet our modern schooling is really mere training, taking on the skills we need to get along in the world. We are not educated into subject-predicate agreement. We are trained to recognize and employ the principles within it so that we may usefully communicate. It is no cosmic ideal.
Education itself? That is something much greater and vastly more profound. It is also something beyond my point today. But I'll get back to it soon. You've been warned.
Perhaps my favorite Irish folk song is Whiskey on a Sunday. You can listen to The Irish Rovers take on the tune here if you like.
Believe it or not, there's a lot more to Irish folk music than The Unicorn. Whiskey on a Sunday is one example of that. Still, irreverent Marty can't help but take a swat at the tune. Maybe that's the Irish in him acting up.
Seth Davy is the main figure in the song. The third verse begins, 'And sad to relate that old Seth Davy died, in Nineteen Hundred and Four,'. Yes, we're supposed to feel pathos then, and I generally do. Indeed I have had a tear come to me eye at that point in the song as it's sung. Yet does that keep me from mockery? No. I sometimes find myself asking, So it would not have been so sad to relate had he died in 1903 or 1905?
I still love the song. Despite me, some days.
I was going to write about Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed this morning. But I'm not, or, at least, I'm only going to use his candidacy as a jumping off point towards something else.
My original intent was to use quotes of his from his past (where else might they be found?) as fodder for why he doesn't deserve my vote. But we all know what would happen next. I would either be ignored, which is nearly the preferred response (though my comments would serve no purpose then), or countered vehemently. "He's retracted that statement!" "He's distanced himself from that!" Yadda yadda. Exactly like every other politician not named Donald Trump would try to do if he/she/they/it felt threatened. Har-umph.
As an aside, one of the things I actually like about Trump is that he bulls forward no matter what, almost as though saying, "Yeah? So what? It's out there, deal with it." I prefer that to dancing around legitimate issues and legitimate questions.
But I digress.
I'm appalled at the idea of again falling into wormholes. It's tiresome. I shouldn't even bother to point out the self-serving and shallow hypocrisy inherent in such things, but I will. What my guy says goes for all times and all places and he's forever an infidel, yet your guy gets a pass. Both sides do it, at least to a degree. It cheapens each.
And it does not help anyone's identification, understanding, or appreciation of the real problems we face. We're all quite adept at seeing the splinter in the other guy's eye yet looking beyond the plank in ours.
Heavy sigh. We need better, but that's the impossible dream, isn't it?
As the great majority of you know, me Grandpa Joe rented welding equipment for many a year. For a lot of them years me Pops was one of his main delivery drivers. Dad used to love sitting in the office shanty on job sites before the day's work began, listening to the war stories and likely offering a few himself.
One day as he was early with a delivery most all of the weldors on hand were in the shanty drinking coffee and talking, having not yet set out to earn their daily bread. The guys were bragging about how much iron they were going to hang once they got started. It was going to be a big, productive day.
The job foreman, whom I'll call Cloyce just to give him a name, sat by silently taking in the revelry. Finally he had heard enough. Turning to Pops he said, overly loud but wanting everyone to hear, "You know, Red (they called me Pops Red when he was younger because his hair was red back then), if these fellas hung as much iron on the job as they did in the shed, we'd be a high-ballin' outfit."
Cloyce was ribbing them but to a point. They were put on notice to live up to their bragging when the work started. Pride can drive a man to a lot of things. One of them is to put up or shut up.
Everyone in Detroit remembers Kirk Gibson punching his fists in the air when his three run shot off Goose Gossage sealed the 1984 World Series for our hometown Detroit Tigers. Some would call it an iconic moment. But what did it actually accomplish? The Tigers were already leading the game 5-4 in the bottom of the eighth and the series 3 games to one. A smarter manager than Dick Williams would have walked Gibson. But who drove in the actual Series winning run? Who was the MVP of that World Series?
You had to look that up didn't you? But aren't those accomplishments really more important than a moment caught on camera when the series was at least arguably already over? Gibson may have been the icing. But he was not the cake.
We're too much for show in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world today. Yet show rarely accomplishes anything. It's the grunts what do that. It's the little things which add up to great things which ultimately matter the most.
Rusty Kuntz and Alan Trammell BTW. You had forgotten that until now I'm sure.
It has been said, and justifiably I readily admit, that I will not try new things. Indeed, it is not unfair to say that I am downright obstinate in refusing to do or try things I have not before tried or did. I like what I like and have never seen the sense of doing different simply to do so.
Yet that doesn't mean I absolutely will not try the new. Why, just a few weeks ago I went to a Banana Ball game and found it very entertaining, enough so that I have already entered the ticket lottery for when they play in Detroit again next season. And this morning I am drinking a coffee called White Heather. It has the flavor of toffee and brown sugar with a hint of butter and salt. And it's good. I would buy it again.
So there, all you Marty naysayers. I will try something new.
But after experiencing two new things in the last few weeks I say, whew! That anything new stuff is off my calendar for a year or better now.
Me Mom and me Pops were out on a road trip one day. They found a nice little diner in a tiny little town and decided to have breakfast. Mom for some reason asked for decaf coffee. Pops wanted the full strength stuff.
About half way through their meal the waitress came around with a coffee pot, as waitresses often will. But all she had with her was a pot of decaf. "You had decaf, right, honey?" she asked Mom. When mom nodded yes, she got her mug filled.
Turning to look at me Pops the waitress said, "But you had regular coffee?"
"That's right," Dad confirmed.
The waitress stared at him for a moment, then responded, "Well, it won't kill ya," and filled his cup with decaf.
Small town diners. Even Pops got a laugh at that.
Remember when I said that I no longer pay my work electric bill online? Well, if not, look here. Electric Company wanted a $9-dollar monthly fee to pay that way. I decided, forget that stuff (me Grandpa Joe used to say stuff rather than the obvious, cruder word), I'll send a check and make you process it. I further would kill every electric appliance or light whenever not absolutely needed, in order to deprive Electric Company of more than my nine bucks.
I suppose you don't actually have to click that link, now that I've summarized the tale after all.
Be that as it may, I decided to see how much my electric bill has dropped since my hissy fit. Lo and behold, in looking over the bills of the last three months, I've saved about two dollars each month since getting out the checkbook. As payments by mail cost me about 90 cents per month, I'm around a buck-ten ahead every time I pay by mail. I figured it would be a wash, but how about that, as my old friend Mel Allen would say.
Yeah, I know Electric Company doesn't care. Yet I'll still call it a win.
Really wasn't sure what to expect going in, but this turned out to be one of the most unique and atmospheric sci-fi stories I've read in a while. The plot unfolds with impressive precision. The author takes time to develop complex, relatable characters whose personal struggles feel deeply grounded even as larger, more menacing forces begin to shift around them. I enjoyed following the main character’s journey as he begins to discover more about himself and his purpose.
So says Nicole about my book A Subtle Armageddon. I was striving, I really had no choice, but to build a world from the ground up, one where learning was possible without overt guidance. I'm quite happy she found it 'unique and atmospheric' with a plot of 'impressive precision'.
Might you feel the same? Look here and see.
You can have fun with tools. You can have a lot of fun with heavy tools, such as a sledgehammer and an ax. Me and me Grandpa Joe proved that one day in dismantling a stove.
Joe had bought this house to fix up and either sell or use as a rental property. It had this monstrous iron stove in the kitchen; I believe the place used to be a social club of some sort which offered meals. Whatever the reason it was there, it was the biggest stove I'd ever seen outside of a restaurant.
What was pretty clear was that it wasn't carried into that kitchen but assembled there. We had no idea how to dismantle it, so we approached the problem the Cosgriff way. We got a twenty pound sledge and a large ax and began hammering and hacking away at the behemoth.
It wasn't long before chunks and slivers of iron were flying all over the place. I was a teenager, a kid who didn't even consider basic safety equipment such as goggles, and God knows the thought never entered Joe's mind. We just had at it, striking at the dragon's maw until there were small enough bits and pieces to carry out of the house and to the scrap yard. Within about a half hour of attacking the thing it was vanquished. It was no more.
Damn, that was fun. One of me best times with me Grandpa Joe.
Getting old means Medicare. Medicare A is what we've paid for all our working lives. Medicare B covers things A doesn't. Then there's, well in my case, anyway, Medicare G, which covers stuff A and B blow off. It costs me $173 a month.
But it's $173 dollars well spent. Yes, it is. Why, I just received a letter from the Medicare G agents informing me that they happily covered my 52-cent co-pay on a recent medical test. Yessir, 52 Lincolns which ain't coming out of my pocket. And all the privilege set me back was $173. A month. That's $2,076 a year.
All right, full disclosure, they've paid for more than that in the year and a half I've been on Medicare, although still far under the yearly sticker price. I just got a kick out of them taking the time to send me a note for their generosity in covering that particular 52 cents for me. They have my back.
I was just watching the intro to a Dragnet episode. You know, the one where Jack Webb tells us all about how great Los Angeles is. He liked to give short tours of the city as he lead into that day's program.
This morning he was talking about the sports scene. There was a shot of the sports arena where the Los Angeles Kings played at the time. Webb explained that they played ice hockey. My question: is that a dated reference? Does anyone say 'ice hockey' anymore?
That's what I got for you today. Enjoy your Friday.
You all know what bounce houses are I'm sure. They're the large, inflated play pens often seen at children's parties. Kids jump up and down in them, caroming off the floor and walls and each other. They're meant to burn all that excess energy out of the young 'uns so they'll fall asleep as soon as they get home.
I happened to catch an episode of the old police procedural Highway Patrol the other morning. If you think Sgt. Joe Friday has a machine gun delivery, Broderick Crawford, the lead in Highway Patrol, puts him to shame. Crawford's delivery is so rapid fire you almost need captions. No one talks that rat-a-tat in real life.
Anyway, Highway Patrol aired in the late 1950s, when vehicles were monstrous land battleships. Not only were they huge, the bounced around as though shock absorbers and springs were an afterthought. It appeared as if the front and rear fenders were bouncing up off the ground whenever a car would stop or turn or even wink at a pothole. Those cars rocked back and forth like a teeter-totter even when slowing to a stop.
"Should we put something on our vehicles to make the ride smoother?" I could imagine an automotive engineer back then ask during R&D.
"Nah," his supervisor might reply. "They're land battleships. Let 'em bounce along the road as though they're really on the high seas."
Watch an episode of that old show. You'll see what I mean.
I made a trip to Electric Eel in Springfield, Ohio yesterday, just one of dozens (maybe a couple hundred) I've made in the last dozen or so years. It was uneventful, which is good. You don't really want eventful road trips as a rule because that nearly always means trouble. About the worst that happened was the sigh moment. Typically, there's one of those per road trip.
Yesterday it happened as I passed a Wendy's in Bellefountaine, Ohio. For whatever reason it popped into my head that one Friday years ago, me and me Pops stopped there for fish sandwiches for lunch. And a Frosty; you gotta have a frosty at Wendy's. Anyway, we actually had stopped at that particular fast food joint several times over the years. And I looked over at it, merely sighing as I drove past.
At this point in my life I figured that me and Pops would be making these trips together regularly. I had in fact resolved that on his next birthday, when he would have turned 78 (that would have been 2014), I was going to screw up my courage and insist that either me or my brother Phil go with him on all road trips. He was going to get the Son Speech, similar to the Doctor Speech we all get after a certain age. You don't need to be traipsing alone all over the country at your age, Pops. You don't need to be trying to lift hundred-pound boxes at all, let alone by yourself, Pops. Me or Phil need to go with you on sales runs.
Obviously enough by now, I never got to make that speech. Maybe it's just as well. I know the old man would have gotten his dander up to hear it. We'd have likely went around and around about it, reasonably politely to be fair and honest, before coming to tepid agreement. But it would have been uncomfortable for all involved.
Instead, I take road trips and see things which remind of old times. Places and haunts which he liked to stop at whether anyone was with him or not. Places I often stop at solely because he would have stopped there.
And I have the sigh moment. Then it's just on to my next destination.
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.
I know it's early. I'll concede that I'm even being, well, just a bit snarky this morning. I even readily admit I am conservative by nature, and while I don't mind calculated aggressiveness, on the whole you should be cautious. You should take what you're given.
After watching the Detroit Lions lose last night to the Carolina Panthers, a team which lost to the Cleveland Browns of all things, I am wondering: are these the same old Lions, shooting themselves in the foot when a golden opportunity knocks? So, I'm going to say something I've held my tongue on for two years now.
Shoulda kicked the field goal.
Lions fans know what I mean.
While channel surfing Friday night, I watched a few minutes of a college football game. On one play, a running back made a pretty good move. Pressed up against a stack of bodies, blockers and tackles frantically trying to shove each other aside, the ball carrier bounced to his left, into an opening. He gained 17 yards before he was brought down.
A nice run, yes. One described by the color commentator as, "He was bottled up, then saw a hole with his vision and hit it for a good gain."
Ah. The football player 'saw' with his 'vision' and had a good run.
An incisive remark, to be sure. I heard it with my hearing, after seeing with my own vision. Then I smelled potato chips with my nose and tasted them with my tongue before chewing them with my mouth. And now I'm thinking (with my brain) that you, too, could be a football commentator.
Ooh boy.
Call me crazy - I'm sure most of you have by now - but some days I do worry that I am losing my mind.
The house is very quiet when I'm home alone during the day, working at my computer and absolutely not playing video poker (why would you think that?). It becomes, as the old trepidation goes, too quiet.
While I was working on my current writing project (and not, I stress, playing poker) I heard what I thought was a noise from the pantry. Great, I think, a critter has gotten into something. Do I have mousetraps? But checking the pantry found no evidence of a tiny rodent invasion.
A few minutes later I heard it again. Further investigation discovered no suspects, no scurrying activity. That's two strikes. At strike three, I'm going to tear the place apart, find that little miscreant, and settle our score.
Of course within a few minutes I hear more squeaking and creaking noises. I rose to storm the pantry, leaving pocket Aces at the table - I mean an incredibly important email unfinished - when I realize that it's the chair at my computer desk. When I shift my weight ever so slightly as I sit, I'm causing the noises myself.
I think I need to keep the radio or TV on as I work from home.
Sometimes it's the little things in life which make a guy happy. Sometimes, in my case, it's very little things.
While out shopping yesterday I came across pickle loaf. It's really just bologna with slivers of pickle and slivers of, oh, what's that stuff, it looks like slivers of red pickle...pimento! That's it. Bologna with pickle and pimento slivers.
Anyway, I hadn't seen it in a long time. That's likely as not because I simply hadn't been looking for it. But yesterday it found me. Of course I had to buy some. And of course I had to have a pickle loaf sandwich as soon as I got home.
And you know what? It did not disappoint. For a few lone minutes in this hectic world, I was a kid again eating the pickle loaf sandwich during school lunch which my mother had packed for me that day. It is sometimes the little things which make your day.
The use of checks has become a very Boomer thing in recent years, as electronic payments have come to the fore. Still, this Boomer, genuflecting to The Future, has been paying most things electronically. Yet typically, I still averaged writing a check a month, for various reasons. Now I write two.
A couple of months ago I went to pay the household bills online. While I was at it I decided to pay the electric bill for the Shop. To my surprise and dismay, though I had paid that bill online for years now, Electric Company would only allow me to do so with a $9 surcharge, apparently because I am a business. By all appearances it isn't something innocuous like a one time set up fee. It's every month I try to pay electronically.
Well, forget that. I wrote them a check and mailed it, and will continue to do so so long as that added charge is demanded. What's more, and although we have turned the power off at the old barn at closing time for as long as I can recall, I now turn it off every time I leave. For example, if running to the hardware, a chore which typically takes about a half hour, I kill the lights. All of them. Even when I'm working I only keep on the ones necessary, such as above my workbench. The far end of the Shop? I turn on those lights only for as long as I need them. The side room we have? Ditto. I've turned back into a Dad about the lights.
The Shop bill is usually around $24, so I know I'm not depriving Electric Company much with my actions. But there's a principle at stake. I ain't paying nine bucks a month, adding around thirty five percent to my bill, for the privilege of giving you my cash, and if I only save a buck turning lights on and off frequently, well, it covers the postage on a check you must now process.
So. There.
The 2026 baseball season is over for the Detroit Tigers. To call it a disappointment feels like understatement. Profound understatement. I don't think I've been this downhearted since the 2006 World Series loss.
There were some good signs. It will be an injustice if Kevin McGonigle is not the American League Rookie of the Year. Hao-yu Lee also had a solid rookie season, and Max Clark has looked good since being called up around mid-year. Dillon Dingler has shown he's an everyday backstop. The team had a couple of feel good moments to boot. Justin Verlander's farewell counts as one, of course, but the emergence of Eduardo Valencia ranks high as well. He spent a lot of time in the minors yet has shown his mettle in the bigs. From a position player standpoint, the future looks good.
Pitching, especially relievers, failed miserably, so we should expect an overhaul in that department. The Tigers lost too many games against division rivals, and that 6-22 month of May alone likely killed the season, although the 3-16 stretch in August, right as they were on the cusp of controlling a playoff spot, cut deep.
They lost too many one run games. Their record was a dismal 19-28 in contests decided by a single score. But how do you improve on that? Even the nerd boys in the sabermetrics office believe that one run wins or losses are basically matters of luck, and they eat numbers like Garfield scarfs lasagna. If they have nothing to offer, what else can be said?
I'll still watch a lot of the playoffs because, hey, it's baseball, and we have a whole 'nother month of games yet. But 26 just seems like a classic 'what if' season for the hometown Nine. They should have been better.
Ah, September. I do love you, and October afterward. Fall is my favorite season. Only I'm not really sure why.
The energized colors on the trees as they change are exhilarating. Crisp fall air is a delight. Hot coffee is tastier, hot cider and hot chocolate wonderful warmers. Pumpkins and harvest feelings, things coming of age, are hints of maturity and grace. Yes, I like all that.
Yet Autumn also means winter is peeking over the shoulder, and I do not like winter at all anymore. Well, fresh snow is pretty, and cleansing of all it covers. Then it becomes dirty and brown and murky and uglier than what it hid. And cold, cold, cold. It all comes after fall, so I should look upon autumn with a fair dread.
I don't. I love it. It helps that I'm not really a fan of summer. Take away baseball and golf and summer would mean nothing to me at all. That means, rather oddly I'll admit, that I find in Spring (other than the beauty of things growing) greater dread. Spring heralds hot and sticky discomfort, and I profoundly dislike heat more than cold. I prefer neither, but that's not an option.
So here it is, my favorite time of the year. Even though I'm not entirely sure why.
I am as big of a free market capitalist as anyone I know. I firmly believe that free market forces, people working and exchanging among themselves with no government interference whatsoever, could cure what ails society much more quickly, efficiently, and especially peacefully than government order and regulation. Still, there are times where I wonder if there is a line in the sand, the other side of which is absurdity.
While at Fenway Park in Boston with me boys recently, we came upon a samples table. They were giving away free small tubes of toothpaste, Dr. Sheffield's Original Toothpaste for what that's worth. Apparently it's a marketing ploy, as Dr. Sheffield's is the official toothpaste of the Boston Red Sox, the baseball nine who call Fenway their home.
Isn't that a bit much? Do major league baseball franchises need official toothpastes? And what's more, we were given samples of four different types. The first was extra whitening; no surprise there. Then there was peppermint, an okay taste, followed by cinnamon, which is beginning to strain the flavor parameters of mouth care yet is still not particularly outside the park.
Outside the park...a little sports humor reference there.
The fourth tube is chocolate flavor. I'm not sure at all that that's an acceptable toothpaste flavor. But more so: I don't really understand why anyone would want or need such a range of dental care products.
There's nothing wrong with any of this of course, other than that it's all rather bizarre. Still, it does leave me to wonder what it might cost me to become the official drain snake salesman of the Detroit Tigers. I have actually sold them snake cables and parts, so the relationship is already established. Could I get a sign on the outfield wall for a reasonable price though?
Me Pops was on a trip one time with an old friend; I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name. While in Philadelphia, they decided to take a tour of the US Mint.
Miraculously, they were able to park within a block. But as they were climbing the steps to the Mint Cloyce remarked, "Bill, should I tell them at the door that I've got my pistol with me?"
Pops stopped in his tracks. After a second or two of thought he explained quickly and quietly, "Okay, Cloyce, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna stand here a minute and talk, pretend we're discussing an issue, act like we forgot something, and then we'll go back to the car. Then we're gonna leave your gun there."
"I don't go nowhere without my gun!" Cloyce responded indignantly.
"Then you ain't going to the US Mint!" Dad said firmly. They got back to the car and drove off.
What a waste of an ideal parking space too.
Schools are in favor of sensitivity and opposed, of course, to insensitivity. In the traditional curriculum there are still some outdated things which cause insensitivity. Historical dates cause insensitivity. The square of the hypotenuse causes callousness. Untempered grammar and spelling produce elitism. The multiplication table can engender inhumanity, and precise diction has been known to produce fascism.
Richard Mitchell, the author of Less Than Words Can Say, wrote those words in 1979. They're on page 90 of that book. They sound prophetic, yet were based on a review of teaching practices way back then.
What do we hear these days? That math is racist. So are speaking and writing well. One might suppose they always have been if you listen to teachers in 2026. They have been trained in this approach for decades now, and kids can't read, write or cipher at alarming rates of ineptitude which have been rolling downhill, building like a snowball since, well, I was in school. We are raising in our public schools a nation of illiterates.
But they feel good about themselves, so it's all right. They are sensitive, whatever that means, about the ills of the world. Never mind that they might actually feel better if they knew things whereby they might be able to do something about them. Yet those are hard to teach. Everyone can get an A in Sensitivity.
The Interim Generation is book three of my Infinity series, and it's getting reviews. Most are good, while others, well, there's this one:
The momentum of the story drew me in fairly quickly. The world building was also handled better than average. Definitely wasn't overburdened with exposition. There were some moments the writing could've been tightened up a little. The author did a good job bringing this dystopian world to life.
What do you think? Should you get a copy of The Interim Generation? The world building is, after all, better than average. And you won't be overburdened with exposition. What more can you ask?
I was looking for something to read yesterday, and nothing seemed to grab my attention. Then I noticed my copy of Less Than Words Can Say by one Richard Mitchell. He is better known, but, sadly, not well enough known, as The Underground Grammarian, under which name he called out poor language from 1976 until 1992. Despite that arguably high-falutin' title, the Underground Grammarian was gold for its insight, humor, and warnings about the power of language.
But I digress. In rereading Less, I rediscovered the irony of insights so incisive as to be laugh out loud. Chastising teachers who decry the need to write well, Mitchell says:
This is, they tell us, an age of technology, and that what we need to know is how to program computers, not how to devise grammatical sentences in orderly sequence. As it happens, computers work by reading and devising grammatical sentences in orderly sequence.
Delightful. I did laugh out loud. Basically, if our computers are to work, our instructions must be grammatically correct, at least in computer language. But can we perform that task if we can't employ good grammar in our own language?
Mitchell's book dwells on how language is used for control, so he has a special vitriol for bureaucrats and lawyers who seem to make a habit of obscuring language as a means of controlling situations. He further despises letter openers such as "You are hearby informed" and "Our records indicate" and "It has been brought to our attention" calling such things the Divine Imperative, words suggesting God Almighty is addressing you. And you best listen. Words used like that are quite successful in their intimidating tone. We dread them.
Yet the best thing which I've reread so far is a fabulous little sentence Mitchell says early on: Words never fail. If they speak reason, reason is passed forward. If they speak nonsense, confusion reigns. In today's society we tend towards the latter. We say less than we can say.
I am only about halfway through but have already resolved to reread this book at least once a year from here out. The only other books I have at this writing put into that category are The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis and Death on a Friday Afternoon by Fr. Richard Neuhaus. We need books like these on our shelves, and I'm sure I'll have more to say about Mitchell in the coming blogs.
Well, well, well. It's early Wednesday morning and I have a blog to write. With no other ideas coming to mind, I'll fall back onto This Day in History.
On September 23, 1779 during the American Revolution ('The Troubles' to you Brits) John Paul Jones uttered his famous "I have not yet begun to fight!" in answer to an English demand that he surrender his ship during a naval engagement.
For you astronomers, on September 23, 1846, the planet Neptune was first spotted.
Mickey Rooney, Julio Iglesias, Ray Charles, and Bruce Springsteen were all born the 23rd.
St. Pio of Pietrelcina, better as Padre Pio, died September 23, 1968. He had the stigmata, the wounds of Christ, on his body.
Lewis and Clark returned to St. Louis from their exploration of the Louisiana Territory September 23, 1806.
Merkle's Boner, a famous baseball mistake, gave the Chicago Cubs the National League Pennant on this day in 1908. It's one of the most famous plays (or non plays) in the sport's history.
There you have it, friends. September 23 in history!
I was lucky enough to see Bananaball in Detroit last weekend. It's baseball played seriously but with added, I'll say, athleticism and sideshow.
There was a lot going on. I found it difficult to watch the actual baseball game because there was almost always something happening in foul territory or in the stands. I'm going to be the old guy and say there were too many distractions. Arguably, it was too much of a good thing. But it was still fun.
They set a two hour limit on the game (though they do their best to play the traditional nine innings), play music all the time (a good mix of old and new), and bench players weave through the crowd for goodwill. In order to keep pace there are no mound visits, batters must stay in the batter's box, and I won't even try to explain all the other rules. Still, one more: if a spectator catches a foul ball it counts as an out. Cute, but I would not like it as a player.
It was pretty obvious there weren't major league players on the field. Though the competition was decent, it was clearly less than even in the low minor leagues. A-ball games show better true baseball.
Pitches were noticeably slow. At least three throws by my count bounced twice between the third baseman and first on routine grounders, and fly balls hit to the outfield tended towards shallow, although there was one home run and another fly to the warning track. The play in itself did not impress.
Still, for a style intended to engage the audience it was worthwhile. On that level, Bananaball certainly works. I'd go again.
Last Tuesday I took a call from a plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who said he needed 4 drain snake cables. "Believe it or not, Cosgriff, my own sewer's plugged, ha, ha!"
"It can happen to any of us, eh, Cloyce? Well, I got plenty, come on by."
"Okay. You gonna be in Friday?"
"Well, yes."
"Great. See you then, Cosgriff." You do you, Cloyce, but when my sewer has backed up, ASAP isn't quick enough to get it open. But, fine, if that suits you.
Friday morning he called back. "Can I get those cables at 4, Cosgriff?"
"Absolutely."
"Cool. See you then"
Cloyce calls at three. "I ain't gonna make it. Can we meet next week?"
"It would have to be Tuesday. I'm not available Monday."
"Tuesday's good, Cosgriff."
We'll see if he shows. I'm surprised Mrs. Cloyce isn't on his case. Either way, I don't get it. When there's nasty sewer water on my basement floor, it's gotta go, right now kapow. But, you do you, Cloyce.
But like anything else it requires service from time to time. After a lot of use the washers inside the unit wear so that it won't hold pressure, for example. There's a repair kit available for when this happens.
One day a customer called and explained his trouble and I said he needed that kit. He asked if I'd order it and call him when it arrived. Fair enough; we do that regularly. I told him sure.
When the Ram repair kit came a day or two later I called the guy to let him know it was in. Thanks, he said, but he was by then in the middle of a large plumbing job and couldn't get to my Shop for a couple days. No problem, I replied, we'd hold it for him.
As I hung up the phone I sat and I looked at the kit. O'er the Ram parts we watch, I thought.
Not bad. Not bad at all. To me.
The 8 foot long drain cleaning cables I sell come in barrels of 20. At just about a pound a foot, that's 160 pounds each. At 66, I appreciate help lifting them into the new old van. Indeed, it's almost a necessity, though I can manage it if I must.
Wednesday last I went to Electric Eel (Electric Eel: for all your drain cleaning needs) and was happy to have me brother Phil along. But I did learn that when you ask a question, it's really important to wait for the answer.
I rolled a barrel up to the side door of the van and leaned it backwards for us to lift. As we each bent down opposite one another and began to take hold of the barrel I asked, "Ready?" and immediately started to lift.
"No," Phil replied. Consequently, I nearly heaved myself into a hernia. Fortunately, my hands just slipped off the barrel, and I was able to regain my balance with one backward step.
Have a question for someone? Wait. For. The. Reply. Your back will appreciate it.
They can't leave anything alone, can they? Hollywood won't respect established source material, and I am sick of it.
The latest travesty comes from a reboot of the famed and well-loved Narnia children's books written by C. S. Lewis. Aslan, a male lion and obvious Christ figure, is the penultimate character in the stories, the true guiding light. The fifth title in the series, and my second favorite (after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which begins the Narnia tales), The Magician's Nephew, was lined up for being put on film. I was genuinely excited.
And then they cast Meryl Steep to voice Aslan. After promising to be true to the original books too.
You want to know why I don't care, liberal, progressive friends, about President Trump seeking to rename lakes and mountains? You have no respect yourselves for what has been well established for years, but you have the gall to be righteously indignant over Lake America or the Gulf of America? It dirties your mantle.
A female actor, even a well-known and respected one, voicing a male Christ figure. A character created by a serious, traditional Christian who surely would object. Damn your characters and intentions, Lewis. We know better how to express your meaning. That's Hollywood's modus operandi.
Well, express away. You won't do it on my dime, a dime you certainly would have gotten had you played it right. The bulk of Lewis readers and Narnia fans won't pony up either, I'm sure. Of course, you'll only argue Narnia wasn't really marketable, or that fans like me are somehow sexist or palpably self righteous ourselves. Har-umph. You might try an iota of introspection. Just one little bit.
Instead, no respect for fans or original sources. You're better than them and that, aren't you?
The things me Grandpa Joe used to have us do at the old barn make me shake my head these days. At the time I didn't think much about it, but looking back, I often wonder why.
The gasoline powered welding machines he had had long side panels which folded upwards to allow access to the engine and welding unit. These panels (which were as I recall where about four foot in length) had what amounted to long hinges. That they required occasional greasing I get. Joe did that with old oil.
We changed the oil in our own cars back then, and the engines on the welders needed changing too of course. Joe would save all the old oil and have teens like me at the time paint the gray, sticky goo across and into the hinges.
Suffice it to say, it left you smelling like oil. It got oil all over everything: your clothes, the entirety of the machine, and a lot on the cement. For days afterwards you would get a light spray of oil when opening a panel on the machine. It was simply one big, slick, greasy mess.
I understand his reasoning. He felt the oil penetrated well, that it worked itself more into the joints. But thinking back on it, I have to believe there were actual penetrating oils which might have been less hassle: WD-40 or something. But back then I was only a 14 year old doing as he was told. Thinking wasn't in my job description. Joe did that for me...for whatever that's worth.
Other than for the sake of the exercise itself, one thing I try to do while walking is to greet everyone I meet. It's interesting that a simple 'good morning' can appear to make other folks smile. I can't tell you how many people approach where you can see they're keeping their heads down, unsure whether they should make contact. Then I say "Good Morning!" and they invariably smile and say it back. I like to think it's good for us both.
To be sure, some do not respond, or respond surly. Yet I try not to let that bother me. I don't know what's on their minds or how their lives have been lately, so why make a big deal of it? Even if they are surly by nature, my good morning certainly can't hurt.
It all actually makes my walks better. I've never been much on psychology but I can see that when we choose a good attitude we tend to develop one. With that in mind I say to all of you out there, Good Morning!
Or good afternoon if you don't see this until then.
Just when you think it's safe to go outside...
I was diagnosed with Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, or maybe Meniere's Disease, or something, about ten years ago. Call it what you will, what it means is that I get dizzy and they don't know why.
I haven't had a major episode in several years. I had hoped it was in my past. I take vitamin D as recommended, and do the exercises, and hydrate, just like I'm supposed to. Then, around four in the morning today, I was sliding along the wall to get to the bathroom. Yes, I'm old too.
This is not fun.
The Lindsay Clancy trial has brought about strong emotions, and understandably. There are serious and profound issues of justice involved, issues of basic right and wrong, and none are to be taken lightly. We must be able to speak out; we must be able to say things which need saying, even to be strident and emphatic. Justice requires that we draw a hard line.
But it does not require casual, flippant, mean-spirited comments. Indeed, justice condemns them. There are things you simply cannot say or do.
We must never, ever, under any circumstances, wish or presume Hell on anyone. Holy Mother Church has named many Saints. She has never proclaimed anyone to be in or deserving of Hell. Not even Judas Iscariot. If the Bride of Christ will not do it, neither may we. No matter what.
We must never, ever, under any circumstances, encourage violence against the person. We must not, for example, tell someone to kill themselves, no matter how heinous the acts they commit. It's just plain wrong.
Christian charity is required of all of us, at all times. This may be most necessary when the most important questions are at play. For while we may be, and perhaps ought to be, strident, we may never become subhuman. Or act as though others are.
The traffic light caught me as I made a Michigan left on Telegraph Road in Taylor yesterday. As it happened, directly across from me as I waited I saw a family restaurant which used to be a Denny's. It was a Denny's when I was in high school back in the seventies (the NINETEEN seventies, just to clarify). My friends and I back then ate there with some modest regularity.
One such time, six of us stopped there on a Saturday night after a movie for a late dinner. We ordered food and pop. Of course, with six people there were orders for a few different types of pop: Coke, Dr. Pepper, and likely even a Diet Pepsi were in the mix. The waitress as was the norm brought our drinks first.
Only she had apparently forgotten who ordered what and what was what. She had too neglected to somehow mark them as some servers did even then, with two straws for the Coke, one for the Dr. Pepper, and so forth. So arriving at our booth, the young woman improvised. She stuck her nose almost into a pop, snorted loudly and, deciding the first was a Coke, handed it to one of us who ordered one. Then she snorted the next, another Coke, and set it before the next of us, then likewise determined which was the Dr. Pepper and handed it out.
Caught between silent snickering and uproarious laughter, we did what teenage boys would naturally do. We laughed uproariously. The girl looked at us as if we were insane and asked if everything was okay.
It more than was. In fact, her entertainment was better than the movie we had seen. It brought a whole new meaning to snorting coke.
Jeffrey Dahmer. Ted Bundy. David Berkowitz. Charles Manson. And yes, yes I am. I'm about to add Lindsay Clancy to this list.
I'll be blunt: you have to have at least a touch of insanity to commit gruesome murder. Every person on that list demonstrated a degree of it, at times to reprehensible proportions. Ted Bundy violated the corpses of his victims until they were too decomposed to be of any use for his wicked desires. Berkowitz thought, if we can take him at his word, a dog from Satan was ordering him to kill. Charles Manson? He clearly broke the code of the Beatles' White Album to gain instruction. You get the point.
Lindsay Clancy systematically executed her three small children. She clearly put a lot of thought into it. Was she insane? I'm not sure if or how much that matters.
The men on this list were put to death, or, at least, institutionalized for life. Jurors created no excuses for them. Yet "He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children," said one Clancy juror, knocking the holdout juror who would not grant a not guilty verdict. That statement itself is insane. She couldn't hear the profound stupidity in what she was saying?
Another juror said the holdout couldn't point to one piece of evidence for a guilty verdict. Does Lindsay murdered her children not count? Again, an insane comment.
This type of dismissal of murder one worries me more about the future of humanity than the Iran War, Donald Trump or AOC, homelessness and many other societal ills. A segment of society is trying to defend murder based on mental health. Never mind that thousands of women who suffered post-partum depression did not kill their babies. Lindsay should not get excused for that. What kind of jury pool do we have when folks think that way? Are any of us safe when and if such an attitude towards very basic questions of justice permeates society?
Did you notice she wasn't quite so successful at killing herself? Yet she was a nurse. She surely knew how to accomplish that. If she actually meant to. Yes, I think her attempt at suicide a rather obvious subterfuge.
Bundy got the chair. Manson died in prison. Clancy should be in jail or confined to a mental institution. For life. An overwrought sympathy for her dilemma if, and that's a big if, she really was momentarily crazy, is a denial of justice to her children, and thoroughly despicable.
This past weekend was a great one, for me anyway. My sons and I spent it in Cleveland, Ohio, where there was more to do that I had expected.
For starters, we picked the right baseball game to attend. The tumbling Detroit Tigers lost three of four to Cleveland, but won Saturday night 6-0, the game we saw. I picked up another MLB hat, and the Cleveland home cap is a nice one. It will see the light of day from time to time as I try to rotate my baseball hats; no point having them if all they do is sit in boxes.
Sunday we saw the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of my favorite bands, Paul McCartney and Wings, were the centerpiece display, so it was pretty cool to view that retrospective along with all the other exhibits. There was even a chance to vote on the 2027 inductees to the Hall. I voted for Weird Al Yankovic. He deserves it. I mean it.
The Hall is right on Lake Erie, and as it happened there was an air show. After the Hall, we were treated to the Blue Angels, the US Navy's tactical flying squad. Very impressive, close quarters formations. Those pilots must have nerves of steel.
We ended the main part of our visit watching Coyote vs. Acme at a restored theater (The Capitol) just off downtown. A great place to see a movie, and Coyote vs. Acme, about Wile E Coyote suing the ACME corporation for its defective products (anyone who has seen the old Warner Brothers cartoons know ACME) was worthy of the hype. I laughed out loud often.
As always seems to be the case, it was over all too soon. C'est la vie. We'll just have to improve on it next year.
As I picked up my rental car the other day, I dutifully offered a credit card and my driver's license to the young woman at the counter. "Hey! We have the same birthday!"
"You're 66?" I exclaimed.
She did not find the joke as funny as I did...
An Amazon reader mentioned this about my book A Subtle Armageddon:
What I really enjoyed about the book was Mr. Cosgriff’s attention to detail. I could feel the things the man was experiencing for the first time. The way he described the man tasting an apple and drinking water for the first time was written really well. I thoroughly enjoyed man’s first encounter with wine! I’m a true crime/cozy mystery buff but I’m telling you, this book did not disappoint.
Thank you, dear reader! That's one of the points I want to get across. This last man on Earth begins with a total lack of experience of anything. Neither the world of the mind nor the physical world have any meaning to him as his journey begins. I want you to feel what he's feeling as he discovers the things around him, things we take for granted. yet what if we were to experience them for the first time? What would that apple taste like? What would sunrise and sunset mean to him as he saw the first of each? How could these experiences create a fully human being out of him?
Intrigued? Look here for the answers to these and other important questions.
I began to expound about English grammar. She listened quietly and wrote a couple of notes as I went along. After a minute of two she took a pinch, literally a pinch, hardly enough to call a crumb, off of her donut and ate it. I thought quietly to myself, and very calmly, 'Take a bite of the donut'.
I continued with my lecture. Before long the young lady had another infinitesimal bit of her donut, then a tiny, bare, meager sip at her coffee. 'Eat the donut,' I said to myself, a little more encouragingly.
Rules of the comma were the rule of the day, so I pressed on. She took another vague nip of her pastry. 'Take a bite of the donut,' said Marty to himself, becoming perturbed at her manner of consumption.
After an explanation of comma rule three and a note about such, another pinch of donut. 'Take. A bite. Of your donut,' I thought emphatically. By then it looked as though a mouse had been nibbling at it rather than a human being eating it.
Comma rule five followed comma rule four. Pick, pick, pick at the donut. She wasn't eating the doughy ring so much as slow torturing it. That pastry was undergoing a horrible, painful death. My pulse raced; a drip of sweat formed on my forehead. My blood pressure rose volcanically. In my mind I was yelling, 'For the love of all that's good and holy in this world, take a bite out of that stupid donut!
The math instructor appeared in the doorway. We tagged teamed our classes and she had arrived to do a math review. I finished up, gave a homework assignment, and rose to go to the other room to talk about the comma there. As I made my exit I took a furtive glance over my shoulder. The young woman had just consumed another atom of her snack.
'Take an actual bite out of that donut,' the math teacher thought, with a touch of anxiety. I could see it in her eyes.
Everything, it seems, is a catastrophe these days. But is the modern world really that much different than the worlds left to history?
To be sure, there are superficial differences, and I don't mean superficial as unimportant. I mean it as not different in a substantial way. The atomic bomb is really only 'one more terrible way to die in a world filled with terrible ways to die' said the writer C. S. Lewis. I just finished a book about Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and believe me, many of those soldiers died horrible, gruesome deaths. My point is that scale doesn't necessarily add to substance. Men have been horrible to other men pretty much forever.
It will continue. There is no antidote, no way to prevent abominations of any sort. That's not to say that we shouldn't try. But even if we could prevent evil in one area, it's going to happen in another. In no way might we anticipate where the next awful thing will appear. Quite bluntly and, I will add, obviously, we do not have the capability to see the future. We only have the evidence of human failure, which points to continuing failure.
I think the problem, and I do look at it as a problem, is the furious rush of bad things which inundate our world. We hear about everything that happens almost instantaneously. It makes the world appear worse. Most of the time it's bad news because that sells, another curse which always is with us. The spigot ought to be turned off, if for no other reason that it isn't good for our collective or individual mental health.
There will always be, as me Grandpa Joe might say, the next catastastroke. I rather believe the best we can do is do right in our own lives, help others when we can, and not fret too much about the rest. You weren't born to save the world. You were born, if I might co-opt Jordan Peterson, to clean your room. Seeing to yourself might just be the best way to fix the world.
Ah, Facebook. You do encourage folks to get lathered up about trivialities.
Almost every day lately I've seen memes which hammer at the onrushing autumn and it's mavens who love pumpkin spice everything. It's not unlike those (one of whom might be me) who lament Christmas displays being raised in mid-October, nosing out Halloween when it's still two weeks away. "Summer isn't over until September 22!" one friend, or, more to the point, one friend's meme yelled. "Put your pumpkin spice lattes away while I have another margarita!" Ah, hilarity.
But I've noticed that weathermen say something different. They say that fall begins September 1st. Meteorological fall begins today. We are, to those stout professionals, at this very minute already in autumn.
There, I've sold both sides ammunition. Entertain me. Start the Pumpkin Spice Wars.
The Rosary is a set of prayers widely said by Catholics. It is made up of traditional prayers well known to most: The Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be, said in a particular sequence.
But there are variations. Most folks, when they say prayers, say them with a certain pacing. 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee'. So it is with the Rosary generally.
Yet me Pops, having grown up in a parish staffed by Dominican priests, always said there were Rosaries, and then there was the Dominican Rosary. It was said very, very fast, almost at a machine gun rate. HailMaryfullofgracetheLordiswiththeblessedartThouamongsywomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombJesus.
Could you follow that? Then you might be a Dominican.
The sectional drain snake cables which I sell come in large barrels. They're maybe three feet high and about two feet wide. They make great garbage cans once I've sold the cables, as they're just about the ideal size for 33 gallon trash bags. I have a couple in the Shop set aside for that purpose.
Once a plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, came down from Saginaw to buy some cables. He paid me, and then grabbed a barrel. "What do you think you're doing?" I demanded.
"I'm loading my barrel, Marty," a confused and somewhat annoyed Cloyce responded.
"Well, if you really want to drive my trash to Saginaw, Cloyce, who am I to deny you the pleasure?" I then explained what he was doing, latching onto the first barrel he saw thinking it filled with sectional cables. Peals of laughter and much knee slapping then rang throughout the old barn.
Daniel, a reviewer, says this about my book David Gideon:
Hands down one of the best books I’ve read in a while! This book just continues to captivate me and I’m always left wanting more. There’s so much raw emotion and the plot pulls you in quickly. If you like themes of this type of book , rewriting history, and solid character development pick this up now and you won’t regret it!
I must say an emphatic thank you to Daniel. Such encouraging words are heart warming, to say the least.
Would Charles Martin Cosgriff's novel David Gideon leave you hungry for me? Find out here. Why? Because maybe Daniel's onto something.
Yes, I know I said just this past Sunday that I loathe commenting on social issues these days, yet here I am again. C'est la guerre.
The WNBA thing recalls, for quite obvious reasons, questions of women's rights. But see here: if you don't know what a woman is, how can you speak of women's rights? All talk of women's rights is only just so much nonsense, complete and utter nonsense in fact, if you don't or can't know what a woman is.
Human rights presume human beings. Property rights presume property. It would be indelibly and profoundly stupid, indeed incomprehensible, to argue for property rights if no such things as property or ownership existed and could be defined in language understandable by all. Likewise, if you don't know what a woman is, what are you arguing for? What rights can possibly exist within the indefinite?
If you don't know what a woman is you cannot speak of women's rights, precisely because such things do not exist if there aren't women. Responding, as many of our progressive friends do, that a woman is whatever she says she is, is not an answer. It's begging the question and, quite frankly, cannot produce intelligent conversation. It's deflection, a shallow debater's trick to stymie any useful conclusion. Tell me what a woman is and then we can speak of her rights. Until then, you're just wasting your breath and my time.
Under doctor's orders, I am resolved to try to eat better. Let's see how long this lasts.
Now, to be fair to me, a few years ago when I embarked on a similar voyage I actually did manage to lose twenty pounds and drop my blood pressure thirty eight points. So hey, it can happen. Deep within my being is some semblance of willpower.
Last Friday I was heading into my local supermarket determined to get fried fish from their deli as my lunch. Then that lurking spirit of will crept up. Passing the deli counter I approached the fresh fruit, where some reasonably priced fruit salads were on display. The one I selected had a mixture of watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew, obvious through the plastic container. The bottom layer seemed to me to be black olives. That struck me as odd, olives in a fruit salad. But I like black olives, so I bought it.
Once home and checking email, I ate the fruit rather quickly and went after an olive. The sweet taste informed me that the black olives were in fact grapes.
It all makes sense to me now. Fruit salad wouldn't have any bit of vegetable, would it?
Long ago, I decided to hold back on political and social commentary in this here blog. Writing lighter stuff was more fun, it did not get one drawn into tedious arguments, and truly helps a body stay mentally healthy. But, damn, sometimes staying away is a hard pledge to keep.
Take the entire fiasco surrounding the WNBA, the Women's National Basketball Association. I'm going to cut right to the chase: we all know what a woman is, and to argue anything contrary is simply intellectual dishonesty. Yet there are those who try. That's worse than not being honest. I'm tempted to say they are flat out liars.
But here's this women's group, with the term women all over the place, and they can't make up their mind what it means? Hogwash. They don't want to make up their minds. They don't want to make a definitive statement. If they actually affirm what a woman is, they can't support other things which they very much want to aggrandize.
Then two biological men call their bluff. Well, good for them.
I know it's a grandstand play on their part, but so what? Make the WNBA say what a woman is, or make them live their creed (whatever the hell it is). Make them commit, or be, heh, heh, committed. Live your dream right down to its logical conclusion, ladies, or admit what is patently obvious to all. Stop being the emperor in new clothes. Start being rational human beings.
Here were go again! Some kind observations about my book The Interim Generation:
Writersive on Amazon says: I mistakenly got the third book first but to my surprise it reads well as a standalone. I really love the engaging concept and captivating storyline. I'm hooked! Definitely getting the earlier 2 books for sure!
Why thank you! I'm certainly okay with that approach, especially as I try to style my books as stand alones!
See more about The Interim Generation: Interim
Josh offers this about David Gideon: This book truly is a very entertaining literary book. The story really is quite creative and illustrates the life of a fictional character named David, who apparently had a wide arrange of professions over his lifetime. Overall the story highlights different elements of suspense, drama, intrigue, and even inspires leadership. Leadership is actually one of the big qualities that the main character begins to recognize in himself. Overall a very satisfying read!
Check out what others are saying: DG
I'm really, really happy with the progress of my writings. Thank you all!
Posts
All Comments
