President Bush is in Mississippi and Louisiana this week, making Katrina anniversary appearances, but it doesn’t count.
When it did count, or could have counted, a year ago, the president was elsewhere.
On Saturday, Aug. 27, 2005, as national television watched Katrina spinning up to full strength in the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said that, in a worst-case scenario, storm surge would sweep past the levees and flood the city with 18 feet of water. Nagin was exploring the idea of ordering a mandatory evacuation. Making matters worse, at least 100,000 people in the city lacked the transportation to get out of town. Nagin said the Superdome might be used as a shelter of last resort for people who had no cars, with city bus pick-up points around New Orleans. “This is not a test,” Nagin said. “This is the real deal.”
On Sunday, Aug. 28, Mayor Nagin said, “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.” Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. In Crawford, Texas, at the Vacation White House, President Bush declared a state of emergency for the Gulf Coast, an action that cleared the way for immediate federal aid. “We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities,” he said. The president participated in a videoconference with disaster management officials, and he spoke by telephone with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. FEMA director Michael Brown took up a position in Baton Rouge, north of New Orleans. FEMA started to position water, ice and military rations to points in the Southeast. Thousands of New Orleans residents went to the Superdome.
On Monday, Aug. 29, the hurricane made landfall south of New Orleans at 6 a.m. NBC’s Brian Williams reported from inside the Superdome as winds and rain penetrated its roof. A levee was reported breached, and flood waters gushed into the city. President Bush was flying from Texas to California, where he made a speech on the new Medicare program at a senior center in Rancho Cucamonga. He and Mrs. Bush then flew to the North Island Navy base in Coronado in the afternoon and rode in a motorcade to the Hotel del Coronado.
On Tuesday morning, Aug. 30, 80 percent of New Orleans was under water after multiple levee failures. President Bush made a speech at North Island Naval Air Station in which he compared the Iraq war to World War II. The media focus was almost completely on the New Orleans disaster. “The scope of the catastrophe caught the city by surprise,” reported The New York Times. “A certainly sense of relief that was felt on Monday afternoon, after the eye of the storm swept east of New Orleans, proved cruelly illusory, as authorities and residents woke up Tuesday to a more horrifying result than had been anticipated.” “The magnitude of the situation is untenable,” said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. “It’s just heartbreaking.” During the day, President Bush said he would cut short his vacation and fly back to Washington. He left San Diego and flew back to Crawford.
On Wednesday, Aug. 31, looting was widespread in New Orleans and the atmosphere increasingly hostile. Some of the looting was of emergency supplies. Food, water and ice were not reaching refugees stranded in New Orleans. Reports from the Superdome were horrifying. “A major American city all but disintegrated yesterday,” said the AP. President Bush departed Waco, Texas, in Air Force One, instructing the pilot to overfly New Orleans and the Gulf Coast devastation. A photo, now famous, is taken of the president looking out of the airplane’s window at the wreckage. The plane continues on to Washington, D.C., where the president later said, “We’re dealing with one of the worst national disasters in our nation’s history. I’m confident that with time you’ll get your life back in order, new communities will flourish, the great city of New Orleans will get back on its feet and America will be a stronger place for it.”
Thursday morning, Sept. 1, the AP reported that “Criticism of the federal response to the most sweeping natural disaster in U.S. history rose to a fever pitch. Some who survived Katrina’s assault Monday died of neglect in the ruins of their homes, on city streets and at New Orleans’ Superdome and convention center.” New Orleans mayor Nagin issued “a desperate SOS.” The White House announced Bush would tour the area Friday.
On Friday morning, Sept. 2, President Bush flew on Air Force One into Mobile Regional Airport: At a briefing there, he spoke the famous line to FEMA director Michael Brown: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
The president toured sites in Alabama and Mississippi and was driven through New Orleans. But he was a day late and a dollar short. The time for him to be on the ground in New Orleans was Tuesday, or at the latest, Wednesday morning. He may not have actually been able to achieve anything, but he would have at least been perceived as doing something, and that would have made all the difference, to us, and to him. Now, a year later, the world might be a different place. But it’s not.
August 29, 2006
August 26, 2006
The 9/11 Comic Book
Texans of my generation, looking at the “9-11 Comic Book,” will instantly remember their 7th grade Texas History class. A comic book was used then, too, to teach history.
The comic book depicted the struggles in 1836, at the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto, that brought about the defeat of Santa Anna’s armies that won independence for Texas from Mexico. I don’t remember how the book was bound, or presented, but the pages looked just like the pages of a comic book you would buy at the drugstore.
As far as I know, the information was factual, but obviously the action in the drawings was, by definition, dramatized, simply by bringing the events “to life.” We proceeded through graphic scenes of battle, and preparations for battle, that were seen only by people who were actually there.
I liked the book. It was as professionally drawn as any commercial comic book you could buy. The Texans were portrayed as the good guys, and the Mexicans were the bad guys, the same bias that ultimately came through in print texts, though it became much more vivid in comic book form. I’m sure there is an archive of complaints about that, and I have a query in to the Texas State Historical Association.
Also included were the typical sound effects (“Blam!” “Boom!” “Whoosh!”) common to commercial comic books. I don’t remember any objections to that at the time – we were, after all, reading the book under the direction of educational professionals – and we had all seen and heard similar sound recreations in the movie theaters.
I have already ordered a copy of the 9-11 book, real name “The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation,” by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. If you want to look at it, slate.com is excerpting it, a chapter a day, until Sept. 7. It is definitely a comic book, very well done, but with liberties of style that are raising the question, “Should they be doing this?” Bringing to dramatized life events that occurred in 1836 are one thing, but bringing to dramatized life the battle to take back Flight 93 is something else.
Yes, there are film and video interpretations of that battle, but people are acclimated to seeing drama on a screen one minute, and then allowing that same screen to show them comedy. Our expectations of comic books are less flexible. Unless, of course, you were a Texan in a 7th-grade Texas History class in the 1950s. I realize that citing the Texas educational system does not amount to an overwhelming endorsement for teaching history in comic books, but it has provided that demographic specific flexibility, that others won’t have, when they look at the 9-11 book for the first time.
The comic book simplifies what happened, and that could be interpreted as disrespect. It is also, for better or worse, becoming typical of how Americans receive all their information: there is a short, visual, simplified version, and a long, print version that is as complex as the subject matter requires. Right now, we see the short, visual version on television, with the tease at the end, “For more about this story, go to our Website at www.cbs.com.” At the Website is the long, complex, print version. Both stories have been written by the same reporter. This semester, in my classrooms, as in all the semesters for the last three or four years, I will teach my journalism students how to write both the visual and print stories, because they won’t get hired anywhere if they don’t know how to do both. In fact, pretty soon, the visual (TV) and print (newspapers) mediums will merge, the TV remote will become a mouse also, and at the end of the visual story on the screen, there won’t be a tease, but a link directly to the Website.
I think this is a good thing. It better be, because it is inevitable. I think it is good because the short, visual version always lacks depth. You obtain depth through the print version. Linking them makes perfect sense. That’s why I think the 9-11 comic book is legitimate, and valuable. It is the short, simplified visual version of the longer, extremely complex, print version that, for the time being, is the document of record of an event that we will be a long time understanding.
The comic book depicted the struggles in 1836, at the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto, that brought about the defeat of Santa Anna’s armies that won independence for Texas from Mexico. I don’t remember how the book was bound, or presented, but the pages looked just like the pages of a comic book you would buy at the drugstore.
As far as I know, the information was factual, but obviously the action in the drawings was, by definition, dramatized, simply by bringing the events “to life.” We proceeded through graphic scenes of battle, and preparations for battle, that were seen only by people who were actually there.
I liked the book. It was as professionally drawn as any commercial comic book you could buy. The Texans were portrayed as the good guys, and the Mexicans were the bad guys, the same bias that ultimately came through in print texts, though it became much more vivid in comic book form. I’m sure there is an archive of complaints about that, and I have a query in to the Texas State Historical Association.
Also included were the typical sound effects (“Blam!” “Boom!” “Whoosh!”) common to commercial comic books. I don’t remember any objections to that at the time – we were, after all, reading the book under the direction of educational professionals – and we had all seen and heard similar sound recreations in the movie theaters.
I have already ordered a copy of the 9-11 book, real name “The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation,” by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon. If you want to look at it, slate.com is excerpting it, a chapter a day, until Sept. 7. It is definitely a comic book, very well done, but with liberties of style that are raising the question, “Should they be doing this?” Bringing to dramatized life events that occurred in 1836 are one thing, but bringing to dramatized life the battle to take back Flight 93 is something else.
Yes, there are film and video interpretations of that battle, but people are acclimated to seeing drama on a screen one minute, and then allowing that same screen to show them comedy. Our expectations of comic books are less flexible. Unless, of course, you were a Texan in a 7th-grade Texas History class in the 1950s. I realize that citing the Texas educational system does not amount to an overwhelming endorsement for teaching history in comic books, but it has provided that demographic specific flexibility, that others won’t have, when they look at the 9-11 book for the first time.
The comic book simplifies what happened, and that could be interpreted as disrespect. It is also, for better or worse, becoming typical of how Americans receive all their information: there is a short, visual, simplified version, and a long, print version that is as complex as the subject matter requires. Right now, we see the short, visual version on television, with the tease at the end, “For more about this story, go to our Website at www.cbs.com.” At the Website is the long, complex, print version. Both stories have been written by the same reporter. This semester, in my classrooms, as in all the semesters for the last three or four years, I will teach my journalism students how to write both the visual and print stories, because they won’t get hired anywhere if they don’t know how to do both. In fact, pretty soon, the visual (TV) and print (newspapers) mediums will merge, the TV remote will become a mouse also, and at the end of the visual story on the screen, there won’t be a tease, but a link directly to the Website.
I think this is a good thing. It better be, because it is inevitable. I think it is good because the short, visual version always lacks depth. You obtain depth through the print version. Linking them makes perfect sense. That’s why I think the 9-11 comic book is legitimate, and valuable. It is the short, simplified visual version of the longer, extremely complex, print version that, for the time being, is the document of record of an event that we will be a long time understanding.
August 24, 2006
Accepting the possible
You take your mentors where you find them. It was a turkey buzzard, minding his own business, who made me see that anything is possible.
I thought he was a condor. Huge, black bird, circling and soaring in a hot midday sky around and above our house, several years ago. I was impressed that I might be looking at a condor, a rare bird to which much symbolism is attached. When I spotted him, I thought that some mechanics of symbolism might be in place, guiding him to this house, where I might see him.
Such is vanity. I felt so special that I went inside to telephone the zoo, to report a sighting of this endangered creature far from his natural mountain habitat.
“Probably just a turkey buzzard,” said the voice from the zoo. “We get calls like this all the time. Does he have an ugly head?”
I couldn’t answer that question. I found the binoculars, took them outside, and found the bird, ranging back and forth not more than 200 or 300 yards above and beyond our deck on the hillside, and not more than a quarter-mile to either side. Yes, he had an ugly head, red and wormlike. I watched him anyway. Watched him for a couple of days. He had the span and the presence of a condor, soaring and wheeling on wide wings whose elegant tips and trailing edges flicked in fine-tuned equilibrium with the faint signals from the hot, still, noonday air.
At his wingtips were long, slender feathers, fanned out aristocratically, individually changing pitch (I could see through the binoculars) with every nuance of lift and drift. Not many creatures enjoy such rapport with their element, and I envied his.
The sun was directly overhead. The bird was in a low, watchful glide over the hillside when he apparently had a change of mind. He let the air lift him higher, and turn him in lazy circles, until he was several hundred feet above me. I tracked him with the binoculars. He could see me – I thought he looked at me – though I don’t suppose he was watching me. I wanted to imagine some communication going on, and so I did, even if it was me with me.
He drifted toward the sun. It was so bright that I had to look away. I picked him up again on the other side of the brightness. He came back to the center, circling the brightness as I watched, spiraling nearer to it. I thought it was magnificent, and symbolic at least of opportunity. I watched as long as I could, until I saw him touch the edge of the sun. Then I looked away. I blinked my eyes for only a couple of seconds, then lifted the binoculars again, to pick him up.
But the bird was gone.
I dropped the binoculars and scanned the wide view, from sun to horizon. I turned quickly around the 360-degree circle, searching the sky, feeling very much on the earth point of an axis. The bird was not there.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I looked back at the brightness. Maybe he was still orbiting there. I watched the vicinity for 10 minutes, and the bird didn’t emerge. For the next half-hour I tried to watch all of the sky at once, looking for him. I had watched the bird fly into the sun, liking the symbolism of it, and then the bird had disappeared. For a minute I wished it had been a condor, then was glad it was not. Condors should fly into the sun only for holy men. My turkey buzzard, though lacking romance, had made the same mysticism perfectly accessible to an ordinary man with the sun in his eyes.
The bird did not reappear. I was compelled to wonder what it might mean, to see what I had seen, when a man saw a bird fly into the sun. If I, for whatever reason, had been assigned to be the one to find out, then I was willing. And that changed me.
I saw the bird a couple of hours later, cruising the hillside as before. So I had not been chosen, or assigned, after all. But I was changed nevertheless. I still have no idea how he got out of the sun, but I am not disappointed. In those minutes when I believed he might be gone, I accepted the contention that anything is possible. And when anything is possible, what is there to fear from the unknown, from the realities that can’t be measured? What else is there to do, but to accept the idea of God?
I thought he was a condor. Huge, black bird, circling and soaring in a hot midday sky around and above our house, several years ago. I was impressed that I might be looking at a condor, a rare bird to which much symbolism is attached. When I spotted him, I thought that some mechanics of symbolism might be in place, guiding him to this house, where I might see him.
Such is vanity. I felt so special that I went inside to telephone the zoo, to report a sighting of this endangered creature far from his natural mountain habitat.
“Probably just a turkey buzzard,” said the voice from the zoo. “We get calls like this all the time. Does he have an ugly head?”
I couldn’t answer that question. I found the binoculars, took them outside, and found the bird, ranging back and forth not more than 200 or 300 yards above and beyond our deck on the hillside, and not more than a quarter-mile to either side. Yes, he had an ugly head, red and wormlike. I watched him anyway. Watched him for a couple of days. He had the span and the presence of a condor, soaring and wheeling on wide wings whose elegant tips and trailing edges flicked in fine-tuned equilibrium with the faint signals from the hot, still, noonday air.
At his wingtips were long, slender feathers, fanned out aristocratically, individually changing pitch (I could see through the binoculars) with every nuance of lift and drift. Not many creatures enjoy such rapport with their element, and I envied his.
The sun was directly overhead. The bird was in a low, watchful glide over the hillside when he apparently had a change of mind. He let the air lift him higher, and turn him in lazy circles, until he was several hundred feet above me. I tracked him with the binoculars. He could see me – I thought he looked at me – though I don’t suppose he was watching me. I wanted to imagine some communication going on, and so I did, even if it was me with me.
He drifted toward the sun. It was so bright that I had to look away. I picked him up again on the other side of the brightness. He came back to the center, circling the brightness as I watched, spiraling nearer to it. I thought it was magnificent, and symbolic at least of opportunity. I watched as long as I could, until I saw him touch the edge of the sun. Then I looked away. I blinked my eyes for only a couple of seconds, then lifted the binoculars again, to pick him up.
But the bird was gone.
I dropped the binoculars and scanned the wide view, from sun to horizon. I turned quickly around the 360-degree circle, searching the sky, feeling very much on the earth point of an axis. The bird was not there.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I looked back at the brightness. Maybe he was still orbiting there. I watched the vicinity for 10 minutes, and the bird didn’t emerge. For the next half-hour I tried to watch all of the sky at once, looking for him. I had watched the bird fly into the sun, liking the symbolism of it, and then the bird had disappeared. For a minute I wished it had been a condor, then was glad it was not. Condors should fly into the sun only for holy men. My turkey buzzard, though lacking romance, had made the same mysticism perfectly accessible to an ordinary man with the sun in his eyes.
The bird did not reappear. I was compelled to wonder what it might mean, to see what I had seen, when a man saw a bird fly into the sun. If I, for whatever reason, had been assigned to be the one to find out, then I was willing. And that changed me.
I saw the bird a couple of hours later, cruising the hillside as before. So I had not been chosen, or assigned, after all. But I was changed nevertheless. I still have no idea how he got out of the sun, but I am not disappointed. In those minutes when I believed he might be gone, I accepted the contention that anything is possible. And when anything is possible, what is there to fear from the unknown, from the realities that can’t be measured? What else is there to do, but to accept the idea of God?
August 21, 2006
The barbecue technique
I have received a request for directions in preparing Texas barbecue.
You start with a whole brisket, “in the bag,” as they say. You need one that is 8-10 pounds, with a decent slab of fat on it. The fat does the basting, and if you get a brisket that is too lean, it will be dry. Take the brisket out of the bag and sprinkle it liberally with salt and fresh-ground pepper.
My cooker is a 22-inch Weber. I can actually do two briskets on it, if you are feeding that many. Pile a fire of about 30 charcoal briquets (I use Kingsford Mesquite) against one side of the fire grate. On the fire, place two or three chunks of lump mesquite charcoal. You can also use soaked wood chips – oak, mesquite, what have you. On the grate opposite the fire, place a drip pan – I use a big, rectangular aluminum baking pan – lined with foil. Open the bottom vents all the way.
Start no later than 7 a.m. Place the brisket over the drip pan, and place the cooker cover so the vent is over the meat. This vent should be open no more than halfway. Every 45 minutes to an hour, flip the brisket, and add seven or so briquets and a couple more chunks of mesquite charcoal, or more wood chips. You want a fairly slow fire. If you can rest your fingertips on the grill behind the brisket for two or three seconds, that is about right. Use paper towels to turn the meat.
Continue this way all day long. About 7 p.m., feed the fire one last time and let it die out overnight. In the morning, wrap the cooled brisket loosely in foil. Empty the drippings into a saucepan. Put a little water and vinegar in the drip pan and heat it carefully on the stove to loosen up burned-on drippings and add these to the saucepan. Place the saucepan in the freezer until the fat hardens on top. Remove the fat, carefully warm the drippings, and strain them into a separate saucepan. Add a small bottle of ordinary barbecue sauce (I use KC Masterpiece) and heat through to blend drippings and sauce. Add fresh-ground black pepper to taste, a splash more vinegar, and a tablespoon or so of oregano.
When you’re ready to eat, trim the excess fat off the brisket and slice it across the grain into long, thin slices. Place the slices on foil for easy handling and reheat in the Weber. Warm the sauce and serve it on the side.
Use the same fire technique for baby back ribs. Sprinkle three or four racks of ribs with salt, pepper, celery salt, garlic powder, paprika and oregano. Tend them hourly just as you do with brisket, but the ribs only take three or four hours.
You start with a whole brisket, “in the bag,” as they say. You need one that is 8-10 pounds, with a decent slab of fat on it. The fat does the basting, and if you get a brisket that is too lean, it will be dry. Take the brisket out of the bag and sprinkle it liberally with salt and fresh-ground pepper.
My cooker is a 22-inch Weber. I can actually do two briskets on it, if you are feeding that many. Pile a fire of about 30 charcoal briquets (I use Kingsford Mesquite) against one side of the fire grate. On the fire, place two or three chunks of lump mesquite charcoal. You can also use soaked wood chips – oak, mesquite, what have you. On the grate opposite the fire, place a drip pan – I use a big, rectangular aluminum baking pan – lined with foil. Open the bottom vents all the way.
Start no later than 7 a.m. Place the brisket over the drip pan, and place the cooker cover so the vent is over the meat. This vent should be open no more than halfway. Every 45 minutes to an hour, flip the brisket, and add seven or so briquets and a couple more chunks of mesquite charcoal, or more wood chips. You want a fairly slow fire. If you can rest your fingertips on the grill behind the brisket for two or three seconds, that is about right. Use paper towels to turn the meat.
Continue this way all day long. About 7 p.m., feed the fire one last time and let it die out overnight. In the morning, wrap the cooled brisket loosely in foil. Empty the drippings into a saucepan. Put a little water and vinegar in the drip pan and heat it carefully on the stove to loosen up burned-on drippings and add these to the saucepan. Place the saucepan in the freezer until the fat hardens on top. Remove the fat, carefully warm the drippings, and strain them into a separate saucepan. Add a small bottle of ordinary barbecue sauce (I use KC Masterpiece) and heat through to blend drippings and sauce. Add fresh-ground black pepper to taste, a splash more vinegar, and a tablespoon or so of oregano.
When you’re ready to eat, trim the excess fat off the brisket and slice it across the grain into long, thin slices. Place the slices on foil for easy handling and reheat in the Weber. Warm the sauce and serve it on the side.
Use the same fire technique for baby back ribs. Sprinkle three or four racks of ribs with salt, pepper, celery salt, garlic powder, paprika and oregano. Tend them hourly just as you do with brisket, but the ribs only take three or four hours.
August 17, 2006
Kindergarten lunch quiz
The following quiz is what we call in the media a “repeatable feature,” one that is keyed to a recurring event. As September approaches, the recurring event is the start of school, and this quiz is dedicated to kindergarten teachers everywhere.
Question 1: In any kindergartner’s lunchbox on any given day, mommies are likely to put: (a) unpeeled orange; (b) unpeeled hardboiled egg; (c) bag of chips; (d) energy bar; (e) zip-top can of pudding; (f) fruit juice in pouch with straw packaged in cellophane on the side; (g) yogurt in container sealed with space-age adhesives; (h) orange juice in container sealed with space-age adhesives; (i) any three of the above.
When a kindergartner needs help opening something in his or her lunch, the kindergartner is most likely to ask the help of: (a) school principal; (b) best friend; (c) school custodian; (d) president of school board; (e) kindergarten teacher.
If there are 28 kindergartners in a class, and 28 bring their lunch to school, how many are likely to need help opening something in it: (a) 28; (b) 28; (c) 28; (d) 28; (e) all of the above.
Zip-top cans – where you pop the key one way, then pull the other way to remove the lid – were invented by: (a) Osama bin Laden; (b) Johnson & Johnson; (c) yogurt lobbyists; (d) U.S. Dept. of Education.
If lunchtime is 35 minutes, how long does it take to peel 28 oranges?
to get the shell off a hard-boiled egg without gouging out bits of egg, you need: (a) scalpel; (b) tweezers; (c) brain surgeon; (d) 45 minutes; (e) all of the above.
If you hand back to a kindergartner an egg with bits gouged out of its smooth surface, the odds he will eat it are: (a) 100-1; (b) 99-1; (c) 98-1; (d) 97-1; (e) 96-1.
The term “hermetically sealed” derives from: (a) the ancient Egyptian practice of burying valuables with their dead deep in the core of mammoth pyramids so the devil himself could not get at the valuables; (b) from Nepalese hermits who fell into crevasses where they were sealed in ice, sometimes for centuries, before archaeologists could chip out the well-preserved remains; (c) from Hermes, courier for the gods who, to preserve confidentiality, placed the gods’ dispatches in a magic pouch that he sealed with a flame from the sun.
True or false: The easiest way to open a hermetically sealed bag is to tear down through the seal with your fingers.
T or F: The easiest way to open a hermetically sealed bag is to rip down through the seal with your teeth.
T or F: The easiest way to open a hermetically sealed bag is to grip it on either side in clenched fingers and pull until your rotator cuffs shred.
There really is nothing to threading a straw into a foil juice pouch if you: (a) are in the third year of medical school; (b) can open locks just by feeling the tumblers drop; (c) take it to the kindergarten teacher.
After lunch, who gets to take a nap? (a) kindergartners; (b) kindergarten teacher; (c) president of school board; (d) U.S. Dept. of Education.
Question 1: In any kindergartner’s lunchbox on any given day, mommies are likely to put: (a) unpeeled orange; (b) unpeeled hardboiled egg; (c) bag of chips; (d) energy bar; (e) zip-top can of pudding; (f) fruit juice in pouch with straw packaged in cellophane on the side; (g) yogurt in container sealed with space-age adhesives; (h) orange juice in container sealed with space-age adhesives; (i) any three of the above.
When a kindergartner needs help opening something in his or her lunch, the kindergartner is most likely to ask the help of: (a) school principal; (b) best friend; (c) school custodian; (d) president of school board; (e) kindergarten teacher.
If there are 28 kindergartners in a class, and 28 bring their lunch to school, how many are likely to need help opening something in it: (a) 28; (b) 28; (c) 28; (d) 28; (e) all of the above.
Zip-top cans – where you pop the key one way, then pull the other way to remove the lid – were invented by: (a) Osama bin Laden; (b) Johnson & Johnson; (c) yogurt lobbyists; (d) U.S. Dept. of Education.
If lunchtime is 35 minutes, how long does it take to peel 28 oranges?
to get the shell off a hard-boiled egg without gouging out bits of egg, you need: (a) scalpel; (b) tweezers; (c) brain surgeon; (d) 45 minutes; (e) all of the above.
If you hand back to a kindergartner an egg with bits gouged out of its smooth surface, the odds he will eat it are: (a) 100-1; (b) 99-1; (c) 98-1; (d) 97-1; (e) 96-1.
The term “hermetically sealed” derives from: (a) the ancient Egyptian practice of burying valuables with their dead deep in the core of mammoth pyramids so the devil himself could not get at the valuables; (b) from Nepalese hermits who fell into crevasses where they were sealed in ice, sometimes for centuries, before archaeologists could chip out the well-preserved remains; (c) from Hermes, courier for the gods who, to preserve confidentiality, placed the gods’ dispatches in a magic pouch that he sealed with a flame from the sun.
True or false: The easiest way to open a hermetically sealed bag is to tear down through the seal with your fingers.
T or F: The easiest way to open a hermetically sealed bag is to rip down through the seal with your teeth.
T or F: The easiest way to open a hermetically sealed bag is to grip it on either side in clenched fingers and pull until your rotator cuffs shred.
There really is nothing to threading a straw into a foil juice pouch if you: (a) are in the third year of medical school; (b) can open locks just by feeling the tumblers drop; (c) take it to the kindergarten teacher.
After lunch, who gets to take a nap? (a) kindergartners; (b) kindergarten teacher; (c) president of school board; (d) U.S. Dept. of Education.
August 15, 2006
Treating dark secrets
I have to tell you something that I would rather keep a secret. I am a victim of toenail fungus. You must have seen the commercial on television. Little yellow critters get under your toenail, and they do their work, and the nail turns yellow. In my case, the right big toe.
I have to tell you this, because it is the second time in my life that revealing such a dark secret has brought me into contact with Vicks Vapo-Rub.
The first time was when I was a kid. I can’t tell you how old I was, but I can tell you the exact day. It was the day I came down with my first cold, ever, in my life, and my grandmother, Susie, found out about it. After that first time, I desperately tried to keep it a secret from her, when I caught a cold, because I knew what would happen next.
She always found out, of course. Susie belonged to an extinct generation, that was born in the 1800s – 1886, for her – and spent most of their early life living in the country, before they moved to the city. Susie was born in northern Alabama, came to Texas in a wagon, lived on a farm in Haskell County, and finally married, settled in Abilene, where there was work, and had six kids, one of whom was my mother.
Susie’s husband, Roy Grant, died in 1929 and she raised the six kids, alone, through the Depression. She was nicely equipped. In the country, women worked to keep men in the fields. Susie brought that mission with her to the city and, as long as I knew her – she died in 1977 – never let go of it. In the city, they may have been her daughters, coming home from work in offices downtown, but she had the table set and ready for them at 5 p.m., rain or shine, heat or cold. To me – I grew up in my grandmother’s house – it meant she poured the milk and had it on the table by 4:45, in the dead of August. By 5, it was warm in the glass. It turned me away from milk, and I still resist eating dinner before 7 p.m.
Susie could spot an illness coming while it was still a mile away. If I sneezed, she was on me like a hawk on a gopher. I could protest, claim it was dandelion fuzz, but it was no use. She had me by the arm, making a stop in the kitchen, turning on the oven to 500 degrees, then on into the bedroom, where she shucked me out of my clothes and got me in the bed. Miraculously in her hand appeared a jar of Vicks Vapo-Rub. Susie was a believer in salve. She had two kinds: Vicks, and some kind of petroleum-based black salve that she squeezed out of a tube. With these two, she could cure anything, or scare us out of catching anything in the first place.
With two fingers, she scooped out the Vicks and rubbed it on my chest. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with a 500-degree cuptowel, straight from the oven. This she slapped over the Vicks layer on my chest, snugged it on, and pulled the covers up under my chin. In her hand appeared a teaspoon, and the Vicks jar. She dug the spoon into the jar, came out with a rounded mound of it, and said, “Open your mouth.” You can see why, after the first time, catching a cold became my desperate secret. In went the Vicks, I closed my mouth, pulled it off the spoon and swallowed it straight down. I spent the day in my Venusian stew, trying desperately to get better, and maybe it worked.
I thought when I grew up that I was forever done with Vicks. Now a friend insists it works on toenail fungus, without the side effects of the product mentioned on TV. The friend says it will take a couple of months. I started the treatment yesterday, using my little finger to get the dab of Vicks out of the jar and onto my toe. I wash my finger immediately, but it is no use. It smells like Vicks. My toe smells like Vicks. For the second time in my life, I reek of Vicks Vapo-Rub.
I was putting it on during the day, but Karen said, “You are supposed to put it on before you go to bed, and leave it on all night.” “But,” I protested, “it will get on the sheets.” “Put a sock over it,” she said, in a tone suggesting there was some country life in her background. I did as I was told. During the night, Susie’s voice floated over to me from her own dreamland. “I told you so,” she said.
I have to tell you this, because it is the second time in my life that revealing such a dark secret has brought me into contact with Vicks Vapo-Rub.
The first time was when I was a kid. I can’t tell you how old I was, but I can tell you the exact day. It was the day I came down with my first cold, ever, in my life, and my grandmother, Susie, found out about it. After that first time, I desperately tried to keep it a secret from her, when I caught a cold, because I knew what would happen next.
She always found out, of course. Susie belonged to an extinct generation, that was born in the 1800s – 1886, for her – and spent most of their early life living in the country, before they moved to the city. Susie was born in northern Alabama, came to Texas in a wagon, lived on a farm in Haskell County, and finally married, settled in Abilene, where there was work, and had six kids, one of whom was my mother.
Susie’s husband, Roy Grant, died in 1929 and she raised the six kids, alone, through the Depression. She was nicely equipped. In the country, women worked to keep men in the fields. Susie brought that mission with her to the city and, as long as I knew her – she died in 1977 – never let go of it. In the city, they may have been her daughters, coming home from work in offices downtown, but she had the table set and ready for them at 5 p.m., rain or shine, heat or cold. To me – I grew up in my grandmother’s house – it meant she poured the milk and had it on the table by 4:45, in the dead of August. By 5, it was warm in the glass. It turned me away from milk, and I still resist eating dinner before 7 p.m.
Susie could spot an illness coming while it was still a mile away. If I sneezed, she was on me like a hawk on a gopher. I could protest, claim it was dandelion fuzz, but it was no use. She had me by the arm, making a stop in the kitchen, turning on the oven to 500 degrees, then on into the bedroom, where she shucked me out of my clothes and got me in the bed. Miraculously in her hand appeared a jar of Vicks Vapo-Rub. Susie was a believer in salve. She had two kinds: Vicks, and some kind of petroleum-based black salve that she squeezed out of a tube. With these two, she could cure anything, or scare us out of catching anything in the first place.
With two fingers, she scooped out the Vicks and rubbed it on my chest. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with a 500-degree cuptowel, straight from the oven. This she slapped over the Vicks layer on my chest, snugged it on, and pulled the covers up under my chin. In her hand appeared a teaspoon, and the Vicks jar. She dug the spoon into the jar, came out with a rounded mound of it, and said, “Open your mouth.” You can see why, after the first time, catching a cold became my desperate secret. In went the Vicks, I closed my mouth, pulled it off the spoon and swallowed it straight down. I spent the day in my Venusian stew, trying desperately to get better, and maybe it worked.
I thought when I grew up that I was forever done with Vicks. Now a friend insists it works on toenail fungus, without the side effects of the product mentioned on TV. The friend says it will take a couple of months. I started the treatment yesterday, using my little finger to get the dab of Vicks out of the jar and onto my toe. I wash my finger immediately, but it is no use. It smells like Vicks. My toe smells like Vicks. For the second time in my life, I reek of Vicks Vapo-Rub.
I was putting it on during the day, but Karen said, “You are supposed to put it on before you go to bed, and leave it on all night.” “But,” I protested, “it will get on the sheets.” “Put a sock over it,” she said, in a tone suggesting there was some country life in her background. I did as I was told. During the night, Susie’s voice floated over to me from her own dreamland. “I told you so,” she said.
August 12, 2006
Impact, Texas
The wet-dry wars in the Southern states continue to this day, according to a story in today’s New York Times.
It is called “local option.” Southern states, including Texas, leave the making of several kinds of law up to local precincts: a county, a city, even a precinct within a city. Alcohol laws are one such local option. In Texas, there are many “wet” counties, and many “dry” counties, where alcohol can’t be sold. Today’s story focused on East Texas, Angelina County, to be exact, which is dry. If a resident of Lufkin, in Angelina County, wants to buy a six-pack of beer, he or she has to cross into Nacogdoches County, which is wet, to buy it.
Texas liquor laws are the reason, after 35 years’ residency in California, I still get a craving for a warm beer. Abilene, my home town, was in Taylor County, which was dry until 1978. If we wanted a beer, we had to drive 35 miles north from Taylor County, across Jones County, and into Haskell County, where there was a liquor store not 50 feet across the county line. Haskell County was wet, but it was illegal to sell cold beer. We took a cooler with us, bought a case of beer off the floor display, and a bag of ice. In the car, we put several beers on ice and drank the first one warm, which tasted pretty good at the end of a long summer workday. By the time we finished the first one, the others were getting nice and cool. Yes, we drank in the car, which was legal in Texas in those days, but frowned upon: along the highways the highway department posted signs: “If you drive, don’t drink; if you drink, don’t drive.”
I have emailed the New York Times reporter with directions to information on Impact, Texas, one of the most interesting stories in the wet-dry lore. Abilene in the 1960s was dry, and with more than 160 churches in a city of 90,000, it was determined to stay that way. Before Haskell County, if an Abilenian wanted a beer, he had to drive to Breckenridge, over in Stephens County, which was about a 60-mile trip, one way. Bootleggers had prospered in Abilene since the 1930s; Abilene had the reputation of being “the wettest dry town in Texas.” But bootleggers didn’t cater to customers just wanting a six-pack, or even a fifth.
In the early ‘60s, an Abilenian named Dallas Perkins decided to do something about it. He owned 30 acres on the north side of town, not too far from Hardin-Simmons University, a Baptist institution. He bought more acreage to bring the total up to about 70 acres, with a population of 50 or 60, enough to vote on a proposal of incorporation. Papers were filed, the vote was taken, and Impact, Texas, was created, for the sole purpose, many believed, of selling alcohol. There was a court fight, of course, and it carried to the Texas Supreme Court before the incorporation and the intent to sell were both upheld in December, 1963.
I was there. Literally. As I recall, Impact opened for business a day or two before Christmas, 1963. I think Pinkie’s had already built a store and was ready for business, but on opening day, two 18-wheelers backed onto the property and sold booze right out of the backs of the trailers. Impact did a booming business for many years, until 1978, when the City of Abilene went wet. Impact still exists – Google “Impact, Texas” – but it’s just another place with a liquor store now. Makes me thirsty for a beer, if I can find a place in San Diego that sells it warm.
It is called “local option.” Southern states, including Texas, leave the making of several kinds of law up to local precincts: a county, a city, even a precinct within a city. Alcohol laws are one such local option. In Texas, there are many “wet” counties, and many “dry” counties, where alcohol can’t be sold. Today’s story focused on East Texas, Angelina County, to be exact, which is dry. If a resident of Lufkin, in Angelina County, wants to buy a six-pack of beer, he or she has to cross into Nacogdoches County, which is wet, to buy it.
Texas liquor laws are the reason, after 35 years’ residency in California, I still get a craving for a warm beer. Abilene, my home town, was in Taylor County, which was dry until 1978. If we wanted a beer, we had to drive 35 miles north from Taylor County, across Jones County, and into Haskell County, where there was a liquor store not 50 feet across the county line. Haskell County was wet, but it was illegal to sell cold beer. We took a cooler with us, bought a case of beer off the floor display, and a bag of ice. In the car, we put several beers on ice and drank the first one warm, which tasted pretty good at the end of a long summer workday. By the time we finished the first one, the others were getting nice and cool. Yes, we drank in the car, which was legal in Texas in those days, but frowned upon: along the highways the highway department posted signs: “If you drive, don’t drink; if you drink, don’t drive.”
I have emailed the New York Times reporter with directions to information on Impact, Texas, one of the most interesting stories in the wet-dry lore. Abilene in the 1960s was dry, and with more than 160 churches in a city of 90,000, it was determined to stay that way. Before Haskell County, if an Abilenian wanted a beer, he had to drive to Breckenridge, over in Stephens County, which was about a 60-mile trip, one way. Bootleggers had prospered in Abilene since the 1930s; Abilene had the reputation of being “the wettest dry town in Texas.” But bootleggers didn’t cater to customers just wanting a six-pack, or even a fifth.
In the early ‘60s, an Abilenian named Dallas Perkins decided to do something about it. He owned 30 acres on the north side of town, not too far from Hardin-Simmons University, a Baptist institution. He bought more acreage to bring the total up to about 70 acres, with a population of 50 or 60, enough to vote on a proposal of incorporation. Papers were filed, the vote was taken, and Impact, Texas, was created, for the sole purpose, many believed, of selling alcohol. There was a court fight, of course, and it carried to the Texas Supreme Court before the incorporation and the intent to sell were both upheld in December, 1963.
I was there. Literally. As I recall, Impact opened for business a day or two before Christmas, 1963. I think Pinkie’s had already built a store and was ready for business, but on opening day, two 18-wheelers backed onto the property and sold booze right out of the backs of the trailers. Impact did a booming business for many years, until 1978, when the City of Abilene went wet. Impact still exists – Google “Impact, Texas” – but it’s just another place with a liquor store now. Makes me thirsty for a beer, if I can find a place in San Diego that sells it warm.
August 11, 2006
Story of a roll
On the shelf behind the toilet in our bathroom sits a roll of toilet paper autographed by Herb Kelleher, founder, former CEO and now executive president, of Southwest Airlines.
Actually, this is “Son of Roll.” There was an earlier Herb Kelleher roll that came to me in events initiated in the 1990s by Jim Price, a native of Childress, Texas, living in San Diego. Jim was in labor relations and traveled a lot, up and down California, mostly on Southwest flights. I knew Jim Price from the media ramble in San Diego, and Jim knew Herb Kelleher, knew him well enough to send him a personal letter of complaint about his airline.
Jim told Herb he had flown Southwest faithfully, “but no more,” Jim said, until Southwest corrected the toilet paper feed on its fleet. At present, Jim said, the paper in the airplane lavatories fed over the top. Everyone with any sense knows it should feed off the bottom. I received a copy of the letter, as one who, Jim sensed from knowing me, would have a definite opinion about toilet paper feeds. Immediately I wrote a column for my paper, The San Diego Union, saying what a great guy Jim Price was, but he was dead wrong about the toilet paper, which should always feed over the top, never off the bottom.
The column found its way to Dallas, because several days later I received a congratulatory letter from Herb Kelleher, along with a roll of Scott tissue, autographed on the wrapper by Mr. Kelleher himself. This I displayed in the bathroom for the longest time, until a new cleaning lady took the roll from the shelf behind the toilet, pulled off the wrapper and threw it away, and installed the roll on the dispenser.
I was mortified, but of course it was my own fault, that the cleaning lady didn’t know the roll for what it was.
Now into the picture comes Dr. Ted Martinez, who until last December was president of Grossmont College, where I teach journalism. At that time, the college district board decided not to renew his contract. It was unpleasant for us. Dr. Martinez was much respected by faculty and staff, as an involved, effective, innovative, president. The board was, well, the board. Faculty and staff were surprised and tickled to death when, in January, Dr. Martinez accepted a high-level job – much higher and infinitely more visible than the Grossmont presidency – in the administration of the new San Diego mayor, Jerry Sanders. I wrote a column about that for San Diego’s online newspaper, voiceofsandiego.org.
Several weeks ago, I wrote a voiceofsandiego column about the ongoing debate (60 years now) concerning a new San Diego airport to replace Lindbergh Field. In that column I expressed great affection for Southwest Airlines, and included a mention of the long-lost Herb Kelleher toilet paper.
This week, we got a call from Dr. Martinez. I wasn’t home, so he told Karen who he was and that he and his wife, Lidia, had read the two voiceofsandiego columns, and they had a surprise for me. As they chatted, Dr. Martinez told Karen that Lidia was the California marketing director for Southwest Airlines. I may have known that, but I had forgotten.
Last night they came over, and Lidia, just back from company meetings in Dallas, presented me a roll of Scott tissue, inscribed on the wrapper: “For Emergency Use Only!” And signed by Herb Kelleher. In a brief installation ceremony, we placed it on the ledge behind the toilet. My next stop is Bed, Bath and Beyond, to get a glass or acrylic case for it. Herb sent a letter, too, and I thought about framing it and hanging it above the toilet paper, but that would probably be a bit much.
Actually, this is “Son of Roll.” There was an earlier Herb Kelleher roll that came to me in events initiated in the 1990s by Jim Price, a native of Childress, Texas, living in San Diego. Jim was in labor relations and traveled a lot, up and down California, mostly on Southwest flights. I knew Jim Price from the media ramble in San Diego, and Jim knew Herb Kelleher, knew him well enough to send him a personal letter of complaint about his airline.
Jim told Herb he had flown Southwest faithfully, “but no more,” Jim said, until Southwest corrected the toilet paper feed on its fleet. At present, Jim said, the paper in the airplane lavatories fed over the top. Everyone with any sense knows it should feed off the bottom. I received a copy of the letter, as one who, Jim sensed from knowing me, would have a definite opinion about toilet paper feeds. Immediately I wrote a column for my paper, The San Diego Union, saying what a great guy Jim Price was, but he was dead wrong about the toilet paper, which should always feed over the top, never off the bottom.
The column found its way to Dallas, because several days later I received a congratulatory letter from Herb Kelleher, along with a roll of Scott tissue, autographed on the wrapper by Mr. Kelleher himself. This I displayed in the bathroom for the longest time, until a new cleaning lady took the roll from the shelf behind the toilet, pulled off the wrapper and threw it away, and installed the roll on the dispenser.
I was mortified, but of course it was my own fault, that the cleaning lady didn’t know the roll for what it was.
Now into the picture comes Dr. Ted Martinez, who until last December was president of Grossmont College, where I teach journalism. At that time, the college district board decided not to renew his contract. It was unpleasant for us. Dr. Martinez was much respected by faculty and staff, as an involved, effective, innovative, president. The board was, well, the board. Faculty and staff were surprised and tickled to death when, in January, Dr. Martinez accepted a high-level job – much higher and infinitely more visible than the Grossmont presidency – in the administration of the new San Diego mayor, Jerry Sanders. I wrote a column about that for San Diego’s online newspaper, voiceofsandiego.org.
Several weeks ago, I wrote a voiceofsandiego column about the ongoing debate (60 years now) concerning a new San Diego airport to replace Lindbergh Field. In that column I expressed great affection for Southwest Airlines, and included a mention of the long-lost Herb Kelleher toilet paper.
This week, we got a call from Dr. Martinez. I wasn’t home, so he told Karen who he was and that he and his wife, Lidia, had read the two voiceofsandiego columns, and they had a surprise for me. As they chatted, Dr. Martinez told Karen that Lidia was the California marketing director for Southwest Airlines. I may have known that, but I had forgotten.
Last night they came over, and Lidia, just back from company meetings in Dallas, presented me a roll of Scott tissue, inscribed on the wrapper: “For Emergency Use Only!” And signed by Herb Kelleher. In a brief installation ceremony, we placed it on the ledge behind the toilet. My next stop is Bed, Bath and Beyond, to get a glass or acrylic case for it. Herb sent a letter, too, and I thought about framing it and hanging it above the toilet paper, but that would probably be a bit much.
August 10, 2006
Things to do
What’s on TV?
British agents have foiled a terrorist plot, possibly linked to Al Qaeda, to blow up 10 airliners on their routes from London to the United States.
Maybe we should go to a movie instead.
“World Trade Center.”
Well, we can read a book. What are the two top sellers at Amazon?
“The Looming Towers,” about how Sept. 11 happened, and “Fiasco,” about how the Bush administration got us into the Iraq war.
Maybe I’ll just read the newspaper. What are the headlines?
World news: Iraq, Lebanon, BP negligence in oil pipeline shutdown. Local news: investigation shows San Diego city government behaved like Enron in pension scandal.
How about just going for a drive in the mountains?
Gasoline is $60 a tank.
Well, what do you want to do?
There’s a lot to do. Look at that mockingbird, chasing a hawk. Guarding its nest, I guess. Interesting, how the little bird always – and it really does appear to be 100 percent of the time – chases the big bird. I have seen a hummingbird dive-bombing a crow. What is that all about? Lots of mourning doves sitting on the phone lines lately. Must be a particularly time of year for them. They sit in pairs, and it looks like they may be courting. But then one from one pair runs off one from another pair, and then the one left behind takes off, and the second pair hangs around for 15 seconds, then one of them takes off. If they are courting, it doesn’t look as loving as the doves you see on the Hallmark cards.
The spiders are out in force. Orange ones, some small, some larger. They start their webs at dusk, dropping down from an eave and finding an anchor down below somewhere Рa stalk, a piece of firewood, the corner of the glider - and shuttle back up for the next leg, a couple more anchors, and then the wide net. You always hope to see the webs after overnight weather has left them appliqu̩d with dew.
Seeing them at all is the real need. We have to be careful, walking down to the street to get the papers, that we don’t walk into a web, have it draped over our heads, and wonder if the spider is down our collar. The webs are easy enough to see, and I snag loose the anchor on one side, and let the spider scoot off to the other side, into the bush. I don’t like spiders, but I hate to kill them, after all their work, and their obvious faith in the results. It may be the only violence in the world over which I have any control. Of course if one gets down my collar, it’s every creature for himself.
It feels better to collaborate. Yesterday I almost literally sat down into a web anchored to the glider. I saw it just in time. The spider had caught something, very low down in the web, and already had it packaged, to some extent. If I had sat down, the package, and the spider, would have been right by my ear. Instead, I pulled the glider anchor loose, and the spider rushed up the web to the eave. I sat on the opposite end from the web and drank coffee. A few minutes later I looked at the web, now dangling loosely, again. The spider had come back down, tied onto the package, and was hauling it back up, to the eave. Did he know I wasn’t going to hurt him, when he decided to come back down? I hardly think so, but I felt good about it anyway.
British agents have foiled a terrorist plot, possibly linked to Al Qaeda, to blow up 10 airliners on their routes from London to the United States.
Maybe we should go to a movie instead.
“World Trade Center.”
Well, we can read a book. What are the two top sellers at Amazon?
“The Looming Towers,” about how Sept. 11 happened, and “Fiasco,” about how the Bush administration got us into the Iraq war.
Maybe I’ll just read the newspaper. What are the headlines?
World news: Iraq, Lebanon, BP negligence in oil pipeline shutdown. Local news: investigation shows San Diego city government behaved like Enron in pension scandal.
How about just going for a drive in the mountains?
Gasoline is $60 a tank.
Well, what do you want to do?
There’s a lot to do. Look at that mockingbird, chasing a hawk. Guarding its nest, I guess. Interesting, how the little bird always – and it really does appear to be 100 percent of the time – chases the big bird. I have seen a hummingbird dive-bombing a crow. What is that all about? Lots of mourning doves sitting on the phone lines lately. Must be a particularly time of year for them. They sit in pairs, and it looks like they may be courting. But then one from one pair runs off one from another pair, and then the one left behind takes off, and the second pair hangs around for 15 seconds, then one of them takes off. If they are courting, it doesn’t look as loving as the doves you see on the Hallmark cards.
The spiders are out in force. Orange ones, some small, some larger. They start their webs at dusk, dropping down from an eave and finding an anchor down below somewhere Рa stalk, a piece of firewood, the corner of the glider - and shuttle back up for the next leg, a couple more anchors, and then the wide net. You always hope to see the webs after overnight weather has left them appliqu̩d with dew.
Seeing them at all is the real need. We have to be careful, walking down to the street to get the papers, that we don’t walk into a web, have it draped over our heads, and wonder if the spider is down our collar. The webs are easy enough to see, and I snag loose the anchor on one side, and let the spider scoot off to the other side, into the bush. I don’t like spiders, but I hate to kill them, after all their work, and their obvious faith in the results. It may be the only violence in the world over which I have any control. Of course if one gets down my collar, it’s every creature for himself.
It feels better to collaborate. Yesterday I almost literally sat down into a web anchored to the glider. I saw it just in time. The spider had caught something, very low down in the web, and already had it packaged, to some extent. If I had sat down, the package, and the spider, would have been right by my ear. Instead, I pulled the glider anchor loose, and the spider rushed up the web to the eave. I sat on the opposite end from the web and drank coffee. A few minutes later I looked at the web, now dangling loosely, again. The spider had come back down, tied onto the package, and was hauling it back up, to the eave. Did he know I wasn’t going to hurt him, when he decided to come back down? I hardly think so, but I felt good about it anyway.
August 08, 2006
Moonrise at Alta Mira
Glider time, 8:25 p.m., August 8. Sunsets are generally clear here, moreso than the sunrise hours, when the cool ocean and the warm earth collaborate on what we call the “marine layer.” In summer, it is almost always warm enough throughout the day to burn off the low clouds or fog and let us have a view of sunset events such as these.
The weather changed slightly today – as much as we can say the “weather changes” in San Diego. The weather does change, but it takes months. Today’s subtleties involved a repositioning of southwest high pressure which created a tug on moisture from the south, called “monsoon moisture” here. The humidity was up, and there were high clouds, and the eastern orientation of this system kept the coastal areas clear of evening haze.
The result is glider time like this. The moon schedule, according to the paper, was to rise at 7:36, our time, but that time is keyed to the flat horizon in our time zone, and the actual moonrise occurs when the edge of the moon arrives at the actual horizon laid down by the foothills that lie just to our east. It was almost 8 when the moon, like a pearl, cultured itself from the earth. It was special tonight, but we are almost at that time, the October full moon, when the sun sets and the moon rises at the same time. This is an impossibly beautiful event, and complete evidence that, no matter who you are or what your possessions are, you can’t have it all. You can’t look at the sunset and the moonrise at the same time. You have to turn to one and then the other.
Tonight I am working on a new computer, flat screen, lots of RAM, etc. Karen saw I needed a new computer, then with Bill’s help (her son), ordered it, and then it arrived and she spent an entire day last week, with Bill’s help, getting it up and operating. Late in the day, she showed me an ad from that morning’s New York Times. It was a Tiffany ad, showing gorgeous diamond earrings for only $9,800. “After getting this computer running, I think these would be nice,” she said, tongue in cheek. And they would. She would wear them beautifully, and she damn sure earned them.
Right now, though, I am cash poor. Instead I gave her tripod equipment for her camera. “The earrings are a couple of years away, but you can make some beautiful things with these,” I wrote her in a card. Tonight she set up the tripod and camera for the first time, and gave us a keepsake of one of the most beautiful things on this earth that either of us has ever seen.
The weather changed slightly today – as much as we can say the “weather changes” in San Diego. The weather does change, but it takes months. Today’s subtleties involved a repositioning of southwest high pressure which created a tug on moisture from the south, called “monsoon moisture” here. The humidity was up, and there were high clouds, and the eastern orientation of this system kept the coastal areas clear of evening haze.
The result is glider time like this. The moon schedule, according to the paper, was to rise at 7:36, our time, but that time is keyed to the flat horizon in our time zone, and the actual moonrise occurs when the edge of the moon arrives at the actual horizon laid down by the foothills that lie just to our east. It was almost 8 when the moon, like a pearl, cultured itself from the earth. It was special tonight, but we are almost at that time, the October full moon, when the sun sets and the moon rises at the same time. This is an impossibly beautiful event, and complete evidence that, no matter who you are or what your possessions are, you can’t have it all. You can’t look at the sunset and the moonrise at the same time. You have to turn to one and then the other.
Tonight I am working on a new computer, flat screen, lots of RAM, etc. Karen saw I needed a new computer, then with Bill’s help (her son), ordered it, and then it arrived and she spent an entire day last week, with Bill’s help, getting it up and operating. Late in the day, she showed me an ad from that morning’s New York Times. It was a Tiffany ad, showing gorgeous diamond earrings for only $9,800. “After getting this computer running, I think these would be nice,” she said, tongue in cheek. And they would. She would wear them beautifully, and she damn sure earned them.
Right now, though, I am cash poor. Instead I gave her tripod equipment for her camera. “The earrings are a couple of years away, but you can make some beautiful things with these,” I wrote her in a card. Tonight she set up the tripod and camera for the first time, and gave us a keepsake of one of the most beautiful things on this earth that either of us has ever seen.
Flat truth about TV
Television as we know it is on the way out.
“After the holidays, the days of picture-tube TVs are gone,” a CostCo buyer told The New York Times. “One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TVs.”
Demand is dropping, he said. Consumers want the new, flat-panel television screens that offer better resolution with their plasma or liquid-crystal displays.
From what I have seen of them in the stores, I wouldn’t mind one myself, but there are a couple of obstacles. One is the price, and even if the price were acceptable, I don’t know where we would put the thing when we got it home. It won’t fit in our entertainment center, which really is about to become a dinosaur in the American living room.
If we take the entertainment center out, what do we do with it? In weekends after next year, are we to join lines of citizens at U-Haul counters, renting a trailer to join processions of vehicles hauling our entertainment centers, like worn-out artillery caissons, to the landfills? If so, how quickly will the landfills reach capacity and close? No, the landfill is not an environmentally reasonable solution.
Will we muscle it out to the patio, and bust it into kindling? I hate to do that to a perfectly good piece of expensive furniture that we have only had a few years.
And if we did, what would we do with the VCR, the DVD player, the receiver-amplifier, the tape deck, and the equalizer? And the passel of CDs and VHS tapes in the bottom drawers, poking their corners out of the dust bunnies?
We are looking at a new entertainment center, built to flat-screen specs, or we could just tear out a living room wall and install built-ins, at which time bringing home a new, flat-screen TV is costing anywhere from $4,000 to $25,000.
Fortunately, our old TV is relatively new and should be fine until well beyond the time the manufacturers stop making replacement parts. If we open a special flat-screen TV with furniture and accessories savings account now, it is possible we could have the money at the end of the approximately four years we have left before the broadcasters are providing signals that our old cathode-ray tube TVs will not accept. By then, Father Joe will have figured out a way to build houses out of old entertainment centers, so that problem will be solved. The old TV itself – actually, we have four old TVs in the house – will be recycled.
We’re going to hold short of remodeling the living room for the new flat-panel TV, even though new homes being built now are all designed around a logical place to position flat-panel screens. In a decade, those spaces will make nice art walls, when flat-panel TVs become dinosaurs – one thing about them, they will stack neatly in the landfills – and the next technology arrives.
I am 63 years old, meaning my lifetime is about to exceed the lifespan of the old TVs, the big-tube consoles and portables that started coming into living rooms in the late 1940s. I remember how to adjust the Channel Master, the horizontal hold, the vertical hold, the brightness, the contrast, and the fine tune knob (for UHF). I like telling my students about watching TV in the 1950s, and watching Channel 9, then clicking the big knob over to Channel 12, and rotating the antenna, adjusting the holds and the fine tune, and sitting down for half an hour until it was time to get up and click back to Channel 9 and watch the black-and-white picture shrivel into electronic dust bunnies until the holds were adjusted back to Channel 9 again.
It is informative to look back 50 years, and describe a TV set then, and now turn around and look forward 50 years, and describe the TV set of 2056. I truly believe – and this may actually happen in my lifetime – that media communications in the future will be conducted through sensors we carry around with us, under the skin somewhere, or in a section in the brain, that will project images and sounds from the inside-out, into our eyes and ears, and simply with a thought, we will change channels, or turn off the TV and listen to music for awhile.
I don’t think I am going to like it, but obviously we have no choice. A couple of years from now, we will have a flat-panel TV, like it or not.
“After the holidays, the days of picture-tube TVs are gone,” a CostCo buyer told The New York Times. “One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TVs.”
Demand is dropping, he said. Consumers want the new, flat-panel television screens that offer better resolution with their plasma or liquid-crystal displays.
From what I have seen of them in the stores, I wouldn’t mind one myself, but there are a couple of obstacles. One is the price, and even if the price were acceptable, I don’t know where we would put the thing when we got it home. It won’t fit in our entertainment center, which really is about to become a dinosaur in the American living room.
If we take the entertainment center out, what do we do with it? In weekends after next year, are we to join lines of citizens at U-Haul counters, renting a trailer to join processions of vehicles hauling our entertainment centers, like worn-out artillery caissons, to the landfills? If so, how quickly will the landfills reach capacity and close? No, the landfill is not an environmentally reasonable solution.
Will we muscle it out to the patio, and bust it into kindling? I hate to do that to a perfectly good piece of expensive furniture that we have only had a few years.
And if we did, what would we do with the VCR, the DVD player, the receiver-amplifier, the tape deck, and the equalizer? And the passel of CDs and VHS tapes in the bottom drawers, poking their corners out of the dust bunnies?
We are looking at a new entertainment center, built to flat-screen specs, or we could just tear out a living room wall and install built-ins, at which time bringing home a new, flat-screen TV is costing anywhere from $4,000 to $25,000.
Fortunately, our old TV is relatively new and should be fine until well beyond the time the manufacturers stop making replacement parts. If we open a special flat-screen TV with furniture and accessories savings account now, it is possible we could have the money at the end of the approximately four years we have left before the broadcasters are providing signals that our old cathode-ray tube TVs will not accept. By then, Father Joe will have figured out a way to build houses out of old entertainment centers, so that problem will be solved. The old TV itself – actually, we have four old TVs in the house – will be recycled.
We’re going to hold short of remodeling the living room for the new flat-panel TV, even though new homes being built now are all designed around a logical place to position flat-panel screens. In a decade, those spaces will make nice art walls, when flat-panel TVs become dinosaurs – one thing about them, they will stack neatly in the landfills – and the next technology arrives.
I am 63 years old, meaning my lifetime is about to exceed the lifespan of the old TVs, the big-tube consoles and portables that started coming into living rooms in the late 1940s. I remember how to adjust the Channel Master, the horizontal hold, the vertical hold, the brightness, the contrast, and the fine tune knob (for UHF). I like telling my students about watching TV in the 1950s, and watching Channel 9, then clicking the big knob over to Channel 12, and rotating the antenna, adjusting the holds and the fine tune, and sitting down for half an hour until it was time to get up and click back to Channel 9 and watch the black-and-white picture shrivel into electronic dust bunnies until the holds were adjusted back to Channel 9 again.
It is informative to look back 50 years, and describe a TV set then, and now turn around and look forward 50 years, and describe the TV set of 2056. I truly believe – and this may actually happen in my lifetime – that media communications in the future will be conducted through sensors we carry around with us, under the skin somewhere, or in a section in the brain, that will project images and sounds from the inside-out, into our eyes and ears, and simply with a thought, we will change channels, or turn off the TV and listen to music for awhile.
I don’t think I am going to like it, but obviously we have no choice. A couple of years from now, we will have a flat-panel TV, like it or not.
August 05, 2006
Eggs Bob
We actually had a sunrise this morning. I pay so much attention to sunrises because we can see the entire sunrise horizon from Alta Mira, all 47 degrees of it, from the summer solstice in June to the winter solstice in December. From the glider, we can tell where we are on the calendar by the place where the sun comes up.
This morning, I want to introduce “Eggs Bob.” No doubt there are other recipes similar to this one, and that predate it by years or hundreds of years, but Eggs Bob is, I am sure, unique in its origin.
“Bob” is Bob Cluck, whom I have known since grade school, in Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s. He and Marilyn, who are looking at either their 41st or 42nd anniversary, were in California sightseeing along Big Sur last week, and they drove down to San Diego to see us. Bob is an interesting man (just ask Marilyn), with an inquiring turn of mind. We always have the most interesting conversations. One evening we were talking about what we might have for breakfast.
“What do you think would happen,” Bob said, in his paced, deliberate style, “if you took a Ziploc bag, put the eggs in it, with onion, cheese, whatever you wanted, and just put the bag in boiling water?”
You see what I mean by unique origin. There were only a couple of things that kept me from saying, “Let’s try it and see.” The first was getting the eggs, onion, cheese, etc., out of the bag when they were done. The second was what the hot water might do to the bag plastic, in terms of a bad effect on the food, in the time it took the water to cook the eggs. Actually, I would have liked to see the results of my first reservation, getting the eggs out of the bag. It was the second reservation that stopped me. I am leery of plastic polymers, and how they might get into food via a boiled Ziploc bag, and, if a human ate it, if cancer might just pop straight up out of his skin before he could take a bite of toast.
I announced both of these to Bob, who nodded thoughtfully and agreed to my suggestion that we try a modified version of his idea.
Thus, “Eggs Bob.” For individual servings, you need Pyrex custard cups. Grease the cups with a little olive oil on a paper towel. In the bottom, sprinkle onions, peppers, tomatoes, salsa, chopped leftover meats or shrimp, whatever you like. On top of that, break two eggs. Sprinkle on some cheese, if you like.
Fill a skillet three-quarters full of water and bring it to a high simmer, not quite a boil. There is a technical term for this, “bain marie” or something, but just use a skillet three-quarters full of water. When the water simmers, carefully place the custard cups into the water (tongs are useful for this), that should come up not quite to the lip of the cups. Place a lid (glass, if you have it) on the skillet and let the eggs cook. This takes awhile, maybe 10 minutes. The whites firm up and the yolks sort of cloud over.
It’s best if the yolks stay a bit runny at the end. Otherwise you’ve just got a boiled egg. When I took ours out (with tongs and a hot pad), the center of the cup was still slightly jiggly. I served the cups on a plate, with bacon, toast and preserves (Texans love preserves). Dump the eggs or eat them from the cup, your choice. Marilyn and Bob chose the cup, I dumped mine.
They were pretty good. I would have liked my yolks runnier, but I don’t think you can achieve that and still get the whites properly done. I have had them once again, with a bit of chopped shrimp in the bottom, and of course there will be endless variations. I plan to serve Eggs Bob regularly for company, so I can tell the story of where they came from.
This morning, I want to introduce “Eggs Bob.” No doubt there are other recipes similar to this one, and that predate it by years or hundreds of years, but Eggs Bob is, I am sure, unique in its origin.
“Bob” is Bob Cluck, whom I have known since grade school, in Abilene, Texas, in the 1950s. He and Marilyn, who are looking at either their 41st or 42nd anniversary, were in California sightseeing along Big Sur last week, and they drove down to San Diego to see us. Bob is an interesting man (just ask Marilyn), with an inquiring turn of mind. We always have the most interesting conversations. One evening we were talking about what we might have for breakfast.
“What do you think would happen,” Bob said, in his paced, deliberate style, “if you took a Ziploc bag, put the eggs in it, with onion, cheese, whatever you wanted, and just put the bag in boiling water?”
You see what I mean by unique origin. There were only a couple of things that kept me from saying, “Let’s try it and see.” The first was getting the eggs, onion, cheese, etc., out of the bag when they were done. The second was what the hot water might do to the bag plastic, in terms of a bad effect on the food, in the time it took the water to cook the eggs. Actually, I would have liked to see the results of my first reservation, getting the eggs out of the bag. It was the second reservation that stopped me. I am leery of plastic polymers, and how they might get into food via a boiled Ziploc bag, and, if a human ate it, if cancer might just pop straight up out of his skin before he could take a bite of toast.
I announced both of these to Bob, who nodded thoughtfully and agreed to my suggestion that we try a modified version of his idea.
Thus, “Eggs Bob.” For individual servings, you need Pyrex custard cups. Grease the cups with a little olive oil on a paper towel. In the bottom, sprinkle onions, peppers, tomatoes, salsa, chopped leftover meats or shrimp, whatever you like. On top of that, break two eggs. Sprinkle on some cheese, if you like.
Fill a skillet three-quarters full of water and bring it to a high simmer, not quite a boil. There is a technical term for this, “bain marie” or something, but just use a skillet three-quarters full of water. When the water simmers, carefully place the custard cups into the water (tongs are useful for this), that should come up not quite to the lip of the cups. Place a lid (glass, if you have it) on the skillet and let the eggs cook. This takes awhile, maybe 10 minutes. The whites firm up and the yolks sort of cloud over.
It’s best if the yolks stay a bit runny at the end. Otherwise you’ve just got a boiled egg. When I took ours out (with tongs and a hot pad), the center of the cup was still slightly jiggly. I served the cups on a plate, with bacon, toast and preserves (Texans love preserves). Dump the eggs or eat them from the cup, your choice. Marilyn and Bob chose the cup, I dumped mine.
They were pretty good. I would have liked my yolks runnier, but I don’t think you can achieve that and still get the whites properly done. I have had them once again, with a bit of chopped shrimp in the bottom, and of course there will be endless variations. I plan to serve Eggs Bob regularly for company, so I can tell the story of where they came from.
August 04, 2006
Seeing Perini
Glider time . . . . They don’t make gliders like they used to. Sixty years ago, on my Texas front porch, we had a sofa-sized glider that was upholstered like a sofa, with pillows and skirts and flounces, and coil springs underneath, the whole nine yards. Our glider is loveseat-size, cushions and pads on enameled tubular steel. It glides like it is supposed to, which does for porch ruminating what a swing could never do, but comparing it to the old-style gliders is like comparing a 2006 Ford Echo to a 1955 Buick Roadmaster.
More low clouds this morning with points of blue sky peeking through, but no sunrise, which is probably two weeks now without that moment when the first white-bright ray of sun breaks the horizon like a diamond on the rim of the world.
I glide, I Google, I last. Our television remote has a “Last” button on it, which lets you one-click to the last channel you were watching. I like to keep 67, the Food Network, as the “Last” button so when a commercial interrupts the program I’m watching, I can Last over to see what’s cooking, literally.
Wednesday night I Lasted and found myself looking straight into the eyes of Tom Perini, who operates the Perini Ranch Steakhouse in Buffalo Gap, Texas, just south of my home town, caters Texas-style barbecue events nationwide (including at The White House), and has a cookbook, “Texas Cowboy Cooking,” which you need for two recipes if nothing else: Jessica’s Favorite Green Chile Hominy, and Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce. The cookbook is available at Amazon.
I was disappointed to discover that Tom was not the whole show, but part of a show, called “Unwrapped,” having to do with outdoor cooking, cowboy style. His role was to recite the history of cowboy, or chuck wagon, cooking, in the lore of the nation’s expansion westward. Tom is a good resource for this: he learned from real ranch cooks around Abilene and Albany, Texas, and his catering setup includes an authentic chuck wagon, and chuck wagon cooks.
Clips showed the Perini cooks at work, what it takes to keep working cowboys fed, and what they mostly eat. I was tickled by one clip, that looked like chicken-fried steak being sizzled in a cast-iron pot over a cookfire, except the items were way too small to be chicken-fried steaks. I would wager the cooks, historically an impish lot, were cooking up calf fries (truly a prairie delicacy) without telling the TV folks. Tom tells an hilarious story about calf fries in his cookbook, starts at the bottom of Page 73.
Suddenly the story cut away from Perini, and went to the plant where they make B&M Baked Beans. The show’s host, a man named Marc Summers, acted like this was a natural segue, giving the suggestion that you would actually eat eastern-style baked beans with Perini’s cooking, a suggestion that made me wish I could feed Summers a raw calf fry on the spot. B&M beans are fine with a hamburger or a hotdog, but what you want with a Perini chuck wagon steak are Ranch Beans, Page 155, which lifelong Texans, wherever they are living, know simply as red, or pinto, beans.
The show wandered on into other places where you wouldn’t find anything you could call cowboy cooking. They did show where and how Lodge black cast-iron skillets are manufactured, and you can’t call your chuck wagon, or kitchen, complete without a black skillet. Still, it was neat to hit Last and suddenly be looking at someone you went to high school with, who has made a name for himself cooking the same kind of food you grew up on. With the exception of the calf fries.
More low clouds this morning with points of blue sky peeking through, but no sunrise, which is probably two weeks now without that moment when the first white-bright ray of sun breaks the horizon like a diamond on the rim of the world.
I glide, I Google, I last. Our television remote has a “Last” button on it, which lets you one-click to the last channel you were watching. I like to keep 67, the Food Network, as the “Last” button so when a commercial interrupts the program I’m watching, I can Last over to see what’s cooking, literally.
Wednesday night I Lasted and found myself looking straight into the eyes of Tom Perini, who operates the Perini Ranch Steakhouse in Buffalo Gap, Texas, just south of my home town, caters Texas-style barbecue events nationwide (including at The White House), and has a cookbook, “Texas Cowboy Cooking,” which you need for two recipes if nothing else: Jessica’s Favorite Green Chile Hominy, and Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce. The cookbook is available at Amazon.
I was disappointed to discover that Tom was not the whole show, but part of a show, called “Unwrapped,” having to do with outdoor cooking, cowboy style. His role was to recite the history of cowboy, or chuck wagon, cooking, in the lore of the nation’s expansion westward. Tom is a good resource for this: he learned from real ranch cooks around Abilene and Albany, Texas, and his catering setup includes an authentic chuck wagon, and chuck wagon cooks.
Clips showed the Perini cooks at work, what it takes to keep working cowboys fed, and what they mostly eat. I was tickled by one clip, that looked like chicken-fried steak being sizzled in a cast-iron pot over a cookfire, except the items were way too small to be chicken-fried steaks. I would wager the cooks, historically an impish lot, were cooking up calf fries (truly a prairie delicacy) without telling the TV folks. Tom tells an hilarious story about calf fries in his cookbook, starts at the bottom of Page 73.
Suddenly the story cut away from Perini, and went to the plant where they make B&M Baked Beans. The show’s host, a man named Marc Summers, acted like this was a natural segue, giving the suggestion that you would actually eat eastern-style baked beans with Perini’s cooking, a suggestion that made me wish I could feed Summers a raw calf fry on the spot. B&M beans are fine with a hamburger or a hotdog, but what you want with a Perini chuck wagon steak are Ranch Beans, Page 155, which lifelong Texans, wherever they are living, know simply as red, or pinto, beans.
The show wandered on into other places where you wouldn’t find anything you could call cowboy cooking. They did show where and how Lodge black cast-iron skillets are manufactured, and you can’t call your chuck wagon, or kitchen, complete without a black skillet. Still, it was neat to hit Last and suddenly be looking at someone you went to high school with, who has made a name for himself cooking the same kind of food you grew up on. With the exception of the calf fries.
August 03, 2006
Thinking younger
Glider time. The day begins at 5:30, which in San Diego in August is a little after first light. We get up, make coffee, feed the puppies and Joey the Cat, and then we have about half an hour on the glider with our coffee and dawn events . . .
Thick coastal clouds and drizzle this morning. More weird weather. We had three weeks of heat and monsoon moisture, then almost a week of solid overcast, and now this drizzle. We are supposed to get the heat in September, the overcast in January, and the drizzle in June. I’m not complaining. This morning an ocean breeze was pushing some of the drizzle onto the porch, just enough to mist my face. I had to go back in and pull on a corduroy shirt. After the heat stretch, it was a very nice change, snuggled in a shirt jacket with the collar turned up, coffee hot in the cup, thick clouds hanging heavy and low.
I have decided not to “feel old.” There was a story in the paper several days ago, arguing that “feeling old” makes you old. The story validated the decision I had already made. I have never thought of myself as old, even at age 63. I thank rock and roll for that. I can’t listen to Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and feel old.
Still, a time came when I had to make the decision. Oldness came at me the way I believe it comes to most people, at the side door. Things started to happen to me that start happening naturally to people entering their 60s. We enter an age of fair wear and tear. When I was 59, I had prostate cancer surgery. Earlier this year, I had hip replacement surgery. The health scientists say these are the sorts of ailments that start to occur “when you get older.”
I believed it. Outside of appendicitis in junior high school, I went through life without much need for medical attention. I still don’t wear eyeglasses. I go twice a year to get my teeth cleaned, and last time I went, an xray showed a cavity, my first cavity in more than 40 years, which I liked to attribute to my habit of bathing my teeth regularly in strong water. I was active physically, with not many aches or pains.
So I was a babe in the medical woods, entering the age of fair wear and tear, and I was surprised, and ticked off, when doctors told me my prostate needed to come out, and my hip was shot. They mollified me: “It’s just part of the aging process.”
I accepted that, and acceptance was the side door. Hey, old man, come on in. Set a spell. Here, have a few Advil.
I know I started to act old. Well, not old, just older. Having accepted the aging process, I started to buy into it. That’s when I made the decision. As my hip kept healing throughout the spring, I was amazed by how young I was starting to feel. I decided to act on that. I started jitterbugging in the kitchen. I got back outside, in the yard, the garage, the heavy lifting. Karen and I are eating less and exercising more, and from 215 pounds last December, I am knocking on 200. Last week I pulled on my 36 Levis for the first time in five years.
Then here was the story in the paper: feel old, act old, be old. The old Gillette radio ad, stood on its gray head. The aging process is out there, and being in the age of fair wear and tear is perfectly natural. But I’m not going to help it along.
A cool morning, the gym later. Karen is going to lunch with a friend and is bringing me home some pasta for dinner. Life can be good.
Thick coastal clouds and drizzle this morning. More weird weather. We had three weeks of heat and monsoon moisture, then almost a week of solid overcast, and now this drizzle. We are supposed to get the heat in September, the overcast in January, and the drizzle in June. I’m not complaining. This morning an ocean breeze was pushing some of the drizzle onto the porch, just enough to mist my face. I had to go back in and pull on a corduroy shirt. After the heat stretch, it was a very nice change, snuggled in a shirt jacket with the collar turned up, coffee hot in the cup, thick clouds hanging heavy and low.
I have decided not to “feel old.” There was a story in the paper several days ago, arguing that “feeling old” makes you old. The story validated the decision I had already made. I have never thought of myself as old, even at age 63. I thank rock and roll for that. I can’t listen to Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and feel old.
Still, a time came when I had to make the decision. Oldness came at me the way I believe it comes to most people, at the side door. Things started to happen to me that start happening naturally to people entering their 60s. We enter an age of fair wear and tear. When I was 59, I had prostate cancer surgery. Earlier this year, I had hip replacement surgery. The health scientists say these are the sorts of ailments that start to occur “when you get older.”
I believed it. Outside of appendicitis in junior high school, I went through life without much need for medical attention. I still don’t wear eyeglasses. I go twice a year to get my teeth cleaned, and last time I went, an xray showed a cavity, my first cavity in more than 40 years, which I liked to attribute to my habit of bathing my teeth regularly in strong water. I was active physically, with not many aches or pains.
So I was a babe in the medical woods, entering the age of fair wear and tear, and I was surprised, and ticked off, when doctors told me my prostate needed to come out, and my hip was shot. They mollified me: “It’s just part of the aging process.”
I accepted that, and acceptance was the side door. Hey, old man, come on in. Set a spell. Here, have a few Advil.
I know I started to act old. Well, not old, just older. Having accepted the aging process, I started to buy into it. That’s when I made the decision. As my hip kept healing throughout the spring, I was amazed by how young I was starting to feel. I decided to act on that. I started jitterbugging in the kitchen. I got back outside, in the yard, the garage, the heavy lifting. Karen and I are eating less and exercising more, and from 215 pounds last December, I am knocking on 200. Last week I pulled on my 36 Levis for the first time in five years.
Then here was the story in the paper: feel old, act old, be old. The old Gillette radio ad, stood on its gray head. The aging process is out there, and being in the age of fair wear and tear is perfectly natural. But I’m not going to help it along.
A cool morning, the gym later. Karen is going to lunch with a friend and is bringing me home some pasta for dinner. Life can be good.
August 02, 2006
Return of the Card Motors
Lately I have been collecting anecdotal information about childhood before television and computers, when children found practically all of their recreation out-of-doors.
One respondent emailed a memory about card motors. You took a baseball trading card – some player you never heard of or didn’t like – and attached it to the front fork of your bicycle with a clothespin. When the wheel turned, the spokes would slap the card and make a sound like a motor.
It must have been 20 years since I thought about card motors. Even then, I was positive there was going to be a big market for card motors someday. Now I am reminded of them again, and in the 20 intervening years, advances in science and technology have been made that have moved us leaps and bounds closer to card motors.
Human beings have always liked engine noise with their transportation. Young people, in fact, go to some trouble to create the kind of engine noise that makes their engines sound muscular. It’s not easy to do with today’s tiny 4-cylinder engines that typically power the autos that are marketed to the young. The special exhaust systems designed to make an engine sound muscular, when attached to one of these hamster motors (as I like to call them), gives out a sound like a sewing machine on laughing gas.
Loud, ridiculous, or refined, the engine noise provides reassurance that the engine is doing what it is supposed to do, which is to keep the vehicle moving. We can very easily look at instruments in the dashboard and know whether or not the engine is running. Instead, we listen. Sometimes people forget if they have started the engine or not. They lean forward in the seat, listening, and if they can’t hear it, they turn the ignition key and are informed by the godawful grinding of the starter motor that yes, the engine is running.
Now we are in the 21st century, and practically guaranteed that before the century is ended, there will be some basic changes in vehicle power, and the fuels that provide the power. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was writing about diesel vehicles that will run quite nicely on vegetable oil, and not only that, but used vegetable oil, with the bonus that the vehicle’s exhaust smells like whatever was fried in the oil.
But that is just a primitive wrinkle on old technology. Scientists are working on much classier solutions, such as atomic power. Twenty years ago – and this is what reminded me of card motors at the time – scientists were talking about the future of cold fusion. A team of chemists even announced that they had achieved what appeared to be cold fusion – the creation of energy by the fusion of hydrogen atoms – in a vessel of room-temperature water.
Their findings were debunked, but debunkment is no reason for a scientist to quit. Googling “cold fusion” will net you 11,800,000 links to potential sites, including work going on at the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. There may be a day, when this work is done, that fueling your car will be a simple matter of raising the hood, pouring a cup of fusion juice into the tank, and driving for months.
The new fusion power is silent. Thus, every car will need a card motor. All the Indy 500 cars will have card motors. The crowd will insist on it. In many venues, the sounds of engines running provide us not reassurance, but romance. Think about a train track. People who love trains – and they tend to be romantic types – already have endured the evolution from steam to diesel, whose sound in the night isn’t nearly as good. These people are not going to sit happily at grade crossings when fusion locomotives bubble past with the thunder of club soda.
Other engine sounds will demand a romance factor. Take shuttle launches. The flame and the smoke and the roar are spectacular, which is romantic. It may be even more than romance. It could be that human beings have a basic need for flame and thunder from their rockets. It may have become a part of our belief system. Could we take the sight of a flameless, smokeless, noiseless new-fusion launch? I don’t know. I think there is going to be a lot of money to be made from card motors.
The most important trick is going to be rigging up a card motor for fusion-powered airliners. If there is one place that a human being demands to hear engines running, it is at 33,000 feet. With the sound of airplane engines running, romance is not a factor.
One respondent emailed a memory about card motors. You took a baseball trading card – some player you never heard of or didn’t like – and attached it to the front fork of your bicycle with a clothespin. When the wheel turned, the spokes would slap the card and make a sound like a motor.
It must have been 20 years since I thought about card motors. Even then, I was positive there was going to be a big market for card motors someday. Now I am reminded of them again, and in the 20 intervening years, advances in science and technology have been made that have moved us leaps and bounds closer to card motors.
Human beings have always liked engine noise with their transportation. Young people, in fact, go to some trouble to create the kind of engine noise that makes their engines sound muscular. It’s not easy to do with today’s tiny 4-cylinder engines that typically power the autos that are marketed to the young. The special exhaust systems designed to make an engine sound muscular, when attached to one of these hamster motors (as I like to call them), gives out a sound like a sewing machine on laughing gas.
Loud, ridiculous, or refined, the engine noise provides reassurance that the engine is doing what it is supposed to do, which is to keep the vehicle moving. We can very easily look at instruments in the dashboard and know whether or not the engine is running. Instead, we listen. Sometimes people forget if they have started the engine or not. They lean forward in the seat, listening, and if they can’t hear it, they turn the ignition key and are informed by the godawful grinding of the starter motor that yes, the engine is running.
Now we are in the 21st century, and practically guaranteed that before the century is ended, there will be some basic changes in vehicle power, and the fuels that provide the power. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was writing about diesel vehicles that will run quite nicely on vegetable oil, and not only that, but used vegetable oil, with the bonus that the vehicle’s exhaust smells like whatever was fried in the oil.
But that is just a primitive wrinkle on old technology. Scientists are working on much classier solutions, such as atomic power. Twenty years ago – and this is what reminded me of card motors at the time – scientists were talking about the future of cold fusion. A team of chemists even announced that they had achieved what appeared to be cold fusion – the creation of energy by the fusion of hydrogen atoms – in a vessel of room-temperature water.
Their findings were debunked, but debunkment is no reason for a scientist to quit. Googling “cold fusion” will net you 11,800,000 links to potential sites, including work going on at the U.S. Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. There may be a day, when this work is done, that fueling your car will be a simple matter of raising the hood, pouring a cup of fusion juice into the tank, and driving for months.
The new fusion power is silent. Thus, every car will need a card motor. All the Indy 500 cars will have card motors. The crowd will insist on it. In many venues, the sounds of engines running provide us not reassurance, but romance. Think about a train track. People who love trains – and they tend to be romantic types – already have endured the evolution from steam to diesel, whose sound in the night isn’t nearly as good. These people are not going to sit happily at grade crossings when fusion locomotives bubble past with the thunder of club soda.
Other engine sounds will demand a romance factor. Take shuttle launches. The flame and the smoke and the roar are spectacular, which is romantic. It may be even more than romance. It could be that human beings have a basic need for flame and thunder from their rockets. It may have become a part of our belief system. Could we take the sight of a flameless, smokeless, noiseless new-fusion launch? I don’t know. I think there is going to be a lot of money to be made from card motors.
The most important trick is going to be rigging up a card motor for fusion-powered airliners. If there is one place that a human being demands to hear engines running, it is at 33,000 feet. With the sound of airplane engines running, romance is not a factor.
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