Late Spring Ruminations

Late Spring Ruminations

Today was a warm one. Mid-80's or thereabouts. Warm enough to make you believe summer is approaching, if not already here. Late May.

About time, I guess.

I've mowed our lawn 3 or 4 times already, the quick-growing grasses of springtime, along with ten to twelve kinds of weeds common to my lawn, succumbing to the whirling blade of my power mower. It's nice to see trimmed green around the house again instead of the grays, browns and dirty whites of not that many months ago. Not to mention the cold.

It pleases the eye as well as the soul.

Across the street we're experiencing a resurrection of sorts and not just the normal springtime rebirth. Or you might even say a Phoenix is arising from the rubble. We've lived our home for over 30 years now and, for all that time, the residences in the neighborhood have remained mostly the same. There have been some remodelings and some repaintings and maybe some small additions tacked on here and there. And a lot of shuffling of owners. But the basic edifices have remained the same.

An interesting feature of my neighborhood is that one of the homes across the street, an older one, has been a half-way house for a dozen or more years. I'm not positive as to what was half-way about it. Perhaps it contained criminals who were learning how to adjust to life “outside” prison/jail walls and were doing so in my neighborhood. Perhaps it was men from mental institutions going through the same adjustment. I don't think we really knew the exact source of the men who lived over there. All we knew was that they were all men and they all were in some sort of transition. And all we were sure of was that they were good neighbors, as odd as that sounds. They were quiet and peaceful, they handed out candy on trick-or-treat night during Halloween, their lawn and hedges were trimmed properly and they caused no trouble to any of the neighbors. If you didn't know the circumstances, you'd never know that house contained “half-way” people.

Good neighbors.

Sometime last year the house became vacant. We noticed that fact when the curtains disappeared and the blank windows faced the street. Not much later a crew came and pulled all the siding off the house exposing the old clapboard and beams. We assumed that they were going to remodel the old place and we kept an eye over there. We assumed the half-way men had either graduated into full-time civilian life or had been transferred to another domicile.

The house sat that way quite a while, its exposed walls and blank windows seeming to cry out for help until some months ago when a demolition crew arrived and tore the house down. It was in some ways sad seeing it transition from a full 2 and a half story house to a rubble pile and then to an empty hole in the ground. That took approximately a week.

The empty hole sat there a month or two until a crew arrived last month and began laying block in the hole, building a basement for a new house. Day after day and week after week we've been watching this new house rise from the ground across the street. We've since learned it's a Habitat for Humanity house, the organization that provides housing for lower income families that are willing to invest “sweat equity” in building their new homes. HH started in 1976 and has built over 350,000 homes around the world providing more than 1.75 million people with safe, decent, affordable housing. You may remember Jimmy Carter in the television ads about HH homes swinging his hammer, pounding in nails and helping build them.

The house is really starting to look good now. They've finished the roofing shingles and have recently installed the siding for the house. We've also seen lots of people involved in putting it up. I'd guess that some of the helpers belong to the family that are going to be our new neighbors.

It's taken a while to get it up. I believe that most of the labor has been donated and volunteered. I do know that a lot of the materials and supplies have been donated. There's a sign to that effect in front of the house. I also know that there has been a LOT of hammering and sawing going on over there for the past few weeks. Looks as if it won't be long until it's finished.

It's going to look nice, too, and it'll be pleasant to see an end to the construction noise.

Although a remodeling of the old house would have been, to my mind, preferable, there was obviously something wrong with the structure that necessitated it's demolition. Asbestos? Foundation deterioration? Something else? In any event it is nice to see another home being erected in our old neighborhood instead of an empty lot being left as is. Empty lots always remind me of a bad tooth being extracted and a replacement implant or bridge not installed. An unwanted vacancy.

And when the work is finished and the new neighbors arrive, I hope they are as comfortable and happy in our neighborhood as we've been the past 3 decades or so.

* * *

Had a bit of a scare recently. Let me tell you about it:

A few weeks ago I'd been feeling a bit “poorly”. A little of this and a little of that. Aches, pains and maybe a bit of a shortness of breath here and there. Some stomach grumbles and nausea. It wasn't real bad but it was off-and-on annoying. I thought it might even be some bad ham I had eaten. I had a doctor's appointment scheduled previous to my recent problems and, while I was there, I mentioned that I was a bit under the weather. He zeroed in on one of my complaints and said, “Shortness of breath, eh?”

And scheduled me for a nuclear stress test.

He did this not only because of my age (I guess) and my recent problems, but because of my family history of heart disease. My whole family's had cardiac conditions. My mother passed away at 52 from a heart attack. My brother passed at age 42 the same way. My father had quintuple bypass surgery a decade before he passed away and my youngest brother suffered a heart attack a few years ago and presently wears a pacemaker/defibrillator.

So I've been living under a genetic Sword of Damocles most of my life.

I've had stress tests before but not for some years. This time the idea of the stress test creeped me out immensely. My symptoms increased dramatically after the doc scheduled the test and the stomach nausea jumped in intensity until I thought I would be sick almost daily. My old nemesis Anxiety had me in it's clutches and was shaking me like a dog shakes a rat.

I was miserable.

All too soon the day of the test arrived. Once again I read the prep sheet about what I had to do before arriving for the test. Line 2 said “no food for at least 4 hours before arriving”. So that's what I did. I woke up, cleaned up, took my morning meds and headed over to the hospital. No food.

The test went about as well as I figured. I was feeling miserable, hungry, anxious, sick to my stomach, my heartbeat was fluttery and I was unable to walk on the treadmill as far or as fast as I probably should have. Plus the diabetes meds I took that morning without any food had brought my sugar quite low and added low sugar jitters to the whole mix. The cardiologist in attendance made several remarks that sounded negative to me after the test. Especially when he said, “I guess it wasn't bad ham, was it?”

I went home feeling even worse. I was sure that the next call from the doctor would be to schedule me for a heart catheterization and stent insertion if necessary. With my family history? I figured I was the next thing to a goner.

I called the my doctor's office the next day and inquired about the results of the test. The nurse replied that it was much too early for the results and that they would call when they came in.

I suffered some more.

I work second shift and, about a half-hour before I was to leave for work, the phone rang. It was my doctor's office.

A cold sweat formed on my forehead and the phone trembled in my hand as I shakily listened to the voice.

The nurse said, “The doctor has gone over your test results and wanted you to know that he saw no problems. He said you were quite out of shape, though, and needed to really work on that.”

And, just like that, my symptoms disappeared. The nausea. The fluttery heart. The this-and-that which was troubling me so much. All gone.

I went to work feeling like, as they say, a million dollars. I had beaten the genetic claymore mine that had been aimed at me since birth.

At least so far...

Since that great news I've rededicated myself to losing weight and being much more physically active. I've lost some weight since then and my glucose numbers are down dramatically. And I'm feeling better. A lot of pluses. Of course I'm not counting the muscle aches and pains from activity after lots of non-activity.

I really feel I was given a second chance.

My wife says I'm over dramatizing. And she's probably right. But I'm still glad and thankful for the good news recently and am happy to be able to start working on my health again more proactively.

Because one day the news won't be so positive and my prognosis won't be quite so good.

But not this day.

Not yet.

And for that I'm thankful.

Two Koans

Two Koans

Koan number one:

The Sound of One Hand.

The master of Kennin temple was Mokurai, Silent Thunder. He had a little protege named Toyo who was only twelve years old. Toyo saw the older disciples visit the master's room each morning and evening to receive instruction in sanzen or personal guidance in which they were given koans to stop mind-wandering.

Toyo wished to do sanzen also.

“Wait a while,” said Mokurai. “You are too young.”

But the child insisted, so the teacher finally consented.

In the evening little Toyo went at the proper time to the threshold of Mokurai's sanzen room. He struck the gong to announce his presence, bowed respectfully three times outside the door, and went to sit before the master in respectful silence.

“You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together,” said Mokurai. “Now show me the sound of one hand.”

Toyo bowed and went to his room to consider this problem. From the window he could hear the music of the geishas. “Ah, I have it!” imagined Toyo.

The next evening, when his teacher asked him to illustrate the sound of one hand, Toyo began to play the music of the geishas.

“No, no,” said Mokurai. “That will never do. That is not the sound of one hand. You've not got it at all.”

Thinking that such music might interrupt, Toyo moved his abode to a quiet place. He meditated again. “What can the sound of one hand be?” He happened to hear some water dripping. “I have it,” imagined Toyo.

When he next appeared before his teacher, Toyo imitated dripping water.

“What is that?” asked Mokurai. “That is the sound of dripping water, but not the sound of one hand. Try again.”

In vain Toyo meditated to hear the sound of one hand. He heard the sighing of the wind. But the sound was rejected.

He heard the cry of an owl. This also was refused.

The sound of one hand was not the locusts.

For more than ten times Toyo visited Mokurai with different sounds. All were wrong. For almost a year he pondered what the sound of one hand might be.

At last little Toyo entered true meditation and transcended all sounds. “I could collect no more,” he explained later, “so I reached the soundless sound.”

Toyo had realized the sound of one hand.

Koan number two:

A Cup of Tea.

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Koans are, if you didn't know before, an important aspect of Zen Buddhism. Zen promotes a very different way of understanding and dealing with ordinary reality. One of the more baffling aspects of Zen to the Western mind is the practice of Koans. Koans are teaching tools used to break down the barriers to enlightenment. They are a method of training the mind in order to achieve the state of Satori. Satori is also a difficult concept to explain in a few words. It is essentially the goal of all Zen meditation and can be compared to the term enlightenment or insight into the nature of reality. These two concepts, Koan exercise and Satori are the central aspects of Zen.

A Koan, when literally translated, means “public document”. It refers to a statement made by a Master to a student of Zen or a discussion or dialogue between the Master and the student. The purpose is to open the mind and perception to the truth. Koans are questions or riddles designed as instruments by the Zen Master to aid the student in finding the truth behind the everyday images of reality.

How do they work?

Koans are not rational questions with final linear conclusions. They are designed to open the mind that has been closed by habitual responses to the world and reality.

To explain: Our perception of the world is clouded by, first, the habitual responses that we are taught by society and secondly, by the habit forming creation of our own selves or ego's. In our everyday lives we develop ideas about reality and possibilities that our peers verify. We accept these “laws” as immutable on the basis of their habitual occurrence and certification by society. For example, scientific authority states that there is a law of gravity and that time is linear and proceeds from one second to the next. These “truths” are bolstered by schools, society and our peers until they become unquestionable fact. Changing them becomes almost impossible within the framework of conventional society.

The purpose of Zen Koans is to upset or dislocate the mind from these habitual ideas of reality and open the mind to the other possibilities and, eventually, to Satori or knowledge of reality.

The Koan works at various levels and on various stages of the student's progress in understanding Zen. At its most elementary stage the Zen Koan is intended to question what the student takes for commonplace reality and to question that which is seen to be logically impossible.

It is designed to open the initiated mind to possibilities beyond the rational. Zen master Dogen said that in order to perceive reality we must “drop mind and body”. The Koan forces the student to face this type of thinking.

In trying to answer the Koan, the student will come to a mental “precipice”, as it were, where all methods and procedures of accepted thinking no longer function. The purpose of the Koan is to shove the pupil over the precipice into an area of experience that is completely new. To critique ordinary reality and to force the mind into other areas of understanding. That is the spiritual reality that the Zen master is attempting to guide the student towards.

When you're given your first koan your mind cries out, “This is nonsense. It is meaningless.”

But when you really start to think about it and meditate on it for a substantial amount of time, you begin to get glimmers and shadows of what the master might be trying to lead you to, to get a vague feeling of the direction you must travel. And, like young Toyo, you might find the sound of one hand. Or, like the professor, you might begin to realize what has to be dropped or discarded before an understanding of what you're after can be achieved or realized.

To gain some insight to this process, I'd like for you to do the following.

Take your favorite teacup from your cupboard and set it on the table. Sit down in a chair in front of the cup and examine it closely. Note its color, its shape, its solidity. Now close your eyes and keep them closed. Imagine you have just brewed a cup of your favorite tea, whether that be a delicate green tea or a robust black pekoe. You've just poured that brewed tea into the cup and sat it on the table. You recall the process of preparing the tea, how you either opened up a tea bag and steeped your boiling water onto it or how you measured out the precise amount of leaf tea into your steeping ball and have let it sit in the teapot until it was ready to drink, then you poured it into the cup. You've sugared and lemoned your tea (or not) as you usually do. The tea now sits on the table in front of you, steam rising from it and the odor of tea is perfuming the air. You are thirsty for the tea and it now sits before you.

You reach out and touch the teacup. You feel it's contours, its smoothness or roughness. You feel the warmth of the tea within the cup and the weight of the liquid in the cup. You feel the weight of the tea shift within the cup as you raise it toward your face. When the cup is raised in front of you, you bend your nose slightly toward the cup and smell the warm tea odors rising from the surface of the tea, the scent both invigorating and familiar. Your face can actually feel the steam arising from the cup, bathing your face with fragrant aroma. You raise the cup to your lips and take a small sip of the tea.

Did you smell anything? Did you taste anything? Did you feel anything, even a little bit?

Do it again tomorrow. And again the day after. And again. And again.

One day you will be able to drink tea from an empty cup.

And on that day you will take your first baby-steps on your journey to Satori.

Heavy Thoughts

Heavy Thoughts

Have you ever noticed that when you are starting to do something or, even when you're contemplating doing something, roadblocks seem to magically appear in front of you? The path that seemed smooth and self-evident when you first started contemplating it suddenly has developed bumps and trenches. The small details suddenly growing large teeth and claws.

For example:

I am overweight. Plump. Husky. Plus-sized. Big-boned. Suffer from “Dunlap's Disease, where my belly done laps over my belt. Fat, to use the vernacular. My wife prefers to use the word “heavy”, but I think that's too gentle. Am I way, way overweight? I don't think so. There are lots of folks around me that are bigger. Heavier. Fatter. But yes, I could benefit from losing 50 pounds or thereabouts. As could, sadly, a large percentage of my brother and sister Americans.

It goes on easy. The weight, you know. The extra piece of pie after supper last night. The fast-food meal you ate because you were tired of your own cooking. The candy bar you bought from the machine at work because... who knows why? The chocolate candy jones you seem to have developed.

You know what I'm talking about.

So the fact that I should lose some weight is beginning to set heavily on my mind from time to time and I end up telling myself that I should do something about it. And the fact that my wife is on a Weight Watchers program, has been for over a year now and is actually losing weight, only acts as more of a goad to me. A constant reminder of what I should do.

As an aside, congratulations to my steadfast wife for her earnestness in attempting to be “less than what she was”. Having your accomplishments set before me daily surely must eventually seep into my hulking male consciousness as a “good thing”, a goal to be attained.

So I think about what I must do to lose weight. Sadly, thinking about it and doing it are very different. Thinking is easy. Doing is hard. The cold facts are these: You must either take in less or exercise more. Think about it. That's all there is. All boiled down in one sentence. Intake less or exercise more.

I just saved you a fortune on diet books. You may thank me when you can.

Now, on to the roadblocks that litter this road to weight-loss bliss.

My life is filled with enticements and temptations almost everywhere. (Let's focus on the dietary ones for the moment, OK?) They whisper to me daily, calling my name with scents of chocolate, the aroma of frying meat and onions and the succulent perfumes of a thousand savory scents. They kiss my olfactory nerves with smells of freshly baked bread, pies and cakes, fruit jams and jellies, cinnamon pastries at the malls and a million kinds of freshly-baked cookies. They entice me constantly with the proximity of their availability and the reasonableness of their costs. And they spear into my eyes and hammer into my ears from every venue of advertising, from the TV and radio to the omnipresence of the Golden Arches on, what seems like, every street corner.

Have you ever thought about how many holidays and occasions in our lives which have food as their lynchpin? Think about it. Most of them do. Go through the calendar.

New Years. Dinners and buffets, drinking and parties, snack tables and appetizers.

Valentine's Day. Candy. Lots and lots of candy. Dinners out with your spouse.

St. Patrick's Day. Drink-em-ups and beer. Corned beef and cabbage.

Girl Scout Cookie Time. Cookies. ALL KINDS of cookies!

Easter. Candy and chocolate. Family dinners.

Memorial Day. Barbecues and family get togethers.

The fair. All that yummy FAIR FOOD.

Independence Day. Picnics and more barbecues. Drinking.

Labor Day. More picnics and cookouts.

Halloween. Candy. Parties.

Thanksgiving. The granddaddy of food holidays. Groaning dinner tables and belts being unbuckled to allow more gorging.

Christmas. Holiday feasts.

Then think about all the other chances throughout the year to eat something “extra” such as birthdays, anniversaries, reunions, visits from relatives and friends, vacations, “Date” nights, movies, candy bowls on desks at work, buffets, ice cream or strawberry socials, fairs and carnivals,

And lets not forget the “Food Network” on our televisions where they talk about and show food 24 hours a day. Their chefs are now celebrities and their names are known to millions. Rachael Ray. Ina Garten. Paula Deen. Bobbie Flay. Giada. Cat. Emeril. Mario. Tyler. And they're all about FOOD.

Then there's the “deals” you see and hear about that seem to be everywhere. I have a fistful of 2-for-1 coupons from McDonald's sitting on my coffee table at home right this minute. (Coffee table – another food reference!) I don't even particularly care for McDonald's, but... Two for one! What a deal! How can I say no?

And have you noticed how MANY commercials on TV are for food? They're unescapeable.

But trying to eat less is VERY different than trying to quit smoking or quit taking drugs. To do those things you have to QUIT doing them. Quitting meaning stopping. NEVER doing them again. But with food, you CAN'T quit. You just have to eat less. It's MUCH, MUCH harder than quitting. As an ex-smoker I speak from experience on the difficulties of quitting any kind of drug. But just easing off? Tough!

Lord, give me strength.

On the other side of the coin, exercising more isn't just a piece of cake either. (Notice the food idiom. You just can't escape them. )

My situation is even more aggravating than having a successful Weight Watcher for a wife. Her brother, my brother-in-law, used to be a body-builder and now owns a couple of gyms. He IS Mr. Exercise! You look in your dictionary under healthy muscular super good-looking dude and there's his picture! Yikes! I even stopped by his gym last weekend and asked for some tips on how to strengthen my back, which has been giving me some grief recently. I even kissed his ring hoping that some of his physical charisma might be magically bestowed upon me. I figured: strengthen my back = exercise more = lose weight. Simple, eh? So I followed through on some of his exercises today when I was at the gym. Felt OK when I left there. But now at ten o'clock? My back is presently barking at me like a rabid pit bull. Sure, I guess it's just muscles that haven't been used with any real regularity sounding off. But they REALLY hurt now. When I get out of my chair I walk like a 90-year-old man. And feel like it!

None of this is easy, my friends. None of it. Of course, nobody said life was easy.

But it is proving to be interesting.

Oh, I forgot. We're going on a cruise in a couple months. Food opportunities 24/7. You don't even have to get out of bed. Just call room service and food will appear at your cabin door. Wonderful, wonderful cruise food.

Lord, lord, lord will the blessings never end?

This I Believe

This I Believe

As I was watching the news recently, shaking my head over the way things are nowadays and stifling an urge to scream at the television, I was strongly reminded of the character Howard Beale in the motion picture “Network” and how he so succinctly stated as he stood before the TV camera, soaking wet and with madness in his eyes, and shouted, “I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!” Howard Beale was suffering from depression and insanity, but his message was delivered loud and clear.

Remembering that great performance, I think it would benefit us, during this time in our nation's history, to again revisit those famous words:

Please repeat after me...

“I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this any more!”

And what exactly am I mad as hell about?

I'm angry about the yawning division between the two major political parties in America. I'm angry and mad as hell about the impossibility of the left to see the viewpoint of the right and of the right to see any aspects of goodness from the viewpoint of the left.

I'm angry about the rants, the rabble rousing and the petty viciousness of some of the so-called media when they accuse the “other” side of everything from criminal behavior clear through to satanically-inspired acts. And I absolutely hate the brain-dead followers of these bile-spouters who parrot those words and further the hate.

And I'm DAMN mad about those folks who say I'm not a good American, or even just inferring it, because of the particular viewpoint I endorse at a certain point in time. Just because I'm a proponent of viewpoint “A” doesn't mean I'm not a good American or that I can't see the possible good portions of viewpoint “B”. Or just because you are opposed to that viewpoint vehemently also doesn't make you a bad citizen. Could you possibly see, at least a little bit, where I'm coming from? If so, I'd be happy to listen to your viewpoint and to examine its positive aspects.

It's called compromise, folks, and it's been the backbone of this country for over two centuries. Believe it or not.

I earned my stripes as a good American years ago when I gave up four years of my life and served my country in the military. Along with thousands of other men and women over the years. Other people proved their membership in the “good American” club by volunteering at the local level – coaching little league, knocking on doors to collect donations for a charity, serving in poorly paid positions in local government, donating their time and money to worthwhile causes. Others volunteered their time serving positions in the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister, officiating in Special Olympics, working as school crossing guards, delivering meals to shut-ins, driving people to the polls on election day.

And let's not forget performing their civic duty by voting their consciences on election day.

All these activities demonstrate a person's affirmation of the American ethic. All these pursuits help make us Americans.

Good Americans.

But adhering to inflexible positions by our politicians, even when examining the opponent's viewpoint would likely illuminate more positive aspects for solutions, is ludicrous and dangerous. I find it extremely hard to believe that the adage “it's my way or the highway” is beneficial in any regard. In my eyes that's not American behavior.

I believe that almost all people who go into politics originally do so wanting to do good. They want to make things better. They want to “right the wrongs” and make their community, state or nation the best that it can possibly be. Unfortunately, I feel some who started with this commitment are corrupted by the temptations that seem to surround our elected officials. But the majority, perhaps the vast majority of the ones that still serve, are still trying to do their best. Still trying to steer the ship of state into beneficial waters. Some of them under terrible pressures to do otherwise.

I applaud their courage and their convictions whether I agree with their particular solution to a problem or not.

Perhaps I'm more of an optimist than I ought to be. Perhaps I'm also a very naïve man.

I recall a piece of writing I read a long time ago by one of my favorite authors, Robert Heinlein. It was entitled “This I Believe” and was delivered to a radio audience in 1952 during an interview by Edward R. Murrow. I'd like to believe that the precepts stated in it are still alive and well in this year 2010, well over a half-century later. I'd surely like to believe that.

I'd like for you to also read those words that I fervently believe are still true.

“This I Believe” by Robert A. Heinlein

"I am not going to talk about religious beliefs, but about matters so obvious that it has gone out of style to mention them."

"I believe in my neighbors."

"I know their faults and I know that their virtues far outweigh their faults. Take Father Michael down our road a piece --I'm not of his creed, but I know the goodness and charity and lovingkindness that shine in his daily actions. I believe in Father Mike; if I'm in trouble, I'll go to him. My next-door neighbor is a veterinary doctor. Doc will get out of bed after a hard day to help a stray cat. No fee -- no prospect of a fee. I believe in Doc."

"I believe in my townspeople. You can knock on any door in our town say, 'I'm hungry,' and you will be fed. Our town is no exception; I've found the same ready charity everywhere. For the one who says, 'To heck with you -- I got mine,' there are a hundred, a thousand, who will say, 'Sure, pal, sit down.'

"I know that, despite all warnings against hitchhikers, I can step to the highway, thumb for a ride and in a few minutes a car or a truck will stop and someone will say, 'Climb in, Mac. How how far you going?'

"I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime, yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest decent kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up, business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries --but it is a force stronger than crime."

"I believe in the patient gallantry of nurses...in the tedious sacrifices of teachers. I believe in the unseen and unending fight against desperate odds that goes on quietly in almost every home in the land."

"I believe in the honest craft of workmen. Take a look around you. There never were enough bosses to check up on all that work. From Independence Hall to the Grand Coulee Dam, these things were built level and square by craftsmen who were honest in their bones."

"I believe that almost all politicians are honest. For every bribed alderman there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true, we would never have gotten past the thirteen colonies."

"I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River."

"I believe in -- I am proud to belong to -- the United States. Despite shortcomings, from lynchings to bad faith in high places, our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history."

"And finally, I believe in my whole race. Yellow, white, black, red, brown --in the honesty, courage, intelligence, durability....and goodness.....of the overwhelming majority of my brothers and sisters everywhere on this planet. I am proud to be a human being. I believe that we have come this far by the skin of our teeth, that we always make it just by the skin of our teeth --but that we will always make it....survive....endure. I believe that this hairless embryo with the aching, oversize brain case and the opposable thumb, this animal barely up from the apes, will endure --will endure longer than his home planet, will spread out to the other planets, to the stars, and beyond, carrying with him his honesty, his insatiable curiosity, his unlimited courage --and his noble essential decency."

"This I believe with all my heart."

I think Heinlein expressed, with words vastly better than anything I could conjure, exactly what I'm thinking.

In any event, just keep in mind the fact that a pendulum swings both ways. When it reaches the apex of its swing to the left (or to the right), it always returns to the center.

And the center is where most of us live.

Inspiration

Inspiration

I'm not a big admirer of spontaneity. I'd consider it foreign to my way of thinking to jump in a car and head somewhere without knowing, at least somewhat, where I was heading, why I was going there, how long I would be there and what I would do when I arrived. I'm not a fan of surprises and I hate not having a plan. I don't know if this is a failing of mine or whether I'm in the majority in this view. I only know that I get the shudders when I contemplate setting forth on a task or journey with no planning beforehand.

I know people who are proponents of the alternative viewpoint. A young lady where I work is of that persuasion. She actually likes unpreparedness, going off half-cocked, heading out with no clear destination. And she seems to thrive on that mind set.

I applaud her choices and am quick to acknowledge that her way of doing things might be acceptable under some circumstances – maybe even, dare I say it, fun? But I surely would not want to do it her way very often, if at all.

Another friend once told me that I was, perhaps, the most unspontaneous person they had ever known. When I thought about it, I had to agree. I wasn't ashamed of it. I wasn't even put off by their judgment on my way of doing things. It was like saying a ball was round. Or the sea is salty. Of course it is and of course I am.

Which leads me, after meandering around a bit, to the topic of this blog.

I like to have goals in front of me. Something to look forward to – something to aspire toward. Whether those goals are as simple as a dental appointment next month or as complicated as the day I plan to retire. I like to see that goal sitting on my horizon and I like to see my path leading toward that prize. One of the goals I've always enjoyed placing in my path, planning for and then moving toward is our yearly quest for a vacation destination. My wife and I like to start throwing out possibilities to each other late in the previous year. The beach? The mountains? Canada? Dixie? The big city? Visit with distant relatives or friends? To go back to a place we're familiar with or to seek out a new place? There are generally lots of ideas floating back and forth between us during that time period. After discussing this and that we usually select a destination early in the year in which we plan to take the vacation and start drawing a bead on it. Well, at least I do. I don't think my wife is as fanatical about planning as I am. In fact I'm sure she isn't.

But this year we were a bit at loose ends. All the possibilities we were discussing were leaving me cold. No I didn't want to do this. No I was not particularly sold on that. And I definitely didn't want to do that other thing. And it was getting late. At least late to my viewpoint. Some destinations require making plans many months in advance and it was already mid-February.

What to do? What to do?

About that time several things began to coalesce around us that eventually lead to our final decision as to our vacation this year. I heard a friend from work talking about the vacation she'd taken last year. Another friend at my workplace had just returned from his winter vacation, the type of trip very similar to the first friend's. And my brother-in-law mentioned about his going on a trip very similar to the two friends at work.

The vacation they had all taken was a cruise.

And they had ALL had GREAT times.

When I floated the idea to my wife that maybe we might want to consider taking a short cruise – just to “test the water”, I could see her eyes light up. We'd talked about doing just that thing a number of years ago. We'd even talked to a travel agent who specialized in cruises. But we'd chickened out for a number of reasons then and hadn't revisited the idea since. I don't even remember our reasons for not going then.

But now?

I dove onto the Internet and began making queries. Where do cruises go? How long should we go for? Which cruise line? How much will it cost? How do we get to whatever port of departure we need to get to? How much will that cost? What do you do on a cruise? And what do you do at your destination?

And so on and so forth.

I talked to my brother-in-law about cruising, as he'd been on eleven of them and was, therefore, as much an expert as I'd need. He gave me many excellent tips. I talked to the people I worked with and asked innumerable questions concerning their trips. I talked to my wife as to what her thoughts were. I went back to the computer and began narrowing down choices. Finally, after considering a number of factors, we decided on our cruise.

We're heading out of Tampa early in July. We're sailing on the Carnival Inspiration on a four-day cruise to Cozumel, Mexico and back.

The length was about right for first-time cruisers, I thought. Enough time to get immersed in shipboard life and enough time at the destination to see and feel a bit of a foreign country. To have some fun in the sun and to enjoy ourselves in a new venture. But not too long in case we hated it. Or if we got seasick. Or a coronovirus.

We've decided to fly down a day early to ensure we don't “miss the boat”. I've already booked the motel we'll stay at that evening before.

We've applied for our passports and are patiently awaiting their arrival.

And I'm busily and happily making plans and plans and more plans. I've read dozens and dozens of reviews written by cruisers who've taken that exact cruise recently in the same boat and soaked up their thoughts on the good stuff and the bad stuff. (It's all mostly good.) I've read blogs by cruise directors. I've eyeballed Google Earth for our ship's course, what Tampa looks like and how far our motel is from the airport and the ship's departure dock. I've read many reviews of Cozumel – where to buy souvenirs and what kind, where to dine, where to enjoy a beach, where to have a drink, what to expect for weather and many other things. I've watched videos shot by vacationers on the same boat we're booked on and in the same kind of cabin we've reserved. And of their excursions at Cozumel. I even told my wife I could probably find my way around the cabin and ship blind-folded as I'd seen so many videos about it.

It ought to be fun. No. It WILL be fun! I'm very, very confident.

Why?

'Cause I've made my plans! I've checked everything out I possibly can and am relaxed that we're prepared and we'll be fine.

Cruising the Caribbean! Visiting Mexico! New friends! Fabulous food! Fun in the sun!

120 days and counting.

I CAN'T WAIT!

Snowfall and Crummy Coins

Snowfall and Crummy Coins

This week the main story around this part of the neighborhood is snow. It's February – go figure. A storm lashed its way through our Buckeye State last Friday night (and elsewhere, if you recall) and dumped many inches of the white stuff on this land between the river and the lake. We, in my hometown, shared in its bounty during that storm, counting anywhere from 10 to 14 inches of snow on our yards and streets and sidewalks. Other areas of the state had varying amounts also, from not-too-much to way-way-too-much. I guess our foot, give or take an inch or two, was about average. If you want to know the truth, I'd have enjoyed being less than average this time around.

I'm sort of ambivalent about snow. (I love that sentence.) Of course I've lived with it all my life. I've seen old black and white photos that were taken by my father, when I was a baby, of monster snows that occurred during those years. People were stranded for days and days during those snows. I understand I caught pneumonia during one of those onslaughts and spent some time in the hospital. I don't really remember. Just stories.

Were the snows actually bigger in the “old” days, or are our memories getting more easily revised as the years go by?

I have to drive quite a ways to work these days and am not terribly fond of having to make my way through the mess that a substantial snowfall entails. It almost invariably leads to slow travel and apprehension as to the safety of being on the road. And it's always more time consuming, having to clean off the car, having to warm the car, having to make sure the car has its safety equipment, perhaps even having to clean the driveway to get out, etc., etc. A 10-minute drive to the store can become a 30-minute endeavor that can tire you out for an afternoon.

But, to look at the obverse of that coin, the beauty of a snowfall is something awesome to behold in itself. I recalled this aspect of the white stuff when I left work last night at midnight and walked to the car. The snow piles around the parking lot where I work glistened in the lights from the high light poles as if they contained thousands and thousands of glittering diamonds embedded in them. The night was quiet and frosty and my breath steamed in the cold air as my boots crunched their way to the car. On the drive home I marveled at the moon-drenched snowscapes on either side of the car as I drove through the rural countryside.

So I again sit here at work and watch another storm wend its way through the area. The work is light tonight and I have time to ponder various topics as they occur to my questing mind.

Such as pennies.

For instance, did you know that United States cents are now biodegradable? I'm pretty sure that they aren't supposed to be. But I've discovered that they are. Here's how I discovered that fact: One of my hobbies is metal detecting, the pursuit of which, as my faithful readers may recall, entails my retrieving lost coins from the ground. Generally nickels, dimes, quarters and cents. Occasionally a half might appear or one of the newer US dollar coins. Rarely silver, but it's not unheard of.

But it's usually a pocketful of common coins when the day's done.

Now I suppose it's time for a history lesson. In the “old” days, cents were made out of primarily copper. Here's how they evolved over time. Let's just go back to World War II for simplicity sake. 1944-1946 the cent was made of 95% copper and 5% zinc. This composition is better known as brass. 1946-1962 the cent was composed of 95% copper and 5% tin and zinc, better known as bronze. 1962-1982 it was made of brass again, the same as the '44-'46 ones. But during 1982 the composition was changed again and not for the better. It became 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper plating. This was ostensibly because the value of the copper in the cent began to rise above one cent.

Let's look at what Wikipedia says about the “new” zinc cents. “It should be noted that the post-1982 cents, since copper and zinc form a galvanic cell in the presence of electrolytes, are much more susceptible to corrosion and pitting than the bronze cents made prior to 1982. Many collectors lament that even perfectly preserved post-1982 cents protected in Mint sets have begun tarnishing, developing bubbles beneath the copper coating's surface, or even corroding.”

If the zinc cents are deteriorating even in sealed mint sets, you can imagine what they do when they're buried in the ground! I estimate that about half of the cents that I've recovered from the ground recently have been of the zinc variety and half of those cents are pitted and corroded so badly as to make them unspendable. I recently cleaned a number of dirty coins I'd dug the past year or two and it was sad to see the way the zinc ones looked. They appeared as if they'd been exposed to hydrochloric or sulfuric acid or possibly some other highly corrosive media. The pre-1982 ones are, almost without an exception, in decent shape and only need a bit of cleaning before placing them directly back into circulation after cleaning. I ended up picking out the bad ones and keeping them for novelty sake. When the final tally is taken it's only going to result in the loss of a couple of dollars, but when I think of the effort that went into retrieving those cents, the hours of bending and digging, it's sad to see the end result being veritably worthless.

Out of curiosity I've checked out the Internet to see if I could trade in the bad cents for good ones. I knew you could do this with ripped and mutilated paper currency. And I found out you can. But you have to either send them or carry them to the US Mint in Washington to do so. Hardly worth the effort.

Another big downside to the zinc cent is this, and I again quote from Wikipedia: “Zinc, a major component of post-1982 US pennies, is toxic in large quantities. Swallowing such a penny, which is 97.5% zinc, can cause damage to the stomach lining due to the high solubility of the zinc ion in the acidic stomach. Zinc toxicity, mostly in the form of the ingestion of US pennies minted after 1982, is commonly fatal in dogs where it causes a severe hemolytic anemia. It is also highly toxic in pet parrots and can often be fatal.”

And so it goes.

I suppose a conspiracy theorist might surmise that the change was a government plot to poison our children, our dogs, our parrots and to devalue the currency. I hardly think that. I believe a mistake was made when the composition of the cents was changed and that it's now high time to rectify that error.

So, from this day forth let your battle cry be “Bring Back the Copper Cents!” Or “Let's Pitch the Pathetic Pennies and Bring Back the Old Time Cents!”

The coin collectors will thank you. The handful of us treasure hunters will thank you. And you'll again be content that the cents in your pocket will last almost forever and are worth at least a cent again.

Even if you can't buy anything with them.

Tumbler Troubles

Tumbler Troubles

As some of my faithful readers may remember from previous blogs, I've been an active devotee of the hobby of metal detecting for quite a number of years. I've used a half-dozen machines of various makes and models in the course of this hobby, the latest of which I purchased last year. The aim of the hobby is, of course, to acquire “treasures” from the ground. As you might imagine, the gold rings, gold coins, silver dollars, jewelry and other goodies are the most sought after. But the normal acquisitions that the ground yields up to the metal detectorist are usually common, everyday coins – cents, nickels, dimes and quarters – or rarely a half dollar. Occasionally a dollar coin is uncovered or some other rarity, but the vast majority of finds are quite simply pocket change.

What you have to understand about coins lost in the ground is this: they change color and get tarnished during their sojourn in the soil. I'm not sure of the chemistry, but the various metals in modern coinage react to the soil by darkening and tarnishing. So the coins you bring home at the end of your day digging them out of the ground will eventually need cleaning before any even semi-observant store will accept them. Or the banks. Or anyone.

I haven't cleaned any of my finds for a number of years. I've just been tossing them into a big jug in the basement and figuring I'd “get around” to cleaning them “one day”.

So the jug of dirty money sat in the basement.

Upstairs, in the extra bedroom we use for our library/computer room/file storage room we have two big jars which we also use for coins. They were originally the depository of pretzel rods. Now they hold pocket change. One is for cents only, the other has mixed nickels, dimes and quarters. There's LOTS of coins in them, about forty pounds worth in each one nowadays.

I've been looking at them for some time now, wondering what I was going to do with that money when I cashed it in. I wanted it to be used for something special, not just household expenses. The last time we had an accumulation of a magnitude near this size we bought a nice digital camera with the proceeds. But we had no need for a new camera at the moment, so what would we do with it?

As my faithful readers may also remember, my wife and I got into a new hobby last year – geocaching. That's where you get the coordinates of a hidden “treasure” on the Internet and, using a GPS receiver, go and find the target. When found, you sign a logbook, exchange small tokens if you like, and log the find on the Internet. We'd been using one of the more inexpensive GPS receivers last year and had talked a bit about getting a better one.

Aha! A reason to break the two “piggy banks”! A new GPS!

But, if I was going to do that, why not add the dug coins from the basement stash to the two big jars upstairs?

All I had to do was clean the dirty ones.

As you may or may not know, there are several ways to clean dirty coins. I've tried most of them. The easiest way is with a rock tumbler.

Let me explain.

A rock tumbler is a machine who's original purpose is to tumble semi-precious rocks in and, by tumbling with various grades of grit, smooth and polish those rocks until they became like gems and could be used to make jewelry of various sorts. You've probably seen them in rock shops or souvenir stands in bins with hundreds of smooth, colorful pieces of various minerals.

The rotary rock tumbler (the kind I have) is quite simple. It's just a soft rubber barrel into which you load whatever rocks you want to tumble to smooth and polish along with some grit. You seal the barrel and place it in a metal box where a motor turns the barrel. The load of rocks and grit in the barrel tumble against themselves and, by doing so, wear themselves smooth and rounded and, depending on the grit, highly polished.

The rock tumbler is also a dandy way to clean dirty coins. I have an old rotary tumbler which I purchased at a garage sale many, many years ago. It's given good service, but was definitely showing the signs of age. I'd taken the cover off the drive machinery (it didn't fit well anymore and rubbed the barrel) and had to doctor up the drive shaft (that turns the barrel) so it would grip the barrel better. Along with other tweaks. The barrel itself was old and the rubber was showing a lot of wear and dryness.

Last Saturday I sat down and sorted through the “treasures” in the basement jug. I separated the pennies from the clad coins and those from the other “stuff” in the jug. I ended up with two piles of dirty coins. I loaded up the rubber barrel from my tumbler with the pile of clad coins along with some sand, some aquarium gravel, some water and a dash of dish soap. I sealed the lid on the barrel and started it tumbling. I had to wrap some masking tape on the drive shaft to give it some “bite” so it would turn the barrel. It was running fine.

I left it running for three days which is what I usually did for a load of coins.

They came out fine. I rinsed the gravel, sand and slurry off the cleaned coins and let them air dry. They were plenty clean enough to spend, so I carted them upstairs and dumped them into the “silver” jug.

I then loaded up the cents into the barrel. You don't want to mix the cents with the clad coins as your result will all look coppery, even the clad ones. I started them tumbling three days ago.

They were doing fine yesterday afternoon which was the last time I checked them.

But as I descended the basement steps this morning, planning on emptying the barrel and rinsing the cleaned cents, I subconsciously noted a change in the sound from the workshop where the tumbler was running. Instead of the light grinding and grumbling a loaded barrel made when it was rotating, I just heard a humming. The humming of a rock tumbler motor without a load.

I grit my teeth, took a deep breath, walked into the workshop and turned on the light.

Sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning, disaster had occurred on my workbench. One of two things had to have happened. The first possibility was that the idler shaft that kept the barrel square while the drive shaft turned it, had slipped out of it's bearings and dumped the barrel, thus knocking off the lid and dumping the contents on the bench top. The other possibility is that the barrel itself had succumbed to dry rot and had popped the lid off itself, dumping the contents onto the idler shaft and knocking it off.

Whatever the mechanism of the failure, the gray-black slurry that was in the barrel was suddenly ejected onto the motor's fan which, in turn, then splashed the glop onto the walls and everything within six feet of the motor. It was a mess, with gray splatter seemingly everywhere, dumped cents all over the machine with the dark slurry hardening into a stone-like mass over everything.

And the coins weren't even clean! They needed another day or so tumbling.

So...

I cleaned up the cents as well as possible, rinsing the gravel, sand and slurry off them, and put them on some paper towels to dry.

Tomorrow I'll start cleaning the workshop. Or else I may just paint the rest of the room in polka dots to match the slurry splatter that's there already.

I'll have to think about that.

In the meantime I've given the wrecked tumbler the old heave ho and have ordered a new one from a company on the Internet. It should be here later this week.

Then I can finish tumbling my pennies.

And what did I learn from this coin catastrophe?

I guess you could say I've got a cents about needing some change in my life.

Yeah, that one hurt...