I Get It!

I Get It!

“Like and share if you love Jesus.” “Keep scrolling if you love Satan.”

“Obama is a Muslim, non-American and only wants to destroy this country.”

“Obama is the answer to America's prayers and has done more for the country than the past x number of presidents combined.”

“Share if you love your wife or husband or sister or brother or aunt or uncle or cousin.”

“Share if you know religion is a farce and anyone who's religious is a throwback or a naive ignoramus.”

“Guns are GOOD!” “Guns are BAD!” “Ban guns!” “Require guns!”

“Democrats stink.” “Republicans stink.”

“Ship all the rotten illegal aliens back to wherever they came from.”

“Make all the illegal aliens American citizens.”

“Christians against Obama”. “Christians for Obama.” “non-Christians for/against Obama.”

“Share this if you're a REAL American. If you don't, pack up and move out!”

Do you recognize any of the above statements from Facebook or your emails? Or possibly a variant of one of them? Do they prompt you to forward or share the message or do they make you want to unfriend the sender? Do you agree 110% with the sentiment of some of them or are you vehement about your opposition to them?

I get it.

I got it back a few years ago during the political campaigns when you expressed your preferences. And then did it again. And again. And numerous times daily. And continually since the elections. I figured out your allegiance after checking out the first couple of them. Here's a question back at ya. Did you think you were going to change my mind by your postings? Did you think you'd steer me away from the “error of my ways” by your sharing all the vitriol on the Internet that was available for sharing? Even the ones that had been proven incorrect a LONG time ago? Or were you just venting, just expressing your rights by belittling the “worthy” opposition?

I hate to burst your bubble, my friend, but your continual haranguing on the negative aspects of the running candidates did absolutely nothing to change my mind insofar as the support of my candidate. I picked my man quite a while ago and ended up voting for him no matter how virulent your pronouncements were.

Now don't get me wrong. You ARE my friend. You may have diametrically opposing ideas on a bunch of things from what I do, but you are STILL my friend. You wouldn't be on my friends list otherwise. I do NOT friend anyone who I don't consider a friend. With maybe a couple exceptions, folks that I friended in a weak moment. Or to maybe just keep tabs on someone. But the vast majority of my friends on Facebook ARE my friends.

And to all my devoutly religious friends and family: Thank you for your concern about my well-being and my immortal soul. Seriously. Your thoughts and prayers ARE much appreciated. I may or may not share your particular beliefs but I'm very pleased that you're a believer, whatever the flavor of that belief may be. My only complaint, if you may call it that, is the absolute choice some of you like to give me on your FB postings. Some of you like to give me the old “you're either with me or agin me” choice. And, in your mind I'm sure you believe that there actually IS only that single choice, only that specific flavor of belief. Only black or white. And I'm sorry if I offend you, but I see LOTS of shades of gray in LOTS of areas of life. That may be a curse or a blessing, but it's me and that's where I'm at now.

Back to the politics. I honestly do try to examine most of the examples you might put forward to explain a stance or position. Sometimes I see your point and on others I draw a blank. To be honest, I don't mind those postings. They generally require some study and some reflection and I'm usually willing to do that. But I do want to tell you I'm not very fond of what I call the “straight hate” postings; the ones that say “I hate so-and-so, now and forever, in every aspect of his life, for every thing he's done and for everything he wants to do.” Excuse me, but I'm going to skip over those posting and try my hardest to not dislike you for them. They trouble me and I don't need to be troubled.

Also understand, my friends, that there are issues that we will never see eye to eye on and which I'll never agree with you. That's just the way it is. I will probably always be pro-this and anti-that. If that's in opposition to your stance, so be it. Badgering me for my beliefs is an exercise in futility. Better to let it go and agree to disagree.

Or post some funny cat pictures.

Please also look up the definition of jingoism if you don't know it already and understand that there are ALL KINDS of Americans. All colors, all religions, all kinds of backgrounds with all kinds of beliefs. And the VAST majority of them are GOOD Americans, from the Navajo woman on her reservation hand crafting a silver ring to the turbaned Sikh in Detroit praying to his elephant god. From the rabid liberal newscaster to the rabid conservative newscaster (you fill in the names). From the demonstrating hippie in 1969 carrying the anti-war sign to the begrimed Marine close to the Vietnam DMZ during the same year. From my close friend “A” to my close friend “B”.

All good Americans.

Please also note that fervency is not a necessary requirement for citizenship or emblematic of your patriotism. There are a lot of laid-back souls who don't jump up and down when the patriotic music starts or who don't carry signs at demonstrations. Lots who show their patriotism and their love of country in quiet, unobtrusive ways. Doing this or that “under the radar”, quietly serving in the military and then not strutting about their patriotism, patiently supporting a candidate with time or money, thanking veterans for their service, flying the flag.

Be aware that I see your Facebook posts and I know where you stand. I see who you like and, way TOO often, who you hate.

I get it.

You know, I originally intended this blog to be one where I would scream and carry on about the dumb postings and closed-minded pronouncements of the folks on my friends list. I planned to holler about their shallow meanness, their blank-minded membership in whatever organization that they professed involvement in. I'd lambast them for not checking Snopes out before posting an item that was totally wrong and proved so. I planned to express my mild to profound distaste for most of their mindless postings. I really did.

But then I decided that wasn't right.

Why couldn't they post those messages? Why couldn't they believe what they believe? Why couldn't they shout their mottoes and their credos and their passion in high fidelity and living color? What made me the arbiter of what they could or could not say?

What made me sure they were wrong?

As a matter of fact, I'm sure there were a LOT of people who read those self-same articles and pronouncements and said, “Right on, brother!”

So, if you carry anything away from this blog, from this small rant of mine, carry this. If I don't forward your messages, if I don't comment my approval, if I don't profess my undying support of your brand of faith, don't believe for a minute that I don't support it. Or that I do.

If I don't profess my undying love for whatever item you've put forward for my perusal or don't forward same, don't think I'm not for it. Or against it.

If you absolutely need to believe something about me, believe this:

Some things I'm for and some things I'm against, but for the vast majority of things that go floating through my Facebook pages I'm far more likely to be simply ambivalent. And I'm just not very demonstrative. And I'm truly sorry if that offends you.

But if you want to know a secret, I'll tell ya one! If you want me to share one of your postings, if you want me to comment on it or tell all my friends, just make me laugh. Just be clever or just make me think.

I'll share those in a flash with a great comment!

But for the rest?

I get it!

Doggie Dentistry

Doggie Dentistry

So... I decided to grit my teeth, face this empty piece of paper tonight and try to put a few words on it that don't sound too much like drivel and dreck. Of course I'll probably be OK with them, but it'll be up to you to decide the drivel-ness and dreck-ness of what ends up here. So get your grading pencils sharpened and lets go!

March, in these precincts, is always an iffy go. It's what could be called, if you're a generous soul, a transitional month, a period of time when the iron grip of winter is supposed to begin to loosen and the warmer blessings of the springtime begin to show with more clement temperatures and the earliest flowers beginning to poke out of the warming earth. The maxim “in like a lion, out like a lamb” as a description of March is unfortunately a generality, not a specific. Some Marches follow the old adage, others are contrary and gleefully allow Old Man Winter some extra weeks to strut and fret upon this particular stage. So, with a week and a couple more days to go, is the Lamb gonna make his appearance? Or is the Lion gonna keep growling for a bit longer. Guess we'll find out 'fore too long.

It's seemed like a long, long winter this year and everyone is antsy for spring.

We had a fairly stressful go of it this past week, faithful reader, but I'm hoping the stressful part of it is over now. This time the author of our family's anxiety was our half-pint Schnauzer Barney.

It started one morning recently when my wife was playing with our dog and noticed some dried blood on his whiskers. She did some eyeballing of the pooch, peering here and there, and couldn't find any source of the blood. She washed it off his muzzle and, before leaving for work, mentioned it to me. I woke up enough to notice that there was a bloody spot on the carpeting next to the bed where the dog usually sleeps. It was about the size of a large grapefruit, so there had to have been a decent quantity of blood that would cause it. I checked out the dog also and didn't see any problem although it was a bit unnerving. I cleaned the spot from the carpet.

I discussed it with my wife and we decided he probably got a sharp piece of a rawhide chew and had cut the inside of his mouth. Odd but hey, it could happen. So we removed all the bones and pieces of rawhide that were laying here and there around the house. He wouldn't get cut again.

The next morning my wife had the dog on her lap when he started bleeding again. She took him to the sink in the kitchen and, seeing the blood was coming from his mouth, put a paper towel in there with some pressure and soon the flow stopped. That was enough of that, so I bundled him off to the vet that morning. She did an exam and after a long look finally found that he apparently had a bad tooth. Since it was a large canine molar and she didn't do extractions of that magnitude, she had me schedule a dental x-ray and extraction with another vet in town who specialized in doggie dentistry.

Yesterday I dropped him off at the pet hospital for this procedure. I received a call a couple hours later from the vet. He had Barney under anesthesia and had removed two teeth at that point in time. He had called to tell me that the dog had several more quite bad teeth and wanted my OK to continue with his extractions. I asked for the dog's prognosis after the extractions and he said it was excellent. I asked for a ballpark dollar amount and he gave it to me. It was expensive but less so than I'd feared. Since the prognosis was so good, I said to go ahead.

We got a call a bit later after the procedure was complete and the vet said he'd came through “with flying colors” and we could come get him later that day. He also said he expected Barney to be much better insofar as his general health was concerned as he would not be fighting the infections from those doggone bad teeth any more. He also said that, unlike a person who had gone through six tooth extractions and could be expected to be a while recovering, dogs usually were back up and raring to go in about 2 days.

Good news.

My wife picked him up after she got off work yesterday afternoon, and the vet was quite right. The dog was pretty active when he got home along with being very thirsty and hungry. We had to limit his intake for a while to make sure he was OK, but he's actually acting much better than he had for maybe the month or two before. We didn't know it, but he'd been hurting for a while.

He'll be on soft food for a week or two, but I don't think he'll be much the worse for wear and it'll be really nice to have a healthy dog back! Of course he's still sightless and a diabetic, but you'd be surprised at how little that bothers him. And as a possible bonus of this procedure he went through, the vet thought his diabetes might be much better also. We'll see about that in the days to come.

I feel really bad we didn't catch this problem earlier, but Barney's a pretty stoic little mutt and it's difficult to catch the signals of him hurting if he doesn't display much. In hindsight we can remember certain mannerisms over the past month or two that we should have equated with a problem, but we just missed 'em.

So now we have doggie toothpaste and a doggie toothbrush as a parting gift from his dentist. My question is this: how's he supposed to brush his teeth if he can't hold the toothbrush?

Wait a minute. You don't suppose that we're supposed to...

Oh lord, that ain't gonna be fun...

It's About Time

It's About Time

It seems like a really, really simple thing. I mean, really! At certain times of the year you go to your clocks and watches and chronometers and other timepieces and set the hour forward or backward one unit. If you're performing this task at midnight, you set your clock to either eleven pm or to one am the next day, depending on whether it's spring or fall.

I mean, really, really simple, eh?

And what possible difference would one hour make? How could this adjustment to your clocks make any difference in the world?

I find myself repeating that mantra twice every year and every time I do, my words turn to ashes in my mouth because it makes a lot of difference.

At least it seems to and I'm still not really sure why?

I guess the difficulties are all based on the human diurnal rhythms or our internal clocks. Or the way the sunshine ebbs and flows throughout the year. But it really does seem to be built into us on a sub-conscious level. We always hope that it won't bother us this time, but on the spring morning when you wake up after resetting your clock one hour ahead, your body will disagree with the clock. He will not be happy about your messing with the time.

Not at all.

Of course this phenomenon is really just jet lag hiding in its vernal or autumnal equinox disguise. It is indistinguishable from flying east or west to another time zone.

So, at least in my case, you end up walking around a bit tired and groggy and bumfuzzled for a week or so after the change. Bedtime seems to come too early (or late) and the morning dawns long before you're ready for it or strangely later.

I know there are places here and there that don't fiddle with their clocks twice a year. According to what I read on the internet, Arizona (with the exception of the Navaho Nation), Hawaii and the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa do not participate in this bi-annual procedure, but stay on “standard time” the year round.

I'm not terribly interested in exactly why they chose not to fiddle with their clocks although it's probably a fascinating story. My real question to folks living in those places is this: how do you know when to change the batteries on your smoke detectors? I always use the time change to remind myself to get another pair of nine-volts at the store and stick 'em in the detectors. I'm sure I'd be at a loss in Arizona. Maybe they use Christmas and Independence Day as their reminders. I'll have to ask the next time I see an Arizonan. Or is it Arizonian?

And then there's the question on how do you remember which way to move the hands of the clock? I guess the most memorable mnemonic is the old adage “spring forward and fall back”. Pretty straight forward, eh? But a little adversarial voice inside my noggin always tries to mess me up. He says stuff like, “how about you springing back and falling forward?” I try to ignore that crazy little voice, but he can cause me to second guess myself from time to time.

Another concern with this fun time of year: we have a lot of timepieces around my house. Yes, some of them do the twice-yearly jump all by themselves – the computers and cell phones and the televisions seem to take care of this task with commendable alacrity. Even one of our bedroom alarm clocks also does it. But there always seems to be a lot of battery clocks that require your physical attention and they always seem to be hung just a wee bit higher on the wall than you remembered them being. Or the timepiece needs some complicated pressing of buttons to achieve the desired hour. I had a wristwatch like that. After a couple years of swearing at the darn thing twice a year and trying to reread the instructions with its tiny print and oddly-phrased English, I finally gave up on it and relegated it to a drawer. The learning curve on the beast was sadly more than I wanted to attempt and a lot of the functions that the 873-page instruction manual said would do this or that, wouldn't. Or maybe this feeble-minded button pusher missed one of the manipulations that were required. Whatever the reason, off to the drawer it went. So I backslid to an analog watch a year or so ago with a stem that I could twist and turn and hands that would move to those manipulations. Easy-peasy.

Once in a while I'm guilty of forgetting to reset the clock on the thermostat. Missing that one results in some icy cold mornings when getting out of bed because the setback programs still think you're living on the “other” time. I usually get yelled at by my wife when I miss that one – she's the one that gets up early. And, of course, resetting the time on that isn't exactly easy either.

Even with all the downsides and hassles of changing the clocks, it is kind of nice in the spring to have that extra hour of daylight in the evenings. To do things with the family, to go outside and enjoy the daylight after toiling all day at work.

Except for the sad fact that I work second shift and the extra daylight in the evening is only a tease outside my office windows.

So I trudge along in my acclimation week, sleepy and a bit grumpy, glancing at the clock, mumbling to myself a bit and waiting for my slow-ass body to catch up with the new rhythms of the world.

Should be good to go in about a week. That'd be about time.

A Tale of Two Sisters

A Tale of Two Sisters

          ---Sometimes it feels like simply saying thank you just isn't enough.---

                                                                    &

After living these past six-and-a-half decades and watching how things work in the world and trying to understand what I've seen, I've discovered something. Most families seem to always have at least one member that's become the go-to person or the rallying point for the family. It might not even be the oldest or the smartest or the richest one, but there is always one that is accepted as the one you go to to get things done. They're the ones that the other family members defer to and ask to spearhead social occasions, to host and celebrate family happenings, the birthdays, the anniversaries, the weddings and the graduations.

They become the hosts, for many reasons, of the gatherings that provide the glue for the family and, in many instances, the extended family. They're the ones that know who's got a major birthday or anniversary coming up, the ones who always have a smile for your accomplishments and a cake to celebrate them. They seem to genuinely enjoy having family in for the holidays and to always be there to help out when times require a helping hand.

I am delighted to say I have two sisters who are magnificent in those positions.

My sister Kathy came into my family when my father remarried in 1976. My birth mother had passed away several years before and my father was lucky enough to find a wonderful woman with which to share the rest of his life. She had four children from her previous marriage and the oldest was named Kathy. Our blended family worked well together for quite a few years, with my father and her mom being the “go to” folks during that time period as is usually the case with parents. But when my father passed away in '92 and Kathy's mom began to grow infirm from age some years ago, the mantel of family “go to” person easily evolved onto her.

Kathy was always a stand-up gal. She was probably the one child of the blended family who had their head screwed on the best and who always demonstrated wisdom far beyond her years. She made a good marriage and had two great kids. She was the one that we all gravitated toward when tragedy struck; when dad passed away, when her sisters passed away long before their time, during the tough divorces and other life-altering circumstances she was there. She always had something for you to eat, a shoulder that you could cry on, a hanky to wipe away your tears.

She was our rock.

She took a job at a large church near where she lived and gained more and more responsibilities as her tenure there grew. She recently pleased all of us by answering a call and becoming an ordained minister, a position that seems to suit her well.

She was and is a tough, fair and deep-down nice lady who I'm proud to call sister.

On my wife's side of the family I'm extremely pleased to say I have another super sister! I'm not sure how I got so lucky, but I seemed to have hit a home run in wonderful women in the family.

Maenar became a member of the family some years ago when she married my brother-in-law Roy. Maenar and her family own and operate the most successful Chinese restaurant in the city in which she and Roy reside. You can probably understand why I was pleased and intrigued by that union. Suddenly I had a restaurant in the family! And, to top it off, a Chinese sister-in-law! How utterly exotic was that for this semi-naive Ohioan of German/English/Italian heritage. I had a cousin who had married a Thai girl during the Vietnam war and I always enjoyed visits with them. She was also a wonderful lady and a marvelous cook. And now, another Asian-American in the family. With a well-loved restaurant coming along for the ride!

How cool was that!

Maenar is about five foot nothing and her weight is barely in the triple digits. She has a world-class smile and is quite possibly, all kidding aside, one of the most intelligent people I've ever met, man or woman. Besides all that, she has a work ethic that would shame most people. She is an exemplary example of the “treat your customers right and they'll always come back” school of business owners. As is the norm for people like that, her workdays are always long. She is the front person in the restaurant and is the “face of the place”. People come from many miles around to eat there and do so over and over again.

And they always look for Maenar when they step in the door.

They know they'll get treated wonderfully and their meals will be superb. (Her brothers are the cooks and they're great!) The turnover at the restaurant is minimal. Her wait staff simply adore her. She's been known to close the restaurant, grab her “girls” and take them to New York for a weekend on the town to say thanks for work well done.

She is the one on that side of the family that everyone gravitates toward. She can plan a celebration and host it, spearhead a charity, support her husband in his business endeavors, lavish untold attention to her husband's children and their myriad of activities, and still be sure to ask you what you've been doing and how the world's been treating you. And really listen to your answers.

She's one of those folks who would rather stand than sit, walk than stand and run than walk. I'm constantly amazed at her energy and her joie de vivre.

Maenar is an absolute joy to be around and I am, again, also proud to call her sister.

My little immediate family, the three of us here in my small home town, have often been the recipients of my sister's invitations to their places, to sup with them, to celebrate the accomplishments of the family, to commiserate with them during down times. We've gathered together with the rest of the family at their homes and businesses to commemorate the holidays, to rejoice in engagements, children, marriages and noteworthy accomplishments, to join in the ongoing song of family and of solidarity.

And when the festivities are over, when the handshakes and hugs are concluded, when the promises to get together again “real soon” are spoken, how do you say thank you? How do you express your joy and happiness at being a part of this strange and wondrous thing, this amalgamation of disparate people with wildly differing lives who constitute the members of this family, this totally unique thing?

You say thank you Kathy and you say thank you Maenar.

But it never, ever seems to be enough.

So you sit down and maybe try to express the thank you in written form, trying to say the words differently. Maybe if you said them in another language they might be more eloquent. Gracias. Danke. M goi. Dank je. Grazie. Domo arigato. Xie xie. Merci. Spasibo.

But, in the end, it's always thanks Maenar and thanks Kath.

And it still just doesn't seem like enough...

Broken Cruise and Fireballs in the Sky

Broken Cruise and Fireballs from the Sky

So let's take a peek and see what's been happening recently in the news, shall we?

First, I guess, and the item that concerned my wife and I more directly than a lot of what's been going on, was the saga of the good ship Carnival Triumph and its fire and engine problems of last week. I know that I, along with many others, surely watched with interest as the multimillion dollar ship with over 4,000 souls on board spent the better part of four days bobbing around in and eventually being towed halfway across the Gulf of Mexico. The stories reaching us from the ship after the power failure were sketchy early on and seemed to be of the panicky-sounding variety. Little power. Sanitation almost non-existent. Pooping in bags and peeing in showers. Bread and ketchup sandwiches. Horrible smells. Sewage on the floor and running down the walls. Ship listing. Sleeping on deck chairs and on the casino floor. Slot machines were too tight. Moby Dick attacking the ship almost hourly! (Naw, not really the case in the last two examples.)

Pretty much the antitheses of a cruise vacation.

Communications with the passengers from the shore was limited to quick cell phone contacts when other ships were close enough that their telephone connections could be used. Obviously there are no cell towers in the center of the Gulf and few, if any of the passengers had sat-phones.

As the situation deteriorated there were eventually two tugboats dispatched which eventually arrived and slowly towed the ship to Mobile, Alabama. It was originally intended for them to haul the boat to Progresso, Mexico, but the ship had drifted so far north by the time the tugs got there it was smarter to pull it north to the U.S.

Besides, the Gulf current ran in that direction.

And there was also the fact that around 900 of the cruise passengers did not have U. S. Passports. Docking in Mexico would have entailed mucho paperwork for those passengers to return to the U. S. by air or in some fashion other than that of the ship they had been cruising in. The cruise line does not require you to have a passport for a cruise that is returning to the same port it left, but it strongly recommends that you do so, specifically for situations like that. It would have been a total nightmare for those non-passport folks trying to return home from Mexico.

The cruise left Galveston on Thursday for a 4-day cruise to Cozumel, Mexico. It should have returned there Monday, but, instead, ended up late on the following Thursday docking in Mobile, Alabama. I found myself, for some reason, humming the chorus from the theme song of Gilligan's Island: “...three hour cruise.”

It was not a “fun” cruise on one of Carnival's “Fun” ships. Not even close.

But in every report I've heard, the crew of the ship was praised for their incredible dedication in doing their best for their passengers and for their above-and-beyond work ethics. I've heard NO negative reports on the crew's performance of their duties. None. And, after having cruised and seen how hard the staff worked on a normal cruise, I expected to see none. Obviously, gigantic kudos to each and every one of them!

So, taking all this excitement in consideration, I ask myself, “Will I cruise again?”

Perhaps the question ought to be, “What are the odds that something of this sort will happen on our cruise, should we elect to take one?”

The answer, of course, is a number so small as to be almost insignificant. Probably in the ballpark of getting hit by lightning at the same time as getting hit by a car.

Definitely worth the “gamble”.

But would I ride on the Triumph?

Ah, another interesting question. The answer is probably not if there were another option available. Not that I believe that the Triumph will have a similar problem in the foreseeable future, but... Hell. Why take even that chance?

But, when all is said and done, life is a gamble that you'll never win. You just try to pick the circumstances that'll give you the best odds for the longest run.

So expect to see another cruise blog from yours truly and his esposa sometime down the road.

Aren't you excited? I am!

&&&

Looking at another piece of news that occurred recently, did you get a chance to check out the stories about the meteor bombardment that happened over in Russia? Wasn't that interesting. And did you happen to view some of the videos on Youtube that were taken of the event?

Holy crap-in-your-pants-and-call-your-mama-Sheera, Batman! That was some of the most terrifying footage that was NOT done by CG I've ever seen! You'd have SWORN those videos were hacked together by some sci-fi-loving computer geeks or were trailers for some upcoming end-of-the-world horror movie.

They were absolutely incredible!

But maybe the most fascinating part of those videos was the reactions of the Russians who were filming them. Or should I say non-reactions? I do not speak Russian, so I can't positively state what was said during and after the fireballs tore through their sky, the sonic booms burst windows for miles and miles around and the rocks themselves thundered into the ground just down the road, but it seemed like they didn't seem too terribly concerned.

Not even a little!

Either they were pretty drunk from too much vodka, or they just didn't give a damn!

A lot of the videos were taken from dash cams on cars, so you can actually see those immense fiery trails from the howling incoming meteors, then the white-hot fireball screamed overhead and the video flashed a solid white as the camera was overloaded with the glare. Then the doggone thing shrieked to a thunderous landing somewhere just out of sight. A few seconds later the tremendous sonic boom shakes the car and landscape all around them like an earthquake.

And the Russians in their cars keep yammering on and on as if the cataclysmic event happening just over their heads were something inconsequential that they experienced every day!

I can just imagine what some of my friends and fellow countrymen might have done in that situation! How poorly we'd have handled it. How quickly the conspiracy theorists would have grabbed onto the event and started pointing fingers at the government. Or to the aliens that just had to have something to do with it.

And I thought about how the Russians just continued on with their conversations as to where they were going to eat lunch, whether it would be blintz's or borscht and black bread that day and wasn't that last bottle of vodka we drank a bit more watered down than usual?

They probably thought it was just Putin screwing around.

It's certainly a wild and crazy world.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity

I went to the gym today. It was Friday and I try to make it there on Fridays along with Mondays and Wednesdays. I'm working on making these treks a habit. Hopefully it's working. It's not my most favorite activity but it's one that I know is important. So I soldier on...

So I'm at the gym and trudging along on the ol' treadmill, bumping up the speed from time to time to make sure I'm not getting lazy, eyes half-way watching the TV that was in front of me and tuned to the Weather Channel. There was the usual pair of commentators in front of the camera, a guy and a girl, pointing to the weather map. I noticed that the lady half of the pair was wearing boots. I wondered about that, knowing that there was probably a zero chance of any snow or slush in the studio. But perhaps her wardrobe choice might have been dictated by the big story of the day.

Yes, as you may have guessed, the story of the day, this day, was the big snowstorm beginning to pound the northeast.
It's name was Nemo.

As an aside, when did they start naming winter storms? Wait a minute while I google that...

OK gang, here's the scoop. Naming winter storms is apparently a marketing ploy by the aforementioned Weather Channel! The National Weather Service is not happy about this new practice and has advised it's forecasters NOT to follow along, but their admonition is apparently falling on mainly deaf ears. The media has latched onto the practice and is promoting it. So... This storm is named Nemo.

If you haven't pictured a little orange-and-black animated fish by now you must have been living in a cave for the last decade.

Anyhow, so I'm plugging along on the treadmill, watching the weather lady in her shiny black boots pointing to the giant mass of blue and green grinding its way north by northeast on the map behind her. Interspersed from time to time the channel would go to a remote shot somewhere in the soon-to-be affected area and there was the mobile troops from the Weather Channel out there, wearing their logo-emblazoned parkas and yammering about the upcoming cataclysm. At least that is what they seemed to be implying – I wasn't really listening. Good old Jim Cantore, the erstwhile franchise symbol and point man for the channel was there, of course. Seems he's always out there in the thick of things where the weather's the worst and wind's the fiercest. Unfortunately, while I was watching, the snow was yet to arrive and Jim was being forced to point to a yardstick which was poked into the ground and indicate how high they were expecting the snow to accumulate. It was actually a bit laughable watching their ace reporter pointing to a stick.

Poor Jim.

As I'm watching this almost comical charade play itself out on the television, I'm also listening to my mp3 player. I'm a hell of a multi-tasker! I've loaded down a number of rousing classic rock songs to help me forget my efforts at the gym and to help me keep moving. And don't ya know it, the next song that rolls into my earphones is “Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac.

And the song, along with the soon-to-be-blizzard on the TV, almost made me stumble on the treadmill. For you see, that song, a really good single from the 1976 album “Rumors” and vocalized by Stevie Nicks had, in my mind, taken me back to ANOTHER blizzard a long time ago.

Let me explain.

My wife and I had married in 1972 and moved into a brand-new mobile home. This mobile home was planted in a park about 8 miles east of the town where I grew up in and where we both worked. We'd been married about 6-and-a-half years when January 26, 1978 rolled around.

We both drove to work that day, her to an office at a manufacturing facility on the west side of our home town and me to an insurance office headquarters in the north part of town. The news that morning was ominous and warning of a heavy snow storm bearing down on us. We were starting to become a bit concerned. Later that day when the wind really started to blow and the snow started coming down in earnest, both of our employers dismissed their staffs early. We'd made some contingency plans earlier and had decided that, if the weather got really bad, instead of trying to make the 8-mile trip back to our trailer, we'd make the one-mile trip to my dad's house and see how the storm progressed from there. He had several spare bedrooms and I knew he could put us up if we couldn't make it home that evening.

The news called that storm “The White Hurricane”. The winds gusted to 80 miles per hour and the barometer crashed to record lows. The snow came down like a vertical avalanche and then the winds took it and piled it in ever increasing drifts. It buried cars, blew out power and killed 51 Ohioans. It was probably the strongest and worst winter storm to ever hit Ohio. It was eventually categorized “a severe blizzard”, something that rarely if ever occurs in these parts.

My wife and I made it to my dad's house, but not easily. I've never ever driven in anything like that, either before or since. Visibility out the windshield was close to zero with the snow absolutely pelting down and the wind howling and carrying it sideways. And what I remember as the weirdest part, the day started out quite warm for January, creepily warm and very still, as if the weather gods were holding their breaths before blasting out the blizzard. The temperature dropped 30 or more degrees within an hour and the storm was then upon us.

We were extremely glad to be in my dad's sturdy brick ranch and watching the howling blast out the windows and not out in it.

We eventually ended up spending 4 days or so out there. I remember about the second or third day my brother talking himself out of a traffic ticket for riding his snowmobile right through our city's downtown. He was on a grocery-and-cigarettes run for those of us stranded in the house and decided, since everything was snow-covered, to take a detour through the middle of town to “check things out”. Luckily the police had more pressing matters to take care of, so a quick warning was all they gave him.

So there we were for four days, hunkered down, waiting for the plows to come through, waiting for the weather to clear up a bit, waiting, waiting. And while we waited, we played games, talked, watched TV and listened to music.

My brother had his 8-track stereo outfit in the family room in the basement, so we ended up down there a lot of the time. Yes all my young readers, an 8-track. That was the pinnacle of music technology at that time, so don't sneer.

His selection of music seemed to be somewhat limited for some reason, but the one cartridge that he really liked listening to was that doggone “Rumors”. So we must ended up having listened to that one 15 to 20 times. Or more! It got so I could almost hear the music while I was asleep. Maybe I even could! He might have been playing it even then!

Anyhow, our exile at my dad's house finally came to an end and we all went back to living our lives again. Our trailer was still there, albeit dangerously low in fuel oil. Dad and I had to cart some diesel fuel from a nearby truck stop to keep us going until our fuel oil delivery man could get through the drifts to our park. We lost all our house plants to the cold, but we survived and went on with our lives relatively unscathed.

So here I was again watching another blizzard tearing into the country and again listening to Stevie Nicks singing the 1977 hit “Go Your Own Way”.

And I realized that everything is cyclical. Everything that goes around, comes around if you wait long enough.

But this time it was someone else who would have to hunker down, who would have to watch the howling snow out their windows and bide their time until they could emerge from their refuges and blink at the newly-fallen snow.

So I hummed the Fleetwood Mac song on the way to work this afternoon, remembering, remembering, thinking of the past all those many, many years ago and thanking my lucky stars that the blizzard was over there this time and not over here.

“Loving you

Isn't the right thing to do

How can I

Ever change things that I feel?

If I could

Maybe I'd give you my world...”



The River Flows

The River Flows

Every now and again I'll find myself running across a phrase or possibly a quotation in something I'm reading that will begin to spark the hidden philosopher in me. Not too often, but once in a while it'll hit me in my sweet spot and start the old synapses firing.

Most of the time I'm pretty prosaic and down-to-earth and try not to second guess the universe as it flows past me. Things are as they are and most processes and situations generally have their own inertia about them and tend to go on being what they are. Habits become ingrained and my mind starts to become dull. However, once in a while, as I said before, I'll see something that rings so true that it pulls the veil from the eyes of my everyday life and makes me say, “ Of course! That's so true! How could I have been so blind!”

Perhaps if I'd studied philosophy as a younger man these occasionally uncovered gems might not be as enlightening or surprising. But my education in that area is sadly lacking, so when I do discover those ideas they are as refreshing as a cool rain shower on a hot July afternoon.

Tonight I ran across another one.

Way back in the Golden Age of Greece there was this gentleman by the name of Heraclitis. The history books say he lived from 535 BC to 475 BC. (And, as an aside, don't you wish the years of your life were counting down instead of up?) Anyhow, he was a famous Greek philosopher who was known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe.

Sort of an early-day Einstein stating a counterpoint to his explanation that all things are relative.

The quote of Heraclitis' that I ran across tonight was, “No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

Something to really reflect on, isn't it? Not only do all things change in the outer world, but you yourself change day by day, hour by hour. You're not the same person who you were this morning. Not only physically, but mentally also – maybe even more so mentally.

Each day we learn. We discover new things. Our minds can change. We may find out that things that we accepted as true or which we thought were “set in stone” are not necessarily so. We might now even be willing to accept that those things might now be polar opposites of what we used to think! And whether we accept it or not, the world does moves on and does carry us, willingly or unwillingly, to wherever it's heading. Perhaps it might not be as apparent on a day-to-day basis, but think back to last year, or five years ago.

Or ten.

Is the world the same as it was then? Are you? If you're not living with blinders on you have to respond in the negative. Things change. Always and forever.

Look at a photo of yourself from a decade ago. Now look in the mirror. If you see the same face looking back at you, you better make an appointment with your optometrist! That fact may make you sad or may make you happy but it should always be apparent.

It's phenomenally easy to fall into a rut and think that life is same-o, same-o. You go to work, eat, sleep, etc., etc. You see generally the same people, the same faces, the same tasks placed before you. It may be the habit that humans are best in – falling into ruts and making them deeper and deeper until they're too high to see out of.

But same-o, same-o is not reality.

As an example, consider this:

I work at a job that requires me to watch a monitor which displays the condition of a group of public water systems. The levels of their water towers, the speed of water being pumped out of their pumps and into those towers, the amount of chlorine being injected into each of the water systems to make the water safe, the water flowing out of the towers as demand increases. When I'm training a new operator in this particular job I always make sure to tell them to look at the monitor right then and take notice of it. And I then tell them that they will never see it look the same again. Never. The reason for this is that the display shows a snapshot of a dynamic system. Not a static system. A dynamic system is always changing and is never the same.

I guess you could compare life to that dynamic display I watch five days a week. I've monitored it for almost 12 years now and have never seen it showing the same screen. Never. There is always something different. Something is always moving up or moving down. The gallons-per-minute displays are always moving – a little faster now, a little slower later.

We even used to play a game where we would watch to see if ever three certain towers might be at the same level at the same time.

I saw it happen once for about 5 minutes.

In 12 years.

But everything else on the screen was different.

I guess the parallels with the world and yourself as compared to my microcosmic world of county water systems are pretty evident. Life is a dynamic system, not a static one.

It might even be like taking a rifle shot at a moving target from a moving train during a heavy wind on uneven terrain. In the dark. That particular shot will never present itself the same again.

So when you wake up tomorrow, take a good look around. Take a mental picture of your world and put it in your mental box of keepsakes. Because when you wake up the next day the world and YOU will no longer be the same.

The river and you will have moved.

For better or for worse...