Tinny Tussle

Is it just me, or are people speaking faster?
Sometimes I feel like my ears are full of plaster.
When I watch TV they all seem to be, like, twenty,
And their lips do move, but the background noise is plenty.

Are they making sense, is there anything they're saying
That I ought to hear? What's that awful music playing?
And that high-pitched whine, what's it doing in my ears?
It is always there, but grows louder with the years.

Now I'm getting mail from the Beltone Corporation
For those free coupons for an head examination.
I guess they heard that I require some augmentation
If I wish to hear my neighbor's conversation.

But I don't blame drums for my hearing aberration,
Or my lack of skill in interpreting vibration
Or the gap that forms between each generation
Or some nasty gene that has caused deterioration.

No, indeed, I say, there's a simpler explanation.
It is mere old age that diverts my concentration
For when I was young, life was rife with aspiration,
And the aim of mine was to get an education.

But that stage is past, as the Bard so aptly penned;
I no longer sway to the beat of every trend.
Existential thoughts now well up in my head
And drown out things that other folks have said.

Such success

In keeping with my father's admonition that “if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything”, I have refrained for more than a year from adding to the pile of screed you may have seen here.

But my problem is not that I can't say anything nice, but rather that I can't say anything clever. Given the number of websites that repeat wise quotations from everyone from the John Adams to Frank Zappa, I feel like The Preacher who proclaimed that 

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. “_Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV

Well, that's kind of depressing, but strangely reassuring, if you stop to think about it. 

So when someone says, “Hey man, what's new”, I guess I'm supposed to reply, “Same old same old.” Or I could just say, “Wait for it.” But that could get old really quickly.

It does amaze me, though, the cleverness of those quotation innovators who lurk all over the internet. Example:

“If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.”

 In my dad's day, that would have been “If at first you don't succeed, suck eggs”, possibly because sucking eggs predates skydiving by several generations.

  I forget how many years it was before I saw the connection between the “suck seed” and “succeed” parts. Even more time passed before I understood that “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs” was the equivalent of saying “try telling her something she doesn't already know.”

I was certain my grandma sucked eggs, until I observed her technique. She pieced both ends, enlarged both holes, and blew the innards out of the eggs, rather than sucking them.  The yoke was on me.  

Today marks the 71^st year since I took up planetary space, so I am working very hard on doing something that I have never done before, namely, creating a clever internet-worthy quotation. I figure it will likely take me a year, so you're invited back here, same time, same place next year to watch me suck seed or suck eggs.

(Man, that was a mouthful).

Focus Tales

Well, it's coming up on the anniversary of a full year of this blog (in April) during which I have not posted an entry.

Too much has happened in the intervening time to write about. Most bloggers would be thrilled by this wealth of events, given that these are the stuff of which life (and hence, blog entries) are made. I refer, of course, to the three Rs: Remarriage, Retirement and Relocation.

During this embarrassingly long interval of hyperactivity with no literary output, the phenomenon of social networking has taken a stranglehold on the web. Facebook in particular has become as daily an addiction for the generations behind mine as Days of Our Lives is for my own age group (66+). Twitter likewise, is filled with Tweets, or is it Twits? And these are only two components of a whole movement, abetted by the ubiquitous cell phone/camera/movie theatre/game parlor that has become a tool for the upheaval of entire societies and cultures.

To post to a blog requires reflection, introspection and above all, time. Where did all that go?

In the old days (a couple of years or so ago) it would take, at a minimum, ten or fifteen minutes to sit down and write anything on a blog. Even assuming the computer was already running, there was the ritual of having to log onto the blog site, run the editor, type up the entry, proofread it, and then post it (and in many cases, correct it post haste). Blog hosting companies soon adopted the idea of simplifying posting by allowing direct posting from an email message, and now, of course, you can post voice messages directly from your phone.

Other writers have mentioned Attention Deficit Disorder as a symptom of our times: some call it The Demand for Instant Gratification, and the doddering amongst us find Impatience to be a sufficient description of the trend. My generation experienced it mainly on three occasions: Christmas morning, sermons, and the last week of school.

If it is true that humanity is speeding up and becoming more interconnected at the same time, there is a down side to this trend, which has already shown up in, for example, Facebook. Some call it over-sharing. There's TMI (too much information). The stretching of privacy boundaries until they snap. The arbitrary changing of corporate policy or rules while the game is on. The inattention to craftsmanship and detail. The elevation of the trivial to the consequential.

Along with the ratcheting up of the pace and triviality of mass communication (and to think that most of this junk is now stored and indexed and retrievable), comes an overwhelming need to limit intake and filter content. It gives me pause to think about the hours of my life that I have irretrievably wasted on reading comments that follow even a New York Times piece, or a home improvement site. It becomes an addiction, like gold mining: panning the muck for that valuable gem of insight or information that can instruct me, enrich my experience, or save me effort, when the odds against success are those of a Reno blackjack table. Even the search engines are swamped.

When I ponder my tendency to waste these hours (which are now more available, given that I finally smartened up and retired), I conclude that I'm as needy for community wisdom as a teenager is for social interaction. The difference is, a younger person has little difficulty in mastering the technology, while I can't seem to hit the mute button on the remote without changing the channel or turning the damn thing off.

I cannot multitask, talk on the phone while watching TV, boil water unless I remain in the kitchen, or converse with an Android. So what are my options? This post started an hour ago. I have only one option: to go from Point A to Point B in a single, straight line, pausing only to deal with spelling, grammar and composition. I suppose that during this interval, a million or more Tweets have flown by , and another 3/4 of a million people have logged onto Facebook.

As I gaze at the Ohio River in flood, a slowly turning raft of sticks, twigs, branches, bottles, tires, styrofoam and plastic revolves just offshore. Occasionally an object will break free from the vortex and rejoin the current, only to become entrapped in the next whirling mass.

The burden of churning flotsam reminds me of social networking.

All the world's a stage.

How hard can it be to sell a house?
Very hard.
Lot of work.

The irony, amongst all the patching, painting and purging, is that you're trying to make the house look like nobody ever lived it in. Clean as a whistle. Empty as a tomb yet considerably more inviting. A home, not a house.

I think buyers have been educated by this consumerist society to believe that only the new has desirability. A whole new genre of TV shows based on the principle that we're all unbelievably messy and therefore need professionals to come in and help us get rid of everything that made us comfortable has taken hold on the home improvement channels.

The word is "staging", which is new to anyone trying to sell a house, but has been around professionally for a number of years.

It's all about putting your house on stage. About making it look as though it was perfect. Just like the theatre, it's all a big act. Buyers are invited, as they walk through the door, to suspend their disbelief and be swept up in the superficialities of surfaces.

There's a certain irony in the phrase "real estate". A staged home is neither real, nor, for most of us, is it an "estate". In the case of a resale, it's a place to live, constructed in the past for a different era, for different expectations, and meant to support different lifestyles. Renovation is not far in the future for any resale purchaser.

So the staging becomes a mandatory function to bridge the gap between the reality of this old house and what the prospective buyers think they need, at a minimum, to live conveniently and comfortably and happily ever after, despite the reality that they will move at least once or twice more as they age and their needs change.

Hence, the totally inadequate bathrooms, typically a mere 30 square feet, of a Cape Cod must somehow be made to appear double that size, and the garage, which in most neighborhoods serves the function of a storage unit so full that the car(s) must be left on the driveway, becomes a burden that only a dumpster can solve. And how, we ask, did the people for whom those tiny houses were originally built ever manage with a kitchen that had no dining room or separate pantry, or a bedroom with no walk-in closet or ensuite bathroom?

No building that is more than a few years old can possibly remain wearless and tearless. Nature takes care of that detail by a process called "settling". Techtonic forces are ever at work beneath the foundation, and the effects of weather and wear are discoverable everywhere, the older, the more. It costs more to sell an older house. And what nature doesn't destroy, people and pets do.

Just as the seller hires a stager to dress up the place long enough for the buyer to fall for its cosmetic curb appeal, so the buyer pays for the assurance that there will be no nasty structural surprises. Or perhaps the contract places the burdens of closing on one or the other party. All is done in an effort of the buyer to pay as little as possible, and the seller to get as much as possible for the same piece of property. Yet if you look at any other form of resale transaction, most other personal property (unless you're famous) will net you only garage sale prices.

Oddly enough, there is a way to figure out exactly what a house should be worth. I've never heard of it being done, but since all building costs are known, such as the value of materials and labor, factored by inflation and operational costs (taxes, utilities, depreciation etc.) some such formula should be the basis of a rational calculation. The price should become much more predictable and reasonable and maybe affordable for both parties. Perhaps.

Instead of that, we have to deal with "comparable houses in your district", and how much more reasonably they sold than the price you are demanding. Forget that your house was built of oak by a master Amish carpenter and no nails were used in the construction thereof, the fact remains that it will sell based on the price of whatever else is in your neighborhood, and how pitifully yours compares with theirs.

Location, location, location.

It was only a matter of time

OK. Some mental midget spammed an old entry on this blog (not that I get all that much traffic, but that's fine... quality rather than quantity matters). It was especially galling because it was appended after one of Jo's few entries, and it was anonymous (coward) and it had a whole mess of links to buy cheap software, which you know has to source itself in piracy.

My apologies to my few faithful followers, but I'm now moderating comments, and you'll have to fill in a Captcha as well. I do appreciate the sincerity of your comments, but this is the internet, and part of that is the dark sewer of spam that flows beneath the bright surface of friendly interchange. I'll be as timely as possible in posting whatever is written by an actual human being.

Celebrate!

I've been impressed by the thoughtful responses to my previous post, about the difficulty of responding to an unintentionally awkward question in the aftemath of a loss. In some sense, the grieving person is put in the position of trying to ease the pain of the questioner, while having to deny his or her own feelings, however briefly.

Such denial contributes at least one more paving stone to the road to depression. Like all roadbuilding, it is a cumulative process, only not as obvious. So if that road is to be cut off, we need to find ways to stop building it, or reduce the pace of the project.

One way is to celebrate. If you hit the online dictionary, you'll find several different meanings, each of which suggests some approaches.

1. To observe with ceremonies of respect, festivity, or rejoicing.

In the case of the departure of a loved one, whether through death, divorce or duplicity, there are still things to celebrate:

• there was a time when we were the best of friends
• there were times when we understood each other perfectly
• we forgave and forgot the other times, at least for a while if not forever
• life was challenging, comfortable, exhilarating, difficult, worthwhile
• I grew up a little (or a lot): especially in regard to....

2. To perform (a religious ceremony):

• In certain cultures, a household shrine, or a table of mementoes, commemorates the ongoing presence of the spirit of the departed.
• In the case of some acrimonious departures, a dart board can be a target of ceremony that at the least reduces stress
• Writing a list of all of the things that one is thankful for, and all the others that were painful, and then burning it (preferably outdoors or in a fireplace) along with statements like, "Thank you for our love: I release you, and you me" or, conversely, "Begone miserable witch/warlock, and haunt no more this sphere of misery" can be as meaningful, if not more, as any priest or prophet can conjure.

3. To extol or praise:

• We generally get our first chance to do this at a memorial service or a funeral, but the stress levels are very high, despite the presence of empathetic supporters. So it needs to be done again, and again.
• The obituaries offered by the funeral homes are bland lists of living relatives, with standard phrases that conjure nothing of the intensity of feeling and emotion. And if you have too many survivors, the high cost of listing them brings out the natural Scrooge in many of us. And yet, "survived by her loving husband, Alfred, et al." would seem unkind at best. So put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, mouth to mic, and write speak or record what you really feel. Then see that at least one other person reads, hears or sees it.
• With the passage of time, the mind blots up the inky spots of bad memories, and so, writing an annual or unscheduled remembrance is likely to take on a more silvery gloss as the days become weeks and the weeks months. Rereading previous peans will encourage you to see that indeed, you have actually grown emotionally and spiritually, because all paths eventually lead to forgiveness and understanding.

Note that I do not refer to those horrible, smarmy couplets that appear in newspapers, picked from prescripted Hallmarkian anthologies. "You are gone but not forgotten, though the leaves of fall be rotten".

No indeed. If smarm is your thing, well, good on you. I'm just saying that you can do better. As the Moody Blues put it, "Say what you mean, and mean what you say." "Best damn husband I ever had" is good, and true, especially if you've only had one so far.

4. To make widely known; display. Well, why not? If the mayor of your city, town or village can declare a day to honor a celebrity or an occasion, you certainly can do the same amongst your friends and relations.

An email message that has as its subject line : "I hereby declare: Today is Jo Day" is bound to attract attention. But do not pass it along by the carbon copy method. Send out one to each of the persons who would care, each one highlighting a different memory. It is impossible to remember everything about another that we would wish to remember. But in the replies you are bound to get, there will be others, some of which you may well never have know.

And should the day commemorate someone who is best forgotten, the above exercise should provide an opportunity to indulge in a little rueful irony, which may well help with the healing of feeling.

How You Doing?

It's interesting, and very kind, that people constantly inquire after your welfare once you have lost a partner. The professionals whom you have to contact about all the unpaid bills and the other legal miseries that inevitably come bobbing along in the wake of death pretty much universally use the phrase, "I'm sorry for your loss." This comes either early or late in process of taking care of business. My response is usually, "Thank you, so am I." It's sincere, but somewhat distancing. A statement of fact, it only requires a quick response.

People who know you more informally, however, take it farther. They ask, "How you doing?". This is a response that triggers thought, because it more or less implies that they're aware that you're going through a difficult adjustment period, and it's definitely more supportive in its intent. It's more nuanced than "How are you?", and less insouciant than, say, "How's everything going?" Its implied focus is on you and your particular feelings and situation.

But "How (are) you doing?" is difficult to answer, because sometimes you just want to stop for a minute and say, "Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm having a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what's going on with our bank accounts." Or maybe it's more like, "My God, I didn't know chicken got so dry and tough if you left it in the oven too long." But does anyone really want to have you do data mining like that? In the computer world, we call that a core dump. Probably it's best to keep it brief, honest, and appreciative in tone.

"How (are) you doing?" can be pretty open-ended like that. It's nice. It presents one of those rare opportunities that if you feel like elaborating, you may, but you don't have to. Nobody has a particular agenda, other than to show an interest, and offer an opportunity.

So if you happen to see me, and happen to say "How ya doin'", don't be surprised if sometimes I say, "Just fine, thanks", but other times, "Well, the cat threw up on my kitchen chair, and a raccoon chewed a hole in the swing seat, and I don't think I like the way I cook, but generally, not so bad, thanks." After all, you asked for it. And thank you for asking.

The Dumb Cluck in the Kitchen

I understand that in some parts of this country, especially in the south, there is a preference for meats of various kinds, blackened. This normally involves various spices, such as paprika, salt, cayenne, cumin, thyme, white pepper, and onion powder. Searing the chicken breast, for example, after oiling it and rubbing it with these condiments produces the desired blackening, and subsequent baking turns it into something special.

It is with great pleasure that I announce via this blog entry that I have found a much simpler way, involving no additional expense for condiments of any kind. Based on my extensive kitchen experience, this is how I produced it. One caveat: this recipe requires that you own a dog or cats, or maybe a ferret. Or a skunk.

1. Purchase a chicken. Without it, this recipe fails.

2. Unpack it and lose the giblets. I hate giblets.

3. Put it on a roasting rack (the vertical kind makes it self-basting).

4. Ask someone whose vision is good enough to read the oven temperature indicator to turn it on to 450 for you. (Thank you, A.)

4. Place it in the oven on the bottom rack. This assumes you have removed the top rack before the oven started to heat up.

5. Set the timer for about an hour and a half, if you like well-done chicken.

6. When the timer goes off, silence it and remove the beautiful, brown chicken, off whose bones the meat will be falling.

7. Turn off the oven.

8. Because your pets will materialize on cue when they hear you open the oven door, you cannot leave the bird on the kitchen counter. Instead, when you have carved off what you want to eat, return the bird, on the platter, to the oven, and securely close the door.

9. Set the table, throw together some accompaniments, and have dinner.

10. After dinner, you may remember that the oven was fairly dirty. Turn it on to self clean.

11. Busy yourself with other activities for about 20 minutes. By that time, the smell of well-done chicken should be permeating even the fabric of your curtains.

12. If you can see into the kitchen, run and cancel the self-clean cycle. If you can't, feel your way until you burn your fingers on something hot. It will be the stove. Cancel the self-clean cycle.

13. Tug at the oven door until you realize that the unreadable little red digital bar on the control panel is saying "LOCKED".

14. Busy yourself with other activities for about 40 minutes. By that time, the oven should have cooled enough to unlock the door.

15. Carefully, and with several pot holders or pairs of oven mitts, remove the platter and bird, and place on a non-combustible surface. Be careful not to set it down hard, as all the meat will fall off, except for the burnt parts which will stick to the bones like Velcro(tm).

16. If you prefer, transfer the chicken to a new plate and scrub the platter with any strong abrasive. The burnt-in lines on the bottom where the platter sat on the rack provides a pattern unique in the industry. Your dinner guests will be fascinated by the permanent black spots and the Rorschach smear where the chicken rested on the platter.

Voila. Blackened, Ready-To-Discard Chicken. This recipe will undoubtedly work with a wide variety of dishes, although blackening times may vary. Be sure to include cooling time, as the entree cannot be removed before the oven latch releases. And don't forget to clean your oven afterwards.

J has left the building

After a nineteen-month* struggle with the nastiness of breast cancer, the effects of chemotherapy and the short-lived relief of blood transfusions, Joana Hudgins, always previously referred to as "J" in these entries, has moved along. Nothing more to see here.

Jo was born in Ohio, and apparently always wanted to leave to see other places. She travelled to 26 of them, mainly reflecting her attraction to Florida and its beaches, birds and palm trees.

Her marriage to The Old Guy resulted in a few short years in Canada, where she learned how we say "out" and "about", eh? As close as we came to paradise was a quarter-acre lakeside bungalow north of Kingston, Ontario. When The Old Guy found new employment, it brought her back to Ohio, although this time to Jackson, in Appalachia. Two years later, that job was eliminated, and another move across the bottom of the state found us in Hamilton, Ohio, a city in the Greater Cincinnati area.

If one were to stick pins in a map where her friends are located, it would be too heavy to lift. Her fascination with the internet probably began with the need to express herself in writing, an endeavor that took her on flights of imagination, grounded in the hardship of not the happiest of childhoods. The net offered her an outlet for her loneliness as well as her sense of humor and her natural empathy for all types of creatures.

The Old Guy met her at the right time: email lists were in vogue, and Jo's musings became public on a listserv called "alt-support-loneliness". It was there that she caught the eye of this former high school English teacher, partly because she held nothing back, and that included creating the occasional portmanteau because her brain worked far faster than even her flying fingers.

Over our 14 years of married life, Jo continued on the nets, became expert on The Sims, got into website creation, and maintained a continuing dialog with anyone who would listen. There were many.

The drum circle called OGADE was a compelling interest for her, not only for its rhythmic appeal, but for the friendships she made there.

Her life in the politics of social justice was just the latest in her many creative ways of expressing her love for people and her frustration at the selfishness and avarice of the oligarchy that saps the political will of this republic. In her role as webmistress for both her own website and the local Democratic party, she worked beyond her limitations to bring in a better life for all.

Her five surviving children experienced unconditional love, and so did the world of animals. Jo got involved in rehabilitation of five raccoon babies, three skunks, a few bunnies and many cats and the birds they wounded. Various landlords had trouble with that side of her loving nature. The internet became her daily source for information on how to heal the hurts of all creatures, great and small. Although she became a fan of "Deadliest Catch", she could not help commenting on "those poor king crabs" while watching an episode. Fortunately, she could not bring them all home.

Neither she nor the oncology team could heal the very aggressive breast cancer that she discovered too late for remediation. It was difficult for her to leave, for a time. But her unconditional love and playful humor glowed brightly even as her candle began to flicker out. Life without Jo will go on, better for her having shown us the way.

*Footnote: Jo was diagnosed in February 2008. I can't do math. Also, her daughter tells me that the phrase "a few bunnies" should be amended to read, "more than a few bunnies". I do remember having to get up early each morning when the dew was still on the ground to pick the finest, largest dandelion leaves (and there were thousands to choose from, such was my groundskeeping expertise) for feeding time.

Parking: now, there's the ticket!

What is it about parking on your driveway (as opposed to driving on a parkway?)

This isn't a rant, or at least it's not intended to be. There's always the possibility that it will turn into one.

The fact is, however, that the world divides into two types of people: those who, when they come over to your house and notice that your car is parked in the driveway, blithely park behind you, and the (very few) others who don't.

Think about it. In our situation, we have a long, very narrow, single strip of tired old asphalt that accommodates three cars, but we only have two. So when someone comes over, sees a parking space behind the second car, they have a decision to make. For most, that is easy, apparently. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Here's the thing. There are no parking prohibitions on our street. It's a long, dead-end avenue, filled with houses populated mainly by older people and younger families, many of whom have only one vehicle. There's room in front of our house, and our neighbors', to park at least six vehicles. That's more cars than we have friends.

Here's the next thing. My wife's disabilities qualify our cars for handicapped parking. Unlike most, she doesn't put the tag on her mirror unless she's actually in a designated parking space. I have a duplicate tag which I use only when she is with me, or I'm picking her up from some appointment or store. Nevertheless, everyone who visits us knows about her condition. So why, then, would they not assume that I need extra room on the driveway to load the trunk or the back seat with the wheelchair, walker, oxygen tank and whatever else is needed? Sometimes I need to get out and back the car in, to put the passenger door on the easiest side for loading.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a rule around here that if your car is more than ten feet away from the house, it is fair game for vandals. There are street lights, but they are largely concealed by ancient tree foliage. One night both rear doors of my car were keyed in a random spiral pattern. Another time, a brand new front tire was slashed, but that was likely because we were proudly displaying an Obama lawn sign prior to the elections. Raccoons don't carry shivs, so it had to be a message from a political opponent.

In an effort to keep the car from being damaged, I leave it close behind the other one, so that when the vandals appear, the porch light automatically turns on. At least this allows them to complete their masterpieces with less chance of hurting themselves. Bottom line: there is generally a full car length of free space behind my car.

On some occasions, I've maneuvered like a truck rodeo contestant, inching back and forth with much turning of wheels and adjusting of mirrors, to make it out of the three-car trap. This usually ruts the lawn somewhat, but as long as it doesn't happen in the spring, the grooves even out over time.

Let's be clear here: there is no possibility of a double width driveway. The gas and water lines would end up being directly under any such extension, so that in the event of a problem, a Bobcat would be required.

I think there are two influences at work in this whole situation. America's car-centered culture demands convenience. Why have a car if you have to walk more than twenty feet to its doors? Hence, the development of valet parking services, the drive-thru church, the drive-by funeral home, and, of course, the fast food joints.

Apart from the obvious air and noise pollution that occurs while drivers wait impatiently at a window, there is much to be said for not having to get out of a car to go into a pharmacy, especially when you look at the lineup at the dispensary, and the distance you have to travel to the rear of the store to get in line. It's always good to know that the fast-food joints are doing their damnedest to get you fed up faster.

The other influence, sad to say, is thoughtlessness. I never park in anyone's driveway unless there is a good reason, or better yet, an invitation, to do so. Why would I want to inconvenience myself by having to go out to the car (especially in winter) to move it so that the host can get out of his own driveway? Why waste the gas and generate the pollution?

Even if I were carrying, say, a trunk load of concrete blocks, my instincts are to deliver them and then find a parking space elsewhere until it comes time to leave. Who knows? If there were an emergency, wouldn't it be better not to have blocked the paramedics?

But judging from the number of perfectly-abled drivers who pull up into a handicapped parking space, hang a permit from the mirror (or not) and march into the shopping centers, this whole parking thing is never going to go away until the car does.

So I'm sorry, I guess this was a rant after all. I guess I'm guilty of the desire for automotive convenience after all.

Breathing room.

Well, it's been a different few days. It only took a couple of minutes for the oncologist to send J to be admitted at the local hospital for lung function testing. After four full days there, the news came back: her cancer has started to show up in her lungs.

A couple of transfusions and a chemo drip later, we have a new noisemaker in the house: an oxygen concentrator, connected through a nasal cannula . I've consigned the machine to the middle bedroom with the door shut, where only my collection of teddy bears will suffer the annoyance. If this proves inadequate, we may try the upstairs, with a hole through the closet ceiling for the tube.

Already the newest adopted cat has demonstrated a pernicious interest in the 50 foot long tube. To fend off what may be inevitable fang marks, I've taped the tube to the wall until it reaches our bedroom. J should be able to shake off any attacks when she feels the need to venture out. We use a spray bottle of water along with a vigorous "Get off the table!" as our weapons of choice.

If you really think about it, a few decibels of rattling are a small price to pay for the possibility of extending life expectancy.

Live long and respire!

Tourist Trap

The article in Wikipedia under the heading "tourist trap" explains very clearly and with a hint of irony the meaning of the phrase, and lists a large number of the better-known places. The final entry under North America is, "the Tennessee cities of Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg have numerous tourist traps."

"Numerous" is an understatement which could be enriched by editing it to read "too numerous to mention".

OK, so Dolly Parton was born in Sevierville. That explains the Dollywood attraction. But how about all those other wall-to-wall traps that do everything from stuff you with pancakes to fling you around in a vertical wind tunnel.

None of the above, not even the food, attracted us. As the driver on the trip, I had to negotiate the passage through Gatlinburg to the mountains. Crawling along at an average of perhaps two miles an hour reminded me of the time we drove to Canada up I-75 and got caught in an interstate parking lot between two exits miles apart. I seem to recall it took 2 hours to drive 10 miles.

Since we're not great photographers, I figured that YouTube would fill in the gaps.

This video gives you one person's experience driving through the town. Traffic, people, and multiply by two, and you have our experience.

The real attraction, of course, is the mountains themselves, and the thrill ride is driving the twisty-turny US-441 that takes you to Clingman's Dome. Once there, we were content to watch the perpetual fog blow in over the slopes, and the hundreds of tourists who hiked up and down the trail. We were not among them. Although posted with handicap wheelchair signs, it is clear that an electrically-assisted chair would be the only reasonable way to hike to the top. Walking normally, the hike is 30 minutes to the outlook tower. We came, we saw, we demurred.

And then, there's the bears. This one clouted a car back a few years ago. That bear really knew how to trap tourists.

If you can't lick them, join them

Well, Sylvie is well on the way to adopting us. In fact, she already has. It's just that we have to keep her separated from the other cats so that there won't be pitched battles when they finally come together in the house. And, of course, she has to wait for a few more days until the clinic removes her powers of reproduction.

Spaying/neutering go a long way towards civilizing a stray, as most folk know. Sylvie will miss the excitement that goes with mating with some other local stray, the stress and responsibility of raising kittens two or three times a year, and the vulnerability to disease and early death that inevitably skews the feline actuarial tables.

The Feral Cat Coalition of San Diego puts it this way:

Many people assume their animals will survive when they move away and leave them behind. Contrary to popular belief, domestic animals do not automatically return to their "natural" instincts and cannot fend for themselves! Already, U.S. animal shelters are forced to kill an estimated 15 million homeless cats and dogs annually. ...

And think of the reproduction rate:

A pair of breeding cats, which can have two or more litters per year, can exponentially produce 420,000 offspring over a seven-year period.

The Feral Cat Coalition subscribes to the Trap-Neuter-Release theory that releasing a feral cat once it can no longer reproduce is the antidote to being overrun with cats. An opposing argument is, of course, the one that says that ferals become experts at avoiding traps, and hence they are not vaccinated against the deadly diseases that put the public, especially children, at risk. And this is in addition to the vast numbers of birds killed by cats.

A page at the University of Michigan, Detroit says:

If each outdoor cat only killed one bird per year, it would equal over 60 million birds annually.

Well, Sylvie, who doesn't know about all these facts and opinions because she doesn't spend any time on the internet, is quietly sitting in the Zinn Center at our back door, where, we hope, she will be protected from the nightly maraudings of various male cats and various raccoons of undetermined gender. In a few days, the great experiment of seeing whether she and Orange and Dusky and Kaboodle can co-exist in the same household will begin.

My guess is that there will be a few territorial puddles and some feral feces to clean up, and perhaps a number of free-floating balls of hair in the atmosphere, but the time will come when the ancient wisdom of cats will prevail, which is, I suppose, "a bird in the paw is worth two in the bush."

Robin In The 'Hood?

Yesterday, J spent several hours intently researching bird songs on the internets. She had noticed an unusually clear and melodious tune coming from somewhere in the neighborhood, a voice that seemed familiar, but yet one that she couldn't place. Off she went to the computer, and for the next four hours bird calls peeped, squawked, chirred and pippled from the speakers. This one was clearly complaining, "People never know our song tunes."

We had to leave for a drumming gig, so I busied myself loading the car. It was a day of audible contrasts. We played on the sidewalk and at the curb on a very busy street, with big diesel buses stopping beside us to board and discharge passengers. The store (10,000 Villages) had arranged for the group to celebrate Fair Trade Day, dedicated to the principle that if we're going to buy from other countries we should not take advantage of them. I bought a bamboo pan flute and J purchased a clay ocarina.

Unusually for the drummers, the noise levels out on the street were almost enough to silence them. The pedestrians had no trouble, and many paused for a while to listen. Some danced a bit, and some of the kids took over a djembe or two for a few licks. 

The band flailed away valiantly for three hours despite the physical layout. The musicians at either end could not hear their opposite companions well enough to stay crisply on the beat at times.

At dinner, J announced that she had found the bird song. It belonged to a baltimore oriole, who clearly believed in being heard and not seen. The identification of a baltimore oriole is relatively straightforward if you can see the bright orange breast and black head, but the bird is very creative when singing.

At one point, a technology company offered an in-field pair of binaural bird identifiers, the Song Sleuth, a portable device with a built-in sound matching algorithm that could identify the likely source of whatever you focused it on. According to the site, it was too expensive to manufacture for the target market ($299), but they're working on a new model and looking for a manufacturer. 

I hope they succeed, because as everyone knows, spring is the best time for birding: the birds are calling, the leaves are not fully out on the trees, and in the clear air of a fine spring day, what can be more satisfying than to know that even if you haven't seen it, you can be sure of the bird you heard. Meanwhile, pass the mnemonics, please.

Archaeology: can you dig it?

Yesterday, for something completely different, we took our portable GPS and set off for the Cincinnati Museum Center, a huge former train terminal from the 1900's when trains were the preferred intercity method of travel.

On arrival at the parking lot, we were told that all the handicapped spaces opposite the building appeared taken, so we parked in the main lot and tugged out the wheelchair. The wind chill was pretty palpable, but we survived the push up the sloping drive to the main building.  After a few attempts and some compression, we were able to get the 24-inch chair through the 24-inch doors, and proceeded to buy tickets to the Natural History Museum section.

We navigated several areas of the NH, mainly by trying to brake the chair from rolling down the interior ramps. Many exhibits display the natural history of Ohio. It gives one pause to contemplate the lower jaw of a mammoth, compare it with that of a mastodon, and realize that both stomped the Ohio landscape from the Ice Age until about 10,000 years ago.

As a learning center, this museum is not burdened by today's computerized electronics. Rather than clicking mice or breaking lightbeams, these exhibits tend to offer specimens mounted on the walls, with a bit of natural history narrative below, terminating in a question which can be answered by lifting up a cover, below which is printed the correct response. Most of these are multiple-choice. This simplistic, non-mechanical approach means, essentially, that the only thing that can go wrong is that a lightbulb may burn out inside a display case. In fact, the few displays that actually used computers didn't seem to be working.

Have you ever seen the underside of a blue jay? Perhaps. But all of the birds in the collection are mounted on their backs, so the undersides are pretty much all you see. This is interesting because it's not the usual way you see birds, except in flight, and they are too fast to study in that mode.

It took about two hours to move through to the end of the museum, which terminates in a display of the contents of a number of 19th century outdoor privies, excavated in the back yards of older houses in the earliest parts of the city. What is left of a 38-caliber revolver tossed down the hole is perhaps the most interesting of the many household articles and vast quantities of hand-blown bottles. This exhibit is artfully located just down the hall from the restrooms on the lowest level.

At 3:00 pm it would be time to watch the Omnimax film "Grand Canyon Adventure". We were led to the elevator, where we ascended to the globe-shaped theatre. While waiting for the current showing to release its audience, we bantered with a couple of older couples, who "always wanted to see the Grand Canyon/always wanted to go whitewater rafting".

The movie itself is an experience that can be, at times, disorienting. It's a bit like watching the news crawl at the bottom of a weather channel: when you look up at the main screen after watching the marquee scroll for a while, you could swear the screen was moving. But because the Omnimax is like having your head inside a globe, some scenes, such as lifting off over the edge of a mile-deep gorge, can make you feel as though you were actually on board the helicopter. It's not 3D, unless you mean disorienting, dizzying and death-defying.

So, yeah. We got our money's worth, and more. And we left promptly at 4:00 pm. Within 20 minutes, we were in a traffic snarl that came close to being a parking lot, on I75.  There had been "an accident". All it takes in the big cities is one car to depart from the norm, and we're all in trouble. I truly believe that an evacuation order from Cincinnati would be impossible to fulfil.

Some time later, after successive arguments with Jill, our GPS unit who seems always to want to bring you back to the route that you were taking when the trouble occurred, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel to fill the stomach and pass the time. On the wall were three old tools that evoked some reminiscences of my days in the cottage country of Central Ontario.

The first was a two-man crosscut saw. My Dad and my Uncle Sid (who is now about 98) are preserved on DVD cooperatively trimming the logs that underpinned our lakeside dock with one of these. 

The second was a drawknife, used to rip the bark off branches when making wooden rustic furniture.

The third was a nipper, that I had seen a couple of times used by a blacksmith to pull the old nails from horses' hoofs.

Was that a day!

A trip I didn't enjoy.

A paradox. That's what it is. 

As a library systems person, I have always had the conviction that the library's computers must be kept running at all times. When I worked at the Thunder Bay Public Library many years ago, I sometimes suddenly woke up in the early hours of the morning, usually from the rumble of distant thunder. If lightning accompanied it, I would instinctively feel around for my clothes, and before the storm hit, I would be dressed and out the door, on my way to the workplace.

In those days, electric power supplies were not as sophisticated (for the money) as are today's versions. Even though our computer room circuits were protected by a massive Uninterruptible Power Supply, they were not certain to survive everything nature could throw at them. And in any case, the batteries on that UPS could only keep things running for perhaps a half hour at best.  Today's versions have software that can phone a designated person in the event of a failure. (Ever notice that phone service rarely goes down, while power is more vulnerable?) 

Our service probably could have included that extra cost feature, but did not, but in any case, it didn't matter. My instincts served me well. I was like a wolf in an earthquake zone. 

After the storms passed, I would be there to restart any gear that was down, and assess damages if any. In those cases when the event was prolonged, I might have to restore files from a backup tape.

Today, I work in a system that has a very large UPS in a separate computer room with environmental conditioning. There are about a dozen servers, and some other computers drawing power from the room's own service panel. Power interruptions are, thankfully, rare, and when they occur, the UPS generally gives us an hour to shut things down gracefully.

So why did the entire room shut down instantly yesterday, servers, services, UPS and all?

We decided to set up a brand new server that will take over the duties of one of the ones due to retire. I crawled under the counter to remove a small power supply (also known as a "wall wart") that powered a set of computer speakers, to make room for a power strip with six receptacles on it. I plugged it in, and then plugged in the power supply. As I pushed it home, I noticed a small blue spark. Instantly the room went dark and quiet, except for the emergency lighting and the light from the windows. HUH?

This was a case of the 25-cent engine part bringing down the plane. Presumably, a faulty power strip shorted out when the plug was inserted, and the main circuit breaker tripped. It was electrifying.

It took my boss and me a few minutes to find the solution, because, unlike many breakers whose handles flip to the half-open position, everything seemed unchanged. Finally, he toggled the main switch, and the lights came back. Half an hour later, we had the servers back up.

Fortunately, the incident occurred on a day when the first heavy snowstorm of winter had rolled over the area. Not many people were making it to the library in any case, so the main complaint was that users couldn't get on the internet for a while.

I'm no electrician, but I would suspect that the UPS basically protects the circuits from incoming events. When the wall wart shorted out the circuit, it did was not a power failure or a surge from the main supply. It was a problem from the circuit itself, flying back to the main breaker, which did its job. Don't try this at home, if you can.

My piano role

Back in the day, when I was not in as much control of my life as I would like to be now, I had to take piano lessons. I did not want to take piano lessons. My parents often admonished me with a "some day you'll thank us for these piano lessons." That day never came, at least not on any specific day that I can remember as having marked the time I thanked them for forcing me to study the piano.

Of course, you should never expect gratitude from a younger generation, simply because chronologically they're not in a position to appreciate your wisdom in these matters. Had I become a concert pianist, or even a competent pianist, undoubtedly I would have told anyone who listened that I owed it all to the generosity of my parents, who paid for the many hundreds of hours of instruction, and tolerated the thousands of hours of practice.

I quit taking piano from the first instructor, a tyrant who intimidated me at every misstep, and insisted that I did not practice sufficiently. Of course, he was right. I practiced out of fear, and gave new meaning to the musical term, tremolo.

The next and final teacher lived in the neighborhood, offering lessons to many who could otherwise not have afforded them. She might have succeeded in inspiring me to a more musical life, had it not been for the fact that I had been aesthetically traumatized by the first teacher, to the point where only a lobotomy would have allowed me to approach the instrument with any sense of calm.

Our next-door neighbour who moved in while I was still approaching the teen years, was, in fact, an accomplished classical pianist who taught many higher-achieving students. Her entire diningroom was taken up with a baby grand piano. Her husband, an Armenian rug merchant, was himself no musician, but spent hours listening from the kitchen while drinking his tea, in rapt adoration of his spouse's and her students' musical achievements. A professional photographer in his native country, he would retreat to the basement darkroom to develop his black and white photos of flowers and faces, but since it was directly under the piano, I suspect that much of what he did down there was listen undisturbed to the heavenly concerts above.

Although I did not blossom as a pianist, I retained a "musical ear" which has permitted me to play exclusively by it, in any of three common, uncomplicated keys, C, G and F, on a variety of instruments. That, plus a few lessons, allowed me to be a third clarinettist in our high school cadet corps band, thereby saving me from having to carry a gun. The clarinet was much lighter.

I like to think I didn't totally waste my parents' money even as I dashed their hopes, because I appreciate music, especially of the baroque classical genre. Perhaps the struggle with the intractable piano has led to a greater appreciation of those who master it (including my own brother's abilities: he plays both from notes and/or by ear, in a variety of styles, and in any key required, and if the key is unsuitable, he transposes, even if he's playing by sightreading a piece for the first time!)

The advent of Internet radio with stations like Otto's Baroque on 1.FM and many others from around the world is an enormous gift to my generation. Perhaps in the future the technology will make it possible to travel back in time to watch the young Mozart composing his themes on the harpsichord at the age of three. For now, I am seriously grateful for the musical education I was given, for by failing as a performer, I have had the time to become a better listener.

Carpe Diem

It looks like the beginning of a hard winter.

J has just commenced her first round of chemotherapy for her stage IV metastatic breast cancer. The side effects (fever, aching and loss of appetite) have already devastated her energy and, to a lesser extent, her spirit, and this is only the first day after the first treatment.

J lost her mother to the same disease at the relatively young age of 55. Her mother suffered through chemo, but unsuccessfully. She refused a second round, as I understand the story, and it is not difficult to see why.

One of the difficult transitions J has been facing is that of letting go of her expectations for life. We all, whether we acknowledge it or not, live a good portion of our lives in anticipation. And another big chunk is devoted to the past, whether rose-colored or not. Cancer of any type, however, or indeed any other life-altering disease, forces a change of perspective.

How one feels right now becomes the focus when pain is so omnipresent. One of the handout booklets from the oncology center cites cancer as somehow improving one's ability to live in the present, because to live in any other expectation is a waste of time and precious energy. I can vouch for this as a computer instructor in a public library. Most of the seniors I teach are very much focused on the present. They want to learn enough to be independent of all those people who are mostly younger than they are, because the young are impatient: they are future-focused.

As we progress towards our second babyhood, we once again become dependent on and appreciative of those around us who are our caregivers. As we grow dependent after a life of independence, we grieve our loss of control, our limitations. But each new day is ours, even if only in some small, inner way that is not necessarily obvious to those who care for us and about us.

And so it is with the will to live one day at a time that one "beats" cancer, even if it eventually wins.

My thumb is opposed to old saws

On September 14th, 2008, in the remnant of Hurricane Ike with peak gusts of 82 miles per hour in the Cincinnati area of Ohio, two large branches of our neighbor's 50-year-old sycamore came crashing down. The smaller one (about 5-8 inches in diameter) landed across the old wire fence, and the much larger one came down in their yard.

I took my pitiful electric chain saw next door once the weather cleared. Cutting and piling for a couple of hours, I managed to arrange a respectable pile of logs for their newly-built firepit. Then, I moved back to our side of what used to be the fence, and began cutting and limbing the remaining branches.

I got into a kind of rhythm at the job: pulling a branch over the wheelbarrow, lopping off a stove-length chunk, pulling the branch further, lopping off another length. The problem is, when you get into a rhythm with a chainsaw, even a pathetic, underpowered electric one, you become accident-prone.

In this case, I lopped off a limb and stopped the saw. The branch fell and the blade kicked up against the thumb of the left hand which was holding the main part of the branch. Electric saws don't stop instantly the way their bigger cousins do. So the slight remaining momentum of the chain caught the glove on my left thumb and shredded the heavy cotton.

Instantly I noticed a rather generous bloodstain welling up in the glove. When I tore it off, it appeared that a tooth on the chain had caught my thumbnail with sufficient impact to cut a triangular piece nearly out of it. It had lifted up, but was still attached. I immediately ran for the house, to get a band-aid, if not a tourniquet.

J met me and helped wash the wound. Knowing my sensitive nature, she prepared a drink of juice, all the while attempting to persuade me that I needed the services of the local emergency room. I demurred, because I felt that getting blood on the car upholstery would only hasten its rate of depreciation.

In time, the healing began. As at this writing, I still wear a band-aid over the area, simply because the nail has grown out to the point where the slightest catch, such as putting on a glove, results in a sharp reminder that all is not yet whole.

Some things I reflect on from this experience:

1) The body aggressively tries to heal whatever hurts it. And in most cases, it succeeds, although not without leaving some evidence of the struggle to survive, perhaps as an object lesson, or at the least, a warning.
2) As a rule of thumb, the price paid for inattention is one of the highest we can pay.
3) The inattentive are protected only by their good luck. One should not rely on this, but when it happens one must be grateful.
4) You can do something a thousand times, but the thousand and first may be the one that gets you.
5) Bleeding is a sign that something is probably wrong.
6) The empathy of a loving person is a powerful force for healing.

GPS: for the GyPSy in you

It wasn't the fascination with gadgetry that inspired me to buy a GPS receiver  this week. It was partly that I was itching to spend money on something to mark my 67th birthday coming up. It was even more due to my fear of getting lost, as we have many times when driving around Ohio. 

Some cities, like Cincinnati, are impenetrable via ordinary road maps. Even Google maps present difficulty when driving: you have a printout on the seat beside you (or on the lap of the seatmate beside you), and you give it your best shot, trying to squint at directions in a timely manner while blasting down a major highway, or through streets that you've never seen before.

The GPS, on the other hand, talks you through the entire hassle. Signals from four Global Positioning Satellites are constantly providing quadrangulation, so that the little car icon on the well-lit screen moves calmly down magenta avenues, and the voice of your choice warns you that you'll need to turn in a few moments. If you miss a turn, or take one that you like better, she says, "Recalibrating", and after a few seconds, directs you to the next possible route back to your original path.  And these are just the features we've tried so far.

However, there's a learning curve.

I had read the manual, and poked in the address of a Hallowe'en hafla that would be our destination for the evening. In passing, I would note that Google's directions always begin with an instruction to "turn north on ..... Street". This is a horrible way to commence a trip for someone other than a flock of birds, who, it is said, navigate by the position of the sun. By contrast, this GPS tells you which way to turn, and shows you the compass setting as well. Then, I handed the unit over to J.

I have blogged elsewhere about my spouse's ability to control the most complex of home electronics without reading the manual. She does it by experimentation. Hence, when it was time to go, she had seen everything worth seeing on the little box.

We started out fine, although Jill got a workout as we followed our normal route to the Interstate, rather than giving in to her insistence to take a more constricted one. She had probably been asked to give the shortest route, rather than the fastest, which, in traffic terms, can make a huge difference. 

As daylight disappeared, we found ourselves moving into a suburban area of 25 mph streets. When Jill announced that we had reached our destination, it was a dark urban wooded park. We turned into the parking area, and stopped to to reconnoitre. Shortly, a white Park Patrol car pulled up and we rolled down our windows.

"Do you need some help", queried the officer.

"Sure do", I explained. "We have this new GPS, and we're trying to get to ...."

"Oh, well, you'll figure it out", she said.

"I sure hope so", I replied.

"Just turn right at ......... and left at ........... and you'll be back on ........."

(I use dots here because whenever someone gives me directions, I retain them in my head for about 10 seconds, 15 on a good day.)

"Thanks for the help", I said.

"No problem: have a good evening."

I reprogrammed the destination, and ultimately, in spite of a detour around a bridge maintenance site, we arrived, safely, a mere 45 minutes late.

So the mystery remained. How did the destination get changed from the original to another one that bore little relation to reality? We may never know, but perhaps this time the "poke around until you find out" learning style of the partner may have manifested Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. 

The best points:

1. With Jill announcing everything in her accurate-to-20-foot self-assured manner, the coefficient of profanity is approaching zero. 
2. Gone is the nagging at the navigator (disagreements are now directed at a 3-by-5 inch screen). 
3. Directions are always given in a timely and complete fashion, such as by telling the driver what the next turn will be at least a block or two ahead of the need to make it, taking into account the actual speed of the vehicle. 
4. The presence of an accurate compass heading is reassuring. 
5. For the navigationally-challenged, saving a home location means that, like a prairie horse in a blizzard, you will always be able to find your way back.