Whistling down the wind

This is how I survive.

Looking for Meaning

The phone rang. It was Ben, wanting to ask me a question. He had submitted an entry to his school's Writing Olympics, third-grade tier. His submission had been published and now he was to read it aloud to the gathering of students and their parents and other interested adults, which would extend all the way to grandparents. His mother had been working with him to make the passage understandable. If you've ever been to a similar function of second to sixth graders, you'll have some idea of what goes on in terms of intelligibility of the readings. So the child asked, "Do you think it's really important that people understand what you read to them?" I wanted to support his mother's efforts and say absolutely, that was the purpose of reading to an audience, and one of the basic elements of communication. Instead, I told him that it was not vitally important because the audience was there to support their children, and it really didn't matter what the level of performance was. After all, this is voluntary, not a test, and this was not a SPORTS event. Based on prior experience, I said that about 85% of the young authors would not read their works in a manner that could be heard and understood. It was not worth worrying about: written copies were provided and no one would criticize even the shyest or speediest of readers. Only if you want to be one of the kids that everyone could hear and comprehend should you be concerned about being understood. I don't know if he knew what I meant, but I believe it to be true.

The end of a life

Scrolling through different files and resources on my computer, I came across a name not of a potential Facebook friend, but the obituary of Bob Campbell. He died in the dead of winter, a little over 3 months ago, the article read, and entombment at Saratoga National Cemetery will be in the spring. I'll add to this entry later, when the dust of my mind has settled.

Tech Support

When I turn on my computer, a screen pops up reading "Application is not a valid image. Please check against installation diskette." I'm unable to make the panel disappear, despite agreeing with it, "O.K." or by pressing Exit. Frustrated, I found by pressing Exit about 20+ times, the screen would disappear so I could use the computer, FOR A WHILE, until it reared its ugly head again. I emailed my personal tech support person, whose return email advised "Try using chrome." WTF!

Dorothy says Elvis, not Adam

"Adam hurts my ears, Elvis is music to my ears."

Oh Wow!!!

I admit it: I watch House Hunters. Not House Hunters International, not Selling New York, just plain House Hunters. The universal comment the prospective buyers utter or exclaim or moan is "Oh, Wow." The view is breathtaking, a beautiful beachfront--Oh, Wow. Or not: looking into the neighbors' bedroom---Oh, Wow. The floors are real wood--Oh, Wow, look at those floorboards. Or there is carpet--Oh, wow, how ugly and/or dirty. Oh, Wow, granite countertops! And for those yucky laminate poser counterops---Oh Wow. Stainless steel appliances rate an enthusiastic Oh, Wow! Any other color is an automatic, Oh, Wow, we're going to have to upgrade. Same thing for double sinks in the master bath as opposed to a mere single sink. Oh, Wow and double Oh, wow. (BTW, who ever coined the term Jack and Jill bathroom--Wow!) Just try it---watch the show and count the number of Oh, Wows, and that's even before the first mortgage payment is due.

"You should write a book..."

But no, I shouldn't. Have you ever seen all the perfectly good books that are discarded by libraries or publishers? Millions,I would think, containers of all the words someone once hoped would be destined to reach into eternity, and now fodder for the recycler. I figure if no one has an interest in HEARING what one has to say, there is bound to be even less interest in READING it.

So many words, so little time

Every once in a while, I think about words, all the words there are in the English language that I will never use. Some I have written but never uttered. Who ever speaks the word "truly" except in song? Some I have studied and learned their meanings, pronunciations, and derivations, but have never spoken. Who actually speaks the word uulate? But I do grieve in a sense for all the once possible situations and scenarios where I could have put my vocabulary to significant use. I am rendered speechless.

I'm no Susan Lucci

Susan Lucci is going crazy in her final days on All My Children, looking into a mirror, talking to herself, making the most of her presence before she is shunted into the oblivion of cancellation. I feel akin to her, because this is what I see myself doing as I blog, putting my thoughts into the form of words before my show is cancelled. Even though it is unlikely anyone will ever read them.

Forego Pogo

We have a lot of squirrels at our house. We try to keep them out of the house itself, though last year one or more found entry into our attic. They chomped their way through a weak spot in the eaves, and rampaged overhead as we slept, or tried to. So we bought a have-a-heart trap, to capture and relocate the squirrels unwary enough to take the bait and enter the trap. The other day, though, instead of a mild-mannered squirrel prisoner, the trap contained a possum, a big fellow, wedged solidly into the trap. A possum up close does not look anything like the furry and almost cuddly little things of storybooks or even nature magazines. Possums smell bad, they are made up largely of rows of sharp pointed vicious-looking teeth, they have bald and gnarly tails, and ugly dispositions. We decided to release the possum on the spot, having no desire to pick up the cage and certainly not to put it in the car for transport. Did I mention, they smell really bad. Possums do not want to cooperate in any sense. Unlike the squirrels, which quickly run for the nearest tree when the cage is opened, the possum did not want to move out of the opened cage, just wanted to bare its teeth and hiss or growl and look as ugly and forbidding as possible. When it was finally persuaded to exit, the possum had literally destroyed the cage, ripping and bending all the parts. Evidently, possums cannot move fast or maybe they just prefer not to, as it slowly ambled into the wooded area behind our house. And what a sight, its bulky, ungainly body preceded by a hissing mouth of teeth and finished off by its yellowish ropy tail, waddling off into the woods. "Remind me never to go there," breathed Ben, the nine-year-old who was witnessing the Great Possum Release from the kitchen window.

Toys, not food.

I walked into the room where the kids were playing with actual toys, having been denied their usual fix of electronic stupor. That looks like a peanut butter cracker, I said, pointing to a toy that looked a lot like the same. No, said the three-year-old, that's not a cracker, and you can't eat it. All of these things on the table are toys. If you eat them, you'll choke, or get sick. And that's why they're toys.

To shop or not

Today I dragged myself out of the gloom that was our winter and is now our spring to do a little shopping, though I didn't really need anything. Just thought I'd look around, so I went to a department store that was holding a seasonal sale, whatever that means. I brought my items to the check-out lane, which was in an area being re-designed "to better serve our customers." I entered as the sign directed, but a man also entered the same lane from the other direction, as also directed by a similar sign at the other end of the channel to the register. The cashier directed him to go the other way, and be behind me. I told the cashier that the sign really did tell customers to go that way also. She asked me if I wanted to go back into line. I said no, but just thought it would be easier for her and the custoners. She said she'd been putting up with the situation for the 2 months that the store was under construction, and she would have to tell a supervisor if she wanted the sign corrected. She didn't care about changing anything, even for the better. "I just want to go home," she said. So did I.

Sun dried---or just rotten?

Sun-dried tomatoes------I wonder how it came about that people started eating them. Were they picked up out of the garden as they lay spoiled from the sun and elements, and a hungry or frugal person decided to salvage them? I know sun-dried tomatoes have gotten a lot of press lately as a nutritious food, but they look really revolting and have a disgusting taste. I can't help but wonder how they could be evaluated for food value. People should just follow their instincts and allow them to return to the compost pile.

You're invited, well not really.

I got an email from my bank the other day, inviting me to join an opinion panel. "In an effort to enhance the overall offering to you, we would like to invite you to join the M&T Bank Opinions Panel, an exciting research community of customers like you..........Please take a few minutes to fill out our initial profile questionnaire." Well, OK, I thought: since I have opinions, why not share them. So I filled out the form stating my name, address, and for some reason, what age group I fit in, and pressed submit. But instead of thank you for your interest, the bank emailed back that I would not be a member of the survey panel because UNFORTUNATELY they did not need any more members who were in my category. So they don't need the opinions of any more old people, they might as well have replied. Why was I "invited" and then un-invited, albeit unfortunately. Maybe I should look for another bank.

O Lordy

It was one of the first nice days of spring, and I decided to do a little clearing out of the irises along the fence in front of my house. I was sitting on the ground working away, when a car slowed down as if to pull over near where I was sitting. Since I had no reason to believe I was going to be deliberately run over, I thought the driver was going to ask for directions. Instead he just looked closely at me, then drove away. He must have thought I'd fallen and I couldn't get up.

Who am I?

I am a provost. Who are you?

The Color of Research

Last year a body of research was being touted by the local media, television and newspapers, as a potential breakthrough in medical practice. Actual funding was spent on this breakthrough----a simple matter of having hospital gowns matched to the color of the patients' skin, so the examining physician, in possession of a baseline complexion tone as presented by the color of the afore-matched gown, would be able to detect any variation in skin color, which would be an invaluable aid in diagnosing the patient's ailment. So the patient would probably need a gown for each season, as many complexions vary with the amount of sun exposure. The match-up to skin color is bound to be very tricky and difficult to synchronize, as anyone who has ever tried to match paint colors would testify. Did you ever realize how many different shades of white there are, not to mention beige or tawny or ecru or ivory, or tan or brown? Manufacturing and dyeing of these gowns is bound to be be an involved and painstaking process, and designating and labeling a monumental task. What is your normal complexion color---check your foundation color in the cosmetic department and have that translated into a number; if not your face that is to match the gown, choose a body part you want to display. Tanning booths or spray tans would have to be reported to the examining doctor as well. Oh, don't forget to note that winter trip to Florida. And you women, be sure to remove your makeup in case your doctor color keys your gown to your face. I don't know how many gowns each patient would need for seasonal variations in skin color. And where would the gown be kept, by the patient or stored by the medical facility the patient is treated at. As far as laundering goes, the gowns certainly couldn't be bleached, or washed with a very strong detergent. If you've ever had occasion to don one of the gowns for a medical procedure, you're sure to have seen the various degrees of fading exhibited in the stack of gowns. I don't know about most doctors, but I and many of my acquaintances have visited doctors who barely have the time or the inclinaton to read through patient records. I can't even imagine a doctor's visit where the doctor would scrutinize the patient's skin color and compare the color to that of the gown to see if there has been any change. If indeed there is a notceable change, severe pallor or flushing would most likely be evident anyway. But I can only imagine a doctor's saying: "Your skin color seems to be several shades different from the color of your gown. You should probably undergo a blood test. Either that, or you need to buy a new gown."

What is a URL?

What is a URL?

Too late the phalarope

So when I was a little kid, I wanted to grow up to be a person who uttered famous quotations. I outgrew that lost hope, don't even text or tweet or submit to You Tube, so I guess I'll never be famous. But my later version of the ideal vocation would have ultimately turned out to be even more ill-fated. You see, I read this article in I think it was The Atlantic about a man who was an expert on the works of William Shakespeare. As I recall, he lived in an upscale apartment, probably in NYC, and people from all over the country and indeed the world consulted him whenever they needed an appropriate quotation from the works of Shakespeare. College professors, business tycoons, clergymen, politicians, speakers from all walks of life who wanted a dignified, salient addition to their speeches or articles would ask this man who knew Shakespeare backward and forward, and who could be counted on to provide them with exactly the reference they were looking for. He was immensely respected for his knowledge, and made a good living for providing the sought-after quotation for the proper event. I happened to own The Complete Works of Shakespeare, and told my young self that if that job hadn't already been taken, I could have pretty much memorized a great deal of Shakespeare's works, and was convinced I could have matched an apt quotation to whatever situation was asked for. I thought I would have loved that job. I should have invented google instead.

Good Thing I Didn't Follow Through

When I was a child and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always answered that I didn't know. Nobody had much back then, including hope, and our family fit in that mold; it would have seemed presumptuous and immodest to act as if we could control our future. So I said I had no idea but I really did have a secret aspiration. I wanted to be in one of the few books our family owned, and that was Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. My father was a history buff. He was born at the end of the 19th Century, and was pretty much an expert on all of the history as was then recorded in the textbooks of the day. He used to ask us kids who said "Don't give up the ship, I only regret I have but one life to give for my country, War is hell." I figured that if I had been in any one of those situations, I might have come up with that exact quote, or maybe even a better one that would be worth inclusion in Bartlett's book. The only one I wasn't sure of was "Don't fire til you see the whites of their eyes." I didn't think I could have come up with that one.

A Loss for Words

New words come into our language, and are added to the dictionaries: staycation, jeggings, LOL, tweetup, unfriend, roadkill. And some are inevitably lost or listed as archaic, obsolete, etc. I can think of one perfectly good word which is neither archaic or outdated in meaning, but is hardly ever used any more. The word is "frightening." Whereas the word once was used to describe a harrowing or unsettling experience or scenario, anything formerly considered frightening is now referred to as "scary." A scary tsunami, the scary prospect of nuclear fallout, a victim of a dreadful assault as having lived through a scary experience. Once scary was used in relation to little children and Halloween sights, or for a little animal character in children's literature being lost in a scary woods. Sure, frightening has 3 syllables instead of scary's 2, and 11 letters instead of 5, but is it worth sacrificing the dignity of language for the minimal savings of time or print? Personally, I find it somewhat incongruous and a little humorous when a dignified-looking spokesperson for some agency or another labels a major threat to our economy or world peace or survival of the planet as being "scary." BOO!

Where the sidewalk ended

I was walking along the sidewalk in my town, near the big yellow house across from what used to be the Catholic church, but now in business as "The Brick Elephant." I was looking down briefly at some cards in my hand, when I suddenly fell into a pit where the sidewalk had been taken up, ostensibly for repair, but a lot of time had passed. The orange warning cones had been removed, if indeed they'd ever been placed there. The hole was deep, several feet, and I landed on my feet. I felt a shock in both ankles and a feeling of pressure in the back of my head, but otherwise was unharmed.

Swimming to Fishphobia

There were fish in the room, all over the room, apparently swimming in air, medium sized fish they were. Also, one small yellow kitten. Signs were posted around the room, from all points of view. "Don't look," they warned. I looked anyway of course, although out of the side of my eye. The kitten was being swallowed by one of the fishes, hardly big enough to swallow it all at once, but working on it.