A Matter of Death and Life

    I remember the last days of Winston Churchill.  He'd taken sick and the newspapers, radio and television were keeping a daily death watch.  I remember thinking he was old, fated to die, probably ready for the end at ninety plus years, and why not just let it happen.  It was 1965 and I was in my twenties. 
   George H.W. Bush is now pretty much in the same position as Churchill, good days and bad, rallying and declining, in any event near life's end at 88 years of age.  Now I root for him to fight for every day---"Do not go gentle."    Hang on, Poppy.  You can do it.  Maybe you won't be jumping out of any more airplanes, or dining on steak and lobster, but milkshakes are worth living for, and you have someone to kiss you goodnight.  It's strange how one's  outlook can change over the course of a mere 47 year span. 

The Davids

I saw David S. in church tonight, at Dorothy's Memorial Mass.  This is what I remember about him:   we lived for a while as tenants in his parents' house, near the reservoir. He was the youngest of three brothers as I recall, the elder two grown up, and though he must have been several years older, he used to play with my brother after his farm chores were done.  There was another boy who lived in an old brown house across the road a short distance away, David Owens I think was his name, and he would sometimes join the games played, which were always either Cops and Robbers or Cowboys and Indians.  Dorothy was too young to play outside, but I was old enough to at least observe the games.  One time I walked into the woodshed and saw one of the Davids holding my brother at gunpoint (or by a stick shaped like a gun), so I had to  help him.  I picked up a piece of wood and hit the David with it, trying for his head.  The David never turned around when I entered the shed, and when struck immediately fell to the ground.  I was little enough to have thought I knocked him out and saved my brother, too young to realize it was all part of the game. 
     Another day one of the boys brought his BB gun when he came to play, or hang out, as they say now. They seemed to me to be big boys, and I was not much interested in their doings until one boy, most likely on a bet, put the gun against another boy's leg and pulled the trigger.  BB's were not supposed to hurt; they were not considered real guns.  The shot victim David immediately let out a yell, and burst into tears, loud enough that my mother came outside to see what was wrong.  She ended up prying the BB out of the leg with a large sewing needle.  Most likely she doused it with Mercurochrome or Iodine, depending on his tolerance for pain.  Most likely of all is that no one ever told any of the parents; in those days that would have meant a major hurt for everybody involved. 

"The year is dying in the night..."

IN MEMORIAM        12-29-39            6-1-2011
                Roses, races, angels, loyalty and love

Moonstruck

   I just saw a list on the internet of the 20 most handsome movie stars of all time.  I would agree that some were handsome, others sultry, and some just famous.  The list  reminded me of the best looking man I'd ever met face to face.  Baby David was in the hospital again, this time for a hernia operation.  He was 22 months old, and his roommate was an older boy, a 10 year old twin who was having minor plastic surgery on his lip to correct the scars from an earlier automobile accident.  His name was Don and his twin brother either Dave or Dan, I think.  He was a very cute child, with dark hair, and very polite and helpful.  I remember one night he sprinkled talcum powder in everybody's shoes, including David's.  And although the nurses had told me David would be fine through the night once he'd fallen asleep, and that it would be safe for me to leave him then to go home, young Don told me that David had woken up after I left, and cried throughout much of the night.  That may have been why he, sleepless and concerned,  was dousing shoes with powder.   But it was that young boy's father who I would place on my most handsome list.  His name was Don: he and his wife were taking turns spending time at the hospital with their son, and he was oustandingly good-looking.  Very well built and well dressed and as nice and friendly as anyone could have been--both parents were, actually, but the father was the more remarkable.  One morning when we were sitting watch together, he was leaving to get coffee and asked me if I'd like him to bring me back one, and I had to say no. I occasionally drank coffee back  then, and could  have used a cup,  but I would have been too overwhelmed to drink it.  I remember I must have felt a little guilty being so enraptured by another man so early in our marriage, so I told my husband how impressed I was by this man.    I needn't have worried; it turned out that my husband had felt much the same way.

The Nth Child

"The essence of each:
Charm, grace, lightness,
Next, thoughtfulness, courage, and loyalty,
Then, compassion, humility, and love.
Now in memory only, past elixirs
Bound together by a fragile chain,
Its  separate links of hard-forged steel
The sole testament to the past."

Petty Grievance

   I've never watched Jeff Probst's new show.  I like him all right, I guess, but I can't get beyond his opening spiel, a Miss America-like  introduction where he tells you who he is.  He loses me at "I'm newly married."  Yecch! 

Lesson Learned--Ben Ten

    I asked him if at age 10, he knew what a palindrome was.  He answered no, so the teacher in me took over.  "It's a word that is spelled the same forward and backward. Can you give me an example?"    He thought for a few seconds, and said,  "Poop." 

Dress codified

   The woman sat across from me in church, an elderly woman.  That means she was older than me, or at least I think so.  She had well-coiffed hair, manicured nails, trendy polish at that, and wore what looked like gold jewelry.  She had on a short fur jacket, probably mink, and she was wearing  black stirrup pants, with black flats.   Stirrup pants-----I remember wearing them; I had many pairs of them over the years when they were the style.  They were great to wear with boots, flattering to the leg as long as you kept your boots on.  Even I, who tends to hold on to all items from the past, no longer have my stirrup pants.   How did this otherwise fashionably dressed woman happen to still have the stirrups, I wonder.  I don't think they're making a fashion comeback;  are they?   

Note to Prosecutor

Dear Mr. Smith, It was the singer, not the song.

Awesome Birthday Palindrome

Next birthday will be 3-1-13.   And the birthday child's age will be right in the middle of the set of numbers---11 years of age.  Seems like it should be a special and wonderful year!   (And it's not on the Mayan  calendar.) 

Alas, Eddie McD

How fine is the line between reasonable doubt and unreasonable doubt.  The latter is kind of like a double negative, isn't it?
          AND JUSTICE PREVAILED!!!

Sad endings

  I just read that Bob Dole, now confined to a wheelchair, attended his old friend Senator Daniel Inouye's funeral, and insisted on walking in to pay his final respects.  He said he  "didn't want Danny to see him in a wheelchair."

"Or " else....

There are over 400 words in the English language ending with the letters "or."  All that I can think of commonly  have that last syllable pronounced with the schwa sound, no long "o"--------   administrator, doctor, educator, janitor, mayor, impostor, litigator, legislator, coordinator, aggressor, counselor, instructor, inferior, creditor, juror, junior----and these are just some of the words referring to persons.  Others are factor, manor, glamor--the list goes on and on.  Why then are we constantly subjected to hearing the word "mentor" pronounced to rhyme with gore?  Kind of  a faux-sophistication, do you think?

Redemption--Well, sorta

    I sense I'm losing my hearing:   LeAnn Rimes enters singing on "The Voice."  I remember her pure, clear voice way back when she sang "Blue."  I see her moving her lips and sound is coming out, but I can't understand what she is singing, can only  recognize a  word here and there. I can't even blame it on distractions, as I'm alone in the room.   I resign myself to a measure of hearing loss, inevitable it seems.  Today I am granted a reprieve, from an unlikely source.  Turns out the obnoxious host of  "Primetime in No Time"  also had no clue as to what she sang.  OMG, I'm not alone.

Where art thou, Peter Pan?

  "I don't really want to grow up," he said.  "I used to be three, then I was four, and now," stifling a sob, "I'm five."   

Who? Why?

Just wondering------Who is that weird little George Doppelganger guy who sits in Ali Wentworth's kitchen?  (Everybody should have one around the house.)     Why do they keep showing the VW Passat ad featuring the guy with the perplexed expression and the skinny legs? 

Oh. Rats!

I missed the educational conference in Syracuse this year, and it's probably a good thing I wasn't there.  I believe I would have staged a revolution in one of the workshops that was presented. 
    One who had attended the workshop  favorably commented  on how interesting, and, naturally, educational she found a certain  presentation to be. This  workshop presentation centered on the following body  of research, purportedly measuring motivation in humans, particularly adolescents:
     Rats were placed in a bucket of water (most likely individually), from which there was no possibility of escape.  They  were  timed as to how long they would continue to swim, futile as it was, before they gave up and were at the drowning point.  The researcher then rescued the drowned rat, and let it recover.  Then he/she put the rat back in the bucket, and again timed how long it took before the rat gave up and drowned, no lifesaving this time.  The ostensible reason for the study was to assay stress levels in humans;   the conclusion drawn was that people who have already been placed under stress will give up sooner when additional stressful situations arise. 
     Killing rats is all right with me, though  lab rats are not quite the same as sewer or alley rats.  Poisoning them, bashing them, all right, even drowning them may be acceptable ways to prevent infestations and outbreaks of the bubonic plague, but drowning, reviving, and redrowning to me says more about the mindset of the researchers than it does of legitimate scientific research.  They could have drawn the same conclusions if they had tested the rats on involuntary  treadmills.  The rats would stop when they were exhausted, but they wouldn't be dead. 
    I would say PETA should have been informed, but I don't know the details of the "respected' presenter,  where the drowning rats project was carried out, or for that matter how much of it was true.  I tried to google the experiment, couldn't find that one, but there was another rat drowning experiment measuring aggression in rats, whose level of such reportedly rose after they had "drowned" and been revived.  In that case, oddly enough, the researcher also drowned the rat for real after his initial conclusion. Perhaps the workshop  presentation  has been merely plagiarized, with observations made and then applied in a simulated exercise.  In any case, it does lend credence to the term mad scientist.  Sadists!
     Moreover, those attending the workshop totally bought into the premise, blithely accepting what would be considered torture if not done in a scientific setting.  People in general are sheep; waterboarding has been outlawed, has it not?

The "Operation Game" Updated

  If  the minds of senior citizens, AKA old people, could be wired to respond to select stimuli, what a godsend that would be.  I'm referring to the verbal section of the brain, the memory if you will.  The called-upon brain section could be activated through an impulse delivered via an earplug type device.  Then if someone for whatever reason wanted to know what it was like for Grandma to have had her hair set, or for Grandpa to have worn a military uniform in some forgotten war, a simple dial and probe could select that information without any off-subject rambling.  No longer would any fresh-faced child with a pad and pencil have to complete a class assignment by asking a random elder what life was like back when they were "alive."  Who knows, maybe the dial-a-memory technique could even be effective against Alzheimer's;  all the stored bits and pieces of a lifetime of activity sloshing around in the elderly brain could be retrieved only if and when the stimulus was applied.  Down with unconstructed patter connected only to the past.  On to......

Science class

  Our ninth grade science teacher, later to be our chemistry teacher, was born in the late 1800's.  I no longer have any conscious recall of anything scientific that he related to us, though he was a good teacher so I suppose a lot of his teachings were assimilated over the years.  But I do recall his recounting an anecdote from his youthful days, as he would sometimes do.   The means of travel in his courting days, he told us, was by horse and buggy.  The advantage was great, he explained, because when he would be returning to his home late at night, and was very tired, the horse would know the way back to the barn.  He didn't have to worry about the drive home, and could even fall asleep.  Not something you could do nowadays, he told us.    Ever the optimist, he also told us that since he came from a family that had a lot of longevity, he believed he had the chance to have been alive through three different centuries.  He retired just slightly over half-way through his second century, in 1955 I think, and he didn't make it into the third century.  He'd said it would have been a long shot. 

Christmas Eves Recalled

    It's odd, but we think of childhood as an extended period, as an important and lengthy portion of our lives, but in adult-years, far removed from the burst of childhood, those years when we were children are like the blink of an eye.  The memories then formed  delude us into thinking that those times were the way things should have been, and in our minds they take on a permanence that never really existed.  Thus, my memories of  the real Christmas Eve:
       Those of us who were old enough, at least seven years of age,would all go to Confession in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church.  I think the time was from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m.  Then confessions were heard in the Confessional boxes, at the back of the church.  The kind where it was dark inside, and you knelt on a little bench and waited for the priest to slide the door open  in the little window on your side.  There were two confessional booths in the church, and, on occasions like this, both the pastor and the assistant pastor would be hearing confessions.  Back then, confessions were not a routine happening, much more rigorously scheduled, and not highly frequented except at Christmas and Easter, when every Catholic felt the need to be cleansed of sin.  Sinners would be lined up all the way down (or up) both outside aisles.  If the lines were too long, some of the older communicants would wait in the pews, along with those whose confessions had already been heard, and were saying their Penances in the pews.  Sometimes that was a lengthy process, especially for those who only went to Confession once or twice a year.  It was nothing to have received 25 Our Fathers and 25 Hail Marys if you'd been remiss. 
     Sometimes one line would be considerably longer than the other, depending on which priest was the more mellow, or the least terrifying, as we kids would have seen it.  Once inside the box, or booth, we knelt and waited in the darkness for that door to slide open, and even then the priest would be behind a curtain; I think it was dark green.  The booth was double, with the priest's compartment in the center, and a section on each side for the sinners.  Privacy was paramount, and you were never supposed to divulge what you, the priest, or anyone else said inside that booth, under penalty of Mortal Sin.  Sometimes you could overhear part of what the other person was saying, and sometimes the priest would in no uncertain terms tell that person how wrong he was.  You'd try not to listen, but couldn't help hearing, and so would try to forget what you'd overheard as soon as possible, hoping it was not another sin on your part that needed confessing.  When your door slid open, and you could finally see the outline of the  priest's face, you hoped your mind wouldn't go blank as to the procedure.  Your first words to the shadowed figure had better be "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."  After that, total secrecy, even unto today.
      When the priest had heard your sins and absolved you of them, pending of course, your recitation of your Penance, you would retreat to an empty pew to say your penance.  I always guiltily hoped I had truly confessed all my transgressions, fearing maybe I had missed some.
      Back home, we would wait for Midnight Mass, and of course were forbidden to partake of food or even water.  (Sunday Masses  had the same restrictions and it was not uncommon to see young girls and older women fall in a faint kneeling at the Communion Rail, having had to refrain from all sustenance from the night before until after Communion.)  At our house the wait  until midnight was both exhilarating and exhausting when we were little.  For midnight in those days meant exactly that; it would have been heretic to call a service a Midnight Mass if it were held at 10:00 or any other time.  We had no television in those days and my father  would have already read the newspaper and  my mother would have been finished with her daily chores, so to keep us kids awake, way past our bedtime, the whole family would play cards, pretty much the only game available.  There was  checkers, but that could occupy only two people at a time.  I can remember a card game called Pit;  it seemed the face cards were grains, and one of the grains was called rape.  I had no idea of any other connotation, but I remember definitely feeling some uneasy vibes when we would shout out the name of that card. 
     Midnight Mass itself was invariably mysteriously beautiful, with the church crowded with people, and decorated, and there was a large Manger scene we kids would strain to view.  I can remember being there, all my family present, with the music and the lights, struggling to stay awake.  The mystique of all the holiness merged into a  picture of what I imagined  Heaven would be like.
    
    

Are you smart?

   There are many different and complex ways to assess intelligence, but to my mind, the  level of intellectual competence could all boil down to the  correct use of the words its and it's.    AND, I must add, there is never, never, never  an apostrophe after the s in its.

Grown Up

    Andrew came into our house and saw the manger which we'd just set up on a table in the living room.  He sat in front of it for quite a while, looking at the detailed figures, and naming them.  After a while, he stood up and said,  "We have a toy one of those at home."  

Paradise-Lost, Regained, who knows?

     I read about the jailhouse suicide of a serial murderer who traveled across the country, chose his victims at random,  and  in the case in Vermont viciously assaulted a couple  in their own home and slaughtered them.  This reminded me that, stowed away in the bottom of my bookshelf, is an "Atlantic Monthly"  magazine which has within it a story that I read back in 1997.  The story has troubled me ever since, in a vague way, which only means I couldn't fully recall the horror of it.  Yesterday, after 15 years, a measure of years which is astounding to me, and horrible in its own way, I overcame my  reluctance to reread such a loathsome tale, blew the dust off the magazine, and took a look.
    "Puttermesser in Paradise"  a short story by Cynthia Ozick opens like this:   "It happens that in the several seconds before we die, the well of the ribs opens, and a crystal pebble is thrown in; then there is a tiny splash, no more than the chirp of a droplet.  This seeming pebble is the earthly equal of what scientists call a black hole---a dead sun that has collapsed into itself, shrinking from density to deeper density, until it is smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.  Until it is less than infinitesimal."
  The end is like this:   "Puttermesser.......walks through the white ash of Paradise, herself a shadow though casting none, and longs for the plain green earth.----She has seen into (paradise) so this is what she sings:  At the point of a knife I lost my life....If I were alive I wouldn't fault anything under the heavenly vault.   Better never to have loved at all.  Better never to have risen than had a fall.  Oh, bitter, bitter, bitter, butter knife."
     I found the story just as I remembered it, though at the time, I was not elderly, like Mrs. Puttermesser.  Now I relate to it more deeply, hoping to avoid or bypass in some way the conclusion she drew about her life, examined during her murder: the secret meaning  of Paradise  is that it, too, is Hell.
    I am replacing the magazine on the bookshelf.  I might read it again someday.

Take Five

Rest in Peace, Dave Brubeck.  He believed rhythm was integral to life.   "The first sound we hear, " he said, "is the sound of our mother's heartbeat, and  the last sound we hear is the sound of our own heartbeat."

Dave Garroway

I loved Dave Garroway.  I discovered him for myself during my religious period, when I was in my early teenaged years.  During those years, I would not only attend every Holy Day of Obligation  without fail, but I also felt drawn to attend Mass every day during Lent.  The service was held at the Valley Falls Church at 6:30 a.m.  That's the way it was then, so people could make the service before work, or in my case school.
     It would be fairly dark those mornings and I could see the lights in the Sacristy  from the kitchen window of my house.  My mother would be awake: I never saw her asleep until well into my adulthood.  She would have just finished making breakfast for my father who left for work at just about 6:30.  I would put off breakfast until later, and would take a more or less straight-line path to the church:   out the back door, climb over the harmless (neither electrified nor barbed-wired) fence at the top of "our" hill, through the first pasture, then around the wide farm gate that Patsy, Dr. Sproat's hired hand, would obligingly leave loosely chained, so all the River Road kids who took that shortcut to upstreet would not put undue wear on that large wooden gate.  On past the area next to the main barn, where there had been some chicken coops, through the other yard next to the pond, which could be soggy if it had rained.  Out the last gate, also chained slightly ajar, and straight up to the church.
     Mass would not be very long; we had a pastor who could speak Latin faster than I'd ever heard anyone talk.  I would be home by seven a.m., and  while waiting for school to  start, would do what my mother would not do:  turn our recently acquired television set on during the daytime hours.   That is when I discovered Dave Garroway.  I was his sole audience in the house, father had left for work, mother busy getting things ready for the day, brother and sister still upstairs in bed.  Morning TV was fairly new then, and completely new to me, and for the 30 days after morning Mass, I would be drawn in to Dave Garroway, and his personal style of reaching out to his audience, and his friendly conversational demeanor.  I was still probably infused with some of the holy atmosphere I'd been bathing in, so when he would close with his usual, "The world stands out on either side...." I felt a sense of comfort and peace, different from anything presented on television before, or since, for that matter.
    I don't remember the last time I watched the show, or recall when Dave Garroway left the air.  When very young, you tend to think things will always remain the same, yet you hardly notice when they change, barring any direct impact on you. The status quo seems everlasting.
    I do recall viewing Dave Garroway's  guest appearance at the 30th anniversary  of the Today Show.  I hadn't thought of him in a long time, and  though older-appearing, he seemed the same.  He seemed glad to be back on the show, was eager and animated, his usual cheerful persona.  I believe he even signed off with his trademark recitation.  But, I noticed one thing that disturbed me a little, a slight embarrassment that I did not want to admit even to myself because I had admired him so much.  As he spoke, a slight bit of spittle lodged on his lower lip, and maybe no one on set noticed, or maybe they lacked the technology (though it wasn't that long ago), but the camera did not pan away so someone could remedy the situation.  I wondered at the time what he, who had always seemed so in control, would think if he watched himself on the show.  I never heard a word about it, and didn't think of it for a while.
    Only about 6 or 7 months later, Dave Garroway committed suicide by gunshot. Sources said he'd had surgery,and  was depressed for family reasons.  That may well have been true, but I thought I knew the real reason, or at least the final impetus.  He had been a pioneer in the media and an innovator of completely new programming, and his creation, in the end, turned on him and devoured him.  He had aged out.
   
   

    

1950

    When my mother was 45 years old, her mother died.  It changed her life, and therefore  our lives also.  My mother was what I would call a conservative optimist, bowed down by inevitable life discouragements, but always hopeful of the future.   After the death of her mother, my mother would get the blues.  I suppose now it would be called depression.  I was 12 years old  and don't recall how long her sadness  went on; I only remember its effect on me, self-centered as a child that age would be.  Ma would sit in the middle room some nights, after supper, in the dark,  in her  rocking chair near the closet door.  The silence of her grief would permeate the whole house, and my insides would  feel as if they were being gnawed away.  No one made any attempt to comfort her as I recall.  I know I felt I would be intruding if I tried to; she and her mother went back way more than my 12 years, and I was a stranger to most of their time together. I don't remember which triggered the other, but we had a record player at the time, and my brother would play his records.  They seemed mostly about lonesome train whistles and  dead shepherd dogs, but one in particular was pure anguish; it was called "I Dreamed about Mama Last Night," and I wanted it to disappear.  As I said, I don't know which came first:  the playing of the records, or the onset of my mother's blues. Maybe my mother asked for the records to be played.  Possibly it was good therapy in a time when people were not supposed to show their emotions.  I hope so.

Into the Woods

   She told me, in all seriousness, that they had discussed how they would end their days together and had agreed that, when the time came, when they were old and tired, they would walk off into the woods together and just keep going until the end came.  It was not surprising  that they, still in their early twenties, would contemplate the end; after all they had just recently taken vows where they had solemnly promised to become one, and to endure  sickness together  and to be separated only by  death.   I, also still  young, was impressed by and in support of  the decision made by two people newly united together.   From our vantage point in 1964,  projecting  far, far into the future, I could picture the two of them, still in love but bent with age, holding hands on their trek into a woods somewhere. 
      Of course, it didn't happen that way, but still, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep."

"And miles to go before I sleep..."

  Was Robert Frost really contemplating suicide, or do you think he might just have been suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder?  

Apology or Apologia

     I am weary of the apology.   It seems every governing unit and a great many individuals are delivering apologies to whomever they may have insulted, dishonored, wronged, or killed.  The idea is that doing so makes the victims feel better somehow, or offers the key to whatever is meant by closure.  But wait, before you accept, is what is offered an apology or an apologia?  The first is an expression of true regret for one's actions or behavior; the latter, the apologia, is a defense of one's actions or behavior.  (That definition is, by the way, also one of the meanings of the word apology, though usually an apology is thought of as an expression of sorrow for one's actons.)
     In current times, an  apology is an integral part of what happens in court, and woe to the defendant who does not look sorry, or to the convicted who does not offer up an apology, ideally amidst a plethora of tears.  I've never quite understood how such a performance could bring any measure of satisfaction or closure to those grievously wronged.  But then, that may be because  I can't personally recall ever having received an apology in my entire lifetime.   A number of apologias, though. 
    

Lavage Taboo

    If there's one thing no one needs to view on TV, it's the sight of Dr. Oz using a Neti-Pot. 

Soccer and Spice

   I spent a lot of time near a soccer field back in the day, so when Jeopardy ran a category on said sport, I knew all the answers, make that questions, except one:   the  spice that names a play where the soccer ball is kicked through a player's legs.  The spice is nutmeg. 

Time Warner

     Ever since Time Warner moved the Cable Sports channels from Basic Service to Standard Service, and Cable Sports moved to Channel 50, and channels can be delivered in digital format only, therefore viewable only with a digital set-top box, or Digital Adapter or Cable Card, that meant the Golf Channel was no longer available on our bedroom TV, unless we requested a Digital Adapter which was free of charge until December 1. 
    Well, the call was made; I was not home at the time.  The adapter was picked up; I didn't go.  But the instructions as to how to connect it did not work. Believe me, there were calls made; I left the house.  Brother Don, who'd been through the same thing (or so it was thought) tried to help, but after several house calls on his part, had to admit failure.  More calls were made, in vain as it turned out.  The problem was such that a repairman had to come to our house.  He is here as we speak.  He has been in the bedroom, into the deepest recesses of the closet where the wire emerges, easy enough since the closet is only about six inches deep.  He has gone into the cellar twice so far, and is at present climbing the pole outside.  He is a HVC graduate and very polite and apparently cheerful.  He even put on those cloth booties when he came into the house, the kind that the police investigators did not wear during the O.J. Simpson slaughter investigation. After he left the house the first time, I told him he didn't need to put them on again.  He asked if I were sure.  "Definitely," I said.  I 'm willing to make any sacrifice to get that golf channel. 

On the trail with Quayle

   In many years of substituting, and working in classrooms of other teachers, you acquire some weird insights into the educational process.  One teacher was using mnemonics to help her third grade students with the spelling of geographic names.  "Just remember," she pointed out, "there's a "trail" in Aus-trail-ia."   There isn't really anything a substitute teacher can do about that type of mistake; there's no good way to handle it, and after all, it's not a matter of life and death.  But that teacher's learning device stuck;  their high school history teacher years later would comment that almost all her classes would consistently misspell that continent. 

Justly, Because

   The topic at the Educational Conference was how to improve student writing.  One teacher stated she taught all her students never to begin a sentence with the word because.  She remembers her teacher saying it was wrong to do so, and that's what she tells her classes.  I really wish sometimes that I had a class to teach, because I feel some responsibility to the English language.  I long to straighten out her misunderstanding, but it's hard to do that outside a classroom.  I would explain this way:
         "Because you are ignorant of language usage"    That's not a sentence.
         "Because you are ignorant of language usage, you should not be teaching English."   That's a perfectly good sentence. 
    

Eye Talk

The technologist at the opthalmologist's office asked about vision, if I had any trouble with reading signs, etc.  I said no, but that I thought it would be a good idea if there was more distinction beteween the words Stop and Slow at construction sites, (as I've mentioned before.)  "Yes," she agreed.  "They do look alike, each having the five letters."   And on with the eye test.....

Cliche----Touche

   I dream of taking a luxury vacation somewhere, but it's just not in my wheelhouse to do so.
   I realize it would be  good thing if I were to start my Christmas shopping, but I'll probably just continue to kick the can down the road.
     I so want to use a hashtag, but I don't twitter.   
   Call me cra-cra.  No, please don't.

      Off the topic:    I read that a woman named her baby Hashtag.  The  Times Union's list of births last week had a baby named Rocket. 

Time to Fly the Coop

     I've watched Anderson Cooper's talk show several times during its brief run, and understand it's soon to be dropped from the schedule.  Several shows were  interesting, depending on who his guests were, and he has been a more intriguing personality than most other daytime TV hosts.  But any regrets I had about his show's cancellation came to a resounding halt today.  He reprised the incident where he was totally grossed out when  a fellow airline passenger placed his bare feet in proximity to him, a nice little anecdote of personal fastidiousness if you will, kind of an endearing trait.  But then----he went on to relate, in way too much detail, the tale  of his own wretched sickness in an airplane bathroom.  Why a man who has  been through as much as he has would want the world to know that his bodily functions, and malfunctions, can be as disgusting as anyone on the planet is beyond understanding.  One can not help but think it's his way of exacting revenge on the show's producers. 
      Moreover, his interview of the "Coffee Cup Murderer" was as lame as it could get.  Granted, the once-accused murderess was lawyered up by not one, but two, lawyers, for the interview, and since there is speculation other charges could be forthcoming, it's a given she's not going to divulge much.  But in light of her psycopathic demeanor, Cooper could have at least asked her why the investigators  thought she murdered her husband, and who she thought might have killed him.  He asked her twice if the police prevented her from having time to grieve, and she, as well as her daughter, dwelt on this aspect, with seemingly prepared responses.  She expressed no remorse for the death of her husband, only for her own inconvenience.  She did say she was his caretaker, but then said she had left him for more than six or eight hours while she went to work and for a manicure, etc.  And since she was not arrested until 4 months  after the death, she would have had at least some time to grieve; she was already back to work at the time of her arrest.  She did say she loved her job, though I don't think she expressed much love for her husband.
          I think it would have been a fitting, albeit ironic, close to the show to have today's co-host Christie Brinkley do one of her favorite things and sing a song from her role in "Chicago."    She could have performed, "He Had It Coming." 

Tense Tension

To:  Editor of "The Record"   (should one exist):     
       The present tense of the verb is plead; the past tense is pled, or pleaded.  The past participle is pled or pleaded. 
        Please refer to last  week's lesson, which was  lead, led, led.  The other  word spelled "lead" but pronounced "led" is a noun meaning a metallic substance, or ammunition.    Please go over your notes; someone may read what you wrote someday.
   P.S.  Stylistically, as to the alternate usages of the past tense of plead, either pled or pleaded is grammatically correct, though you may want to use "pled"  as in , "He pled his case before the judge,"  but he "pleaded with the judge for leniency."   ( Yeah, I knew you wouldn't care.)