Meteorologist Meter

Nick Johnston favorability rating continues to soar in my house---he honored his mother this morning on her retirement from teaching. (She looks about 45 years old.) 

A.I. id est

The first person voted off the new season of American Idol is the contestant with the thigh gap.  Dang the haters!

Nature's first green is gold...

....as the famous poet wrote.  But outside my house, nature's hue is not gold yet, but a sickly yellow.  The bulbs are trying, though, and it can't be long now.  That "hardest hue to hold" is destined to turn green soon, though not soon enough for me.  The forced tulip bulb inside near my front window is faring better, though its white trailing roots are nourished only by water enveloping the marbles. From the looks of it, the tulip should be a red one.  Yay!

Birthdays

  My daughter-in-law's birthday is in two days and my grandson's birthday a day later.  My mother's birthday is eight days after his.  It's no surprise then that I'm thinking  of birthdays, past, present and future.  Though all my mother's birthdays are consigned to the past, they are propelled into the future through my dreams:   
    The setting is the house. The people are all those who over the years played a part in our lives.  The term "played a part" is not casual use of a metaphor.  It's the dreamlike structure of a real-life play, in which the characters morph in and out of the scenes as their lives touch upon each others,' with no introductions or foreshadowing, or knowledge of from whence they came.  People just appear, as they did in days of childhood. 
     So I am in the house, in my mother's kitchen, ghosts from the old days alive and well and interacting at will, some more visibly than others.  In the company of my sister and others, I ask my mother what she wants for her birthday.  She pauses only briefly, and says, "Well, I always like candy."  My sister and I feel glad, because we know we can get her something she likes.  I can hear their voices.

Let's talk about Justin Beiber

  Do you have something to say about him?  Just make up something and the media will eat it like sheep in a pasture eat grass.  What is disturbing for those who don't much care what the young Beiber fellow does is the power of the media to influence.  We are constantly barraged by stories, the more sensational the better.  Even though we don't care in the slightest about a certain scenario depicted by the media, we tend to believe it; it's a type of mass brainwashing. It's more serious than we might think because we're unaware of what the truth may be.  The spreading of so-called information is intensified by the fact that if a story is picked up, on internet or television, it's not from a single  source.  Every venue hops aboard, not wanting to be left out of what seems to be a juicy inside look at those in the spotlight. 
     For example, you may not have any interest in the adolescent or theatrical behaviors of a young man named Justin Beiber.  But he's "newsworthy" and if you hear a story about him from every channel on TV, zillions of FB posts, and countless references by daytime hosts and latenight comedians, you will probably believe it:  Justin Beiber outraged a  neighborhood in Atlanta, and was the subject of picketers who did not welcome his buying a house there.  We all heard that, and even saw the picketers outside the house he was purportedly going to buy.  Media havoc ensued.  Except, it turns out, that it was all a hoax, perpetrated by some yahoo of a disc jockey or radio station host.  The story was plucked out of the air, the lie made out of whole cloth, as it were.  J.B. had never seen the alleged house, or even been in the town.  The picketers were hired to flesh out the hoax.  Fact checkers do not exist, it seems, when in hot pursuit of ratings.  Do you wonder how much else that we're subjected to (not unwillingly, to be sure), likewise lacks veracity?
    In the novel and film "Life of Pi," the reader/viewer is left to determine (within the framework of a work of fiction, of course) which of the two versions of events that the narrator reveals actually happened: only one narrative can be true: the other is a lie, or an illusion.  We live now, in that type of society, with very little firsthand knowledge of the thousands upon thousands of sound and sight bites streamed to us on a daily basis. 
     I've got to go spend my store of Bitcoins now.  I'm not sure if they're real or not, but according to all I've heard they are very valuable.  Or else completely worthless.  I only hope my investment in them doesn't cost me my house.

Don't have a cow, but....

   .......a TV news story the other day featured the use of robots on a local dairy farm, a reputable establishment where doubtless the animals are well fed and hydrated.   The cows were in their milking stalls where they were being milked by robots.  Not that new really, automatic milking machines have been around for at least half a century.  The difference here was that there were fewer humans involved; evidently the milking apparatus attaches and detaches automatically.  The story also illustrated the use of robots in feeding the cows and in cleaning the stalls.  All good features in the age of declining farm workers, but I couldn't help but notice the condition of the cows and the barn.  Could you believe?  The cows were not only plastered with what looked to be muck and feces:  they were standing in their own waste!   (Until the robots showed up.)   Eww, and we drink their milk.   Granted, we might not look upon cows as pets, since they're usually sent to slaughter at 5 or 6 years of age, but those poor animals must be suffering.  And to add injury to insult, you should just look at their tails, or what's left of them.  The cow the camera focused on had a stub of a tail not much longer than 6 or 8 inches.  In the age of automation, cows' tails are routinely lopped off because they get in the way of the milking machines.  And you think the dogs in puppy mills have it tough. 
    Drive by the dairy farms when the cows are out in the fields, and note that many cows have only half tails.  Now that robots are in use, they'll be lucky if they have that much.  I once asked a farm worker how the cows were able to brush off the flies, and she said the farmers just applied extra insecticide to the cows.  Eww-and we drink their milk.  You may notice that the cows chosen to be displayed at the Schaghticoke Fair have their full tails, and are kept very clean.  Real life holds a lot of dirty little secrets.

The Thigh Gap

  I'm familiar with the Cumberland Gap, the Carlsbad Gap, the age gap, and the gap between Letterman's teeth, but until yesterday I'd never heard of ------The Thigh Gap! Though I understand it's an internet sensation......

Words to live by....

     We were very fortunate for our children to have had the opportunity to be pediatric patients of Dr. William Grattan, and his associate for a time, Dr. Martin Symansky.  Both doctors went way beyond the basics of care on several different occasions.  At one such time, Dr. Symansky gave me the best advice a doctor had ever offered, and ironically (or not), the advice was directed at dealing with doctors.
     David was 5 years old when all the medical interventions for dealing with his repeated and severe strep infections were exhausted.  The usual course of prescribed antibiotics had failed to stop recurrent infections, even after changes in medication and extended periods of time;  6 months of treatment had not stopped him from getting strep again.  The doctors recommended that he undergo a tonsillectomy, and they arranged a consult with the surgeon, Dr. G., who concurred and set a date for the surgery, scheduled at Childs' Hospital in Albany.
    David was old enough to be aware of the seriousness of being hospitalized, and did not want to be alone there.  Dr. G. was a young and capable surgeon and, since he was recommended by Dr. Symansky, I had confidence that we were on the right path.  But Dr. G. said he did not think it necessary that I stay in the hospital, as David had wanted, saying he was old enough not to need that.  When I relayed that to Dr. Symansky, this is what he told me:    "Why should you care what Dr. G. thinks?   He's a good surgeon, and that's why he'll be doing his job, but what he thinks about that shouldn't matter to you.  If you want to stay with your child, then do it.  It's your decision to make."
     The surgery took place, I did stay, and the strep issue was resolved.
          ( As a sidebar, the only time I left was when Dave and Dorothy and Gus came down and we went out to dinner, right near the hospital.  The mother of the other child in the room, a baby, stayed while I was out and told me later that David had crawled under a chair and stayed there in silence the whole time I was gone.  Years later, his only memory was that he had been left alone; he had no store of knowledge  that I had slept for 3 nights in  a reclining chair, with no blankets.) 
      
  

2-23-2014 Harbinger

While I was walking around outside today,  I saw that the bulbs are sprouting amidst the melting snowbanks near the front of my house.  They are a few inches tall already, and yellow from being covered by the snow, but they're getting ready for spring...........

The Naked Emperor

  Does it not seem to border on abuse if an animal, man's best friend at that, is forced to wear a choke chain collar  that  keeps its head in an unnaturally high position in order to gain the approval of the judges?  At the Westminster Dog Show this evening, this was the practice, and in the case of one smaller dog in particular the chain, although slender, appeared to be indented into its neck, even to the extent that the dog's eyes looked bulgy.  The dogs on  display also seemed to be interested in the pocketed treats to the point of voraciousness;  is it possible food was withheld from them for an extended period of time so that they would look alert, and perhaps not have to relieve themselves.  None did, as far as I could see.  I saw a couple of the dogs that I would like to adopt.  I think I'll bring potential abuse charges to the attention of the authorities, and submit my application for ownership.  That's how it's done, isn't it?

The Climb

     Against the back wall of our barn was a ladder to the hayloft.  The ladder was a number of flat boards which served as rungs.  They were  attached to the wall next to the henhouse section, and just behind the two feed barrels, one of wood and the other of black metal, which held their provisions of cracked corn and scratch feed. We kids had no problem climbing up the ladder; the difficulty lay in what to do after we completed the climb.  I don't recall exactly what age we were when we first discovered we could climb to the hayloft.  We moved to the house shortly before the summer I turned six, and, except for not being allowed to cross the road, I don't think there were any restrictions on the  activities in our backyard.  At the top of the climb, where you were pretty much pressed against the wall, you could see out the small window at the top of the ladder.  The view opened on the right side to the  time-worn boards of the old hay barn, while directly ahead stood Dr. Sproat's  more modern cowbarn, where his Guernsey cows were milked by Patsy, his hired hand.  Beyond the cowbarn  if the light allowed you could see the altar section of Our Lady of Good Counsel. 
   But our goal in climbing the ladder was not to observe the view; that was incidental.  We climbed to gain access to the hayloft, and, as mentioned, therein lay the problem, at least at first.  The ladder led us to the wall, which was one side of the rectangular hole that was the access to the loft.  In order to get off the ladder and onto the floor of the loft, you had to release your hold on the rungs, and kind of jump backwards across the gaping hole.  A leap of faith at first, but we learned how to do it, though I'm sure no one ever taught us, except each other.
   I'm not sure now what the motivation was;  there was not much of value up there.  Oh, occasionally a cat would have her kittens up there in the hay, and that was a reason, but most of the times that was not the case.  There was stuff up there; I can almost recall it, but some is lost  in memory.  At one time, it was home to my father's old cigar-making tools, used during his stint of working for Dr. Sproat, who evidently had a cigar business located in previous years somewhere near Bill Ryan's Meat Market.  I wish I knew more now, but as kids we couldn't conceive of any time period that we were not a part of. One side of the loft held mainly bales of hay, food for the family milk cow in those few early years.  Against the bales of hay, I can see a blue crib, small and of wood, not used any time in my memory.  I had a white iron youth bed, and Dorothy a high-sided brown-painted metal crib. I can't remember what other treasures the loft held: I can almost visualize, but through  a haze of lost imagery, a pile of old books or magazines in a trunk. Maybe we would read up there, or pout and think of running away from home, at the times we felt misunderstood or unloved.  All kids do that, don't they? 
    For sure, there were hazards up there, even after we mastered the release and jump that brought us safely to our goal.  The floor was a series of boards laid across the supporting beams.  At one time, probably to construct a building for our dogs, my father appropriated some of the boards from the floor, leaving an area where no one should tread.  You could see the gaps of course, except for when the hay would loosen and spread out over the floor; then you just had to know where the danger lay.  We never fell through, but I remember one of the boys who lived up the road stepping through the hole, and dangling over the car area, but he caught himself with his arms and didn't hit the ground.  It seemed funny, like an episode  from our supply of comic books. 
   Some years later, when Dorothy and Sandy were young teens, verging on the restless years, they decided, on one of those balmy bittersweet summer evenings filled with unknown yearnings, that they wanted to sleep in the hayloft.  Just for something different to do.  And, with parental approval, they did. My father had a sense of humor, sometimes a little off beat, and later that night, he snuck out and threw stones or gravel, up on the roof of the barn. He thought it was funny.  I can't remember the outcome; I was asleep in my boring bedroom.  And there's no one to confirm or deny what happened.

Suffering Suffixes

  It must be so----the voice says that after you see the show, you'll feel "amazing."   I can only wonder if he means "amazed."  The word "amazing" has got to be the most overused descriptive word of the last few years.  Ask formerly obese people how they feel after their weight loss and, almost invariably, they will say they feel amazing.  Same goes for those who've had any type of makeover, whether body or house, and they can't wait to say how amazing they feel.  You know the scenario:  A woman lurks in the audience at the KL & Hoda show on makeover day, wearing sweatpants and no makeup.  She is selected, undergoes a hairdo, is attired in a frumpy dress from Macy's, has some lipstick applied, and sees her "reveal" in the onstage mirror. She weeps.  They ask her how she feels now.  She answers through her tears that she feels amazing.  Really?  Since "feel" can be a linking verb, it would equate with "state of being."  Therefore the speakers are saying they are amazing.  Perhaps that is what they mean to say, but that sense of the word should be reserved as a praise word, and, if modesty prevails, should be applied by others.  Had the made-over parties said they felt "amazed," meaning happily surprised, we would have no objections.  Blame it on the media:  "You're amazing, just the way you are."   Or we could hark back a few years to:  "Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me."  Get it right: say what you mean to say.

You gotta believe...

......that in some cases, people who experience some vision loss see objects and people who aren't really there.  Since the optic nerve is part of the brain, and nature abhors a vacuum, the brain fills in the "blind spots" with some stored visual memory.  Thus you can see things and even people who are invisible to others.  You're in trouble, though, if you hear their voices.  (That might explain the mouse running across the kitchen floor.)

Lack of Faith

Though I concede the possibility, I just can't being myself to believe some things are true:  I don't believe in total memory recall, not in any known person.  I don't think that Marilu Henner can recall every day of her life.  Sorry, Marilu, but aren't you a bit of a phony?   I also can't subscribe to the theory that your dishwasher won't clean your dishes as well if you rinse them first.   "Scrape, but don't rinse," is the advice, so the dishwasher will have something to work on.  Really?  How could it know?

Poor but Proud

    My mother grew up fatherless, her father having succumbed to tuberculosis when she was a baby.  Times were tough back then for a widow with 5 children, in the time before social security of any type, not to mention Obamacare.  The oldest child was a boy, and as a young teen, he became the support of the family.  What other support was there, except the dread Poor House? After he died in an accident on the job, the younger brother had to leave school to find work, as did my mother, a few years later. 
    My mother was strong, capable and willing to work.  She found a position as a mother's helper, or household worker, in the city, where she lived in with the family.  The lady of the house would sit on her front porch in the pleasant summer evenings, and would ask my mother to sit with her, to keep her company.  One such evening, not too far into this job, after the supper dishes were done, Mrs. X asked my mother to join her on the porch, which she did.  They were sitting there, chatting I suppose, woman to young teenaged girl, when Mrs. X peered up the street, turned to my mother, and sweetly said, "Oh, Mary, I think I see my friend Mrs. Y. coming down the street.  Would you mind  going to  sit on the back porch so we can talk?"  
    That would be the last time my mother was in any proximity to either the front or back porch of that house, except to walk out the door and down the steps of one porch or the other.
  Hmmmm....

At the Movie

     In the midst of the night, or early morning, I was watching a movie on TV, one that I'd seen before, back in 1983.  The plot centers on the friendship of eight college friends, years later brought back together by the death of another.  I don't have any memory then of what struck me this time, about a hauntingly eerie sequence where one person is sitting alone in a room, and the camera pans to a scene of another of the friends, and eventually opening to where another, then another are present.
     I think I saw that sequence unfold, but it was deep in the night, and my vision is not what it used to be. The scenario is so like my dreams of late, where people from my earlier life appear and participate in whatever the activity, without being summoned or even recalled.  They are all there, with us actively interacting with each other on a familiar basis. There is no surprise to the spontaneous flow of what was once daily living. That was how life was back then.

The Big Chill

"Nobody ever said it was going to be fun.  At least nobody ever said it to me."