A Christmas Newsletter

I received a Christmas newsletter from one of my long-lost-but-not-forgotten friends along with the annual Christmas card. It was filled with many tidbits of information and humor. Some of the references were mysterious and lacked meaning for me. Those were written for close family and friends. The newsletter was nevertheless a nice touch, and well written.

Newsletters are generally written for the entertainment of the immediate family, so the inclusion of others is somewhat an honor. However, lacking a context for the events that included family members can make the prose boring and meaningless. Heidi, the author of this particular letter, included enough detail to make everything interesting and funny.

I’ve never tried to write a newsletter, but Heidi has inspired me to give it a whirl. I hope that I can follow her lead.

2009 was a traumatic year in that I lost a brother, Don, to cancer, even though his doctors told him that they had discovered it early enough that the prognosis was good. His death came at a time when we originally had planned to hold our bi-annual family reunion. It spelled the probable end to that tradition. We have lost three of the original ten, and two spouses have voluntarily withdrawn from attending.

We did enjoy seven wonderful, fun reunions, which originated from my remarks at our mother’s funeral in 1993 that the next time we would meet would be to say goodbye to a brother or sister. Our oldest brother, Dick, passed away just days before the reunion in September of 2005, so we did have a memorial for him at that one.

But that’s enough of the morbid. 2009 had its bright spots, too.

Judy and I decided to take separate vacations this year, since I get way too involved in my hobby of barbershop singing. Unfortunately, Judy is not a fan of the art, and I get a lot of fun and satisfaction from it. We do have an agreement that I don’t practice in her presence, so harmony in our home is definitely not the musical variety. She just leaves town when I get into show business, so I'm entitled to my own time away when I'm not performing.

One really positive benefit that came from the above is that I was able to take my long solo auto trip in June. I actually got to drive, something I never do when Judy is with me. The trip was just short of 7,500 miles, and I had a long string of “didn’ts.” For instance, I didn’t get any traffic tickets, and I didn’t have any accidents. I didn’t get lost, but that might have been attributable to my GPS. Finally, I didn’t miss very much along the way. (I stopped so often that I might need a new set of brakes soon)

I kept a daily journal on my trip, and sent it each night along with pictures to several of you. After I returned home I had requests from others for the journal, which I aptly titled “Don’t Fence Me In.” In all, I believe I repeated the journal messages four times, and each time I did so it was like taking the trip all over again. If you missed it and would like to share it, I’ll be glad to run it once more. Just let me know.

A really nice change took place this year. Instead of paying rent to someone else to help pay off their mortgage on their town home, we decided to purchase our own property and quit subsidizing others. Throwing away $9,000 per year somehow didn’t seem wise.


Of course, there were some other incentives to make it worthwhile to own our home. The New Home Buyer Credit was a huge factor in our decision. September 24 marked the third anniversary of the sale of the El Paso home. That qualified us as “new” buyers. It was like getting a big discount on the new home, but it was really better than that. Any time you can get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, you should take it. We did!

The town home we bought is in a fairly new subdivision on the outskirts of Augusta, but not really in Grovetown. It is a rural area that used to be a buffalo bison ranch, and as soon as I tell that to anyone who lives here, they know exactly where it is. It’s funny that we just can’t seem to get away from Buffalo no matter how far we go from Western New York.

Speaking of economics, not a day goes by that I don’t give thanks that I am no longer in the work force. I know that many of you have been negatively impacted by the state of our economy, and I sympathize with you. I hope that you were able to put aside some funds for that rainy day which seems to have arrived.

Okay, here comes the family part… Our kids are doing well. Our daughter, Cathy and husband Jeff have embarked on a new phase in life, as Jeff just retired from the Army and will be a civilian contractor. He just won't have a uniform on and won't be deployed again. Grandson Chase is a junior in High school, and he reminds me of myself at that age, but I won’t elaborate on that. We live only about 15 minutes away from them, so there is plenty of family interaction.

I can’t close this newsletter without the customary picture of my family—in this case, my favorite “grand puppy”—Abby, the cutest and smartest Dachshund in the world, in her Christmas finery.



That about wraps it up. I trust that I haven’t bored too many of you and that I have at least entertained the rest. Judy and I both wish each and every one of you a blessed and prosperous new year in 2010. It is hard to believe that Y2K was ten years in the past, doesn’t it?

Who Uses The Public Library

I’ll probably catch hell for this column, but it really needs to be said by somebody.

I received an e-mail message from the Augusta Richmond County Public Library a week or so ago. It was disguised as a wish for a happy holiday season, but it was really a plea for a donation. There was a question asked in the body of the letter, “who really uses the public library?”

The main library in downtown Augusta is being rebuilt, although I recently passed the old building and it looks pretty good to me. Of course, I’ve never been inside that building, since I use one of the local branches near my home.

However, since they asked the question, “Who really uses the public library?” it got me to thinking about that. The answer is not conducive to anyone asking for supplemental funds to augment the $24 million raised by taxes to put up the new library.

If you live in any medium to large metropolitan area—most of us do—and you have a main public library downtown, then I suspect that you have the same problems that have plagued public libraries throughout the country, and maybe throughout the world.

The information I am sharing with you is not hearsay. I use my branch library once per week for a Spanish class, so I and other members of the class have lots of experience with the conditions I will describe. I am sure they are common to most, if not all the public libraries in Augusta.

There are several vagrants—the PC term is homeless victims—who have made libraries their home. They are not there to read or to check out books; they are there because it is a warm place in winter and a cool place in summer. And they cannot be thrown out for loitering, since it is a “public facility, open to all residents.”

Oh yes, there is another convenience that the library provides; bathrooms. Not that you would tell the person has bathed anytime recently if you get up close and personal with one. They do use bathrooms for their other purpose, and often leave the room in horrible shape; plugged commodes, filthy sinks, waste paper strewn all over the floor. Etc.

I have to admit that I have probably used the main library on occasions, but only to request books or audio-visual materials from my computer at home to be shipped to the branch library for pickup. Yes, the main library usually does have the largest volume of materials. I don’t really know why that is the case, since few people go out of their way to visit the main one when a branch library is so much closer to their home.

On that topic, the main library in El Paso, my former residence city, was rebuilt over the course of two years. During that whole period, the books and materials were stored away from the public instead of being distributed to the branches. I estimate that one-third of the total materials were unavailable for public use during that whole two-year time.

I wonder if a similar situation to that in El Paso will happen here. I certainly hope not.

After thinking through and reviewing all the above, I will not be contributing any money to the construction project. It will get built without my support and I do not want to even think that I helped build a huge edifice to provide a daytime refuge for the homeless. There are already several places that cater to their needs, and I don’t want to share our public library with some of them who don’t deserve it in the first place. That is especially true if it is going to cost over $24 million of our taxpayer dollars to restore a building that might have been trashed by those very people.

Okay, now you can e-mail me and tell me how cruel and heartless I am. Just to let you know that it won’t change my mind or attitude, however.

*****************************************************

I wrote the column last year at this time, but I didn’t publish it then. Instead, I wanted to find out how the library project would proceed. Now I can tell you that the books from the main library have been available, unlike the experience I had in El Paso. Also, the library renovation is well along, and the reopening is planned for July of 2010.

I don’t know what the homeless folks have been doing while the library has been under construction, but I do give donations to the city mission and other charities and I hope they are being used to help feed and shelter those poor souls.

I guess I have changed some after all. Merry Christmas

E-mail Alerts!

I received a message earlier this week from a well-meaning friend. The main thrust of the message was that the truth-checkers at www.snopes.com had determined that almost every single e-mail you receive that admonishes you to, “Forward this on to 10 (or some number) of your friends, sign this petition, or you’ll get bad luck, you’ll see something funny on your screen after you send it, or similar endings” contains a hidden e-mail tracker program attached that tracks emails and cookies of the folks to whom you forward the message.

The same is true of those obnoxious messages that shame you into forwarding something about God, or Jesus, or some other religious or political cause. They all contain some form of tracker that can later be used to spam you or your friends and family.

I know, those messages take us all in, even when we promise ourselves that we will cease and desist from ever forwarding them again. I try to follow a rule that I keep any of those things I’m tempted to forward for at least 24-hours before I send them on, and that does eliminate about 50 percent or more of them on review.

Well, when I decided to write this column, I wanted to make it light and somewhat funny, so I’m not going to preach to you. Instead, I’m going to republish an article that I first ran into about two years ago. It was written by a guy named Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in California—or at least he was one when he wrote the column.

Before I get into the meat of the article, I have a few observations. (Was that a pun? Astronomer-observations. Hmmm?)
1. What parent nowadays names their son Seth?
2. Astronomers must have a lot of time to waste during the day.
3. It’s much easier to give credit and copy than it is to compose a column; less thinking, you know.

Okay, having said that, here is the work of Mr. Shostak. I’ll add a few comments of my own at the end or the piece.

You Call This Progress?
By Seth Shostak
Newsweek, January 18, 1999

E-mail has become a steady drip of dubious prose, bad jokes and impatient requests. It's as ubiquitous as winter damp, a pernicious miasma that brings rot and ruin to society's delicate underpinnings. I speak of e-mail, the greatest threat to civilization since lead dinnerware addled the brains of the Roman aristocracy.

A technical byproduct of the Internet, e-mail lets 10 million Americans pound out correspondence faster than you can say QWERTY. One twitch of the finger is all it takes to dispatch missives to the next continent or the next cubicle at light speed. The result is a flood of what is loosely called communication, a tsunami of bytes that is threatening to drown white-collar workers everywhere. Masquerading as a better way to put everyone in touch, e-mail has become an incessant distraction, a nonstop obligation and a sure source of stress and anxiety. I expect that a public statement by the surgeon general is in the offing.

Mind you, e-mail started out cute and cuddly, an inoffensive spin-off from a government defense project. The technically inclined used it to send personal messages to colleagues without the need for a stamp or a wait. Only a small group of folks—mostly at universities—were plugged in to this select network. The amount of traffic was manageable. E-mail was something to be checked every week or so. But technology marches on. Today access to the Internet is widespread, as common and accessible as a cheap motel. Everyone's wired, and everyone has something to say.

Unfortunately, this is not polite correspondence, the gentle art of letter writing in electronic form. E-mail is aggressive. It has a built-in, insistent arrogance. Because it arrives more or less instantaneously, the assumption is that you will deal with it quickly. "Quickly" might mean minutes, or possibly hours. Certainly not days. Failure to respond directly usually produces a second missive sporting the mildly critical plaint, "Didn't you get my last e-mail?" This imperative for the immediate makes me yearn for old-style written communication, in which a week might lapse between inquiry and response. Questions and discussion could be considered in depth. A reply could be considered (or mentally shelved, depending on circumstance). Today, however, all is knee-jerk reaction.

In addition, there is the dismaying fact that electronically generated mail, despite being easy to edit, is usually prose at its worst. Of every 10 e-mails I read, nine suffer from major spelling faults, convoluted grammar and a stunning lack of logical organization. ASCII graffiti. For years I assumed this was an inevitable byproduct of the low student test scores so regularly lamented in newspaper editorials. Johnny can't read, so it's not surprising that he can't write either. But now I believe that the reason for all this unimpressive prose is something else: e-mail has made correspondents of folks who would otherwise never compose a text. It encourages messaging because it is relatively anonymous. The shy, the introverted and the socially inept can all hunker down before a glowing computer and whisper to the world. This is not the telephone, with its brutally personal, audible contact. It's not the post, for which an actual sheet of paper, touched by the writer and displaying his imperfect calligraphic skills, will end up under the nose of the recipient. E-mails are surreptitiously thrown over an electronic transom in the dead of night, packaged in plain manila envelopes.

Still, it is not these esthetic debilities that make e-mail such a threat. Rather, it's the unstoppable proliferation. Like the brooms unleashed by the sorcerer's apprentice, e-mails are beginning to overwhelm those who use them. Electronic correspondence is not one to one. It is one to many, and that's bad news on the receiving end. The ease with which copies of any correspondence can be dispensed to the world ensures that I am "kept informed" of my co-workers' every move. Such bureaucratic banter was once held in check by the technical limitations of carbon paper. Now my colleagues just punch a plastic mouse to ensure my exposure to their thoughts, their plans and the endless missives that supposedly prove that they're doing their jobs.

Because of e-mail's many-tentacled reach, its practitioners hardly care whether I'm around or not. I'm just another address in a list. So the deluge of digital correspondence continues irrespective of whether I'm sitting in my cubicle doing the boss's business or lying on the Côte d'Azur squeezing sand through my toes. Either way the e-mail, like a horde of motivated Mongolians, just keeps a-comin'. Vacations have lost their allure, and I hesitate to leave town. Consider: if I disappear for two weeks of rest and recreation, I can be sure of confronting screenfuls of e-mail upon my return. It's enough to make a grown man groan. The alternative is to take a laptop computer along, in the desperate hope of keeping up with e-mail's steady drip, drip, drip. Needless to say, there's something unholy about answering e-mails from your holiday suite. A friend recently told me that he can't afford to die: the e-mail would pile up and nobody could handle it.

Today I will receive 50 electronic messages. Of that number, at least half require a reply. (Many of the others consist of jokes, irrelevant bulletins and important announcements about secret cookie recipes. I actually like getting such junk e-mails, as they allow the pleasure of a quick delete without guilt.) If I spend five minutes considering and composing a response to each correspondence, then two hours of my day are busied with e-mail, even if I don't initiate a single one. Since the number of Internet users is doubling about once a year, I expect that by the start of the new millennium, I—and millions like me—will be doing nothing but writing e-mails. The collapse of commerce and polite society will quickly follow.

I'm as much in favor of technology as the next guy. Personally, I think the Luddites should have welcomed the steam looms. But if you insist on telling me that e-mail is an advance, do me a favor and use the phone.


Okay, on to my remarks… Did you note the date of that missive? Ten years have elapsed since Seth wrote that piece of vitriolic verse, and his prediction for the millennium notwithstanding, we have survived the onslaught of exponential increase in electronic mail. I don’t know about you, but the first thing I do in the morning, even before I get my first cup of coffee, is check my e-mail. And there are usually a dozen or more of the messages waiting for me. (One of my buddies is a night owl, and I can always tell when he’s been hitting the sauce, too.)

I share some of the author’s complaints, especially those about the grammar and spelling. Every e-mail template has a spell-checker and most will even detect fragmented and awkward sentence structure. Yet, much of the mail I receive has numerous typos, misspellings and meaningless phrases that masquerade as prose. You will not find that in mine if I can help it, I promise you.

However, having put all that down, I still enjoy seeing a full Inbox. I don’t even mind when I get the same joke for the umpteenth time, or when the message promises to reward or punish me, based on my willingness to forward it to 7—have you noticed that 7 is the magic number—of my closest friends and confidants. I always take great pleasure in hitting the ‘Delete’ key on those.

Finally, though I know that Mr. Shostak was annoyed, I also detect some great humor in his lament. I suspect that, like you and me, he would be disappointed if he went to his PC some day and there was not a single e-mail message waiting for his perusal. Let’s face it, we’re social animals, and we love attention no matter how we get it.

The End Must Be Near

I don’t usually publish a column in the middle of the week, but wait until Saturday to send my weekly words. However, this is too interesting to hold in suspense, and I have a topic for Saturday’s column anyway. I just have to get this out now.

December is shaping up to be a pretty interesting month for the world. I try my best not to show too much emotion (laughing or crying or screaming and cursing) but it is becoming increasingly difficult.

Let me see if I can recap what has occurred so far…

Someone hacked into some computers of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia—sounds like some outpost in Outer Mongolia to me—and discovered some very damaging and embarrassing e-mails that seem to make the whole topic of global warming a farce and a cover-up. Not only do the “scientists” input junk for effect, they collaborate on which junk to include and how to doctor the results to make it seem more compelling to their case.

As if that wasn’t enough, our own Environmental Protection Agency issued an edict that carbon dioxide is definitely a poison, and we humans are in mortal danger from it. Now, I don’t know about you, but every time I exhale a breath, it consists of carbon dioxide. That means that I am poisoning the very air I breathe. I am also guilty of poisoning your air too, but then, if you are at all similar to me, you’re also poisoning my air.

What a field day for the lawyers this new discovery will make!! We can all sue each other for millions, and when I die, my relatives can have all of you arrested and charged with murder. Well, maybe they can do it selectively, and I’ll have my will written to include only those whom I want charged with the crime.

On that same topic, most of our vegetation on this planet consumes and thrives on carbon dioxide. If we humans are going to make it a crime to produce it, then I think there is a need for some beneficent group to come to the aid of plant life. Maybe it could be known as “People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants” (PETP). It would be similar to PETA, and I’m sure some of those same people would join and defend the trees.

Oh wait! We already have a society for preservation of the trees, the Sierra Club. Well, maybe they could take up the cause.

Our Congress is in hot and heavy debate on the government takeover of our health care, and they are now meeting on Sundays, even though our Constitution specifically forbids it. (Constitution, what Constitution? We don’t need no stinking Constitution!) Just for reference, Congress never called a Sunday meeting even during our most horrendous days in WWII.

Here’s another nugget… President Obama is claiming credit for “reducing our deficit” by not spending $200 billion of the $787 billion in TARP money. Let me see if I really understand that. Our economy tanked and Obama pumped $787 additional dollars that we didn’t have into the debt total to “save” the nation. Then, when it became evident that only three-fourths of that debt was spent—without saving anything, by the way—he said that we could “reduce the deficit” by not spending the rest. Hmmm, that seems logical.

But wait, it gets even better. Now the president wants to “spend the rest” to get the economy moving again. Wait a minute! I’m confused. How do you reduce the deficit by spending money that you don’t really have, but that you just said you saved?

I’m not done yet. In his now infamous speech at West Point, our Commander-in-Chief outlined his plan to increase our troop strength in Afghanistan by 30,000—General McChrystal asked for 40-60,000 four months ago—while at the same time and in the same breath announcing a withdrawal of all forces beginning in July of 2011.

Let’s see, he’s going to put 30,000 more troops in harm’s way for eighteen months, during which some will inevitably be injured or killed, but they are not promised any justification for their sacrifice. The goal is certainly not victory.

I’m srry, I cn’t typ enymre cuse I cant sei vry wll. Im laugng and cryng to hrd, nd thetears ar blrring my vsion.

Preplanning a Trip

I’ve been busy this week planning my proposed trip next summer. I hope to make it similar and as full of attractions as the trip I took last June to the Northwestern US, but it will probably be a little shorter in miles and days.

My plan is to travel up to Muskegon, Michigan, which should take two days of driving. Then there will be at least two days of meandering up the coast of lake Michigan and all the way to Sault Ste Marie to see the locks there. That part of the trip will include a ferry ride to North Manitou and South Manitou Islands and stopovers in Traverse City and Sault Ste Marie.

The next day I’ll continue over the Upper Peninsula to Tahqaumenon Falls and the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior—wonderful scenic views there—and spend a night in Munising.

From there, it’s on down the western shore of Lake Michigan to Milwaukee, and then on to a huge dairy farm in Fair Oaks, Indiana, where you can actually tour the whole farm and watch all the activities there. That includes watching the cows birthing calves in a special birthing barn.

There are literally hundreds of lighthouses on Lake Michigan, and I hope to visit several of them along the way.

Of course, I plan to keep a daily journal again, and I will probably send it with pictures of my daily activities on a nightly basis, like I did on the NW trip. (I didn’t get any complaints about that, and I did get a ton of compliments)

You might well ask why I start planning for a trip 6-8 months away this early. Well, I have taken many driving trips in the past twenty years, and on several of the earlier ones I unknowingly drove past some pretty spectacular sights that I only learned about later. I always regretted that I had missed those places, so now I preplan thoroughly and research all the nearby sights along my route.

I also plan out my overnights with a maximum of 200 miles of straight line driving per day once I get on my sight seeing itinerary. That way, if I find something I want to spend extra time exploring, I can fit it in and not worry about getting to my hotel before dark.

Believe it or not, I’m already getting excited about this trip, and I hope my wife will go with me this time. If not, I’ve already made contingency plans to take a friend along to share the sights. He probably would have gone with me on the last trek, but I didn’t think of it soon enough to ask him and plan it for two instead of one.

I can assure you that my present travel plans will change several times in the next six months as I add or subtract certain features, book hotels and learn who, if anyone, will be traveling with me.

On my prior trip I had several disappointments. For instance, my plan to visit Timpanogos Cave near Salt Lake City was scuttled when I learned that I would have to waste a whole day to see it. And the huge ball monument along Interstate 80 in Utah was not accessible from the eastbound lanes. Fortunately, I had other places to go and other sights to see, so I was able to improvise.

Hey, if you have ever been in the proximity of the areas I intend to visit, and you know of some really fantastic “do not miss” place or event nearby, let me know and I’ll see if I can add it to my itinerary.

A Poem or Two

I don’t know how you celebrated Thanksgiving, but I had my daughter, son-in-law and grandson over to our new house for dinner. We even used the good china and silverware that only gets put out for special occasions. It hasn’t been on our table in years, and my wife spent the better part of Wednesday polishing that silverware.

The special dinner is my inspiration for today’s column. It is actually not a column so much as it is a borrowed poem from my favorite dead poet, Strickland Gillilan (1869-1954). I’ve used his poetry before, but I don’t recall ever doing this one, his recollection of a special dinner in the high society of New York. Here it is.

Which Fork?

Some persons yearn for knowledge
Of the kind you get at college;
Some long for musty facts from days agone;
Some hunger to be knowing
What the future will be showing,
While others watch the present humming on.
But when I’m called out to dinner
By some plutocratic sinner
Who was always in the social swimming pool,
I would give a whole diploma,
E’en my college bred aroma,
I would give it all and gladly be a fool—
I would give my evening clothes,
And the joy that ebbs and flows,
When I hear the mellow popping of the cork,
Were I not always forgetting
One small thing that keeps me fretting—
If I only could recall
“Which fork?”

There’s quite a row beside me,
But the wo of woes betide me,
If I can ever get them sorted out;
For each one has its duty
Just as each its dainty beauty—
The oyster one is three-tined, short and stout;
But the rest—they have me guessing
In a manner most distressing,
And I’d almost trade my hope of future joy
For a chance to eat again
In that farmhouse dull and plain
With the tools I used to handle when a boy.
For I’m sure I’ll never learn,
Through I yearn and yearn and yearn,
Though I spend a dozen seasons in New York,
Just which trident’s next in line;
So from soup to nuts to wine
I am haunted by the thought,
“Which fork?”

Mr. Gillilan is also the correct author of the world’s shortest poem, which is often wrongly attributed to Ogden Nash under a different title, “Fleas.” The correct name and poem are:

On the Antiquity of Microbes

Adam
Had ‘em.

I hope your Thanksgiving Day was as pleasant as mine.