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 We have lost three of the original ten, and two spouses have voluntarily withdrawn from attending.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.

Great Gravy

I included a wonderful 3-page plan for buying and preparing a turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner in my e-mail column notice. My wife tells me that I’m crazy to send out that thing, since it is almost 40 years old and probably outdated. However, I have found that the recipes, ingredients and preparation instructions always work, so I invite you to print and use them for any turkey dinner you prepare.

There is only one substitution I would recommend, and that is the topic for the column today, just in time for Thanksgiving. Here is my foolproof recipe that I first published in 2004 and again in 2006.

If you are at all like me, and can't get enough of turkey during the winter holidays, then you will appreciate this recipe for gravy to go with that big bird on Thanksgiving. Of course, you might be one of those who prefers to fry your turkey outdoors in one of those new-fangled fry pots, thus missing out on the wonderful aroma of cooking that permeates the house most of the day. But with the new cooking bags to make basting unnecessary, I prefer the old-fashioned method of baking in the oven; and that makes perfect conditions for this recipe.

We all share fond memories of holidays past when Mom or Grandma spent the whole day in the kitchen preparing the feast. The tricky part was always the making of the gravy after the turkey came out of the oven. Most of the time the gravy was perfect, but every once in a while it turned out either thin and watery, or thick and lumpy. Well, those days are over. This recipe will always make perfect gravy.

The ingredients are enough to make gravy for a 12-15 pound turkey, but you can adjust the recipe by adding more if you prepare a bigger one, or if you like more gravy. Use two small potatoes, two medium carrots and one small yellow onion. (small means about 3-4 inches in diameter) Wash the potatoes, but don’t peel them, and cut them in half. Peel the carrots and cut them into thirds. Peel the onion and cut it in half. When you bag the turkey for cooking, add the cut up vegetables into the bag and follow the normal cooking instructions for the bird. When it is done, remove it and the vegetables. Save the juice from the bag in a measuring cup.

Place the vegetables in a blender or food processor and add a quarter of a cup of the juice from the bag. Set aside the rest of the juice. Blend on medium setting and add more juice a little at a time until it has a gravy texture and look. Now taste it, and as the old Cajun cook, Justin Wilson would say, “I garrontee that you won’t be able to distinguish the taste of any of the veggies in there.” It will taste and look just like the great gravy that Grandma used to make. Not only will it taste right, but all things considered, it will probably be healthier for you too.

If you like giblet gravy—some do, I don’t—then be my guest and throw the boiled giblets in, but then you’re on your own. And forget the previous observation about healthy eating; you’re back to square one.

It wouldn’t be right to publish this recipe and not give credit to my daughter-in-law, who introduced it into our traditional Thanksgiving dinner several years ago. It might have even been in 2004, the same year I first shared it in my column. Thanks again, Anjula.

Well, that’s my contribution to your Thanksgiving feast. I hope each and every one of you has a joyous and memorable holiday season, both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Finding My Niche

As you have probably surmised from recent columns, I have moved. It was only about a five-mile move from Augusta to Grovetown, but it was a lot of work, especially all the change of address notifications. It took a week to change address with all the people and businesses that need my permanent address on file.

We now live in a rural area with a wooded area just outside of my backyard, and a large cemetery right across the main road at the head of our subdivision. The cemetery is one of those that has absolutely no headstones, but instead has lots of flowered graves, a large mortuary and a chapel. It is very peaceful looking. Even its name is pretty, Bellvue.

There is a nice loop road that runs through the cemetery, and I noticed that people use the road as a walking trail. I am determined to do that too.

We were driving out of the housing area the other day and talking about the fact that this will hopefully be our last move. I spotted the cemetery and said, “Well, there is one more move to make, but it will be just across the road.”

I thought that was a pretty witty remark, but then I followed up with, “I think I’ll go over there and find my niche.”

In case you didn’t know, an alcove in a wall to place a vase or other object is a niche. The word also comes into play in the saying, “I’ve found my niche in life,” referring to one’s place. (Well, Judy didn’t find it particularly cute to tie the two together, but I hope you will.)

I’m not in any hurry to get into my niche, so I think I’ll just walk around there for a while. That must be why they put that nice road through the cemetery as a matter of fact. You can walk around and find a good place to rest.

Bad Day at Disneyland

My son informed us that he is taking his family to Disney World soon, and will be able to stop over in Augusta to visit us in our soon-to-be new home. Normally, I would be pleased that he is going to stop and stay with us for a few days, or even overnight. But there is a problem... He’s going to Disney World!

If you haven’t followed my columns for at least five years, you won’t know about my long-standing aversion to the Magic Kingdom. I won’t go into detail about it, but I can summarize the source of my disgust with Disney.

In July of 2004, my wife, daughter, son-in-law and grandson and I went to Southern California. We started in San Diego, visiting Sea World and the San Diego Zoo, both fine attractions. Then we headed north for what was to be the best attraction of the trip, Disneyland in Anaheim.

We arrived at the gates to Disneyland just before the opening, and were pleasantly surprised to be able to get on the first two rides with no wait. Then the trouble began... Of the five premier rides at Disneyland, Space Mountain was closed for renovation until 2005, and Thunder Mountain Railroad was closed for the day. Then, after a 40-minute wait to get into the Indiana Jones Adventure, we were turned away and it was closed indefinitely due to some technical difficulty. It never reopened that day.

Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion were operational and as good as ever. However, our troubles weren’t over. When we stopped at a cart to buy some pretzels at about 10:30 AM, the kid running the concession said, “We’re out of that one right now.” He gave no apology, no courtesy, just a bored response.

His attitude seemed typical of most of the personnel in the park. They just weren't the cheerful and friendly people I remember from past visits. Other than the Disney characters in costume, everybody with a badge on seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere and smiles were a rare commodity.

The capper of the day was an innovation that was new at that time called “Fastpass.” It is a means of signing up for a ride and getting a guaranteed time to enter without standing in a long line.

Anyone can apply for a Fastpass once you are in the park, although nowhere is there any written or verbal notice of that. You have to ask park personnel about Fastpass, and my initial impression was that it was a special type of ticket that you could buy at a premium price.

In fact, they were free and were dispensed at kiosks throughout the park. Once you have one, you merely go to any ride where there is a waiting time posted, visit the Fastpass person there and get a ticket stub with a time on it. You return at the time shown and are given access to a separate queue that bypasses the waiting line of riders.

The problem is that the Fastpass path goes parallel to the waiting line. Not only does it give the appearance of line cutting, but also some of the Fastpass riders are prone to taunting those in line as they go past. This does not create a pleasant atmosphere in which to wait for up to an hour and a half. The Fastpass concept is okay, but the practice leaves something to be desired.

Well, I tried to condense my poor experience at Disneyland, but I managed to use two pages to recap it anyway. I tried to lodge a complaint at the park, but found no desk or office to do so. I did write a letter and sent it to the Disneyland address after I arrived home from the trip. I never got any response at all.

Ever since that trip, I have tried to discourage people from going to Disney World or Disneyland. Maybe some people have good times there, but I was sorely disappointed and felt it was not worth all the money I paid to get the five of us in. I intend to boycott Disney for life.

Taking Credit

This morning (Friday, October 30, 2009), Judy and I went to an attorney’s office with our landlord/real estate agent to sign the papers and become the proud owners of a brand new town home here in Augusta. What an ordeal it is to do that!

We had to sign about two-dozen documents relating to deeds, termite inspection, closing costs, warranties, survey and releases. And that was a small stack of papers, only because we aren’t carrying a mortgage on the property. If we had applied for a loan, it would have entailed at least twice as much paperwork.

We’ve had to transfer a lot of funds around in order to get enough in our bank account to get a cashier check for the total amount due. And when we went to the bank yesterday to have the check issued, they acted like it was their money that we were taking away.

It took longer to have the check issued than it did to close on the property.

We have been renters for the past three years, but it always hurt to have to pay rent every month and not have anything tangible to show for it. In addition, with the economy in the doldrums and the dollar falling in value, it seemed like we were on the short end of a losing proposition.

Then the government came along with the first-time home buyer tax credit… Just in case you have been on a desert island for the past year, here is a recap of what the credit is.

Anyone buying a home for the first time, or anyone who has not owned a home in the past three years, is entitled to a refundable tax credit* of up to $8,000 or ten percent of the value of the purchase (whichever is the lesser of the two). The credit is available for any home purchased before December 1, 2009, although there is a move in Congress now to extend that date and possibly to increase the amount of the credit to $15,000.

*I will digress for a moment to define a “refundable tax credit.” There are two kinds of tax credits, refundable and non-refundable.

A non-refundable tax credit is one that only refunds a tax amount that you would otherwise owe to the IRS after you get to that line on your 1040 that is labeled “Taxable Income” and the subsequent line labeled “Tax.” An example of a non-refundable tax credit is Child Care Tax Credit, because you can only take the credit up to the amount of tax liability you owe. Any amount over your current tax liability is forfeited.

A refundable tax credit is one that can exceed the amount you owe the IRS, and will get you a check from the government even if you don’t owe any tax at all. A prime example of a refundable credit is the earned income credit available to low income workers with dependents. The first-time home buyer credit is also a refundable credit, so a qualified buyer can get back more than is owed to the IRS.

Since we had sold our last home in El Paso on September 24, 2006, we had a window open to claim the credit between September 24th and November 30th of this year. That was too good to pass up.

Another plus that helped us to decide on buying was that our landlord, who was also a real estate agent, promised us that if we used his services to buy a house, whether or not it was the rental property we lived in, he would not charge us for breaking the lease. That usually amounts to an extra month’s rent, and was paid up front as a security deposit when we first rented the town home.

It took us about a month to find what we wanted, and we were frankly just about ready to give up when we found a new town home in the early construction stage in a somewhat rural area. We were able to get an allowance for upgrades taken off the price, and used it to upgrade the carpet, purchase three ceiling fans with lights and a full set of high quality blinds for the windows.

The only miscalculation we made was in redeeming some shares in my IRA to assist in the purchase price. I took out enough to put me into a higher tax bracket, and it cost me part of that nice $8,000 credit. But I still cannot complain too loudly. All that money I redeemed is now invested in a real tangible asset.

Maybe I’ll put some pictures in one of the future columns after we get moved in.

Gone But Not forgotten

My column last week, “I’ve Got a Secret…” spurred a wave of responses greater than any I had ever seen in ten years of writing My Weekly Wisdom Column. I was truly touched by the expressions of sympathy all of you sent. And I wanted to thank all of you in some meaningful way.

I can think of no better means of saying “Thank you” than to tell you something about my brother. First of all, I don’t mourn for Don. He will surely be missed, but he didn’t want a lot of moping and sadness. Instead, he wanted those who knew him to celebrate his life. We did that last Friday with a Champaign toast and a lot of remembrances.

Since most of you never knew my brother, I will give you a brief biography.

Our family consisted of Mom and Dad, three boys and two girls, seven of us in all. Don was the second oldest of the children, but he was also the creative genius among us. He never failed at anything he tried, and he tried many different things. At various times during his life he was an accomplished musician, an actor, a director, a screenwriter, a builder, a furniture designer and maker, and the list goes on.

One of the talents I envied in Don was that he could do something naturally without any formal training. For instance, our father was a concert pianist, a graduate of Eastman School of Music. He used to play classical music on our upright piano almost every Sunday afternoon. One Sunday, after Dad had finished playing one of the classics, Don sat at the piano and played the same piece. He had never taken a single lesson on piano, yet he was able to play a very difficult song without any mistakes. That was just the way Don was. If he thought he could do something, most likely he could do it, and with little or no learning curve.

Part of Don’s life was a mystery to me. He married while I was away in the Air Force, and I never really got to know his wife, Katie, that well. They had two daughters, Gwen and Kelly, but the marriage eventually ended in divorce. He was geographically separated from the girls after the divorce. However, he later brought them back into his life, and spent a lot of time with his children and grandchildren, sometimes traveling cross-country from California to North Carolina to be with them.

Don liked to ski, so he left a promising career in television and lived for about three years in Vail, Colorado so that he could indulge his love of skiing. In order to support himself, he went to work helping to build some of those magnificent chalets that grace the hillsides of Vail. But he wasn’t building walls and ceilings and such. No, Don was a finish-carpenter, doing all the fine touches on the interiors.

When Don decided to get back into television and movies, he left Vail for Los Angeles, where he was a news director for one of the network affiliates. About that time, the TV spoof on soap operas, “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” was running on his channel. Don took the theme from that show and applied it to his venue. He created, produced and directed a local show called “Metro News, Metro News.” It ran after the nightly news, and was an impromptu parody of all the stories reported that evening.

“Metro News, Metro News” was very popular with the LA audience, and it earned Don a very important life-changing event. He met his future wife, Penny, whom he married in 1986. That is a story in itself, and I won’t tell it here except to say it was one of those instances of simultaneous love at first sight.

Don always worked behind the scenes in Hollywood, so you probably never saw his name unless you read the credits, but he was there. One of his accomplishments was the production of what he called, “newswraps,” short films that promoted movies and were shown on TV stations. One that I recall vividly was a short half-hour film about the making of “The Cannonball Run.” It was almost as funny as the movie that starred Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett and many others.

The newswraps included outtakes and bloopers, and a lot of film that would have wound up on the cutting room floor. They probably helped spawn the “TV Bloopers & Practical Jokes” shows that Dick Clark and Ed McMahon hosted, since they were very similar in content and predated the bloopers show.

Several years ago, after attending one of our biennial family reunions, this one held in Winston-Salem, Don and Penny decided to move from Los Angeles to North Carolina. Don made yet another career change, and after a yearlong apprenticeship, became a designer and builder of furniture. Once again, he was successful, and many of his friends and clients have treasured pieces in their homes.

One day last year Don was doing some yard work and walked into a partially closed garage door, hitting his head and knocking himself flat on his back. The next day he was suffering from some neck pains and went to a chiropractor. During the preliminary exam, the X-rays showed some anomalies, and the chiropractor suggested that Don see his family doctor. Further examination revealed that there were tumors in Don’s lungs. He had smoked earlier in life, but quit back in 1981. The doctors thought that the cancer was in the early stages, and could be successfully treated.

What began as another obstacle to be overcome soon became the supreme battle. Though Don and Penny remained optimistic throughout the treatment, Don lost the battle. I had the good fortune to visit with him twice in the last few months, and he was as cheerful, funny and positive as ever.

I lost four people at once: brother, friend, mentor and co-conspirator. I would be remiss if I closed without relating a funny story involving Don and me.

My father once got angry with me and banished me from his house, probably deservedly so, but he also kept most of my clothes. Don learned of the incident and volunteered to help me regain my belongings. While I waited a few houses down the street, Don took his new car over to show to Dad and offered to have him test drive it with him.

The two of them drove off on their short test hop, while I stole into the house and recovered my clothing, which had been not only stored there, but also dry-cleaned and bagged in garment bags. I got them back in better condition than I had left them, and Dad didn’t discover the “theft” for a while, so Don didn’t even get into trouble over it. We eventually told him how I got my property back, and I think he was actually amused by the tale.

So thank you for the condolences, but I have many fond memories of Don that make it a lot easier to say goodbye to him. So, “Farewell, brother! You’re still my hero.”

I've Got a Secret

I’ve got to tell you a secret...

When I left on June 17 for my great adventure in the Northwest Territories, I was convinced that it would probably be my last road trip.

I had a doctor appointment set for a few days after I returned, and I was certain that the doctor was going to find some incurable fatal disease that was hiding in my body.

Partly for that reason, I really went all out to see and do everything I could on the long journey. Of course, there were some constraints, like money, time and physical ability.

The reason I took that long and strenuous hike up the bluffs above the Columbia River to see those wonderful waterfalls, was that I figured it would probably be a good way to go if I wasn’t up to it.

Now, isn’t that poetic?

The trip up Mount Evans to over 14,000 feet altitude was another trek that I probably shouldn’t have taken. I know that I was really dizzy and out of breath when I walked around in that upper parking lot at the summit.

I took it easy and made several stops on the way back down the mountain to take my pictures, so it wasn’t as bad as I pictured it up there in the clouds.

Actually, I had experienced some internal aches and pains of undetermined nature prior to taking the trip, and that only made me more certain that there was something serious going on inside.

I was determined to do this one last thing, my “bucket list’ as it were, before I checked out.

When I realized, about halfway up the bluffs in Oregon, that my back and shoulders were no longer aching, I began to wonder if I was imagining the seriousness of the symptoms. There were other indications that my problems were not as bad as I had at first thought.

I completed my trip (alive, by golly) and kept my appointment with my doctor. I was completely honest and thorough with him about my symptoms.

The doctor, in turn, was unimpressed with most of what I told him, and suggested a few over-the-counter remedies to relieve the aches and pains. Things like vitamins, calcium and such were “prescribed” and I was sent on my way with no expensive tests, drugs or (God forbid) procedures.

So, here I am, four months past my “final sprint” to the finish line of life, with another two driving trips to Buffalo and Winston-Salem, and feeling pretty darned good for an old man of 70.

Heck, I already have plans to do another solo venture next summer, though it won’t be a far or as long as my “Don’t Fence Me In” sojourn. I don’t plan to climb any mountains in Michigan or Wisconsin, but I might climb some lighthouses, on the inside, of course.

There is a sad ending to my tale, however. My brother, Don, has been battling lung cancer for the past year. I received a phone call last Monday that he died peacefully in his sleep Sunday night.

Perhaps my premonition was not about me, but rather about my brother. It was fortunate that I was able to visit him twice in the past few months to say goodbye, but I will miss him terribly.

Superman in Metropolis

I believe you’ve all seen my photo journal of my recent trip through the Northwest. However, there were other photos and stories that I left for future columns. This is one of those columns.

On my way up to my starting point for my trip, I passed several places that I had seen before, and so I didn’t bother to stop and take pictures. There was one town that I had passed many times without getting off the interstate and going to see the main attraction there.

On my way home, I again passed the little town in southern Illinois named Metropolis. Now, any town with that name brings an image to most of us of the fictional character, Superman, who lived and worked in the equally fictitious city of Metropolis.

Who among us can forget how we watched and worshipped Superman in our youth? I will admit that I even tried to emulate the Man of Steel in my youth by becoming “Ken Kenmore” (the town I grew up in) and saving numerous damsels in distress in my imagination. I know, I was weird!

There is a water tower next to I-24 outside of Metropolis, IL, that promotes the Superman mystique by showing a huge painting of the hero and letting travelers know that his likeness is preserved in the form of a statue in the town square.

I took the bait and left I-24 for the center of Metropolis to see Superman. I wasn’t the only one to do so, either. There were several visitors in the square to see him.

Okay, I won’t keep you in suspense... Here is the Superman statue in his classic pose, with the inscription on the base, “Truth, Justice, The American Way.”
You can see the size of this statue by measuring it against the woman in the background. Also, notice the floodlights that illuminate Superman at night like a national shrine.

Across the street there is also some glitzy tourist stuff in and on what probably used to be a drug store, complete with a sidewalk photo stand with the bodies of Superman and Superwoman and appropriate notches where you can rest your chin to have your head superimposed on the torso for a photo op. In the center left of the picture you can see, painted on the brick wall, the famous phone booth, Clark Kent and Lois Lane.

If you’re ever in the vicinity of Paducah, Kentucky—the closest city of any size near Metropolis—take a half-hour to stop by and visit with Superman. It’s about as kitschy as you can get.

You Cannot Unmake The Soup

The idea that we can go back to a world where nuclear fission and/or nuclear fusion do not exist is not just ridiculous; it is sublime! It is no more possible to unlearn the secrets of nuclear reactions than it is to mix ingredients together to prepare soup and then change your mind and separate all of the ingredients back into their component parts.

In short, you can’t unmake the soup, and you certainly cannot unlearn the science that we used to create and develop nuclear reactions.

Much like the well-used statement, “If you ban guns, the only people who will have guns are the criminals,” we can now correctly state, “If you ban nuclear weapons, the only people who will have nuclear weapons are the rogues who ignore the rules.” Unfortunately, there are a lot of criminals and rogues out there in the world.

You might consider our current bad guys, Osama Bin Laden, Hugo Chavez, Kim Il Jong, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Raul Castro, and a number of others, incapable of any threat to us in the nuclear arena. They don’t have the delivery systems, or so it seems, to place a nuke on our soil.

That may or may not be true, based on recent development and testing of intermediate-range missiles in both North Korea and Iran, but it isn’t really necessary to have intercontinental missiles in order to attack us. There are a number of scenarios that posit a nuclear attack without any sophisticated delivery at all.

We are at risk regardless of any diplomatic agreements to destroy and quit making nuclear weapons. If the technology is there—and it cannot be unlearned—then there will always be evil people who will use it to further their ends. They are not necessarily associated with any government, and are unanswerable for breaking any “treaty” with the rest of the world.

If President Obama gets his wish and is able to negotiate with the other nuclear powers to completely ban nuclear weapons—an impossibility from the get-go—I will give us about ten years maximum until we will have that dreaded nuclear war that we have deterred for over sixty years. It might signal the end of civilization as we know it.

Thank you, Mr. President. You are a true idealist, and I wanted to stop short of saying that idealists are fools, but then... I cannot unmake the soup either. So there, I’ve gone and made it official. I consider you a fool as well. And I truly hate to have to think that about our president, the most powerful man in the world. The seat of power is no place for a fool to sit.

Radio Blooper

This has been a very busy week for me. I sing in a barbershop chorus here in Augusta. We have a big show coming up this Saturday, and I have been doing a lot of the publicity for it.

If you opened the link I sent out Friday morning, you already know the story of the woman whose private telephone number was inadvertently printed on about 3,000 flyers for our upcoming show as the box office number for the theater where we are to perform. If not, here it is again: http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2009/09/25/met_549499.shtml That’s me on the left, the old guy with the gray hair, but at least I have some hair, unlike the other guys in the photo.

In addition to that publicity, I was called on to be the spokesman for the chorus on a local radio show. We had another quartet singing on that show, and the host asked me to introduce them prior to their performance of the songs. I started off okay, but when I got to the second fellow, Vern Lunsford, I drew a mental block and pronounced his name, Vern Lundquist.

That caused a lot of laughter in the studio, and also made my situation worse. I knew I had given the name wrong, (Verne Lundquist is a television sportscaster who broadcasts SEC college football games) but I couldn’t then think of our Vern’s last name. It was one of those moments of embarrassment that sometimes happen.

After Vern introduced himself, I was able to continue, and the next name (thank God) was George Brown. I needed an easy name at that point, and I got through the rest of the introduction without incident.

Someone taped the interview and the two songs for Southern Blend, the quartet that sang them, so I was able to listen to the whole thing later in the day. It all came out pretty darned good.

One thing that happened, probably because of nerves, was that I got a tickle in my throat just prior to going on air, so my voice came out sounding a little raspy. I was, in fact, one of those “gravel-voice” announcers I wrote about in last week’s column. That’ll teach me not to be critical of others.

Speech-challenged speakers

I drove up to Winston-Salem last week to visit family. On the way home, I was listening to a local radio station in Greensboro, and there was a weatherman on the morning show. He gave the forecast, and it made me terribly uncomfortable.

Why? He had a rattle in his voice so pronounced that it sounded like maybe he was gargling and forgot to spit. His voice was annoying, and to make it worse, he repeated himself three times. You know how a comic singer does that underwater gargle while singing the lyrics? It was kind of like that, but it was only about once every three words.

I kept hoping he would at least clear his throat, even if he did it on air. That rattle was a real turn off.

We had a local weatherman (I guess we’re supposed to refer to them as meteorologists) who recently retired, and he also had an annoying voice. It was what I would call a gravel voice. Again, I was always wishing he would clear his throat. Apparently, he has a permanent raspy voice. Whew, it was a relief when he retired!

On a recent trip up through West Virginia, my wife and I listened to a local guy who did refer to himself as a meteorologist, except he couldn’t pronounce the word correctly. It came out as “meteorlologist,” or maybe it was “meteolrologist.” It was so funny that we laughed every time he said the word.

It occurs to me that we probably don’t even pay attention to the forecast when the person reading it has a speech impediment. The focus changes from the speech to the speaker when that is the case.

Is there some equal opportunity law that requires weather forecasters with less-than-perfect speech have to be given priority? There certainly seem to be a lot of them out there.

Come to think of it, has any weatherman ever been promoted to, or even substituted for one of the news anchors? I cannot recall a single instance when that has happened, but then, I can’t remember a sportscaster ever doing it either.

Maybe there is a difference in the type of person who does those broadcasting jobs, and they don’t want to fill the other guy’s (or gal’s) shoes. They are perfectly happy pointing at green walls or reading the sports scores. At least those speech-challenged weather and sports geeks don’t opine for us in addition to reading their scripts.

One other word—actually a letter—that seems to get mispronounced frequently is “W” in station call letters. The letter “w” sometimes gets a weird middle syllable, so that the letter comes out sounding like “doubwolyou.”

Do you notice these things too, or is it just me?

Posting Comments

Last week, I put out a call for all of you to respond ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as to whether you read my weekly columns. The response was, well, all positive. However, since there were no negative responses, and yet there were more recipients than responses, I don’t know what to make of that.

The responses I did get were enlightening, because many didn’t just follow my simple instructions to put ‘Yes’ or “No’ in the Subject Line, but also sent some feedback as to why they don’t place comments in the blog.

Those who did respond were overwhelming in their reluctance to set up a Google account in order to post comments in the blog. They felt it was a privacy issue.

I have toyed with the idea of writing a column devoted to the newest Internet phenomenon, “tweeting.”

There are apparently a lot of people who find it entertaining to post their personal information for all to see, either on Twitter, or Facebook, or My Space. I am not one of them, and it is precisely because it is a privacy issue with me.

I suppose that most of you are also of the same mind as I am about the aforementioned, shall we call them ‘sharing sites’? That must be why you also don’t have a Google account.

In order to set up my blog page for the weekly column, I had to open a Google account, and I have never been bothered by anyone because of it. I do maintain a profile on the blog site, but it is very ‘low profile’ and doesn’t expose any of my personal information that I prefer not to share.

Let’s face it, everything we share with others has to do with our own ego. That is the main reason I write the column every week. I don’t consider myself to be an ‘intellectual’ or an ‘expert’ on the subjects I write about.

It is interesting to place my opinions out there for debate and discussion. But I know that I’m not always right, and I welcome criticism as well as praise. I get both almost every week; it feeds my ego either way.

The problem is, if you don’t post on the blog, I am the only one who sees how you react to my columns. A lot of your comments are good. They add to the topic, and should be available to everyone who reads the column.

I’m considering the idea of posting comments from you—anonymously, of course—for others to see. That means you might want to go back a day or so later and read the comments as updates to the column.

Regarding those other online tools, Twitter, Facebook, etc., I guess it’s different strokes for different folks, but I don’t consider them a worthwhile exercise, and they definitely compromise you in some fashion.

Oh, and my poll... In the first 24 hours, I received 22 responses, all ‘Yes’, and that makes me feel great. See, it is all about ego!

The Wildfire Tragedy

The wildfires burning north of Los Angeles are truly a disaster. There have already been fatalities, with more possible, and the property loss is huge.

This isn’t even the height of the wildfire season, since the Santa Ana winds are not yet a factor. They are still to come in October, so this huge fire is being fueled without the usual winds that spread it.

The Southern California area has been under severe drought conditions for three years or more, so the underbrush is completely dry and just waiting for the spark to ignite it.

The question is, how could we prevent, or at least lessen the threat of wildfires in and around Los Angeles? After all, these fires are a perennial event, and they displace or harm thousands of people and their homes. It isn’t as though we couldn’t prepare and execute a plan of prevention.

On my recent trip through the American Northwest, I witnessed something that I never thought I would see. In the Black Hills forest of South Dakota, which I drove through extensively, I saw huge amounts of wood and other flammable debris stacked in conical piles. The ground around these tinder piles was clear and green with new grown grasses.

I’m not describing a small area that some local group of volunteers cleared, either. This was something I saw at every place I stopped, and all along the Iron Mountain road, which is about 25 miles in length. It appears that the entire area of Custer State Park was cleared, too.

It occurred to me that there must be a tremendous effort in the Black Hills to clear that flammable underbrush. It must have taken several hundred, even several thousand, people to do such a magnificent job. It reminded me of the pictures I recall of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, back in the Depression Era from 1933 to 1942.

With all of the current unemployment we are experiencing, and all of the stimulus money that is being thrown around, why wouldn’t it make perfect sense to ‘hire’ some of those people at a reasonable salary to clear forests in other parts of the country, and especially in those areas like Southern California?

Maybe it is too late for a lot of that forest, but there certainly must be a lot of trees out there that still could be saved by removing the undergrowth that fuels those huge and tragic wildfires.

In case you cannot believe that all that debris can be adequately cleared, here is one of the pictures I took in the Black Hills. Look closely and you’ll see that there are many piles back in the forest itself in addition to the four you see in the foreground.



I don’t know what the future plan for these conical piles is, but they could be removed pretty quickly in the event of a forest fire there. Since the picture was taken in the early summer, the tinder piles might have already been removed to a controlled burn area. It did look like a work in progress.

I am sending this column to my representative and both senators for their consideration. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I don’t see much in the way of results from the stimulus infusion so far.

How about you? Will you copy and forward the column to your senators and House representative in Washington?

Benzene in Automobiles

I received a warning alert yesterday in my email messages. I cleaned it up just a little to make it more readable, but I certainly didn’t change the message. I want to use this as a springboard to show how distorted these messages can get and why we have to truth-check each and every one of them before forwarding them to others.

I have another reason for using this particular warning alert as my example; it reinforces a column that I wrote just a few seeks ago. In my column, Useful Car Tips, I made a recommendation on how to best utilize your car’s air conditioning. If you follow that advice, you shouldn’t have any trouble with benzene during the summer. Now winter is a whole different season...

Here is the text of the message I received:

No wonder folks are dying from cancer more than ever before. We wonder where this stuff comes from but here is an example that may explain some of the cancer causing incidents. Please pass this on to as many people as possible. Guess it's never too late to make some changes!!

Car A/C (Air Conditioning) MUST READ!!!

Do NOT turn on A/C as soon as you enter the car.

Open the windows after you enter your car and turn ON the air-conditioning after a couple of minutes.

Here's why: According to research the car dashboard emits Benzene, a Cancer causing toxin into the air of your car. Have you ever noticed the smell of heated plastic in your car?

In addition to causing cancer, Benzene poisons your bones, causes anemia and reduces white blood cells.

Prolonged exposure could cause Leukemia, increasing the risk of cancer. It may also cause miscarriage

Acceptable Benzene level indoors is 50 mg per sq. ft. A car parked in a garage with windows closed will contain 400-800 mg of Benzene.

If parked outdoors under the sun at a temperature above 60 degrees F, the Benzene level goes up to 2000-4000 mg, 40 times the acceptable level.

People who get into the car, keeping windows closed will inevitably inhale excessive amounts of the toxin.

Benzene is a toxin that affects your kidney and liver. What's worse, it is extremely difficult for your body to expel this toxic stuff.

So friends, please open the windows and allow the car to air out before you close it up and turn your air on.

Thought: when someone shares something of value with you and you benefit from it, you have a moral obligation to share it with others.

I went to my truth-checker, www.snopes.com, and learned that there is a mixture of fact and fiction in the above message. (If you want to read the entire Snopes comments and analysis, type ‘benzene in automobiles’ [without quotes] into their search engine.)

According to Barbara Mikkelson, benzene levels are actually higher in older cars, and exposure levels are higher in winter, which suggests that air conditioning is not a major factor in benzene exposure.

I am always skeptical about “facts” in the alert messages. For instance, did you notice that there is no reference source for the statistics on levels of benzene under varying conditions? The anonymous author of the warning could easily have dreamed up those numbers to make the warning seem more real.

If Mrs. Mikkelson’s facts—which are supported with a source—are true, then the opposite levels should prevail. That is, the colder the temperature, the more benzene fume exposure there is.

On the other hand, there is supporting evidence that benzene does present a sufficient cancer risk that we should avoid exposure at any level. That part of the warning is apparently true and good advice.

However, the benzene doesn’t come from the air-conditioner, but from all of the plastic that is present in the passenger compartment; stirring it around with a fan is not a factor in how much you inhale. The more important factor is the sealed compartment you are sitting in. Opening the windows should dissipate the concentration.

Now, back to my original analysis... I believe that the main meat of the warning alert has been sufficiently debunked that I would not consider it “...a moral obligation to share it with others.” However, it might be of value for you to air out your vehicle, even in the winter, before you condition the air with either hot or cold conditioning.

I also recommend that you scroll down and read that aforementioned column and follow my advice on how to air-condition your car in the summer. It has even more benefit, now that we’ve established that there is at least some risk in breathing benzene fumes.

Late Night Reading

I had trouble getting to sleep recently. I didn’t have a good book to read, so I went to the next best thing, something everybody is talking about these days anyway. I decided to read HR 3200, the proposed Healthcare Reform bill in the House of Representatives.

Now, if you want to read something that is sure to put you to sleep, this is it! It has more plot twists than “Anna Karenina,” “Dr. Zhivago,” or “War and Peace.” It is also longer than any of those three classics.

What’s more, it is written in some foreign language that nobody seems to understand, since there are so many different translations of it. And people seem to get really, really angry about that, and they keep shouting at each other.

I guess everyone thinks that the louder they yell, the more likely they’ll be understood.

Anyway, I started this long and boring text and before I got two pages into it, I was already lost. But I kept on reading as best I could, and then I got to a really interesting phrase up on pages 50 and 51. Here it is:
SEC. 152. PROHIBITING DISCRIMINATION IN HEALTH CARE.
(a) IN GENERAL. Except as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act and by subsequent regulations consistent with this Act, all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.

Did you understand that??? Do you know what the phrase “personal characteristics” means??? Do you realize that “this Act” was repeated THREE TIMES in that one sentence???

Geez Louise, is that convoluted, or what? No wonder nobody in Congress wants to read those 1017 pages of weirdness. I’m still trying to figure out what “extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services” means.

Doesn’t “extraneous” usually mean “not pertinent, or irrelevant?” Oh wait! There is a second definition in my dictionary. Now get this: “Coming from outside; foreign.”

So, everything before the word “extraneous” is either irrelevant or not pertinent, or else THIS IS THAT MAGIC WORD THAT SAYS ILLEGALS WILL BE COVERED BY THE BILL. OMG, I just uncovered the secret plot!!!

Well, after that discovery, I had little chance of getting to sleep that night, so I read the rest of the bill and found zillions of other indeterminate phrases and words. “Personal characteristics” is repeated numerous times. And, by the way, the butler did it. Well, at the White House they call him the "Chief of Staff."

I came to the conclusion that whoever wrote that horrible piece of prose must have been a William F. Buckley (RIP) wannabe. (No, the late William F. Buckley wasn’t a Republican from Ipanema, I meant Rest In Peace)

I think the writer(s) failed. It’s no wonder people are screaming at each other.


(I have to include this disclaimer: Please try to see the humor in the above piece and for gosh sakes, laugh a little. There is plenty of time for crying later on.)

Voting on Saturday

I wonder how many people know why we hold our national elections on the first Tuesday in November. I’ll tell you a little later, but I want you to try to guess what the reason was way back when the United States of America was formed.

We have over 300 million citizens in this country, and around 75 percent of them are eligible to vote. However, in the last presidential election, as important as it was, only about 125 million, slightly over half of those eligible, voted. That is a disgrace!

I have tried in the past to convince our federal government to allow Internet voting, but it has fallen on deaf ears. One thing many states have done, including my current one, Georgia, is to allow early voting. This is a great help, since it alleviates crowding at the polling places. Even so, I had to wait in a pretty long line when I voted early in the last presidential election in 2008. I can’t imagine what it would have been like had early voting not been allowed.

My original idea on online voting was probably thought to be insecure from tampering, although I thought it would be easy enough to use Social Security number and a secure password to log in. I have voted my proxy votes for my stock holdings for years in a similar manner, and it works very nicely.

There have been numerous disputed ballots from overseas, especially those absentee ballots from our troops stationed in remote areas of the world. I truly believe that the disallowed ballots changed the results of several elections, and cost at least one United States Senator his seat.

Online voting would have validated those late ballots and those without postmarks on them. I certainly hope that we do have the opportunity to vote online someday.

Okay, that is enough time to keep you guessing. I must confess that the reason I know the answer to my original question above is that it was the answer to a Jeopardy question.

The reason election day is the first Tuesday in November is to allow rural folk to finish the harvest and to get to and from the polling place without having to travel on a Sunday. How antiquated is that?

Don’t you agree with me that we could get a lot more people to vote if we changed the day for election to a Saturday. After all, polls are open from 7 AM until 7 PM, and most working people work between 8 AM and 5 PM. That makes it improbable or impossible for a working stiff to get to the polling place and vote for about 10 of those 12 hours.

Anyone who starts work at 8 or 9 AM would be hard pressed to vote before going to work. Lines at the polling places are always long between 5 and 7 PM. After a hard day at work, would you forego or delay your dinner to go stand in a long line to vote?

It’s no wonder our voting percentage is so low. Saturday voting would possibly boost the numbers closer to 200 million.

Useful Car Tips

My column this week will be all about car tips. I have already given some of them to you, but this is a compilation of all the ones I’ve gained over the years, plus some I just recently learned.

I know that we all buy our vehicles and start driving them without ever referring to that booklet they put on the glove compartment called “The Owner’s Manual.” That is too bad, because there is a wealth of information in there that save gas, engine wear and tear, and lives.

In case you want to question my authority to be giving advice, I once drove for Greyhound as an over-the-road bus driver. I’ve never forgotten the training and tips I was given as a driver for Greyhound, and many of the ones you will read here go back that far.

Tip 1 – Always drive with your seat belt fastened, especially if your car is equipped with airbags. That goes for driver and passengers. When an airbag inflates and the person in front of it is not wearing a seat belt, severe injury can result, including suffocation and broken bones. I know that seems weird, but the force of that airbag, combined with your forward motion, can create tremendous impact. Buckle up for safety is a good rule.

Tip 2 – When you turn on your air conditioner (I guess all newer autos are equipped with an A/C) on a hot day, I’ll bet you turn it to “Max A/C” to get the coldest air. Wrong! Use the normal A/C first to exchange the hot air in the passenger compartment with the outside air coming through the fluid that is in the A/C to cool it down. Once you get to a reasonable temperature in the inside, then switch to “Max A/C” to recycle the cold air. From then on, no outside air will come through the vents, only the already cooled air inside the vehicle.

I also recommend that when you get into a hot vehicle, you roll down the windows before you turn on the A/C and get the really super-heated air out while you drive the first few hundred yards. Then turn on the A/C just before you roll the windows back up.

Tip 3 – When you are driving in any kind of precipitation, and whenever you are using windshield wipers, put your headlights on. It makes your vehicle more visible to other drivers both ahead of and behind you. If it is snowing, and your lights against the snow tends to blind you, then use your parking lights instead, but have some lights on. Taillights are especially useful, if traffic is heavy or if it is also foggy or in blowing snow.

Tip 4 – If you drive with automatic shift, learn to use the numbered gears or the “standard’ Drive—the one without the circle around it. It gives you more control of your vehicle when you are on steep downgrades or on any wet or slippery pavement. That in turn saves you from skids and also saves your brakes. If you shift from overdrive to standard drive just before you get on a downhill grade of 5 or 6 percent, you will notice that you don’t have to use your brakes at all most of the way down the hill. The engine will act as a brake for you. I guarantee that you will also feel more in control.

If you drive one of those “funny cars’ with a standard gear shift, then the same tip applies, but in this case, just shift down one gear to achieve the same effects. The top gear is like an overdrive, so the next one down will give you the control and braking you need.

Tip 5 – If you like to go “a little bit above the posted speed limit” here is a tip for you. Due to the inaccuracy of speedometers, most police officers, even those with radar units, will give you a little leeway. If you have a GPS device in your car, you will probably see that it doesn’t agree with the speed on your in-dash speedometer. The GPS will probably read 2-3 miles below the speedometer.

I trust the GPS, and I use it as my guide to the correct speed. On the interstate highways, I usually drive about 3 miles over the posted speed, but I have gone past many police units using radar guns at 5 miles above, and I’ve never been stopped for speeding.

I wouldn’t try the above on a country road or in any populated area along those roads. Obey the posted speed limit to the letter there, or even go a few miles below the speed limit. We all know about speed traps, so be forewarned.

Here is just one more tip about speeding and radar... If you spot a cop up ahead in the median, and it looks like he has a radar gun trained on you, please resist the temptation to hit the brakes. That is a dead giveaway that you are probably speeding, and he already has your speed on the gun. He is more likely to let you get away with a few miles over the limit if you don’t react at all.

I hope these tips were helpful, and that you learned something today that you can apply to your enjoyment of driving.

Take the Pledge

I have seen a lot of pledges going out over the Ethernet recently, and now I have one for you. I’ll get to it in a moment, but first I want to explain what brought about my change in attitude.

If you are anything like me, you get about 20 emails per day. Half of them are probably political or religious messages from friends and family, which, although interesting and informative, leave some doubt as to their authenticity or veracity. If you are tempted to forward them on to other friends and family, you should first check them out at either www.snopes.com. or www.truthorfiction.com to determine if they are merely urban legends.

I try to use one or both of the Websites before I forward, but that takes up more time. Then, there is the new dilemma: both of the fact-check sites are under attack as being biased, so we cannot absolutely trust them to be accurate either.

The messages I hate are those that have a warning at the end that you have to “...forward this message to at least 10 people.” Those messages come with a reward/punishment for your actions. I usually delete those messages—I’ve always seen them before anyway—before I get through the first paragraph.

The political messages are especially silly, because most of you already know my position on the current political scene. It also agrees with about 99 percent of the people with whom I correspond. Therefore, I don’t need to see the message, nor does anyone in that circle of friends. It is called preaching to the choir.

On the other hand, those of my email friends and personal friends who do not agree with me on politics or religion don’t want to see those messages anyway. They are not going to read and heed them, because they have their own ideas and positions. What is more, some consider them offensive. One person replied to one of my forwards this past week with a request that I remove him from my list of contacts.

I could go on, but I think you get my message by this time. If not, here it is, loud and clear—QUIT SENDING THOSE KIND OF MESSAGES TO ME!

Now, the pledge:
· I, (insert full name here), pledge that for the next month, I will delete every message of questionable value or truth.
· I will not forward any message that praises or slanders any political, religious, ethnic or racial person or group, whether true or false.
· Withstanding the two tests above, I will not forward any message of more than four paragraphs or 250 words, regardless of content.
· If I have occasion to send a message longer than four paragraphs or 250 words, I will forward it as an attachment, warning recipients of the content and length in the body of the message text. The recipient is then at liberty to open the attachment or delete the message.

I will be the first signatory to the pledge. During the entire month of August, 2009, I will apply the pledge to every message I receive. However, I hope that messages of that type will be fewer in number. I trust that you will sign, or otherwise commit to the pledge, too.

Maybe we will decide that the pledge needs to be extended indefinitely.

Government Health Care

We are being moved by the president and the Congress toward universal health care. On that we can all agree. And although President Obama is once again calling for speed of passage—even though the implementation isn’t scheduled for four years—more and more of the American people are rising up in protest. Their representatives in Congress are constantly assailed with petitions, faxes, emails and letters from constituents that are urging caution and delay. The more we learn about the 1,018-page bill, the more we find objectionable about it.

Here are two points that I haven’t seen explored yet, but both are terribly important in the debate over universal health care. The first is history that explains why health care costs are where they are today. The second is a projection that will shock you, because it is my estimate of where a lot of the money to pay for the program will be found.

Pretend for a moment that you run a business that provides a service. Further, assume that it costs you $1,000 in wages, benefits, payroll taxes, retirement, and materials in order to provide that service. Now let’s compare two customers for whom you provide your service in exactly the same manner.

When it comes time for the customer to pay you, the bill for each is $1,100 (you do want to make some profit, of course) and Customer A pays the full amount with no complaints. However, Customer B wants to haggle over the bill, and agrees to pay you only $600. You object to the amount, but you know that this customer will give you a lot of referrals for future business, and besides, he is adamant that $600 in the maximum he will pay for your service. You finally agree to accept that amount.

You just provided $2,000 worth of service, but you only received $1,700 for it, so you are now in the hole $300 instead of being up by $200. You also now know that any referrals from Customer B will likely only be willing to pay $600. How are you going to make up the difference so that you can operate at a profit?

Of course, you are going to raise the price for everyone by a few hundred dollars, with full knowledge that not everyone will pay that much. You hope that enough will pay the new amount to make up for those who will not pay what providing the service costs you.

The new price is raised incrementally to $1,500. Customer B and all of his referrals will not pay that amount, but will pay $600. And by the way, Customer B is influential enough that he can put you out of business if you refuse service to his friends.

If we make the service provider you run a hospital, a clinic, or a doctor’s office, then we can identify Customer B as a Medicare/Medicaid patient, and customer A as anyone else who either pays out-of-pocket or has a private health insurance plan.

Health care costs didn’t start to rise until the late 1960s, just after President Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law, and they really took off when Medicaid was added. I know, because I still have the bill form the hospital where my son was born in 1966. The total amount for a four-day stay, mother and child, was under $200. By 1971, when my daughter was born at the same hospital, the cost had already increased fivefold. Ask yourself how much it would cost today with even the normal two-day stay.

Now you know why it costs so much in both premiums and deductibles to use private health care. I also know why the hospital charged me $90,000 for an outpatient surgery, but Medicare only paid about $30,000 of that amount. Who do you suppose paid the balance? The same situation exists for doctors and other health care providers.

Now I’ll disclose that second point. This one you can ignore if you aren’t on Medicare and don’t have any parents who are on, or about to join Medicare. That probably doesn’t dismiss very many of you.

If the universal health care plan does go into effect, what do you suppose will happen to current Medicare/Medicaid patients? Well, we really already know, because they are specifically addressed in the bill before Congress. They will be placed into the same program as all other citizens. And whatever premiums are finally agreed upon for those in the government plan—it really isn’t “free” you know—Medicare patients will have to pay the same rates.

Now ask yourself a few questions here.
1. Will premiums for Medicare Part B go down, go up, or stay the same?
2. Will premiums for Medicare Part A be added?
3. How does the government collect those premiums?
4. Will your Social Security be affected by universal health care?
5. Who will now pay the increased costs of treatment described above?
6. What is the only means of saving money in government health care?

I think you get the idea that seniors are going to be hit hardest by the new health care, because they will pay higher premiums and will receive less treatment. The reason I included those of you who have parents on Medicare is because you are probably going to have to do more to support your parents, not just with health care costs, but with every day costs. Too.

If you followed this to its conclusion, you must know that the decrease in payments and in treatments is going to put a lot of health care providers—especially specialists and surgeons—either out of business, or out of country. That will make even allowed services much harder to find and will increase the waiting time of everyone. Does anyone in Congress even try to listen to anecdotal evidence from Brits, Canadians, Australians or those from any country that currently has national health care? IT DOESN”T WORK THERE, AND IT WON’T WORK HERE!!!!

Lest we forget them, there will be a few winners in this universal health care, but even they are only partial winners. I am referring to the undocumented immigrants and those who are on Medicaid. They will probably not have to pay any more than they do now for their medical treatment—nothing. However, they will lose under the rationing of services and the lack of qualified doctors.

The Next Civil War

One of the first things I learned when I entered the military (USAF) in 1956 was that our American civil War—also known as either The War Between The States, or The Northern Aggression—was still raging on.

Yes, ninety-one years after General Robert E. Lee signed the formal surrender of the Army Of Northern Virginia to Ulysses Grant’s Army of the Potomac, there was still some doubt as to the outcome of that four-year struggle.

I had never been exposed to the Southern sentimentality before that time. Heck, I hadn’t ever been below the Mason-Dixon line. It took me only a short time to realize that there were some “foreigners” in our midst. But then, come to think of it, I was the foreigner, since I took my boot camp at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, Texas.

The reason I bring up the subject is that it ties into my topic for this week; and that topic is indirectly tied to one that I posted a some time ago, the writing of The Battle Hymn of The Republic. I received a response to that column that linked to a website of vitriolic invective (whew, I love big words) regarding the penning of that famous song.

A fellow named Michael Dan Jones was the website author, and he was highly critical of Julia Ward Howe and of the song she wrote. I will include the link so that you can read them if you choose. http://www.plpow.com/Atrocities_BattleHymn.htm.

It is apparent that the Civil War (or whatever you choose to call it) is still going on for some people, including Mr. Jones.

One of the more fascinating facts about The Battle Hymn of the Republic is that I have listened to several versions of it, and the word ‘transfigures’ is rarely pronounced as it should be, with the ‘urs’ sounding like the word ‘yours.’ Instead, it is pronounced as ‘ers.’

I got curious and looked up the word in the dictionary, since I really didn’t know its meaning. Here is Webster’s definition:
1. To change the form or appearance of
2. To transform so as to glorify
If I interpret that correctly, transfiguration is the change in appearance of Jesus so that his body actually glows and his head is encircled by a halo; he is beatified. If that is so, then I suppose Julia Ward Howe actually believed that the Union soldiers would be Transfigured by their very act of fighting in the war. Now that’s a little overboard to me.

If I can believe what I hear from the current members of the military, things haven’t changed much in the fifty odd years since I enlisted in the Air Force, and there is still some rivalry today over the North-South alliances. I wonder how much animosity there is going to be over the next four years with a black president who seems to fan the fires of discontent on an almost daily basis.

We may yet have another civil war in this country, but it won’t be North versus South this time. It may well be either a political or a racial war. I hope I’m wrong, but I do see a lot of signs and I hear a lot of talk about it every day. President Obama and his party are not helping with all their baiting and class warfare.

If you are prone to prayer, you had better pray for some peace and understanding in this land in the coming days. Otherwise, Battle Hymn of the Republic might well become a national anthem once again.