Reflections on 2014

This is my final entry for the year, so I thought I would try to make it my annual newsletter, or what passes for same.  I promise not to make it too boring, but you always have the delete button if it does get out of hand..

First of all I want to get something off my chest that bothers me more and more every year.  We are truly becoming a society of nerds.  We only seem to socialize with each other through electronic communicators; nobody actually interacts with their friends and relatives.  A stunning example is the paucity of Christmas Cards we received this year.  Judy sent out over thirty cards, but we only got a dozen cards in the mail from those same people who used to send one every year.  Of course, we got lots of email cards with family pictures attached and warm Christmas greetings via some artist or computer geek - Jackie Lawson comes to mind - but those just don't convey the same meaning as a snail mail card that somebody had to select, add their greetings and signature to and then seal and stamp it for posting.  It just isn't the same, folks!

We did our usual road-tripping this year which included four separate trips. If you get my trip journals, you'll know where we went, but there were a few that didn't make it into the journal stage.  One of the most fun ones was the trip up to Niagara Falls with the son and grand kids.  That one included a reptile and dinosaur zoo and a day at an amusement park that actually has no admission fee, just per-ride tickets and very reasonably priced at that.

I didn't have any heath episodes this year, but Judy did have a bit of a scare and was the one I took to the ER for a change instead of the other way around.  It turned out to be a temporary and curable type illness, so everything is back to normal now.

My daughter, Cathy, has had super success with her cottage industry in scrapbooking, and is always busy filling online sales of video tutorials as well as her scrapbook creations.  The scrapbooks bring some amazing bids, but then, they are masterpieces, if I may boast a bit here.  Cathy has built a nice little business for herself.  You can see some of her scrapbooks and tutorial samples by doing a search using the words, "So much scrap" (without the quotation marks) in your favorite search engine.  They really are beautiful.

We decided to trade in the Toyota Sienna van back in February, and bought a RAV4 to replace it.  We've had some adjustment problems, but are learning to appreciate the new SUV more each time we travel in it.  We just can't take along as much as we used to, but it gets great mileage and drives like a dream - so Judy tells me; I've never gotten behind the wheel.

I still haven't gotten to attend The Masters Golf  Tournament, although I've been in the raffle for several years.  I did, however, get to go on the grounds this spring to watch the Drive, Pitch and Putt Competition.  Jeff, my son-in-law went with me and we spent several hours enjoying the course.  Jeff is the avid golfer, so I know he wants to get in there to watch the actual pros play someday.  I've already lost out for 2015, but will keep on trying.  I'm just too cheap to pay up to $1,000 for a one-day pass, though.

The grandson here in Augusta went through a few employers this past year, but is now firmly ensconced at Lowe's, working mostly in the Paint Department and doing a fine job there.  His hours aren't all that he would like, but at least the pay is good for those he does work and he is building skills for himself.

I trust that everyone has had a wonderful Christmas and is celebrating the holidays with friends and family.  I look forward to a new year full of promise and adventure and I hope you do too.  Keep on counting your blessings, try not to have any regrets and we'll be just fine. 

Happy New Year!

What's in a Name?

I've lived in the state of Georgia (U. S., that is) for a little over eight years now, and I've traveled extensively throughout the state.  One thing I have noted, or rather, not noted, is the vast peach orchards along my routes of travel.  In fact, I cannot recall seeing even one peach tree in this state much less a whole peach orchard.  And yet, Georgia's nickname is "The Peach State."  In Atlanta alone, there are 55 streets with the name "Peachtree" in them.  Many other towns and cities on Georgia have similarly named streets and avenues.

I've also traveled through our neighboring state, South Carolina, and have seen literally thousands of peach trees there.  Just drive up Route 25 from North Augusta to Greenwood and from there on to Laurens and you'll see orchards lining both sides of the road most of the way, all peaches.

Georgia has never been a leader in the growth and production of peaches. The state now ranks first among the 50 states in the production of peanuts, pecans, lima beans and pimiento peppers.  Do you see peaches listed there?  No, and you won't see any ancient or dead orchards either.

So, the question is, how did Georgia come to be known as "The Peach State", of more Accurately, "The Peach Tree State"?

The name goes all the way back to the colonies.  One of Georgia's first exports was pine tar, the harvested resin of the tree now known as the Georgia Pine.  Pine tar was very important in shipbuilding, as it was used to seal the joints and crevasses between the boards on wooden sailing vessels.  Because of this plentiful and useful commodity, it is just as likely that Georgia would have been called "The Pitch Tree State", but who would want that appellation to attract people to their state?

There is another possible origin in the name of a Native American (Creek) village that once existed near Atlanta.  It was called "Standing Pitch Tree."  Where that name came from, nobody seems to know.  Perhaps if we had left the Creeks alone, hadn't marched them on the "Trail of Tears" over to Oklahoma, one of their descendants could tell us about it, or even give us a tour of the village.

It was very easy to use the southern drawl to change the pronunciation of the word pitch to peach, an attractive and tasty fruit that everybody likes. When you also drop the word "tree" from it, there is no longer any association with the pine tree.  And what better name to get people to either migrate to Georgia, or to come for a visit?  Once they get here, they just forget that it was peaches that first attracted them to this idyllic place, and they can always buy some in the local farmers markets (imported from South Carolina, of course).

I think the next thing I might tackle is the origin of the state nicknames of Iowa and Kansas.  Oh, and I already know that Maine is appropriately called the "Pine Tree State", but that conjures up a lot better mental image than "Pitch Tree State".

Atlantic Lobster Lobbing

 Note: all the factual material for this column was gleaned from a Fox News article that also cites two British news sources, the Daily Mail and the Yorkshire Post.  The opinions that follow, however, are solely my own, independent of those media outlets.

*****

Fishermen off the Northern English Coast have been finding a lot of Canadian lobsters in their nets recently.  The lobsters are not native to those waters and, in fact, live off the Canadian Coast some 3,500 miles distant.  How did they get all the way to England?, you ask.  Well, one big clue is that many of them have rubber bands attached to their pincers.  That would indicate that they were netted near the Canadian Coast and were intended for someone's dinner table.

The supposition is that passengers aboard Atlantic-crossing cruise ships have been busy buying the crustaceans and then throwing them overboard as the ship approaches jolly old England. It is a probably a misguided mission to 'save' the creatures. 

Of course, there are two salient facts that prove the practice to be fruitless - or should I say 'lobster-less'.  First, the lobsters are not the same breed as their counterparts in those waters, so they cannot "...be fruitful and multiply."   And second, leaving the bands around their pincers disables their hunting and eating opportunities, so they soon starve to death, unless caught by those pesky English fishermen for eating enjoyment on their own dinner tables.

There are other bad implications involved with the transport and tossing of contraband crustaceans.  Among them are the transmittal of North American lobster disease to their distant cousins in Europe; possibly a payback for the diseases that the European settlers gave to the Native Americans a few hundred years ago, but on a smaller scale.

I really liked what one fishing industry spokesman had to say on the subject of lobster littering. “They won’t last much longer than if the passengers had eaten them for dinner.” He also proclaimed that they were "cheap Canadian lobster", so I guess the English are not so fond of them after all.

Now, if we could just round up some of those feckless fish-freedom fighters, those seafaring seafood saviors, I think they would be marvelous candidates for the 2014 Darwin Award.  I know, they didn't die in the act, but their refusal to dine on one of nature's prime culinary crustaceans surely qualifies them as bottom breeders themselves and prone to early extinction.

And now, a poem for the occasion...

The lobster is a tasty food,

They look so cool and taste so good.

They boil to red from blue real quick,

But 'seasoned' wrong, they make you sick.

Post Script - My dear wife says that I will probably piss off some people with this column, because they won't understand the irony or sarcasm.  However, rest assured that I had my tongue firmly planted in my cheek the entire time I was typing, and my use of alliteration should give it away as well.  If you found it funny, feel free to forward it to friends and family.

Donations That Give 100-percent

'Tis the Season, again, to celebrate our bountiful and beautiful blessings by giving to others less fortunate than ourselves.  Last year I made this an annual column in support of charity and good will toward men (and women).  In that spirit, here are some tips on how best to donate.

It is just the beginning of December and I've already seen the urban legend that details the salaries of all those 'greedy CEOs' of some of our largest and most known charities.  Well, be advised that the message is not only false, but horribly outdated. The people named in the message have long since gone their separate ways, and the salaries cited are far from what they actually earned while they were heads of those charities. 

However,there certainly are a lot of expenses involved with some well known charitable organizations that eat up our donations before they ever get to the intended recipients. If you care to see what percentage of donations get to those in need, charitynavigator.org is one of several online sites that rate them. Another one is the Forbes website, and a third, and possibly the best of the three is Guidestar.org because it actually has its own tips for choosing a charity. 

Here are some neat ways to provide for those in need and feel good about doing it on a personal, hometown level.  You don't even have to donate through a charity, so there is no middle man in many cases.

Most department stores have a layaway plan that enables people to pay for Christmas gifts in increments.  However, people who have to purchase in that fashion are likely doing so because they aren’t able to afford payment in a lump sum. 

You can aid people anonymously on a selective basis to pay off their layaway purchases.  Don’t just blindly pay on someone’s layaway account, but try to do some investigation (perhaps with the department manager) as to what is on layaway and to whom the gifts will go.  Maybe the manager will have some useful input as to the financial situation of some of the people who have gifts on layaway.  In one case cited in an article I read, the person in need was one of the store employees who had recently lost her husband and was providing for several kids.

Of course, there are other ways that you can donate so that some little boy or girl will get a gift.  The best ones I can think of are the United States Marines’ Toys for Tots program and the Angel Tree (Salvation Army) that is usually in the vestibule of Wal-Mart, Kmart or Target stores. And there is always the red kettle and bell ringer of the Salvation Army. Donate to these programs if you want to donate but cannot afford a large amount.

Another way to make your donation count is available at most grocery stores.  The local food banks that feed the homeless and needy have suffered from the economic woes we’ve experienced in recent years. When you check out with your food items, you can also donate in increments to the food banks.  For as little as $5 you can provide a full meal to someone who might otherwise have slipped through the cracks and either isn’t eligible or has not applied for assistance. A lot of our disabled vets are in this category for one reason or another.

If you go to McDonalds and get change for your purchase, put it in the glass box in front of the cash register and it will go to the Ronald McDonald House, another worthy cause. The proceeds are used to give comfort and care to sick children and their families and provide temporary living quarters for those who do not reside in the area where hospital care is given.

Don't forget that all donations to qualified non-profit charitable organizations can be used as deductions from your taxable income if you use Schedule A for itemized deductions. (Get a valid receipt from the organization, if the donation is $250 or over.)  My wife and I do not use Schedule A anymore, so that means we are not able to take advantage of that tax break.  It doesn't make us less willing to give, but it is an incentive for some people.  We've even found a way to bestow the tax break on our children.

I give each of my adult kids a cash gift with the suggestion that they pass that gift on to their own favorite charities.  Since both of them do itemize deductions, they will also be able to use the deduction to reduce their taxes for 2014.  Those charitable gifts will give three ways:  1) I know that I've given a significant sum to charity, 2) My children have also donated and, 3) There is a tax break for them on April 15th of 2015.  It is a win-win for all and it is perfectly legal.

Whatever the gift, if you are blessed with some spare cash and want to make a difference, I cannot think of a better way to do it than to use one of these vehicles to donate and get the biggest “bang for the buck.”

And remember that charity doesn’t have to be a Christmastime activity. As the song, The Secret of Christmas concludes, “...it’s not the things you do at Christmas time, but the Christmas things you do all year through.”

Haunted Pillar Aftermath

If you read last week's column and you watched American Super Natural in The Weather Channel last Sunday night, you might be able to follow the topic of this column.  You see, there is a follow up to my experience with the Haunted Pillar of Augusta

I related that I touched the pillar while we were there, but that was a little white lie, so I shouldn't have brought the curse upon myself.  Well, at least I haven't died or gotten deathly sick or had any of those other supernatural events happen directly to me.

However, on Sunday night while the program was in progress on television we were under a thunderstorm warning with predictions for high winds and heavy rainfall.  We did hear the rain and wind, but I thought no more about it until we woke up this morning and looked out the windows.

This is what we saw.

The leaves brought down by the late night storm covered everything, including roofs of the houses two blocks from the forest behind our house.  My wife had used our leaf blower on Saturday to clear all that leaves from our driveway and patio, so all of this was brand new fall.

Here is what my house and car looked like after the storm.  You can't see them all, but

there are leaves plastered to the side of the house, the windows and the pillars out front as well.

On the local newscasts later in the day there were reports of wind damage, including roofs and siding that same off buildings in Augusta. It wasn't a tornado, but there was definitely "a mighty wind" that struck simultaneously with the airing of the program.

Was it the curse of Haunted Pillar that brought about this mess?  Maybe not, but then, my daughter lives only a few miles from here, and they didn't even know there was a storm in the area.  Their house, which also has lots of trees behind it, had no such litter around it.  Spooky!!!

One more thing . . . I wrote about seeing spirits near the Haunted Pillar in the previous WW Column, but I didn't explain about them.  If you watched the show Sunday night you might have seen that the store across the street from the Haunted Pillar is a liquor store.  They have plate glass windows and lots of spirits there, so it isn't uncommon to see them from the pillar.

In case you missed American Super Natural last Sunday night, "Augusta's Tornado Talisman" is being shown again at Midnight on Tuesday, December 2nd on The Weather Channel.  If you have the ability to record it, you can still see it.  Michael Wolff, our trolley tour guide, is featured prominently in the show.

The Haunted Pillar of Augusta

I recently went on a nighttime tour of downtown Augusta, Georgia on the HistoricTrolley Tour of Augusta.  Well, actually my barbershop quartet performed on the tour, but we were also treated to the sights and accompanying history of the city.

We learned about the Great Fire of Augusta in 1916, which burned most of the downtown district.  We also got to know about the "Resurrection Man" of Augusta and why there is a mass grave in the Cedar Grove Cemetery which contains the bones of approximately 600 of his post-mortem victims,. And we visited the statue of one of Augusta's favorite sons, singer James Brown, who was born and raised here in less-than-favorable conditions..

One of the stops along our tour route was the boyhood home of our 28th President, Woodrow Wilson, which shares the claim to his childhood with Columbia, SC, some 70 miles distant.  Actually, Wilson (1856-1924) was born in Staunton, VA and his family moved to Augusta in 1860 and then on to Columbia in 1871, so all three cities have title to 'his boyhood home' claims.

One of the highlights of the tour is the Haunted Pillar that stands at 5th and Broad Streets.   I'm not going to attempt to write a complete (?) history of the pillar, but the link above is there if you care to read it.  Alternately, you can just read the sign pictured below, which marks where the Lower Market once stood.

The story we heard from our tour guide, Michael, is that a preacher, also known in those days as an "exhorter", came to Augusta and stood in the marketplace to spread the gospel. His unrepentant audience got quite annoyed and they soon surrounded him and backed him up against one of the support pillars for the building. The preacher leaned on the pillar and put his curse on it,. He also is said to have predicted that, "...a great wind will come and destroy this structure and the only thing left standing will be this pillar."

Well, according to legend, the "great wind" didn't arrive until several years later. In 1878, a tornado, then called a cyclone, came tearing into Augusta from the west. It cut a zigzag swath through the city and eventually came to the Lower Market, where it proceeded to tear asunder the whole building with the exception of the pillar where that preacher had proclaimed the curse. 

The pillar was moved from its location in the center of the square to the corner where it now stands, but it is said that those who moved, or even tried to move or tear it down in subsequent years met with fatal accidents including being struck by lightning, auto accidents and even a bull dozer falling off its trailer and crushing the offending would-be mover.

Even today there are those who believe that the pillar is still haunted and anyone going near it is cautioned not to touch it.  While our tour group was there, someone shouted from across the street, "Don't touch it!"  It really is fascinating.

If you want to read a more complete history just click on the link above, but you can also learn about it on The Weather Channel.  Tomorrow night, Sunday, November 23, there will be an entire segment on the Haunted Pillar of Augusta at 10 PM on American Super/Natural.  Either tune in, or record it for future viewing, but I know you'll enjoy it.

If you ever come to Augusta, be sure to book one of the Trolley Tours as part of your visit.  There are several theme tours, but most of them involve the strange places and events that shaped the early history of the city.  Even the natives of Augusta should take at least one tour to learn all of the interesting facts and legends about the second oldest city in Georgia.

Just for the record, I did touch the Haunted Pillar and even had my picture taken there with the quartet and the tour narrator, but I'm still here, maybe because I didn't try to move it.  And by the way, even if you are a non-believer, you can still see spirits near the Haunted Pillar. I was there and I swear that I saw some.

A 35-year-old Mystery Solved

I recently read a book titled Airframe, written by the late Michael Crichton. It is a work of fiction, but Mr. Crichton used some factual incidents to highlight his fictional story. One of those concerned AA191, a DC-10 that crashed with total loss of life shortly after takeoff from O'Hare Airport in Chicago enroute to Los Angeles in May of 1979. 

When I read that chapter, I was transported back thirty-five years and learned in the space of three pages the final NTSB findings on the causes of the accident.  Until this week, I had never known what those findings were.

Do I believe author Crichton was writing the accurate story?  Since the book is a work of fiction, I can't say for certain, but I do know that he was known for his very thorough research of factual matters so, yes, I do believe his account.

So, what brought down not only American flight 191, but also the company that built the airplane?  That's right, according to Crichton, McDonnell-Douglas never sold another DC-10, nor any other wide-body airliner after that accident, and the production line was only ten years old at the time. I don't want to plagiarize, but I will try to summarize the accident.

Since I am not a pilot, I am not sure that my terminology will be correct.  For instance, the cockpit controls are sometimes referred to as the console, panel or pedestal, and that steering wheel the pilot and first officer use can be the yoke, the column or the stick.  I believe the terms are interchangeable, but if I'm wrong about that, I trust you jet jockeys will forgive my error.

Initially, the accident was blamed on poor maintenance procedures by American Airlines in that the company ignored warnings and advisories from the manufacturer about the removal of engines with the pylons attached. Pylons are those vertical structures that hold the engine to the wing.  Continental Airlines had  discovered cracks in the pylons when their mechanics removed the engine-pylon assembly as a unit.  This was reported to AA, but it was never acted upon to change the procedure.  That fact was critical, but not fatal.

When the left engine-pylon separated from the wing, it immediately shut off power to the Captain's side of the flight console.  It also disabled the audible stall warning system and the stick shaker, a visual warning that the airplane is going into a stall attitude.  The Captain then became a spectator to the subsequent events.

This is where is got weird.  The DC-10 was built with redundant systems, so it should have been able to withstand the catastrophe and the crew should have been able to gain control, turn the plane around and land back at O'Hare Field. The secondary cause of the accident was an event cascade of errors and wrong choices.  None of those backup systems was activated by the crew, and the First Officer even worsened the odds for survival.

The Flight Engineer, the third man in the cockpit, could have thrown a switch on his panel and restored power to the Captain's pedestal, but for some reason, he didn't do that. Of course, the whole sequence from rotation (liftoff) to impact took only about thirty seconds, so maybe there just wasn't enough time to diagnose the problem and react.

The First Officer did not have a stick shaker, it was an optional item on the left side of

the console which American Airlines had turned down, so he was unaware of the true situation.  He didn't have visual perspective on the engine separation, so he did the exact opposite of what he should have - he decreased power instead of increasing it.  That boosted the stall effect and the plane banked into the lighter left wing, rotating a full 180 degrees onto its back before it impacted the ground.  The results were catastrophic!  273 passengers and crew perished that day.

American immediately grounded all DC-10s.  The final National Transportation Safety Board report was not released until seven months later after extensive investigation. The fact that it was released just four days before Christmas on December 21st only added to the mystery, because few people if any paid any attention to the accident summary.  Until this past week, I was completely unaware of it.

The final chapter on this story is that the DC-10 was phased out of all commercial service over the next few years.  It was still used extensively by Fedex for freight transport and by the USAF as a mid-air fueling platform, but as a passenger plane, it was finished by the middle of the next decade. 

I must confess that I rode in the DC-10 on many occasions, and it was a beautiful aircraft not deserving of the fate that befell it due to a single accident that was no fault of the manufacturer, but rather attributable to a series of poor choices over a thirty-second span.  The DC-10 was built to withstand the events that occurred that fateful day, but for unknown reasons, the action to prevent the crash was never initiated.  It cost dearly in lives and spelled the beginning of the end for McDonnell-Douglas.

The Tragedy We Live With

I recently watched a video of Glen Campbell singing his last song, I'm Not Gonna Miss You in a poignant, but recognizable voice. (You have to watch an ad to get to the video, but be patient.)   And it really is his last song, because he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, and his memory is apparently fading fast.  The song is from his recently released film, I'll Be Me, which chronicles his disease and his life before Alzheimer's.

With a title like that, you wouldn't know that it's a love song, but it is, and I'll explain why it is in the column today.

While watching the video and listening to the very meaningful words, I was reminded of my mother-in-law, who was never said to have Alzheimer's, but did suffer Dementia, literally the same thing as far as I'm concerned.  She spent the last ten years of her life in a nursing home, but most of that time she had no idea where she was.

One of the effects of Alzheimer's Disease is that you lose all of your memory, including that of your relatives and friends.  Each time we visited Marge, she became more confused as to who we were, and she would refer to Judy as her sister or her mother at times.  Of course, eventually she didn't know either of us and it really became painful to visit her in those times.

One thing Marge did retain was the memory of her husband, Judy's father, who died several years prior to his wife of over 60 years.  In fact, even while Marge was losing her ability to call us by name, she would often greet us with, "Oh, you just missed Lyle. He left for work a few minutes ago."  Yes, she seemed to always have a continuing life with Lyle, even though he had passed on years before. 

I think that is what Glen Campbell's song refers to in the title and the lyrics. Even though his friends and relatives are no longer in his memory. he will not have to grieve over losing them, just as Marge never grieved over losing Lyle.  In some peculiar way, that is a blessing of Alzheimer's, if one can count it as such.

Mr. Campbell, arguably one of the best Country/Western singers and guitar players ever, was admitted to an Alzheimer's clinic earlier this year, so I'm Not Gonna Miss You will truly be his last song. It is reminiscent of Eric Clapton's song, When I See You In Heaven, written and sung by him after the accidental death of his young son.  Yes, listening to it might bring a tear or two to your eye, but both are songs of hope, not sadness.

Best Senior Joke Ever

I'm not really out of ideas, but I saw one of the most ironic and funny jokes about old people this week, and I just have to share it.  It's been around on the Internet for at least ten years, but I hope you'll like it as much as I did.

Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my own pants.

Since food was mentioned, have you noticed that, despite the fact that we are becoming the world's most obese people, the fast food chains are advertising even bigger meals with more and more calories?   Heck, you don't even have to ask to be "super-sized" anymore . . . everything you buy comes in twos or in a double something.

It reminds me of a guy I worked with once who was about five sizes too large to begin with, but he came to work one day and said that he bought that 5-for-$5 deal at Arby's and complained that he had trouble eating all those roast beef sandwiches for lunch.  Well, Duh!

I went into McDonald's for my senior coffee this morning, and on the breakfast menu they advertised a "Big Breakfast" that consisted of scrambled eggs, three pancakes, sausage, hash browns and a large biscuit.  Total calories for that monster - 1,090.  You need to walk for over five hours to work off all those calories. It also has 2150 grams of sodium, a real heart stopper. But what person that eats one of those meals exercises afterwards.  And we wonder why there are so many people who need those motorized wheelchairs to go shopping at Wal*Mart.

Okay, as long as I'm in a cantankerous frame of mind, I may as well get something else off my chest.  I am really saddened by the deterioration of the English language used by our media people on radio and television.  Few can even pronounce the letter 'w' when they give their station call letters - it comes out sounding like 'dub-wool-you'.  Then there are words that are almost always mispronounced.  Examples: asterick for asterisk; effisode for episode; comfterble for comfortable (there are FOUR syllables in that word); nucular for nuclear; ekscape for escape.  There are many more, but those five are ones that really stick out.

As Porky Pig used to say at the end of the cartoon, "Th-the-ah, th-the-ah, th-that's all, folks!" My rant is done, and I hope I entertained you with the little joke to make up for it.

Oh, and don't forget to set your clocks back before you go to bed tonight.  Yes, we're going to gain an hour of sleep.  You know the saying - Spring forward-Fall back.

Missing Money

This column deals with a benefit that 99.9% of eligible beneficiaries either do not know about, or do not take advantage of, and hence, lose a lot of money through no fault of their own.  If you choose not to read it, shame on you.

I recently received my annual letter from my former employer, from which I retired in 1995, to inform me that my retiree health coverage is noncreditable.  What that means is that it is not usable as a replacement for Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage.

The fact is that my prepaid, and therefore premium-free, retiree coverage cannot be used to replace my premium-based Medicare Part D coverage, for which my wife and I pay $1,217 annually.  However, the same letter reminds me that my retiree coverage coordinates benefits with Medicare Part A, B, C and/or D. 

If you are 65 or older and you do not have one of the Advantage plans that coordinates

all Medicare costs,  you  might also have a supplemental plan that has coordination of benefits with Medicare, and that is the reason I wrote this column. 

My supplemental Health insurance plan with United Healthcare guarantees that once I have satisfied the annual deductible of $150 out-of-pocket, any further health care costs will be covered at eighty percent up to $5,000.  My maximum expense is limited to $1,150 of the first $5,000. Beyond that amount different rules and provisions apply, but they don't concern most of us, so I won't go into them here.  Most supplemental health plans are set up in this fashion, so yours is probably similar to mine.

When you visit your doctor, when you are hospitalized, or when you are sent to a clinic for a procedure or test, the bill is first sent to Medicare for payment.  Then it is submitted to your supplemental insurance company for further payment before the unpaid balance is sent to you for payment.

The same billing sequence does not hold true for prescription drugs, though.  They are paid directly from your chosen insurer under Medicare Part D to the supplier of the drugs, and you pay the co-pay amount, usually at time of delivery at the drugstore.  No third party participation takes place.

Why is that important?  It is possible that your supplemental insurer would reimburse you for part of the out-of-pocket costs, and that can be a sizable amount.  If you take any of the non-generic drugs which are always very expensive, you might have to pay up to fifty percent of the cost each time you refill the prescription.  And when you get into the 'donut hole', that stage above the co-pay ($2,850 by 2014 rules; $2,960 in 2015), you pay full cost for those drugs. Your supplemental insurer may cover part of that cost, but you must submit the claim to them to get reimbursed. 

Your next question should be, "How do I do that?"

I'll use my own Medicare Part D provider - Humana Healthcare - and my Medicare supplemental insurance provider - United Healthcare - as my examples, but you should substitute your own insurers. Here is a step-by-step procedure you can follow to claim your reimbursement:

• I call Humana and requested an annual Summary of all Prescription Drug orders.  No matter how many drug stores or mail order providers I used, they will all be summarized at Humana for me in date sequence.
• When I receive the summary in the mail from Humana, I prepare an envelope and a short letter to United Healthcare with my UHC member number, requesting that UHC determine any reimbursement amount and mail me a check for that amount. I send that to United Healthcare.
• When I receive the check from UHC, I deposit it into my bank. It is not taxable income.

It is that easy, but it might be even easier for you.  You might be able to download the annual summary online from your Medicare Part D provider. You should only perform the above steps once per year after the preceding calendar year has expired, so it will likely be done in January or February.

In case you don't think it is worth all that time and effort to collect the reimbursement,

the last time I submitted the Rx summary to United Healthcare, I received a check for almost $2,400, and that was for just one year of prescriptions.  Of course, I have eight prescriptions and two of them are very expensive Stage 3 level drugs.  I usually enter the coverage gap known as the 'donut hole' in June because of those expensive prescriptions.

I'm not going to promise you that you'll get a ton of money back, and some insurers will not go back more than two or three years, but you really should look into it.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

For those of you who are not yet eligible for Medicare, I urge you to find some way to reference this column when you reach age 65, because nobody else is ever going to tell you about this benefit, especially not your health insurer, since it will cost them money

to do so.

When We Were Young

I'm certain that you are probably like me in your tastes, and I am referencing the taste buds, not your aesthetic or lifestyle choices.  Our tactile senses ripen and mature with age just like our mental and emotional ones.  Let me give some examples in my own life...

My wife and I were recently grocery shopping, and we came across a display of huge boxes of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes® for an unbelievably low price.  My memory of the taste of that cereal just kicked in and I grabbed a box and put it in the cart.  Judy looked askance at me and said, "I hope you intend to eat all of those."  I, of course, stated that I would, but I secretly harbored a notion that she would relent and try some, too.  after all, who can resist those crunchy, sugary corn flakes!

Well, when we opened the box for the first time we did share the Frosted Flakes, and we have done so ever since - several times.  It's amazing how far you can stretch one of those family-sized boxes of cereal!  And it is also interesting how different adult taste buds react to something we loved as a kid.  I don't like them as much as I did when I was young, sorry Kellogg   Never again for me.

On our recent trip we were treated to a complimentary breakfast at our hotel every morning.  One morning, there was bacon instead of sausage in the chafing dish, so I decided to try something I haven't had since I was a teenager back home; a sandwich my brothers and I dubbed "the Powgiver".  It was kind of a shortening of the words "power" and "giver", and we had assigned all kinds of mystical attributes to it.  It consisted of two pieces of toast with about four strips of crisp bacon between them - nothing else, not even butter.

Okay, you know the outcome . . . I used up my breakfast appetite on a greasy and mostly tasteless sandwich that didn't recall any of the magic of childhood.  It was, in a word, "blah!"

There is one other breakfast treat from my childhood that I haven't ever been able to find or even come close to duplicating.  My mother used to do a lot of canning, and one of her concoctions was peach butter.  It wasn't anything like what you might sometimes see in a farmers market or grocery store with that label.  This was big chunks of peaches, boiled in simple syrup until it turned thick and orange.  It was great on bread, but we used to put it on waffles with a splash of sweetened condensed milk over it.  It was yummy in the tummy!

I sometimes obsess over waffles and peach butter.  I know my sister has the recipe and has made it in the past, but I've never gotten to share it,  We live several hours apart now.   But I suspect that if I ever did try it, I would be disappointed.  Some things just aren't the same when we get older.  I think I'll just live with my memories of that wonderful meal.

Are You Better Off Now...

We are approaching a November election that promises to be a contentious one at best and a Republican win - predicted by some, but certainly not all prognosticators - in both houses of Congress.  Since it is not a presidential election, the turnout is questionable. That will, in turn affect the results dramatically.  One thing is certain; these elections are always unpredictable.

The question we are always supposed to ask ourselves is, "Are you better off now than you were (X) years ago?"  Usually, X equals 4, but that is the number of years between presidential elections, not congressional cycles.  In this election, the number has to be either 2 or 6, depending on whether you are voting for a representative or a senator. Confusing, isn't it?

There is a whole new field of public relations called Perception Management in which the object is to convince people that a lie - or at least a half-truth - is really completely true. Some have nicknamed it "spin control" while others refer to it as KSI, or "keep saying it."  The idea is the same in both cases; a lie, told often enough and supported by cleverly crafted "facts" can be foisted on a lazy or ignorant public.,

A lot of the political campaign advertising we will see and hear and read over the next month is going to be extremely negative, because the spin masters have determined that it is easier to broadcast innuendo and half-truth about the opposing candidate than it is to publish

the over inflated, or non-existent record for their candidate.  Negative ads will outnumber positive ads by over two-to-one.

When it comes right down to it, the only true gauge of the incumbent politician's record is how it has affected you during his term in office.  Hence, the question...  Are you better off now than you were before?

The answer isn't always that easy to get to for some.  We tend to pay too much attention to those so-call "facts" and base our own personal answer on the reported affects on others.  Many callers to radio talk shows and writers to newspaper opinion columns cite vague instances they've heard or read about to express their own situation.  If challenged to give specifics, more often than not they point to someone else's experience, not theirs.  I call the phenomenon, "I'm okay, but you should see what happened to..." syndrome.

It isn't fair to judge, or form an opinion based on hearsay and rumor.  Certainly you have some personal experience that can be used to support your view.  If not, if you live in a total vacuum, free of any effects from what the politicians do or legislate, then you have no basis for either praise or complaint.  Please vote for the incumbent in all cases.  But, if you have been either positively or negatively affected, use your own experience, not that of some unknown entity or person to cast your vote. 

Now that we've cleared that up, let me propose the question for real...  Are YOU better off today than you were 2 years ago or 6 years ago because of the influence and actions of the incumbent representative or senator who is up for re-election?

If you can answer that question honestly and personally, you are ready to go to the polls on November 6th.  If not, you better begin to concentrate and formulate your response.  Make your vote count for something you truly believe in..

Why We Don't Need a Minimum Wage

There is plenty of talk these days about raising the minimum wage from its current level, $5.75-per-hour for most workers, by a large increment.  President Obama proposes that $10.10-per-hour for federal contract workers is a fair wage, and some would like it to be even higher than that.

I am opposed to any increase of more that a quarter to possibly fifty cents per hour, and I truly don't see a need for it at all right now.  For one reason, I offer that the states have their own minimum wage levels and several are already above the federal minimum.  And for a second, the market always controls wages, and that includes minimum, or as it is truly termed, starting wages. 

Let's face it, nobody who works for an hourly wage stays at minimum wage beyond the first few months of employment.  If they don't get a raise within ninety days, they are most likely to get fired for poor performance instead.  Minimum wage was never intended to be what the politicians term "a living wage."  It is mostly the wage given to teens who are starting a fast-food job or some other part-time or non-skilled job.  And even that is rarely the case, because wages are market-driven, and competitive, so most employers have to offer more than the minimum to get help.

Now, there is one category of help that doesn't get minimum wage; people who work mainly for gratuities.  That includes hotel/motel maids and bellhops, valets at hotels, restaurants and any clubs or associations that offer valet parking, wait staff at restaurants that offer table service and redcaps/skycaps who check bags at the curb.  Those people are paid $2.13-per-hour, and that wage hasn't changed in decades.  I know, because I worked as a skycap for six years after I retired from my airline job.  That was back in the 90s, and I know for a fact that skycaps who worked for my airline while I was employed there between 1966 and 1995 were paid the same $2.13 during that entire period.

If you've never worked at a job where you depend on tips for most of your income, you probably think that $2.13-per-hour is criminal.  After all, a lot of people are too cheap to tip, and some just don't know when and where tipping is appropriate.  Even when you can somewhat count on tips, how much can you make that way?

Let me recount my experience as a skycap.  I worked on weekends only, so my hours were usually around 12-16 in a week.  Even with a ratio of 1-in-3 people giving tips for service and at an average of $1-per-bag, I rarely came home with less than $150. So for two days of work, I was pulling down $18.75-per-hour exclusive of that $2.13 hourly wage.  It was very sufficient to live on.  Had I worked full-time, I could have been making as much as $800-per-week.

I can't tell you that others in restaurants, hotels and such make those kind of tips, but they certainly make "a living wage" without government help.  I, for one, am very generous with my tips, so I like to feel that I contribute to the good service you get as well.

Now, what is the real reason that politicians (or should I reference the Democrats instead) want higher minimum wages?  It is mainly due to the influence of unions, who hold a huge lobby in Washington.  Whenever the minimum wage is raised, it gives the unions the opportunity to use that wage as a basis for raising union wages in contract talks with management.  And I doubt that the unions request their increases in terms of nickels and dimes.  The union bosses demand $$$, and then take back some of that in union dues from each worker.  It is well known that unions contribute heavily to Democrats and the Democrat Party, as well. 

So I say, "minimum-schminimum!"  Pay the workers what they're worth, and market conditions will dictate that much better than some politico sitting on his or her fanny in a plush office looking for campaign money and votes.

New Word/Term

 I have a new word that is perfect for use in conversations between opposing sides in the abortion debate. It is not politically charged like the terms “pro-choice,” “pro-life” and “pro-abortion.”  If you think about it, “pro-choice” really can be taken as either “pro-life” or “pro-abortion” anyway; it doesn’t define your true opinion very well.

Okay, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.  The word is “prolific.”

pro·lif·ic   /prəˈlifik/  adj.

1. (of a plant, or animal, or person) Producing much fruit or foliage or many offspring.

2. (of an artist, author, or composer) Producing many works.

Synonyms: fertile; fruitful; fecund; productive; rich

The appropriate definition is the first one, since it does refer to a lot of fruit or foliage or, in this case, kids.  The person who claims to be “prolific” is stating that he or she likes many kids, which has to mean they like pregnancy carried to term.

The coolness of the word is that it is sure to confuse the opposition.  The pro-abortion guy or gal won’t really know just what the heck the user really advocates, and therefore will have to listen on to try to determine the mindset and formulate a response.  There will actually be a debate instead of a lot of name-calling.

Now isn’t that an improvement?

Nesting in Iowa

I don't know how many of you followed the Decorah Eagles this year.  I did for a while, but then it got kind of boring to sit and watch nothing happen for minutes and sometimes hours at a time.  I eventually lost interest completely and didn't return.

In case you don't know to what I'm referring, the Decorah Eagles are a pair of bald eagles who have nested for several years in or near the town of Decorah, Iowa, and they had a trio of babies this spring.  There is a webcam set up over the nest to track the eagles 24/7 (not 365, because they do migrate as do all birds.)

You could tune in to the webcam whenever you wanted to and watch the goings on.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, it became one of the most-visited live-stream websites in history. but more on that later...

One of my good friends who stayed with the eagle watch informed me recently that, of the three eaglets, one died when it flew into a power line and was electrocuted, another was apparently mauled by some larger predator and suffered a broken wing and loss of tail feathers, and the third is doing well.  The injured one is being cared for at a rescue center and will probably be returned to the wild soon.

Isn't it prophetic that there were three infants and only two survived infancy, while one of those two was injured and might not have a full life after all.  That is Darwinism at its most basic level, and mirrors life for most species.  Man is the only creature on God's Earth that intervenes and/or interferes with natural selection by salvaging the defective ones. But that is a topic for another column.

While I was researching the material for this column, I ran across the original Wikipedia source for the Decorah Eagles, and I learned a lot of interesting, if unverified, facts.  For one, the original webcam was set up by Raptor Resource Project in 2007 and was used by PBS for a documentary on eagles in 2008.  For another, the 2013 season was missed due to the eagles moving their nest to a new location, which wasn't found and re-equipped with the webcam in time.  I've linked the Wikipedia webpage above so that you can read all you want from it at your leisure.

"And now..." as the late and great commentator, Paul Harvey, coined the phrase, "...you know the rest of the story."

Rules for Lazy Investors

I  could have titled this column "How to become a millionaire" and it wouldn't have been overstated, but many of you would have probably tuned out and just deleted it without even reading the message.  Smart people see that come-on as either a false promise or an outright scam.

Let me clear the air right up front... I cannot promise anyone that they will enjoy great wealth if they read this column and follow the instructions. In fact, I can tell you that I never have been, nor do I expect in the future to be, a millionaire.  However, had I known and practiced what I'm going to tell you shortly from the time I turned 18 and started my working life, I probably would have achieved that goal. 

This is no scam and you won't have to pay me anything; the advice is absolutely FREE. If you follow it, I can almost guarantee that you will, like me, never outlive your savings and have the freedom to keep crossing items off your bucket list.

Rule One: Start early

Begin saving something out of each paycheck from day one.  The amount is up to you, but try to make it at least 5%, five cents of every dollar you get.  Where you put that is also up to you, but try to make it grow both by your contributions and with some kind of internal interest or dividend.

Rule Two:  Live within your means

Limit your purchases to what you can afford to pay for in cash and to what you actually need, not what you want.  The only exceptions to this rule are the purchase of a home, furniture, and a car, but even they should be limited to needs instead of wants.  In other words, don't buy a steak when chicken will fill you up just as nicely.

Rule Three: Trust the power of compounding

Although bank accounts and  bank CDs are currently horrible ways to save, there are alternatives that can pay enough to make your savings grow.  Most have risk involved, but there are ways to minimize risk while maximizing gain.  The best I've found are the no-load index funds of some of the largest and well-known investment companies. No- load because none of the original money you put in is taken as a commission, and index fund because it tracks and invests in all the companies in a particular stock or bond index.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index is one you may know of, and it has stocks of 500 companies in it, so the risk of some companies performing poorly is compensated for by the other companies doing well.  The risk is lowered by that measure, and the index almost always tracks upward.

I don't know that Albert Einstein said it, but the quote I use is, "there is no greater power than that of compound interest!"  An 18-year-old can put $300 a month into an IRA and with the power of compound interest at 10-percent can retire a millionaire.  However, if he or she starts at age 40, the amount necessary becomes over $1000 a month to get to that same amount.  And most of that million dollars comes from compound interest, as the 18-year old would only save $96,000, while the 40-year-old would have to put away $300,000.  That brings us back to rule one - start early.

Rule Four:  Take every withholding allowance on your W-4

This rule will show how to "find" that extra money for retirement to put into your savings, and for that reason, it is maybe the best rule of all.

The average tax refund for American taxpayers is about $3,000.  That means that after we either self-prepare or pay a tax consultant to figure our income tax due by April 15th, most of us receive a check or direct deposit of around $3,000.  It further means that most of us have overpaid our taxes by that amount, thereby giving our federal government an interest-free loan every single pay period.  What a horrible way to save!

If you are one of those who gets a tax refund every year - and many spend it immediately on non-essentials - here is where your money for retirement savings can be found.  It is very easy to request a W-4 at work, or you can even download one from the IRS Website. It will take you less than an hour to fill it out, taking every allowance you are entitled to, and turn it in to your payroll department or your boss.

Most businesses have a payroll provision to deduct a set amount or percentage from each paycheck to invest in the company 401(k). If yours doesn't have a 401(k) or some other tax-deferred savings plan, you can set up your own plan with an investment firm or even a bank.  Just make sure you don't get access to it without some effort on your part.  You'll be surprised at how easy it is to save, but don't expect huge returns at first.  This brings us to the next rule.

Rule five: Be patient and don't expect miracles

One of the pitfalls of investing in general and compound interest in particular is that the growth of funds takes time, and the rapid growth and large gains only come in the latter stages after the fund has gotten sizeable.  Too often, people lose their patience and decide that they need to do something different with the money.  That is almost always wrong.

The absolute best way to make it to your goal is to buy and hold.  Using the index funds I mentioned earlier, a manager or a group of managers does the buying for you and you just have to wait for the returns.  Managers are not day-traders and they don't take on a lot of risk, instead spreading out your money over many investments for good returns and leaving it to grow.  Even in downturns in the markets, most index funds suffer least and recover the fastest.

Regarding the power of compounding, if you have $100 in your account and it gains a 10% rate of interest, it will grow by about $10 in a year, and by $11 the following year. Once you get a larger amount, say $100,000, it will now grow by about $10,000 in a year, and $11,000 the following year.  In two years it will have grown by 21% to $121.000, even though the interest rate stayed at only 10%.  If you are adding to the fund at the same time, those amounts are even higher.  And if the interest is paid monthly instead of yearly,  it will be more than $121,000.  That is the power of compounding at work.

Here is a short example of patience and compounding paying off and it is my own experience, so I can vouch for it.  I started withdrawing from my IRA ten years ago to supplement my retirement and Social Security income.  Even so, my IRA fund has not only stayed even, it has actually grown over those ten years.  I now have more in the fund than I did when I started withdrawing a substantial monthly amount from it.  I don't think I will outlive my savings, even if I were to live to age 100.

There you have it.  There are only five simple rules to follow, but each one is as important as every other one.  Like I said, I cannot guarantee that you will become a millionaire (I didn't), but I can assure you that you can have a very comfortable and rewarding retirement and if you don't live all the way to retirement, you can at least leave a pretty good nest egg to your heirs.

Random Thoughts

Why do pill manufacturers still make round pills? 

I take a combination of prescription and non-prescription medicines that adds up to seventeen pills per day.  When I sort out morning, afternoon and evening doses from my pill container, it is inevitable that there will be at least one pill that bounces on the table and then rolls off onto the floor.  And that pill will always be the little round one that is hardest to spot and usually seeks its refuge under a piece of furniture, stove or refrigerator.

Since our federal government is so fond of making rules and regulations, why can't they mandate that all pills be made in some ovoid shape, or like one of my really expensive ones, in a whirligig shape?  Those pills never make it to the floor but bounce once and stay put.

Who ever thought up the expression, "come to"?

When you wake up every morning your brain changes from a state of unconsciousness to  some form of alertness, so what is different about that same transition when someone or something knocks you out and you wake up from it?  If you "wake up" from sleep, why then do you "come to" from induced sleep?  And just what is it that you "come to" to?

What earns the high-calorie/high-fat food we buy the term "fast food"?

There is nothing fast about waiting in a line at Mickey-D's or Wendy's (or substitute your own favorite) for five minutes to order your "fast food."  And even without the line it sometimes takes that long to get your order.  Or try ordering your fast food and getting some sandwich, pizza or burrito that was assembled two hours ago and sat waiting for someone to order it.

If you want really fast food, eat a piece of fruit or a ready-to-eat vegetable, and you'll get way less calories and fat while improving your nutrition.  Let's label our current fast food for what it really is - FAT FOOD - and give the real fast food its due credit.

Where did the 'd' in the word fridge come from?

Fridge is an abbreviation for refrigerator, which has no letter 'd' in it.  So why isn't the abbreviation spelled f-r-i-g-e?

When was that never-changing 86-14 poll taken?

Every time I see something in my email Inbox with reference to "under God" being kept in the Pledge of Allegiance, no matter who sponsors it, a poll is cited that 86-percent of Americans want it kept in, and 14-percent want it taken out.  If we're really in such poor straits with God, why don't those percentages ever change?  86-percent is pretty high, by the way, so there's not much chance that "under god" will ever be taken out.

What is That Word - Addendum

In June I wrote a column about two words, misconception and misperception.  As often happens, I received more responses to that column than to many others that I considered more important and better written.  In fact, the responses inspired me to write a follow-up column to reveal the responses because they were so clever.

First, I received a short email that only contained four words in response to the column:

"Maybe it's a misinterpretation."  I like that one for its brevity and wit.

Next I got a link to another blog that covered the exact same two words, only this one was written over two years before mine.  I swear on a stack of Bibles that I never saw that other column until that day.  Here is what that email response concluded:

Cogitate on this-----perhaps this link relevant to today's lesson in lexicography will shed some light.

A misconception can be the logical conclusion to a mis-perception (not a word in my mind). Or--a missed way of 'conceiving (mental process) can be the result of and incorrect perception (something originating with the senses).

However, a mis-perception may or may not follow a misconception.  One may be
correct in their assumption, but then again, they may not be correct. 

Now that one was a little deeper, and I think you would like to click on the link to read how similar those two columns were.

Finally, one of my readers sent this response to my column:

A misconception can also result from a birth control device or poor timing or whatever.   Perhaps our AHC debacle is a misconception.   
Misperception....    well, perhaps I simply don't understand AHC.   Or is it like the blind men and the elephant??

This last one got politics into the mix, but the last question is relevant, because it introduced me to that Indian parable, one I had never read or heard before. In case you have also never read it, here it is:

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.
"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.
"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."
"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree to. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, "Maybe you have your reasons." This way we don’t get into arguments.
************************************
What more can I add?  We all perceive things differently, but just because we cannot agree on everything , it doesn't mean that anyone's perception is more correct than any other person's.  So misconception and misperception are both wrongly used. Both the conception and the perception are relative terms, and neither can truly be "missed."

Cleaning the Crevices

A friend and email buddy wrote recently about her experience and revelation in a local park where she lives.  It was one of those "Aha!" moments, so she sent me an email with the suggestion that maybe I could use it in a poem or a column.

Here is what sparked her mental and spiritual processes, told in her own words, on which I cannot improve:

Yesterday I was at a local park with a pond which attracts ducks/geese.  

While walking around I noticed there w(ere) “duck droppings”  Yikes!  

I don’t want to track any to my car so I tried stepping around it.  

When I went to the gazebo to sit down I saw a plastic knife, like

someone knew I would need it to clean my shoes.  My friend Dianne,

came up and sat down.  We discussed the duck mess.  I told her I

used the knife to clean the crevices of my sole “soul."

That last word just popped into her head as she spoke the homonym, and it occurred to her that there was an analogy in the expression.  That is, sometimes it is necessary to "clean the crevices of your soul" of the nasty detritus that can build up over time in much the same fashion as you would clean the soles of your shoes. 

Cleaning the crevices of your soul isn't quite the same, however.  You cannot use a physical object like a knife to scrape out the filth.  Instead, you must use a metaphysical object, such as meditation, or prayer, or confession.  You must reach inside yourself and cleanse the impurities. 

It is possible for some people to perform the self-cleansing through rituals of concentration, but for most of us there is a need for outside help; that is where prayer comes into play.  Whether or not you believe strongly in a higher power or supreme being, there is always that hope that someone or something is overseeing and guiding us, and that there is forgiveness when we do wrong.

I believe that Catholics have a unique means for "cleaning the crevices of their souls" - the Confessional, where the priest acts as intermediary between the supplicant and God. 

I never studied religion, so I don't know whether or not any other religion has that means of  cleansing, or forgiveness of sins.  We Protestants sometimes joke that Catholics have it easy; they can sin all week and then get absolution on Saturday by going to Confession.

I make no secret of the fact that I am not a devout believer, and I certainly don't practice any form of organized religion. Yet I am convinced that we all have a (hole? crevice?) in our soul where sin resides that begs forgiveness and redemption.  And none of us is so perfect that we cannot use a good cleaning of the crevices from time to time.  A good cleaning might prevent it from becoming a crevasse, too.

Now, as to that poem...