Play It Again, Sam

This post originally appeared August 11, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

The Sheppard murder mystery began on the Fourth of July, 1954, in the town of Bay Village, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland), with the brutal murder of Marilyn Sheppard, the pregnant wife of Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard, a handsome 30 years-old osteopathic surgeon in practice with his father and two brothers. She was beaten to death with a blunt object while in her bed upstairs, probably around 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning. Sam, a heavy sleeper, had fallen asleep downstairs, but was awakened by her cries for help. He rushed upstairs, where he was knocked unconscious. Coming to a bit later, he heard the perpetrator downstairs, and rushed to confront him, chasing him down to the shore of the lake. Sam was once again rendered unconscious. When he came to, her returned to the house, determined that his wife was dead, checked on his seven years-old son “Chip” (Sam Reese Sheppard, asleep and undisturbed in a nearby room), and then called the one telephone number that came to mind, that of a neighbor who also happened to be the mayor of Bay Village.

Later that year Sam Sheppard was convicted of second-degree murder. He was convicted in one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice ever committed in these United States.

The coroner, who arrived quickly on the crime scene, was well aware that most murders of wives were committed by husbands, and took this as proof enough that Sam was guilty. He never looked for any exculpatory evidence. He convinced the detectives investigating the murder that Sam was the only suspect. The detectives impounded the house, taking the keys and allowing no one in without police supervision. They did allow Chip’s uncle and aunt to come pick up clothes for the boy, who was now staying with them. The keys were not returned to Sam’s attorney until a couple of days after his conviction.

Had the forensic expert hired by the defense been allowed in the house prior to the trial, it is possible that the outcome would have been different. For one thing, the blood spatter on the wall was only partially Marilyn’s blood. There was blood from another person, not Sam. The fact that two of Marilyn’s teeth had been broken led the defense attorney to believe that she had bitten the finger of the assailant so hard as to draw blood. When the attacker withdrew his or her finger forcefully, it broke the two teeth. An analysis of the wounds and the splatter pattern of the blood indicated that the attacker was left-handed (Sam was right-handed), and probably used a three or four cell flashlight as the murder weapon. (The coroner, who had it in for Sam, speculated based on an impression in the pillow, that the murder weapon was a surgical instrument, though no known surgical instrument left the impression found in the pillow.) Additionally, the murderer would have been covered in Marilyn’s blood (Sam was not). The coroner, thinking this a crime of spousal rage, did not even check to see if this was a sexual crime, even though the body was laid out in such a fashion as to indicate that she had been forcibly raped. (After the trial, the swabs taken but not analyzed at the time indicated sexual intercourse had occurred.)

Sam Sheppard suffered neck and spinal injuries during his tussles with the murderer that could have resulted in paralysis or death. The coroner, looking at x-rays but never having examined the patient himself, pronounced the injuries self-inflicted, contradicting the diagnoses of the doctors who actually examined Sam.

The trial was entirely unacceptable by modern standards. The presiding judge had admitted to a nationally syndicated columnist (who for some reason didn’t see the necessity of reporting it at the time) that Sam was “guilty as hell”, and this was before the trial had commenced. The request for a change of venue was denied, even though all three Cleveland newspapers had for months been trumpeting Sam’s guilt, sometimes in front page editorials. Murder sells newspapers, especially newspapers on a crusade to make sure that the man of wealth and privilege doesn’t get off. Worse still, the names and addresses of the jurors were published in the newspaper. The jury was not sequestered, except during deliberation, and even then at least one juror broke the law by engaging in a telephone conversation that was not monitored by the bailiff. (The verdict was rendered on December 21st, 1954. I can imagine a husband or wife on the phone saying “Everyone knows he’s guilty. Just vote ‘guilty’ and come home for Christmas.”)

All appeals having failed, Sam served 10 years of his life sentence. Then Sam’s defense attorney died, and his cause was taken up by a young lawyer named F. Lee Bailey. In 1966, the U. S. Supreme Court struck down his conviction, because Sam did not receive a fair trial. He was retried by the State of Ohio, and found not guilty.

Sam’s life was ruined. He lived less than four years after his retrial, dying of an encephalopathy associated with alcoholism. He eventually regained his license to practice surgery, but his skills were not what they once were, and his drinking did not help. Two patients he operated on died as a result of his malpractice. He ended his life as a professional wrestler. He was 46 years old when he died.

Likewise, his son’s life took a very different course than it should have. He was robbed of both his mother and his father during his formative years. He did sue the state of Ohio for wrongful imprisonment, which for some reason required yet another trial. In order to recover money from the state, Sam had to be found “innocent”. The 1966 retrial had found him “not guilty”. Apparently, there is a distinction.

The state of Ohio remained obstinate to the end. In 2000, the jury of eight refused to find the defendant “innocent”.

The house in which Marilyn Sheppard was murdered was torn down in 1993 to make way for a new home, one less engulfed in gruesome history. The photo at the top of this blog is from the day the deconstruction began.

It is a sad story. There is no logical reason why I should be so fascinated by it.

To The Moon, Alice!

This post originally appeared July 22, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Last Friday, July 20, 2018, marked 49 years since man landed and walked on the moon for the first time. That event remains the most remarkable of my lifetime.

At the time of my birth, there did not exist anywhere in the world a rocket capable of placing a satellite into orbit. The existing rockets simply did not have the power to lift such a payload that far. Yet, shortly before my fifth birthday, Sputnik 1 entered Earth’s orbit. Mankind finally began to penetrate the frontier of space. And not quite 12 years later, we hit pay dirt: we visited, and safely returned from, another object in our solar system.

The first landing was Apollo 11. NASA had sufficient hardware to go through Apollo 20, but the moon had lost its draw, and the budget cuts began. NASA pared the program back, ending it with Apollo 17. President Nixon wanted to kill the program after Apollo 15, but OMB Deputy Director Caspar Weinberger managed to talk him out of it. Mankind left the moon on December 14, 1972. We have not returned since.

The 16 year old George, watching the first lunar walk on that Sunday night 49 years ago, never would have believed that he was watching the high point of manned space exploration.

The 46 years since our last visit to the moon has seen tremendous progress in unmanned space exploration. The Mars Rovers are great successes, though we may be seeing the end of life for Opportunity, a 15-years-old rover designed to work for a bit more than 90 Earth days on the Martian surface. It is currently powered down, waiting out a massive dust storm on the surface of Mars that is expected to go on until September. The Hyabusa mission to retrieve samples from an asteroid was a remarkable success, as was the recent New Horizons flyby of Pluto, which, by the way, is still a planet in my book.

But manned spaceflight? I don’t see the successes with this side of the program. We have gone back and forth to the International Space Station many times since the first piece was orbited 20 years ago, losing 14 astronauts along the way in two space shuttle disasters. What did we learn from all this? And how could we claim any success now that we have to rely on launch vehicles from another country to ferry our astronauts back and forth?

We can do something about this. Three programs are eating NASA’s budget: the Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion capsule, and the Lunar Orbiting Platform-Gateway (LOP-G). I cannot summarize these programs any better than the summary from Bob Zimmerman’s http://behindtheblack.com/ posting, which I reprint below:

A petition to kill SLS/Orion and LOP-G

July 17, 2018 at 12:54 pm Robert Zimmerman

Link here. To quote their announcement at the link:

What’s killing America’s human access to space? Three projects: a rocket called the Space Launch System, a capsule called the Orion, and a new project called the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway.

These three programs are political boondoggles, pork, pie in the sky, jobs programs disguised as space programs. The Space Launch System, for example, is touted as the biggest rocket ever built. But its $30 billion development cost is eating up almost all of NASA’s human budget for deep space. Compare that $30 billion with the cost of developing Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy—less than a billion dollars. In other words, for the cost of developing the Space Launch System, we could develop thirty brand new rockets if we took the Elon Musk route. Or we could develop an entire Moon and Mars program.

After thirteen years of promises, the Space Launch System has never flown. And when it does, it will cripple NASA. The cost of one launch will be between one and two billion dollars. For that price, you could buy between eleven and 22 launches of the Falcon Heavy. You could buy the launches for an entire Moon and Mars program.

What’s worse, after the launch of each Space Launch System rocket, we will throw the exorbitantly-priced rocket away, then we will be forced to buy another one. Meanwhile, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are making rockets reusable. And reusable rockets, like reusable busses, trucks, trains, cars, and airplanes, will lower our cost of access to space dramatically.

Then there’s the Orion capsule that the SLS will fling into space. It cannot land. It can’t land on the Moon. It can’t land on Mars. And it’s too small to carry crews to Mars. It is a boondoggle.

Topping it all off is the Lunar Orbital Platform – Gateway, another nipple in the mouth of the Space Military Industrial Complex, another make-work program. It is a mini space station orbiting the moon. It’s useless and can’t even be manned or womanned year-round. But it will cost so much to build that we’ll never be able to build lunar landers. We won’t touch down on the moon. We’ll simply circle the moon from a distance and watch with frustration as the Chinese land human beings. [emphasis in original]

The last point about LOP-G is especially important. It is designed not to promote the exploration and settlement of the solar system, but as a kind of purgatory where the U.S. will remain trapped in lunar orbit, accomplishing nothing, while other nations land and settle the Moon.

I have signed the petition, and I encourage you to do the same. Let’s stop the waste of tax dollars, and get serious about manned space exploration again.

Euclid, Draw Back Your Bow

This post originally appeared July 6, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

The summer is going by so quickly. That much hasn’t changed since the dark and dismal days of my youth. In about a month I will be back at school, declaiming on the wonders of mathematics and physics.

Despite the heat, the wildfires, the humidity, the floods, the divisiveness in our political discourse, and the fact that Tractor Supply still can’t seem to produce the latch that I ordered (and paid for) back on May 21, I am having a good summer. I’m spending it with an old friend.

A qualifications is in order. Although Kathy is my dearest friend, I am not referring to her. She is not “old” and thus does not qualify. (Whew!)

The friend is Euclid (fl. 300 BC). I was introduced to Euclid back in the 1960s, but ours was a shallow friendship until the early part of this century, when I began teaching geometry. At that point I began to appreciate his genius.

Euclid gave his name to a branch of geometry, and for his insight into geometry he is revered to this day. But if you open his text, “The Elements of Geometry,” you will find that only seven of the thirteen books deal with geometry, either plane geometry, or solid geometry (including a treatment of the Platonic solids). The other six books represent, to me, the most fascinating aspect of Euclid’s work. In them, he deals with a variety of mathematical topics (quadratics, proportion, number theory, irrational numbers) in an era before the discovery of algebra. He does so the only way he knows how: geometrically, using a straight edge and a compass.

One example should give you an appreciation of just how difficult it was to do math in the days before the discovery of algebra. The picture at the top of this blog is from Euclid’s Book II Proposition 4, which reads: “If a straight line be cut at random, the square on the whole is equal to the squares on the segments and twice the rectangle contained by the segments.” His proof is logical, each step along the way is justified, and the whole thing takes about a page in the textbook to prove. Given our knowledge of algebra, we would instead write

(x + y)^2 = x^2 + 2xy + y^2

and the proof would hardly take a full page in a textbook.

I used Euclid’s textbook for the past several years in my geometry classes. The students found it a heavy slog to read, so I began translating Euclid into more modern English, and along the way used liberal doses of algebra. The order of the propositions, or theorems, in Euclid did not depend upon any knowledge of algebra, so when we apply algebra to his theorems, we find that his propositions are not in the order we would present them today. That was a problem.

I’ve looked at other textbooks, and while they are fine in their own ways, they seem to me to stray a tad bit far afield from the classic text, Euclid’s “Elements”. So, finding no suitable alternative, I began writing my own textbook, a variation on Euclid. It adheres to the basic text, but juggles the order a bit to make the information presented seem a bit more logical, especially as the book uses algebra where possible.

I figure I’m halfway through. I should have the whole thing finished in another year or so. (It usually takes me 18 months to write a book.) There will be errors to correct, problems to solve, and lots of feedback from my students to help me polish the book off. But I must confess that spending all my free time for the last couple of months in the company of Euclid and his remarkable mind has been a most enjoyable aspect of the summer.

And it appears that the fun will not end. I have been asked to teach a course on the mathematics of Descartes, and I agreed enthusiastically. I was introduced to Descartes decades ago, but I haven’t spent the quality time with him that I have with Euclid. I’m excited about getting to know him better.

Which reminds me of a joke: Descartes goes into a bar, orders a drink, and guzzles it down. The bartender says “Would you like another drink?” Descartes says, “I think not,” and, in a puff of smoke, disappears!

I’ll tell you, that one always cracks me up!

Chapel Hill, in Two Parts

This post originally appeared June 28, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Part 1

A few weekends ago, Kathy and I attended a baby shower in Asheville, at The Grey Eagle. They don’t normally hold baby showers at The Grey Eagle, as it is a music venue, but the owner is friends with the parents-to-be, and so it happened. A couple of summers ago, I saw Don Eason and his excellent Allman Brothers tribute band, Idlewild South, at The Grey Eagle, so I was thinking of Don as I entered. Sure enough, I discovered that Don and his band had been there just the weekend before the shower.

A friend once told me that Don had owned a bar in Chapel Hill, sometime after my days at UNC. It occurred to me that Don never knew the role I played in the success of his bar. I suppose I should tell the story.

During the time I lived in North Carolina, it was tough to get a mixed drink. If a county or city voted to allow alcohol sales in the jurisdiction, it was limited to beer and unfortified wine in grocery stores, gasoline stations, or bars, and hard liquor only in state controlled ABC stores. You could get a beer at dinner, but not a scotch and soda. The one exception was the Brown Bag law: if a restaurant had the proper license, you could bring your own bottle, turn it over to the waiter, and then have the waiter serve you mixed drinks, out of your bottle, for a set-up fee. This of course caused problems if a group of, say, four people were going out to dinner, and each member preferred a different libation.

The other problem with brown bagging was an unintended consequence. Once the seal on a bottle of liquor was broken, it could not be transported in the passenger compartment of a car. You could transport the opened bottle in the trunk of a car, but for some reason, that didn’t seem to be as appealing as killing the whole bottle at dinner, resulting in more DUI arrests than should have happened.

Around the time I was finishing up at Chapel Hill, North Carolina changed its drinking laws so that local municipalities could vote to allow “liquor by the drink” instead of “liquor by the bottle.” Therein lies my tale.

I believe the “local option liquor by the drink” election for Chapel Hill was held in October of 1978. I don’t remember the exact date. I do know that it was on the day that the moving van was packing up our little apartment for the move to Maryland and my first professional job. After the moving van was packed, I strolled over to the church behind the apartment (no longer there), our polling place, and cast my vote for the proposition. I then hopped into my Fiat and drove away, never to return as a student, and very seldom to return as a visitor.

So, Don, to the extent that a few mixed drinks contributed to your success, I’m happy to have helped!

Part 2

I finally met the surgeon who will remove my cataract, and we got along just fine. After a bit of conversation, we discovered that we were both at Chapel Hill at the same time: he was an undergraduate student while I was a graduate student. Further, he was an undergraduate taking a chemistry course I taught. The dates suggest that he could well have been my student. (The odds are not great, though: a lot of grad students taught freshman chemistry labs, as UNC graduated more bachelors degree chemists than any other school in the nation at that time.) Of course, my first thought was “Did I treat this guy right, or was I an arrogant jerk?” The doctor’s first thought was “Did I behave as a typical obnoxious pre-med student, or was I okay?”

We laughed. Neither of us remembered the other, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. It is funny, though, that our first thoughts were of past behavior. Both of us wondered whether our behavior then met our current standards. It never would have occurred to me back then that I would be asking such a question today.

So, here is some advice, free for the taking. Always treat others as if, one day, they will be holding a sharp object next to your eyeball.

Odds and Ends from the Miscellaneous File

This post originally appeared June 21, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Last week I left out the most useful household hint of all. I hate ironing, and don't really want to know anyone who enjoys ironing. In the course of my bachelorhood, I examined every possible avenue to avoid ironing. First runner up is, use a steamer. This works very well, but it requires that you buy a steamer. So the very best way to take wrinkles and whatnot out of your clothing is to throw the wrinkled piece in the dryer with a wet hand towel. Let the dryer do your steaming for you. Take it out immediately upon the end of the drying cycle.

My dirty clothes bag has a hole in it. It isn't a very big hole, but start with a small one, and sooner or later it becomes a big one. This is the second problem I've had with that clothes bag. A bit ago, the tie cord dry rotted, so I no longer had a way to close the bag. Now this. Why don't things last anymore? I received that clothes bag as a high school graduation gift, in the spring of 1971.

Kathy gets a little irritated with me because I seldom write about our excellent line of chile pepper sauces and pepper jams. Every now and again I do sneak a little advertising into the blog. Last week I cleverly mentioned George's Gourmet Pepper Sauce in the blog (and it is a truly delicious, reasonably mild, sauce), and I may have mentioned recently that we will be at the Highlands Village Square Arts and Crafts Show in Highlands, NC, this weekend. I decided that a good compromise would be an article on food and food preparation. We have used a couple of the food delivery services, and I am very high on Blue Apron. So my plan was to do an article on my experience as an in-home Blue Apron chef. But then I changed my mind.

Summer has now officially arrived, and I write this on what will be the longest day of the year. I freely confess that summer is my favorite season. In addition to exposure to beautiful weather, I have, in theory, some time off from work. I haven't actually seen any time off from work yet, but hope springs eternal.

There is a fair amount of history in this state, some of it fairly close by. On my list of places to visit this summer are:

(1) Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, just about 40 miles from here. This will be a tough one, as it is only open 4 days a week, and then for only 2 hours each day. But I do want to see the home of Flannery O'Connor, so I will figure a way to sort this out.

(2) Warm Springs, about 100 miles away. I'm not sure what there is to see there other than Roosevelt's Little White House, but I want to go nonetheless.

(3) Crawfordville, about 40 miles from here. I've actually been to Crawfordville, but that was just driving through one day on my way to Beaufort. (I was avoiding interstate highways that day.) Crawfordville is in Taliaferro County (named for Benjamin Taliaferro), and in keeping with the family pronunciation, it is pronounced “Tolliver” County, as in “Oliver.” According to the database “Georgia's Biggest Ticket Traps”, the county pulls in around $1614.33 per capita in revenue from speeding tickets. (The statewide average is $105.48; the average for the five county metro Atlanta area is $116.97.) According to the Census Bureau, and the University of Georgia, the largest employer in the county is government, and the largest component of the government is the Taliaferro County Sheriff's Department.

But I am not interested in visiting there because I need another speeding ticket. Taliaferro County was home to Alexander H. Stephens, who, among other things, once taught school here in Madison “for four months of misery”. The “other things” include being a Congressman, an appointed Senator (though the Senate refused to seat him), a Governor, and the only Vice-President of the Confederate States of America. Not too far from Crawfordville is Robinson, GA, home to Henning Murden, gunsmith to the Confederacy.

While we are on the subject of Georgia, its towns and counties, I have a question. Why are the cities that have the same names as counties NOT in those counties? Examples: Clayton is in Rabun County, not Clayton County; Decatur is in DeKalb County, not Decatur County; Madison is in Morgan County, not Madison County; etc. There are a few exceptions (Greensboro is in Greene County), but these are quite rare.

Oh, did I mention that our Georgia Peach Pepper Jam is perfect for this summer weather?

Hints from Herman

This post originally appeared June 16, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

It appears that I have a very good immune system. I attribute this to a job I once held for something like 11 years, which involved an idiotic amount of travel, primarily air travel. Just imagine averaging somewhere between 4 and 6 flights per week, trapped in an aluminum tube with an atmosphere that is approximately 85% recirculated air. Someone sneezes in 36D, and within minutes, those viruses and germs are coming out of the air vent over 2B. Or imagine a hotel room, prepared by a cleaning staff that just wants to get this room cleaned quickly, but not necessarily thoroughly. Or imagine what goes on in the kitchens of the restaurants you dine in. Better yet, let's not think too much about that.

I suspect that I have been exposed to most of the germs and viruses that afflict the general population. My survival tells me that my immune system, probably because of all this exposure, is in pretty good shape. I seldom get sick, and when I do, it is seldom very bad. Thus have I avoided doctors.

Unfortunately, a good immune system cannot cure a cataract, and in order to have the surgery next month, I needed a pre-surgery physical exam this month. That happened Tuesday. The result was shocking.

They ran an EKG. An EKG checks for heart disease, which presupposes that one has a heart. Apparently, I do. That will come as a great shock to a number of present and former students of mine, as well as to a few ex-girlfriends. And my heart is ready for cataract surgery.

The one physical ailment that has bugged me for the last two weeks is the set of gashes on my arm, courtesy of Lucy, the Devil Puppy. One day she came a-flying through the air, claws extended, and landed on my left arm. That resulted in some serious bleeding. It told me that it was time to trim her claws, which I did. But the clippers left the trimmed edges of her claws fairly sharp, so I used a trick I learned with Ronnie: I sanded them down with a Dremel Tool.

Then it hit me: the Dremel Tool is but one of those time-saving hints I've learned over the years. Why not share these hints with you? Remember the newspaper column “Hints from Heloise”? Somehow “Hints from George” just doesn't have that certain ring to it. “Hints from Herman” sounds better.

Clothes washing: Back in the 1960s, the madras clothing available seemed to have poorly fixed dyes. Wash them, and watch them run. There is no way that one would wash madras with any other item of clothing, for fear of coloring the other clothing. Those days, my friends, are gone. The past 50 years have seen advances by dye and fixative chemists, and I really haven't noticed any great running of colors. So, stop sorting whites and colors into separate piles. Save the Earth! Cut your water usage doing laundry in half! Wash your whites and colors together!

Exception: if you plan to bleach your whites, then do those clothes separately.

Cleaning neck ties: Every tie that I've sent off to a dry cleaner has been ruined, primarily because silk doesn't stand up very well to the high pressure used in pressing at these establishments. I learned to place my neckties in the upper rack of a dishwasher, and hang them up promptly when the cleaning cycle is completed.

Vacuum cleaners: If a man owns a Shop Vac, he does not need to own a vacuum cleaner. This one needs no explanation.

Blood stains and other water-based tough-to-remove stains: Hydrogen peroxide is a great cleaning agent. It can remove blood stains and other difficult stains (such as a George's Gourmet Pepper Sauce stain) from clothing, without bleaching the underlying fabric. Try it on any stain of the sort. Yes, hydrogen peroxide is a bleach, but it is a relatively weak one.

General stain removal: I keep a series of solvents under the kitchen sink, which I use to remove stains and stickies. Here they are: Zippo or charcoal lighter fluid; toluene; Goo Gone; acetone (nail polish remover); ethyl acetate (non-acetone nail polish remover); isopropyl alcohol; hydrogen peroxide; ammonia; distilled vinegar; Hoppe's No. 9 Gun Bore Cleaner. The trick is finding which solvent works on which stain or stickie. It helps if you know a little bit about the problem. For example, if I'm dealing with a grease spot, I will try the lighter fluid or toluene first, followed by Hoppe's. For removing an adhesive, I generally start with isopropyl alcohol or ammonia.

I hope these help.

Hail, Summer!

This post originally appeared June 6, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

According to my calendar, the summer solstice is still 15 days away. According to the Australian lady I once dated, it is already winter in The Land Down Under, as the Aussies change their seasons at the beginning of the month. (They do not wait for the actual solstice or equinox.) But if you are a school teacher, or are married to one, you know when summer officially begins: it begins the day you no longer have to report to school in the morning. So, for me, today is the first day of summer.

I celebrated by sleeping in, until 6:00. It will take awhile for my body to ignore the 10-month-per-year habit of waking up at 4:45. It was a nice, leisurely morning, filled with coffee, a demonic whirlwind of a puppy, and a wife who laughs at everything our cute little puppy dog does, until the doggie decides to dine on her laundry.

I teach some 55 miles away from home. This I do by choice. I love where I live, and I love where I work. Unfortunately, these two places happen to be 55 miles apart, and so I commute. It gives me the chance to catch up on my podcasts, and on the morning commute, to listen to big band music. In the afternoon, I listen to the Kim Peterson Show on the radio. He is hilarious, and keeps me in stitches for the troublesome ride home.

The downside to this grand commute is that I have very little time at home during the week to get anything done. That changes during the summer. Already this morning I had a slow leak in a tire repaired. Later this afternoon, I will head out to Tractor Supply to pick up a toolbox latch that I ordered a couple of weeks ago. Heck, I may even go crazy and get the oil and filter in the pick-up changed!

Unfortunately, summer also means getting visits to the doctor out of the way. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I need a physical exam before getting my cataract removed. That happens next week. The week after that, I see the surgeon who will be removing the cataract. And, of course, there is the dentist. I have a cleaning scheduled next month, as well as the surgery.

We have a couple of Air BnB properties, and Kathy tells me that my loving touch is needed at both. But before I become the maintenance man who travels, I need to do a little work around the house here in Madison. I should start by mowing the lawn.

Let’s not forget that the Chile Today Hot Tamale festival season picks up in the summer. We will be in Highlands, NC, June 23 and 24. Those of you enjoying the cool mountain air in or near Highlands please stop by and see us.

The upside to summer is that my stress level goes down. The downside to summer is that I tend to get into Kathy’s hair more frequently. (There is something to that whole “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing.) But recently, I took steps to avoid any trouble.

Puppy dog Lucy now has a brand-spanking new dog cage in the back yard. (It isn’t clear to me exactly why we needed to put a 10 x 10 x 6 feet chain link cage in the middle of our fenced-in back yard, but Kathy wanted it, and you don’t argue with her about things for Lucy.) We leave the door open most of the time, and Lucy loves it. We have it under some shade trees. She dug a nice little pit in the red Georgia clay, and she frequently chills in the pit, in the cage. She has it made.

And this summer, so do I. If a little too much togetherness causes me to get under Kathy’s skin, I now have a nice place to sleep!

Louie, I Think This Is The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

This post originally appeared May 18, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

In the late 1970s, I was sitting at my desk, reading the latest issue of Science News, when I came across a remarkable advertisement. NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was looking for a new kind of astronaut. Military service as a test pilot was no longer required. NASA was looking for scientists, PhDs preferred, to go up in a new space vehicle that NASA was designing, a vehicle called the space shuttle. I sent off for the application packet immediately, hoping to become a Mission Specialist.

A few days later a pack mule arrived at my Baltimore home carrying the 6,487 pounds of paper that I needed to fill out. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but the application packet was quite thick. Buried in that thick packet was a flyer giving the physical qualifications for the job, and a series of medical forms to be filled out by my personal physician. The flyer was bad news: the maximum height allowed was six feet, and I was a tad bit over six feet one inch at the time. Still, this was my chance to be Mr. Spock, and I wasn’t going to let one lousy inch, more or less, get in the way. When I took my physical, I cheated as best I could, slouching and bending my knees while they concentrated on the measuring stick at my head. The doc signed the forms, I filled out the other paperwork, and sent the whole shebang in.

If I look carefully in my footlocker, I’m sure I can find the rejection letter they sent me. It’s not something I would have thrown away. They were very pleasant, thanking me for being one of more than 7,000 applicants for the 20 slots, 10 of which were reserved for women and minority applicants. So, I would not be Mr. Spock, after all. I settled down to my mundane, humdrum existence as a research chemist at a corporate research center across the street from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

Sidebar: Rejection was probably a good thing. Three of the Mission Specialists in that first class died on the Challenger.

The one thing I took away from the experience was the habit of an annual physical examination. Until the physical for NASA, I hadn’t had a physical since my senior year in high school. In theory, I received a physical exam before taking that job as a research chemist. In practice, the doctor listened to my heart and lungs, then gave me a drug test.

The physical was usually painless. The doctors never found anything wrong with me. Once, in the 1980s, a doctor gave me a flexible sigmoidoscopic examination. This was actually as bad as it sounds. According to Wikipedia: “Sigmoidoscopy is the minimally invasive medical examination of the large intestine from the rectum through the last part of the colon. There are two types of sigmoidoscopy: flexible sigmoidoscopy, which uses a flexible endoscope, and rigid sigmoidoscopy, which uses a rigid device. Flexible sigmoidoscopy is generally the preferred procedure.” Indeed!

I am not sure what the difference is between this procedure and a colonoscopy, other than the fact that I was wide awake during the procedure, over on one side, watching the monitor that displayed the doctor’s view. When I wasn’t looking at the monitor, I was looking at my abdomen. As the sigmoidoscope made its turn around sigmoid colon, I could see my abdominal wall flex outward. It was not what one would call a fantastic experience.

And that has a lot to do with why I stopped the annual physical. The summer before my 50th birthday I had my standard physical. The doctor looked at my chart, nodded, and said “I see you turn 50 soon. We have a few special tests for you next year, when you will be 50.” “Sounds good, Doc,” I said.

I never returned.

That was about 16 years ago, and I have never regretted my decision. But I am reliably informed that my no-physical streak will soon come to an end. You see, I have a cataract, and it is beginning to bug me. The folks I have talked with who have recently had cataract surgery tell me that a physical exam is now a prerequisite for surgery. I’ve got to get this cataract removed, so I guess I will be signing up for the physical soon.

And that is a shame. There isn’t a thing I can do about it. But if the doctor suggests a few special tests because I’m officially over the hill, it will be the end of the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I Love Lucy

This post originally appeared May 2, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Last week I learned from a Facebook post that a high school friend had to put his pet dog of many years down. I immediately felt the pain he must have been feeling. Pets, especially dogs, have a way of becoming members of the family. Danny, my heart goes out to you.

We still miss our beloved Ronnie. He was my dog, at least on paper. I owned him for a full five years before I met Kathy. I trained him, and we bonded as only a bachelor and his dog can do. But when Kathy arrived on the scene, he changed. Kathy thinks that she became his owner, but in fact, Ronnie claimed ownership of Kathy. She was his charge, his duty to protect, his love. When Kathy went back to the bedroom, so did Ronnie. When she got out of bed, so did Ronnie. She took him on long walks. He looked out for her.

Shortly before his death, we took him on a camping trip. Kathy would take him with her on her trips up to the bath house, and every time another camper would come down the path, Ronnie would stop, fix the camper with a gaze, and keep the other camper in his sight until the camper had passed well down the trail. We didn’t realize just how sick he was then, but illness did not stop him from doing his duty, which was seeing to Kathy’s safety.

Given that, it isn’t surprising that Ronnie’s death hit Kathy pretty hard. We both knew we wanted another dog, but I voted for a decent interval of mourning before adding another member to the family. Kathy, on the other hand, voted for a new pet immediately. So, as usual, we compromised, meaning we did what Kathy wanted.

One Saturday morning I received a call from Kathy, who was supposedly out doing errands. She was calling from the Humane Society of Morgan County (Georgia), a no-kill shelter in our beloved town. “You’ve got to get over here now. You must see this dog!” I stopped whatever Very Important Chore I was doing and hopped in the pick-up. Within a few minutes, I met our newest family member, the member we have named Lucy.

I should point out that the shelter called Lucy by a different name. As luck would have it, they called her by our granddaughter’s first name. Our granddaughter is, of course, amused by this coincidence, but we could foresee trouble ahead, having both a granddaughter and a puppy with the same name. Thus we set about to find a new name. I offered my selection, and once again we compromised by going with Kathy’s name. She called her Lucy, after the comedienne Lucille Ball.

Lucy is a Grosser Schweizer Sennenhund, or a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog. Feel free to do what the rest of the world does and abbreviate that mouthful to “Swissie.” The picture at the beginning of this post shows her in Kathy’s car, on the way home from the shelter, on March 28. At that point she was 11 weeks old.

She is going to be a big dog. On one recent weekend, as I lay in bed catching up on my sleep, Lucy decided that I had slept long enough. She came bounding into the room, and with a burst of puppy energy, flew through the air, landing on my chest. At that time, I believe she was only 31 pounds. Trust me on this one: I got out of bed. After, that is, I recovered my breath.

Lucy was aptly named. She may not be as funny as Lucille Ball, but she is trying hard. Puppies are funny creatures, anyway, and this one is hilarious. She fetches, of course, but refuses to return what she fetched. Throw a ball to her when she already has one in her mouth, and she will spend 10 minutes trying to figure out how to put both balls in her mouth. She has an expressive face that makes me laugh for no good reason.

She is not Ronnie. In the same way that no two children are alike, she is her own dog. I can tell already that she will not be the sort to protect Kathy with her life, as Ronnie would have done, but that is just fine. She is our new child, and we will see what personality emerges from the furious cyclone of puppy energy.

To my friend Danny: at the right moment, find your Lucy.

The End of an Era

This post originally appeared April 22, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

One week ago I received the very last Book of the Year annual update from Encyclopedia Britannica. The truth is, I received the last proper update last year, Book of the Year 2017, covering the events of 2016. This year's “update” was a celebration and retrospective of Britannica's 250 years of publication, from 1768 through 2018.

I bought my set of Britannicas in 1987, about which, more later. It was terribly expensive, though I can't give an exact price. I knew that they would not be able to continue publishing a bound volume for very long when, in the late 1990s, I purchased the Encyclopedia Britannica on 2 CD ROMs, for a price of $99. As I mentioned, I do not remember the exact price I paid in 1987, but I suspect the Britannica was at least $1,000, and probably more.

I have always enjoyed these yearbooks. My favorite portions of the yearbook are, or were, the month by month, day by day recap of the preceding year, and the obituaries. Every now and again I used the data portion of the yearbook (countries, forms of governments, GDP, population, etc.), but for the most part, these annual updates were trips down memory lane.

The price for these updates has been consistent over the years. This year's book cost $76.95, with another $7.95 for shipping and handling, for a total of $84.90. That is exactly what I paid last year. It is little wonder that these books are being discontinued. Why pay about $85 for an update, when you can pay $99 each year and get the whole kit and caboodle?

Back in 1987, I lived in a small mountain town in Virginia. It was so small that it didn't even have a bookstore. The community did a nice job of supporting a small library, but after living in Baltimore, and using the Enoch Pratt Free Library, I found the library to be inadequate. In Lexington, about 45 miles away, I could use the libraries on the VMI and Washington and Lee campuses, but that was a good 45 minute drive each way. So, I ended up in a variety of book clubs.

I had two sets of encyclopedias at that time, both published in 1957, and a shelf full of annual updates. Really, I needed a new encyclopedia, so I was overjoyed when, one day in the late spring, I opened my monthly catalog from the Library of Science and found that LOS members could buy the new, updated Encyclopedia Britannica at a discount. I filled in the return mailer.

My wife always accused me of being a sucker for a salesman, especially one with a hard luck story, so I figured I should head this one off at the pass. I told her that I had just sent in a postcard requesting a visit from a Britannica salesman, and that I intended to buy a set, so please, no comments about my ability to withstand a sales pitch. She informed me that the children were too young for the Britannica, and perhaps we should buy a child's edition. I told her that this set was for me, and we would address the kiddies' need for an encyclopedia at the appropriate time. She was not happy, but she said no more.

The salesman came on a Monday night. It was his third day on the job. I showed him to my living room, where he set up a small flip chart on the coffee table. Page one stated, in bold, capital lettering: “The New Encyclopedia Britannica”. I said, “That looks good, I'll take a set.” He looked at me with the funniest look, and flipped to the next page on the chart: “Completely Revised and Updated”. “Fine,” I said, “I'll take a set.” He looked at me again, and decided I was serious. He flipped through another dozen charts in search of an appropriate one. This chart talked about the three bindings available: the expensive one, the cheap one, and the one in between. “I'll take the one in between.” He finally decided I was serious, and pulled out a contract, which he began to fill out.

About that time my wife walked into the room, and a light bulb went off. “Hey, do you guys offer a child's Britannica?” He responded that normally they did offer one, but that the child's version was in the process of being updated and rewritten, so they did not have one to offer at the moment. But, he said, Britannica had recently purchased Compton's Encyclopedia, and they were selling that as a child's encyclopedia in the interim. I said, “Fine, I'll take a set.” My wife harrumphed, and left the room. The salesman looked at me as if I were completely nuts, decided I wasn't, struck through something on the contract, and began anew.

While he was amending the contract, I saw a brochure on the coffee table, advertising the Great Books of the Western World. I don't know why I hadn't put 2 and 2 together. The Great Books series was edited by a couple of University of Chicago fellows (Robert Maynard Hutchins, and Mortimer Adler), and Britannica was headquartered in Chicago. So, I asked, “Do you guys sell the Great Books of the Western World?” The salesman looked at me with a wary eye, and nodded. “I'll take a set.” He tore up the contract he had been working on, pulled a new form out of his briefcase, and began again.

That night, the salesman's third night on the job, I dropped a bit more than $2,000. When they arrived in a few weeks, they included the 1987 annual update. I built a bookcase for the encyclopedias and updates, and a separate bookcase for the Great Books. They have given me great pleasure over the years. But that era is over.

I suspect that they don't even offer the CD ROMs any more. My guess is you pay an annual fee, and have access to a set of Britannicas somewhere in the cloud. Maybe, one day, I'll give it a try. In the meantime, I cherish those books, and feel somewhat saddened that I will no longer receive an update in the mail every April.

I really do hate change. I haven't been all that happy since Queen Victoria died.

A Little Dab’ll Do Ya

This post originally appeared April 13, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

I’m on my third tube of Brylcreem. No, I’m not on my third tube this year, nor my third tube this decade. I am on my third tube of a lifetime.

Originally, I needed no hair cream at all. For at least the first 10 years of my life, my hair style was the typical hair style of a 1950s male child. Some call it a buzz cut. I called it what everyone else called it: a GI haircut. Once a week my father would take me to the barber shop, and we would both get a haircut. His cost 75 cents; mine, 50 cents. The barber would run his electric clippers over my scalp, and voila, mission accomplished. It saved me the trouble of carrying a comb, and I’m sure we must have saved a ton of money on shampoo.

But you can’t keep a fashion plate down, so before too many more years had passed, I acquired a flat top hair style. This was a sign of maturity, as it was a more grown-up hair style than the GI. (I knew several men in the community who styled their hair this way, including, for awhile, my father.) The flat top did not require hair cream: it required wax. So, quite patiently, I used butch wax to train my hair to stand on end.

The flat top phase didn’t last that long. During the mid 1960s I began the transition to slightly longer hair, and the ivy league hair style. It requires a transition period to move away from the flat top. It takes awhile to train your hair to stand on end, but it also takes awhile to train it to go back to its normal position, next to the scalp. At this point in life I was introduced to Brylcreem.

The television commercials for Brylcreem were brilliant. “A little dab’ll do ya” and “they love to run their fingers through your hair” are lines from the catchy tune used to promote the stuff. In fact, it didn’t take very much Brylcreem to impart enough discipline to the hair to maintain something akin to order. As for the “they love to run their fingers through you hair” bit, well, the less said, the better. A pimply-faced teen will not find true love through the judicious application of a tube of Brylcreem.

I liked the stuff because it didn’t make my hair look greasy, and it smelled great. The current incarnation of Brylcreem has no smell about it, but the 1960s version smelled almost good enough to eat. Of course, we knew not to eat it. It may be that today the makers of Brylcreem decided against a candy-like odor for fear that some kids would change their food preference from Tide pods. Who knows?

I used Brylcreem daily until the early 1970s. During the 70s, big hair was in, and I went big (see photo, 1976). In the 70s men didn’t want so much to tame their hair as to live in peaceful coexistence with it. Hair cream was out.

Around the end of the 1970s, two things happened that drastically altered my personal hair style. First, C-SPAN began its life as a cable broadcaster, providing live coverage of the US House of Representatives; and second, politicians appearing on C-SPAN discovered the blow dryer. I liked the look, and promptly began the use of a blow dryer. I needed no hair cream, except on those days when I overdid it with the dryer. When that happened, the old tube of Brylcreem came out of the drawer to save the day.

During the 1990s I traveled extensively for my job, and found it convenient to give up the hair dryer. I would generally comb my hair while wet, and hope for the best. The only time I would use Brylcreem was when my hair became too long, and thus unruly. I used it as a band-aid until I could get a proper haircut.

And that has been my use of Brylcreem up until today: I would use it to get me by until the next haircut. Today, however, I made a change.

My hair was a bit too long, so I stopped by the barber shop I use when in Beaufort, SC, and had my ears lowered. Afterwards, I returned home and showered to remove those little bits of hair that cause me to scratch like a cat with fleas. And then, with a freshly cut head of hair, I did something unusual: I grabbed the tube of Brylcreem. I didn’t use much. After all, a little dab’ll do ya.

I now suspect that Kathy will love to run her fingers through my hair!

Nancy Batten, RIP

This post originally appeared April 1, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Nancy Carol Jones Batten

January 13, 1930 - April 1, 2018

Spring Has Sprung

This post originally appeared March 28, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I found a bit of doggerel that goes something like this:

Spring has sprung,

Fall has fell,

Summer’s here

And it’s hot as hell!

It certainly isn’t summer yet, but it is quite possible that spring has finally arrived. When I left the blustery weather of middle Georgia a few days ago, it did not seem very much like springtime. I hope that has changed. Here in the North Carolina mountains we find spring gradually inching its way towards the present. The deciduous trees are still bare, but the little shoots of growth at the tips of the barren limbs seem ready to open. It is quite brisk before dawn, but the temperature has been above the freezing mark, so spring may well be here.

The 10th grade class at my school is taking its annual trip to the Nantahala Outdoor Center, a heavenly place for those who enjoy hiking, camping, river rafting, kayaking, and pretty much any outdoor event. As for me, I enjoy the mega-zip line. It is composed of eight individual runs, the longest of which is ½ mile (805 meters, for you metric nerds), which I traversed in 40 seconds. According to my calculations, my average speed for that leg of the course was 66 feet per second, or 45 miles per hour. It is a blast, and I heartily recommend it to you.

At week’s end, my little charges will return to the school, and begin their spring break. We seem to have lots of breaks from school, breaks that I don’t remember from the dark and dismal days of my youth. We had the Christmas break, of course, but I don’t recall a fall break, a mid-winter break, or even a spring break. (It may be that we had a spring break, but if so, it has completely slipped from my memory.) On the other hand, we didn’t start the school year until after Labor Day, as opposed to the current practice of starting the school year early in August. I think I would prefer a later start with fewer breaks. Of course, what I prefer is generally that which will never happen.

Today’s expedition is a surveying class down by the river. We will measure the distance across the river without actually crossing the river, using nothing more than a transit on a tripod, a tape measure, and a little Euclidean geometry. Law of Sines, anyone? It should be fun.

Summer is my favorite season, but spring brings a joy that puts a period to the dead season of winter. I can put up with the pollen nuisance knowing that summer will soon be here. On the other hand, we can’t yet write off one last winter blast. I have lived in Georgia since 1989, and with the exception of the great Snowpocalypse of a few years ago, our most significant snowfalls have been in the month of March. So we still have a few days yet to survive before sounding the “all clear”.

I thank all of you who responded to last week’s post with kind words regarding the loss of our beloved Ronnie. I fear we are in for more pain, as my sister tells me that my mother is not doing very well, and is not expected to be long for this world. This is, in all likelihood, her last spring. However, spring brings the promise of new life, so Kathy and I will temper the loss with the joy of new lives, those of our grandchildren. Once again, the cycle of birth, life, and death repeats itself.

So I leave you this week with the joy that springtime brings. May you have a wonderful Easter weekend.

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

This post originally appeared March 20, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

The event that I feared has come to pass. My pal and faithful companion of 12 years, Ronnie, died last night at the veterinary hospital here in Madison.

Ronnie was my fifth dog. I barely remember my first, Rusty, a companion of the early to mid-1950s. I have seen a few photos of the two of us, and apparently we got along splendidly. We lived in town, and it became apparent he would do better on a farm. And that is where he ended his life.

Rusty was a bulldog. Canis, dog number two, was a lab mix. We got him when we lived in Baltimore, in the late 1970s. Canis was a jumper. He could clear our four-feet chain link fence with all the grace of a horse clearing hurdles. In fact, he looked as graceful as a horse, and somewhere there are pictures of Canis in mid-jump, legs tucked perfectly, with about a foot to spare as he gained his freedom from our back yard. Canis moved with us to Covington, Virginia, but soon fell ill. The vet called me at work, telling me he needed to be put down. I told the vet I wanted to see him one last time. He said, “You'd better hurry.” I left work immediately, but by the time I arrived at the veterinary hospital, Canis had cleared that last hurdle.

Quincy, dog number three, was also a lab mix, but with thicker hair. (With Quincy I began my habit of naming dogs after presidents or prime ministers.) We acquired her after a decent interval following the death of Canis. Quincy was sweet-tempered, and had a very good run, lasting from the early 1980s until 1996. She was an outside dog, and in Virginia often broke free from her restraints to explore the countryside. Most of the time she came back a mess. Once, I took her to a target range back in the woods. A deer nearby startled her, she gave chase, and I didn't see her again for several days. She finally turned up, dirty, hungry, and ready to resume her life.

Winston, a corgi, really wasn't my dog. He belonged to my son, Jason. But I loved him just the same. I knew that Jason had become a man by the way he treated Winston during Winston's last few months on earth. I saw compassion, gentleness, and sacrifice. A man needs a dog, if for no other reason than to become a good man.

My youngest, Reilly, found Pepper running around her school yard. No one claimed her, so Reilly did. Pepper passed away a bit ago, and we are guessing that she was somewhere around 16 or 17 years of age. Pepper was a chow, but as sweet as honey. And Pepper, through a union with a lab that jumped the fence in her back yard, became Ronnie's mother.

Ronnie was born on New Year's Day, 2006. Reilly took care of him for his first three months, and then we became pals. He was the best of them all (with the possible exception of Pepper), and we did most everything together. I tried very hard to treat him as well as I treated my children. When Kathy arrived on the scene, she set a new, higher standard. I treated him like a prince; she treated him like a king. I grumbled that she fed Ronnie more filet mignon than she served to me; she joked that if she died, she wanted to be reincarnated as my dog. We were a happy family: you, me, and baby makes three.

I have written about his recent bout of anemia. It wasn't that simple, of course. He suffered an auto-immune response that destroyed his red blood cells. At his last laboratory workup, we found he had about 1/3 the normal number of red blood cells. We spent a part of Sunday on the phone with the vet, trying to figure out what to do. We had a plan, and so we hospitalized him the next day, yesterday. The vet tried to stabilize him in preparation for a procedure. It turned out to be a futile attempt.

Ronnie hated thunder, as it scared him. Last night, in the midst of the worst thunder storm we have seen in awhile, he passed away, without his family by his side, in the veterinary hospital. I regret that he died alone, possibly scared.

But I regret nothing else about his life, except that it was too short. In human years, he made it to 85 ½, but that is still too short. We really needed another 12 years together.

We dog lovers are fools. We know full well that, when we adopt another canine into our family, we are most likely setting ourselves up for the type of heartbreak I am suffering now. And we do it anyway. Because man and dog are made for one another.

Good-bye, Ronnie.

It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Sting

This post originally appeared March 14, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Our festival season begins this weekend, March 17, 2018, at the St. Patrick’s Day festival in Dublin. That would be Dublin, Georgia. This is our 5th year there, and it is an excellent festival. Come on out and see us! http://www.dublinstpatricks.com/ You know we can’t miss this one: Kathy’s maiden name is O’Connor.

We sell a lot of chili pepper sauce and a lot of pepper jam. We also carry orange habanero powder, but that is not our big seller. It is hot: I once used it in a vegetable chili for my vegetarian daughter, at ¼ the recommended dose, and the chili was too hot for any of us to eat. For some reason, last week the website lit up with orders for orange habanero powder, and I found myself back in the production facility (i.e., our kitchen) filling little bags of the devil’s snuff.

It is a finely divided powder, and soon it was in the air, and up my nose. My eyes were watering, my throat and nasal passages were burning, and it made me long for my half-mask respirator. Which reminds me of a misadventure from several years ago.

After moving to Madison I bought a house that had belonged to a young couple with cats. Five cats, to be exact. I liked the house, and planned to put my computer, a table, and a few bookcases in what had been the cat’s lavatory, a room that had contained five litter boxes. But there was one lingering problem with that room: the odor of cat urine.

I tried everything to get rid of that odor. I shampooed the carpet. I bought bottles of urine-eating bacteria. Nothing worked. It appeared that I was going to have to rip up the carpet and sub-flooring to get rid of this foul stench. But before going to all that effort, I thought it worthwhile to do a little research.

Everything I read indicated that the problem was uric acid crystals. These crystals get deposited in the carpet and just stay there. You can’t vacuum them up, and they refuse to dissolve in the soapy solution spit out by carpet shampooers. My best bet, research indicated, was uric acid-eating bacteria. But I had tried the bacteria, and apparently they just weren’t hungry enough.

And then it hit me: get rid of the crystals by dissolving them. All I had to do was to find a liquid that would dissolve the crystals, and then I could suck them up into the belly of the carpet shampooer. Time to consult my trusty CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.

Sure enough, uric acid can be dissolved in a sodium carbonate solution. I don’t recall the exact concentration required, but I do recall dashing into the laboratory to make up a couple of gallons of sodium carbonate at the right concentration. My plan was to add this to the carpet shampooer, and solve my problem. The nice thing about sodium carbonate is that it is pretty innocuous: it is the stuff that gives Alka-Seltzer its fizz. It would not harm my carpet or the carpet shampooer.

And I did just that. I poured the carbonate solution into the shampooer, cranked up the machine, made a pass across the floor of the room, and nearly died.

The air turned putrid. The stench was unbearable.

I staggered across the room to the window, threw it open, and retreated with a whimpering Ronnie to the fresh air of the great out of doors.

Uric acid crystals stink. Uric acid solution can double as Satan’s fecal gas. My plan was working, but too well. I could not breathe in that room.

So I made a quick trip to the laboratory, and grabbed my trusty half-mask respirator. I returned home, and with the help of the respirator was able to shampoo the rug, removing every trace of cat urine. I left the window open for a couple of days, and that was it. The cat’s lavatory was now my computer room.

You could call this “better living through chemistry.”

Oh, well, if you folks keep ordering orange habanero powder, I’m going to have to buy a new respirator.

Group Photo

This post originally appeared March 10, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

One day I convinced the cows to pose with Ronnie.

Our Dog Ronnie and the Cows

This post originally appeared March 2, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

Our dog Ronnie used to like to intimidate the cows in the pasture behind our house. These days he barely pays them heed, dashing to the fence, letting loose with one bark, then returning to the house, to resume his nap. But back in the day . . .

Time, Time, Time, See What’s Become Of Me

This post originally appeared March 2, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

The seasons continue to turn. I, for one, am glad to see the end of winter. Winter has never been my favorite season (that would be summer), and it wouldn’t really hurt my feelings if I lived someplace with only three seasons (spring, summer, fall). The older I get, the less enamored I am of cold.

Of the four season markers, my favorite is the vernal equinox, the first day of spring. It wins out over the summer solstice for two reasons: the equinox marks the end of winter (good); and the summer solstice marks the beginning of shorter days (bad). We are still several days away from the equinox, but I am feeling spring in the air, even though today is a blustery, moderately cold day.

My friends in Australia are already into fall. For some reason, they do not wait for the equinox proper, but simply call the first day of the month the first day of the season. So fall begins March 1, winter June 1, etc. I suppose we could do the same, but it just wouldn’t seem right.

I suffer from the “why is that so – but I forgot” syndrome. I constantly run across things that bother me, that make me ask “why is this so,” only to forget to look them up later. Our naming of the months was one such problem. Take, for example, the month of September. “Sept” is a prefix denoting seven. Why is the ninth month named the seventh month? The same holds true for the 10th month (oct is the prefix for eight) and the 12th month (dec is the prefix for ten). That bothered me for a few years. It didn’t bother me enough to look it up, though, until I read a biography of Edmund Halley, the comet guy. There was a very curious timeline in that biography that forced me to dig a little deeper. Guess what? It just so happens that once upon a time, New Year’s Day was March 1. Why that was ever changed, I have no idea. Curious, isn’t it?

As the seasons progress, I become happier with life. I know folks who wish to be able to revisit their youth, to do it all over again. I am not in that camp. I have enjoyed every phase of my life – childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle age, somewhat advanced middle age – and have no desire to revisit any of those phases.

It seems that March 1 is an important date. It was once New Year’s Day, it is the first day of fall in the antipodes, and several outstanding folks were born that day. Yesterday, I celebrated the birth of one such person.

My wife Kathy, head honcho of Chile Today-Hot Tamale, and number one Red Hot Mama, celebrated her birthday yesterday. Prudence dictates that I not reveal which anniversary of her 39th birthday just passed, so we will leave that be. If I can figure out how to post a picture of her celebrating at Town 220 in Madison, GA, I will. (I am technologically challenged that way.)

Either way, please join me in wishing her a hot birthday and even hotter year to come. Happy Birthday, Love!

There's No Schweiger Like Braunschweiger

This post originally appeared February 23, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

This week was mid-winter break at my other job, that of high school math teacher, and I spent the week attending to the duties of life. I completed and filed the corporate income tax return for Chile Today-Hot Tamale. In addition, I gathered all the details necessary to complete our joint income tax returns. It was not, however, all work, no play. Monday evening we saw Darkest Hour and Tuesday evening we saw The Post. For the life of me, I can't remember a thing about Wednesday except doing the laundry. Thursday I began a project for Kathy, and Friday, we will visit the kids in Asheville, NC.

I needed a quiet week. If you have read my past blogs, you know that I try to keep it light and funny. Of course, not everyone understands my sense of humor, so it isn't always funny. But it has been very difficult this week to be humorous.

The recent stretch of time is one that we all have on occasion, and entirely unavoidable, if one lives long enough. It is a stretch of time pock-marked with death. A little bit ago I learned that my first cousin, Linda, had passed. She was a little older than I, but not much. It was apparent, the last time I saw her, that she was in poor health. Now she is gone. Just last year, in February, her father, my favorite uncle, passed away. He was something like 88 years old, or thereabouts. Linda did not have such a long run.

Then came news that the mother of a mate from high school, Alan, had passed away. That news came from another high school mate I hadn't talked to in probably 10 years. Between us, we figured out how to contact our old school chum, to offer our condolences. I hadn't talked with Alan since our 20th high school reunion, some 27 years ago.

The lady who cuts my hair (she is sweet: she doesn't charge a finder's fee) lost a brother a week ago. Then came a man I had never met. We had spoken on the phone several times, but that was it. He was in the hot sauce business, too, and he was by all accounts a great guy. But two weeks ago Bubber was in an automobile that hydroplaned, ran into a tree, and he is now gone.

Those of you who own a dog know that a dog is part of the family. At least, that is the way we feel about Ronnie, our Lab/Chow mix who loves Kathy to death. He turned 12 years old on January 1 of this year, and recently it became pretty apparent that something wasn't quite right with him. Kathy was so worried that she took him to the vet and authorized all sorts of laboratory studies so that we could get to the bottom of his illness. The result was that, aside from the arthritis that seems to afflict his hind legs more than his front legs, he is anemic. It appears that his bone marrow isn't doing the right bone marrow thingy, which is the cause of the anemia.

Last summer, the vet took a tick off Ronnie, and he speculated that the bone marrow thingy problem might be related to an infection from the tick. We gave the old boy a round of medication which lasted for what seemed like forever, but in reality was probably only 10 or 15 days, and he seemed to recover slightly. And then it hit me. If his problem was anemia, we could fix that.

I picked up a couple of rolls of braunschweiger from our local Ingles, and began topping his bowl of kibble with a nice thick slice at each meal. And believe it or not, I think the old boy has recovered! He seems to have more pep. He still wears out towards the end of the long walks Kathy takes him on, but no more that he did seven or so years ago, when he first met Kathy. Just today, he jumped up into the back seat of the pick-up without any trouble. He hadn't been able to do that in awhile.

I am not naive. Ronnie will not be with us forever. But in the midst of the death and sorrow from the past few weeks, his recovery, even if only temporary, is the bright spot.

Sweets for the Swede

This post originally appeared February 16, 2018, on the Chile Today Hot Tamale! website. (www.chiletodayhottamale.net)

I want to learn Swedish. Or Danish. Or both. I also want to prove the Riemann Hypothesis. I figure the probability of doing any one of the three is zero.

We can set aside the Riemann Hypothesis and focus on language. (It isn’t that I wouldn’t be happy proving the hypothesis, it is just that I am totally unfit to tackle the problem.)

The late Jacob Bronowski, a British mathematician of Polish origin, once claimed that his facility with English was made possible by the fact that he had learned some language (in his case, Polish), prior to the age of seven. My conclusion from this observation, which may or may not be correct, is that our ability to learn a second language diminishes rapidly after the age of seven.

The small high school I attended offered only one foreign language, French. I started to learn the language a month or so before my 15th birthday. According to my theory, that was eight years too late. As for my desire to learn Swedish or Danish, I figure I am now 58 years too late. The attempt to learn either language would be a Sisyphean task.

When I settled on an undergraduate major of chemistry, I was tempted to learn German. The great chemists of the 19th century were German, and German-speaking chemists and physicists were well represented in the world of theoretical chemistry in the early 20th century. German was the foreign language recommended by the chemistry department at Wake Forest University. Given my troubles with French, I avoided the German temptation until my sophomore year. It happened that a young lady in whom I was interested was taking German, so I joined her in the class. It didn’t take long before I decided that she just wasn’t worth the effort. It was a good call, as I can no longer even remember her name.

Graduate school presented an interesting problem. I needed to demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language in order to receive the PhD degree. I doubt that the language requirement is still in place. (Most scholarly publications are now in English. I contributed a research paper to a Swedish journal in the 1980s, in English, and I was not the Lone Ranger. It seemed to me that only about half of the papers were in Swedish. The rest were in English.) Nevertheless, in the 1970s, the archaic foreign language requirement was still in place. I had my choice of taking a couple of semesters of French, or of taking one of those 800-point standardized language exams, with a minimum of 500 points required to pass. I chose the latter, and managed to get by with 20 points to spare. A colleague of mine, who was on his last try, made it with a score of 503.

A few years ago, I purchased the book and tapes for the Foreign Service Institute’s French program. With all the good intentions in the world, I periodically pop a tape in my old tape player and take a shot at “brushing up on my French.” I did so prior to one of my trips to France, only to be laughed at by a dear friend there who considered my command of the language, as well as my accent, to be terrible. C’est dommage.

I must note that the seven-years-of-age rule does admit a few exceptions. Kathy lived for a year in Colombia when she was 10, and she has to this day a decent command of Spanish. My eldest daughter likewise has a decent command of Spanish, and I am pretty sure she didn’t start learning the language before the age of seven. My second daughter seemed to get along in Chinese quite well when we visited her in Taipei, and she didn’t begin Chinese lessons until she attended dear old Wake Forest. So there are exceptions, which just prove the rule, as far as I am concerned.

Recently I have been watching some very good television shows, some in Swedish, some in Danish, and I would really, really like to do away with the subtitles. I would also like to prove the Riemann Hypothesis, but as they say in Italian, “It ain’t a gonna happen!”