Congratulations! You Are Now More Valuable!

On New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Facebook page there is a video (Job One Has To Be Save Lives) of the Governor addressing the current shortage of ventilators in the state. About 1:10 into the video, the Governor says: “No American is going to say ‘accelerate the economy at the cost of a human life’, because no American is going to say how much a life is worth.”

I beg to differ with the Governor. Our Federal Government has said “how much a life is worth.” In fact, this being the Federal Government, three different departments have come up with three different values for a single human life.

Let us begin with the Department of Transportation, which in February of 2011 valued a human life at about $6 million. (This figure, and the figures for the EPA and FDA that follow, were taken from a New York Times article “As US Agencies Put More Value on a Life, Businesses Fret”, written by Binyamin Appelbaum, and published February 6, 2011. The hyperlinks embedded in the NY Times online article, which used to take the reader to government websites, are, alas, no longer active. But these numbers seem to be supported by other sources. See, for example, Green Hell a 2009 book by Steven Milloy, p. 62.) According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Inflation Calculator, $6 million in February of 2011 is worth $7 million in February of 2020. (The figures for March are not yet in.)

The Food and Drug Administration is much more generous. In the Times article mentioned above, the FDA valued a human life at $7.9 million, or $9.2 million as of February, 2020. But the leading government agency, in terms of the value of a human life, is the Environmental Protection Agency, which placed a 2011 value of $9.1 million on a human life, or $10.6 million today. So according to our Federal Government, a human life today is worth somewhere between $7 million and $10.6 million.

I have a different way of using government statistics to measure the value of a human life. The loss in Gross Domestic Product for 2020, due to the virus, is estimated to be $2.3 trillion. (Let’s write that out, as we seem to be tossing trillions of dollars here and there: $2,300,000,000,000. We can tick off one trillion seconds every 32,000 years. In order to spend the money in the recent “stimulus” package in one year, we would have to spend about $64,000 every second, 24/7, for the entire year. That is on top of our normal spending of about $128,000 every second of the fiscal year.) $2.3 trillion ain’t pocket change.

So we have the cost. The question is the denominator. How many people will die?

We can use the estimate I keep hearing, that we could have as many as 200,000 deaths. I think that figure is terribly high, but we can go with it. If so, each death is worth nearly $11.5 million! Congratulations! You really are worth more than you thought!

But what if the death rate is much lower? There was a paper published just a couple of weeks ago, not in some lunatic right wing journal, but in a peer-reviewed, rather prestigious journal, The New England Journal of Medicine. There were three authors, all M.D.s. You have probably heard of one of the authors, a fellow named Anthony S. Fauci. This paper, Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted, contained the following interesting tidbits:

“On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%. In another article in the Journal, Guan et al. report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.”

That is great news! It may have a fatality rate no worse than the good old ordinary flu

So what are the numbers for the flu? According to the CDC website, the estimates for flu illnesses between October 1, 2019 and March 21, 2020, are as follows: 38,000,000 – 54,000,000 flu illnesses, 24,000 – 62,000 flu deaths.

Using the higher figures for both deaths and illnesses, we have a fatality rate of 0.115%. At the time this was written, there have been 351,890 confirmed cases in the United States, with 10,377 deaths, for a fatality rate of nearly 3%. These are confirmed cases only, and we really have no idea how many unconfirmed cases were mistaken for the flu. It is likely that there are more actual cases than confirmed cases. (Remember Dr. Fauci’s comment: “If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases . . .”) This allows us to put the fatality rate in a range from 0.12% to 2.95%. This makes the infection much less hazardous than either SARS or MERS.

And now, the last bit of math. We are shutting down the economy, and losing approximately $2.3 trillion, with the hope that we can keep the number of deaths down at the current level, about 10,377. We know there will be more deaths, so let us use the number of deaths from influenza (62,000), as a reasonable estimate of how this will end. That puts the value of a human life at nearly $37.1 million.

Again, CONGRATULATIONS! You really are quite valuable.

N is for Nick!

I see that my last blog post was on Christmas Eve of last year, a bit more than three months ago. A whole quarter of the year gone without your hearing from me!

The last posting was written after we buried my best friend, and I knew I would not be writing any time soon. It never occurred to me that “any time soon” meant three months. I had come to terms with my loss,
and was ready to write again, when life happened. Things got busy at work. Things got busy at my other work. Things got busy at home. And here we are, three months later, ready to go again.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m going to engage in some sort of discourse on the Wuhan Flu. Wrong! I’ve had enough of it. It is on the television 24/7, it is on the radio 24/7, it is in every issue of my newspaper, and it occupies a fair amount of space in the magazines I read. I’m fed up with this, and I’m quite properly pissed off about it. I am teaching from home using one of those meeting platforms, so it seems that I never leave my home office anymore. I can’t escape by going out to dinner, because the powers that be in the city and state have shut the restaurants down, except for takeout. I can’t go to the movies, because of ditto. But the main thing that I’m pissed about is toilet paper.

My modest little house in Madison has two bathrooms. We generally buy an eight-pack of toilet paper whenever our previous eight-pack gets down to two or three rolls. At the onset of the toilet-paper-hoarding
phase of the pandemic, we had seven rolls in the house. I was not worried, until two subsequent trips to the grocery store in two consecutive weeks indicated that there was no toilet paper in the county.

Amazon was no help. Most storefronts indicated that they were out of toilet paper. The storefronts that said they had toilet paper really didn’t: the delivery times were one to two months out. Ridiculous!

Apparently that part of the crisis is over. I was in Wal-Mart yesterday, and there was a good amount of toilet paper, sitting on two pallets, ready for purchase. We grabbed an eight-pack, breathed a sigh of relief, and headed home.

Seriously, I hope the people who hoarded toilet paper choke on it.

And that’s the extent of my discussion of the Wuhan Flu.

Back some time ago, the 1980s, I think, a fellow named Gurganus wrote a novel entitled Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. I remember the name Gurganus, because I had an acquaintance named Gurganus. At one time I thought it was a Greek surname, such as Galifianakis, Costa-Gavras, and Savalas. Turns out, it’s Welsh. Oh, well, live and learn.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the director Costa-Gavras, and who hasn’t heard of Telly Savalas? You may wonder about that other name, Galifianakis. Nick Galifianakis was a North Carolina Member of Congress, active in the 60s and 70s. I wasn’t in his district, but the television stations I watched in those days must have broadcast to his district, because every two years his political commercials were on the air. He was a reasonably successful politician, until 1972, when he won the Democratic primary for the United States Senate, and had the misfortune to have as an opponent a fellow named Jesse Helms. That year, for the first time in anyone’s memory, the state of North Carolina went Republican in a big way: Nixon, Holshouser, and Helms.

But I digress. Nick Galifianakis must have employed an outstanding PR firm. To this day, I remember his campaign ditty:

N is for Nick,  Nick Galifianakis,

I is for his integrity,

C is for Congress,

K is for Keep him there!

We need Nick in Washington, DC!

All of this, just because I thought Gurganus was a Greek name!

Sometime in the 1980s, the intellectualoids were all atwitter over this first novel from Gurganus, about the oldest living Confederate widow. Of course, I bought the book, and managed to finish it, how I do not know. It was a bit preachy, smug, and did a disservice, I thought, to the real oldest living Confederate widow, who was still alive at the time. (She died in 2008. The penultimate surviving widow of a Confederate soldier, who happened to be the last widow whose marriage to a Confederate soldier resulted in offspring, died in 2004.)

I gave my copy of that book away, so I cannot check the details, but if I recall correctly, towards the end of what seemed like a never-ending novel, the widow takes a plane flight to Atlanta, and is astonished to see, out the window of the airplane, streaks of dark, luscious green vegetation, much darker and greener than the vegetation she had been seeing. When she asked about it, she was told that the beautiful green vegetation was a result of Sherman’s march. The total destruction by burning of the forests resulted in a growth that was even more hardy, even more green, even more luscious.

I have no idea whether Gurganus made that up, or whether it is actually true. I am inclined to believe that it is actually true. Here is why.

I once lived in the middle of the largest hardwood forest in the eastern half of the United States. I was working for a paper company at the time, and the middle of a huge hardwood forest seemed an ideal
location for a paper mill. In fact, that paper company had three mills in this hardwood forest, stretching from Virginia, through Maryland, and into Pennsylvania. And all the time I lived in that hardwood forest, I never suffered from pollen. Never.

My pollen problems started when I moved to Georgia. Gee, thanks, Sherman!

I understand that a pollen count of around 150 or so is so high as to be considered dangerous. Yesterday’s pollen count: more than 6000. Six thousand!

I mowed the lawn today, and was forced to wear one of those masks you wear when sanding down joints in drywall. I hated it. When I hosed down my truck, a mighty yellow river of pollen rolled out the back
and down the driveway. (We have a Yellow River in Georgia. I wonder how it got its name?) I enjoy fresh air, but only a fool would leave a window open this time of year, even though the temperatures are pleasant. The entire interior of the house would be coated with pollen.

One day, the panic over the Wuhan Flu will be gone. But we’ll always have pollen. Now THAT is something to worry about!

Bookends

Many of my generation would call Bob Dylan the philosopher of the baby boomers. I disagree. Simon and Garfunkel are more to my taste. The duo did not put out many albums during their existence (I have only four), but most were classics. My favorite is Bookends, which I think was their fourth album. One tune from the album, Old Friends, has lyrics that begin:

Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends.

For the last two months that song has been tormenting my brain. A bit more than a month ago, I attended the funeral of my best friend, a gentleman I had known for 27 years. I kept thinking of the song, telling myself that I really wasn’t cut out to sit on a park bench with an old friend, anyway. But the loss of an old friend hurts.

I lost my father a bit more than 19 years ago. We were father and son, not the usual combination one thinks of as best friends. His loss was different. My definition of a happy childhood is a childhood without fear, a childhood of knowing that whatever may befall you, your parents can take care of the situation. My father gave me a happy childhood. He had all the answers to all my problems. Of course, eventually I grew up, and had to take responsibility for my own actions. My father no longer had all the answers. But he continued to serve as a sounding board, a source of advice, and let the record show, wisdom. I still feel his loss all these years later.

A bit more than four years ago, I lost another friend, Jim. Jim was a retired lawyer, but in spite of the fact that we practiced different professions, Jim was a mentor. I learned a fair bit about life from him, and even a little bit about the law. We had known each other for about 15 years when he died, quite suddenly. Kathy and I were getting ready to leave for a spring break visit to Taiwan, and I chatted with him on the phone just before we left. When I returned, a week later, I called him to tell him all about the trip. He never answered either his landline or his cell phone. After a few missed calls, I called a mutual friend, who told me that Jim had passed away while we were gone.

Charley, my friend who was died last month, was 55 years old when we met. He was able to retire from his employer in Connecticut with full benefits, but he was unwilling to be put out to pasture at that tender age. Thus, I hired him and moved him to Georgia, in 1992. We got along well, and soon became fast friends. He, too, was a mentor. He is the fellow who talked me into attending my very first jazz party, in Clearwater Beach, Florida. We attended many a jazz party together after that first event in 2000.

One day Charley told me that he had more music than he could ever listen to in the years he had remaining, and so he had decided to give me his entire record, tape, and CD collection of jazz music. I was overwhelmed, as he had some classics dating back several decades. Of course, I did the decent thing: I digitized all the records and tapes, and ripped all the CDs. I then presented Charley with a hard drive containing all the music he had given to me. It turns out that he had quite a few more years to enjoy that music. We also recorded all the music from the jazz parties we attended. I must admit that I am a bit behind on organizing and labeling the music from the last couple of jazz parties we attended. Charley will not be able to enjoy those tunes, but I will think of him when I play them.

I last saw Charley a couple of weeks before he died. He was complaining of various ailments, only one of which sounded remotely serious. As it happens, that is not the ailment that did him in. He suffered a heart attack, and passed quickly.

Given the timing of Charley’s death, I cannot help but feel a bit down this Christmas. Still, he had a good run, and more importantly, he made a difference. I cannot speak for others, but I can state with certainty that my life would have been very different, and much the poorer, if I hadn’t known him. That is, perhaps, the best that can be said for any of us.

Where Are My Balls?

“Alexa, what is the temperature in Madison, Georgia?”

“Right now, the temperature is 59 degrees. Today, expect a high of 82 degrees.”

“Damn, winter is here.”

Now that the cold weather has arrived, it is time to begin the indoor activities appropriate to winter. Yeah, right, you know I'm kidding. The summer's too hot to do outdoor activities anyway. I'm pretty much a creature of the indoors all year round.

I play the vibraphone. Perhaps I should rephrase. I attempt to play the vibraphone, and I quite enjoy the noise I make with my overgrown set of door chimes. And, as with every hobby I have ever undertaken, I tend to study it to death.

I know a few professional vibraphonists, and the conversations I have with them invariably gravitate toward the mallets they use. Vibraphones are fairly expensive. Once you buy one, you keep it until the frame rusts away. Any variation in the sound you get from the instrument thus boils down to technique and mallets. Technique is something I'm still working on. But mallets, well, that's easy. Just buy different mallets and you will get different sounds.

That seems so easy, and it would be if one were rich. But since we're talking the life of a musician here, we can rule out the prospect that one is wealthy. Mallets come in sets of two or four. I buy four, as I play with three and can always use a spare. They generally sell for around $20-$30 per mallet. That gets expensive after awhile.

There are three parts to a vibraphone mallet: the shaft, the core, and the winding. The best shafts are rattan. They have a little, but not too much, flex to them. Wooden dowel rods, on the other hand, have no flex to them, and are not preferred. And don't even mention plastic shafts. Vibraphonists are such snobs!

The core is key. The core is generally rated by its hardness. Hard mallets have a hard plastic ball as a core, and produce a louder, and “pingier”, sound, if “pingier” is indeed a word. Soft mallets use soft rubber balls as cores, and are generally lower in volume. Unfortunately, they also tend to muddy up the low notes. Then there are the composite mallets. My pair of composites has a core that is a hard plastic ball, which is covered with a bit of Tygon tubing. The tubing softens the sound, when compared with the hard plastic ball.

The winding is also critical. The core can be covered with yarn of various types (cotton, bamboo, wool, etc.) or cord. This generally attenuates the sound one gets from just the core. I've tried winding with cord. It isn't easy, and I can't make the mallet sound the way I want it to sound, so I stick with yarn. Of course, just settling on a yarn can be problematic. There are all sorts of different sizes. Do I use number 3, number 5, or number 10 (the three sizes I can find in a Wal Mart)? And let's not even talk about colors!

I once made a set of mallets using dowel rods (not ideal) and rubber stoppers (ground down from a trapezoid of revolution to a cylinder) from Lowes. I like the sound they produce, but I want a little more flex in the handles, and I would prefer a circular, as opposed to a cylindrical, core. So, I visited the Internet, and bought two pounds of rattan. I have no idea why they sell it by the pound, but they do. These two pounds comprise two different diameters: 7mm and 9mm. The 7mm has a good bit of flex to it. I will probably try the 7mm first.

In my imagination, I figured out that I could wind a soft rubber ball very tightly, compressing the ball, to produce a mallet that was not as hard as the hard core mallets (goodbye metallic ping), but harder than a soft core mallet (bringing clarity to the low notes). This should be the easiest thing in the world, yes? I just go down to Wal Mart and buy some rubber balls. How hard could that be?

As it turns out, it is practically impossible.

I suspect the problem is that we are all too stupid to realize that a child can choke on a small rubber ball, thus someone, perhaps the government (conspiracy theory, anyone?), has decided that the only way to save small children from choking on vibraphone mallet cores is to ban them from Wal Mart. Based on the size of the heads on my wound mallets, I am looking for rubber balls anywhere from ½ to 1 inch in diameter. These seem to be missing from Wal Mart. The larger ones they carry. The Lowes employee gave me a very funny look when I asked for rubber balls, and the Tractor Supply lady just said “Huh?”

Back to the Internet. Unfortunately, in order to get the size balls I wanted, I had to order a few hundred. So here I sit with two pounds of rattan (some of which needs to be straightened with a propane torch), waiting for a few hundred balls to appear on my doorstep. I've already bought all the yarn that Wal Mart carries.

I'm beginning to see why vibraphone mallets are so expensive!

61*

The month of September brings us the equinox, and the beginning of fall, at least, on this side of the equator. The month of October ends with the celebration of Halloween, a celebration of interest to me because it coincides with my birthday. In between these two dates we find a date of significance that is not often remembered. It is October 1, 1961. On that date, Roger Eugene Maris broke Babe Ruth’s record (from 1927) of 60 home runs in one season. In the fourth inning, during the last regular game of the season, and in front of a little more than 23,000 fans, Maris nailed a pitch from Boston Red Sox pitcher Tracy Stallard, sending it into the right field bleachers for home run number 61 of the season.

The home run was controversial at the time, primarily because Babe Ruth, who died in 1948, still had friends in Major League Baseball. The most significant friend was Ford Frick, the commissioner of baseball, and a friend to Ruth’s widow, Claire. Frick saw himself as the protector of the Ruth legacy, and he found a way to discredit Maris’ achievement even before it happened.

In Ruth’s day, the baseball season was 154 games long. In 1961, the league was expanded to ten teams with the addition of the Los Angeles Angels and the Washington Senators. In order to balance the schedule, the season was extended to 162 games. Frick announced at a mid-season press conference that, in his opinion, Ruth’s record would stand unless it was broken in 154 games. Any home run past 60, hit in any game after the 154th, should contain some “distinctive mark” in the record books, indicating that it was set in the “extended” season. While Frick himself did not suggest that the record be marked with an asterisk, Dick Young, a sportswriter for the New York Daily News, proposed the asterisk as the “distinctive mark”. Major League Baseball did not control “the record books” at that time, so Frick’s suggestion of a “distinctive mark” was just that, a suggestion that Maris’ record should occupy a different category than Ruth’s.

The controversy hides the remarkable nature of the achievement. The Ruth record stood for 34 years, and Ruth came close to that record only one other time in his career, in 1921, when he hit 59 home runs. He hit 54 home runs twice more in his career (1920, 1928). Aside from those four years, Ruth was never in the 50s with respect to home runs. (In Ruth’s day, what we now call an “automatic double,” a ball that hit the ground in the outfield then bounced over the fence, was considered a home run. I have been assured that none of Ruth’s 1927 home runs came that way, but I do not know whether any of his other three seasons of 50 plus home runs contains “automatic double” homers.) All major league players recognized how difficult it would be to tie the Ruth record, much less best it.

The 50 Home Run Club, made up of players who had hit 50 or more home runs in a season, contained, in 1961, only eight members: Ruth, Hack Wilson, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenburg, Johnny Mize, Ralph Kiner, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle. Foxx and Greenburg led the pack of runners up with 58 home runs each (in 1932 and 1938, respectively). Mantle hit 52 home runs in 1956, and he would end the 1961 season with 54 homers. It was an exclusive club, one difficult to break into. Sixty home runs seemed like a dream.

Yet both Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were in the running to break Ruth’s record in 1961. Late in the season, Mickey Mantle was sidelined with a hip infection. He had no regular season at bats after September 26, 1961. As noted above, he finished the regular season with 54 home runs. It would have been a fantastic season if Mantle had remained healthy.

The 1961 New York Yankees was blessed with its “Murderer’s Row” of heavy hitters. In addition to Mantle(CF) and Maris(RF), the heart of the lineup contained Moose Skowron(1B), Yogi Berra(LF), and Elston Howard(C). For the most part, Maris was third in the lineup, followed by Mantle, Berra, and Skowron. Opposing pitchers did not have the luxury to pitch around Maris, so he saw some pretty good pitches.

At any rate, the 154th game passed with Maris at 59 home runs (September 20). He hit number 60 on September 26 (game number 158), and the 61st on October 1 (game number 162).

In my opinion, Maris’ achievement should never have been marred with the suggestion that it wasn’t in the same category as Ruth’s. For one thing, Ruth didn’t have to travel all the way to Los Angeles to play a game. Travel does tend to wear on the body. The addition of eight games to the schedule seems to have had no effect on any other records. By the time Hank Aaron broke Ruth’s total home runs record (714) in April of 1974, there was no suggestion that an asterisk or other distinctive mark was necessary to denote that some of Aaron’s home runs had occurred during extended seasons. The same holds for single season hits, or walks, or stolen bases, etc. I believe that Maris was the target of an unfair discrimination that would not occur today.

Curiously enough, Maris is still not in the baseball Hall of Fame. I understand why: except for 1961, he really didn’t turn in hall of fame quality years. However, 61 home runs in a season is, in my opinion, enough to overcome the mediocrity of some of his baseball career. He should be in the Hall of Fame.

His achievement still stands, in my opinion. Oh, I know, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds have hit more home runs in a season, and the record books even note that Bonds has beaten Aaron’s record of most home runs (755). I put a great big asterisk next to each of those records, with the qualifier: “These so-called records were set with the aid of performance enhancing drugs.” They are not records in my record book.

The decade of the nineties was a terrible time for baseball. Were I the King of Baseball, there would be no players from that decade inducted into the Hall of Fame, and no records from that decade entered into the record book. It is my sincere hope that Major League Baseball has the performance enhancing drug epidemic under control. Unfortunately, it comes too late for me.

My interest in baseball began its death spiral after the revelations of steroid abuse. But my admiration for Maris, Mantle, and all the other true athletes of the pre-drug era, increased substantially.

So, on Tuesday, October 1, 2019, I will stop and remember with awe the accomplishment of Roger Maris back on that Autumn day some 58 years ago.

Get Back On That Horse!

My former father-in-law, the late Perry Smith, paid me two high compliments. The higher compliment came sometime after his daughter and I had split, and thus was entirely unexpected. He paid me the compliment not to massage my ego or to engender any good will with me, but simply because he was a decent human being. I miss him.

The other compliment came after a session in our kitchen. He was a very good cook, and when he visited us, he invariably ended up in the kitchen. We always looked forward to whatever surprise he decided to prepare for us. One day, he paid me this compliment: “George, the knives in your kitchen are always sharp.”

You may not think that high praise, but he and I were both technical types who appreciated the right tool for the right job, and who believed that any tool ought to be kept in good repair. The most useful kitchen tool is the kitchen knife, and he recognized that I tried to keep the tools in my kitchen in good repair. It was high praise, indeed, from a master in the kitchen.

I have just finished sharpening the kitchen knives that needed work. Sharpening day in the Batten household is a big production, primarily because, back in February, I began shaving with a straight razor. Sharpening a razor has changed my perspective on what constitutes an acceptable level of sharpness in a knife. It has also increased the number of sharpening appliances that I now employ on sharpening day.

In the past, when my ex-father-in-law was using my kitchen knives, I employed a hard Arkansas stone to sharpen my knives. The stone I use has to be at least 50 years old. It has a coarse side and a hard side. After applying mineral oil to the surface of the stone, I would sharpen first on the coarse side, then finish with the fine side. This produced an edge that impressed my father-in-law. However, when I tried to sharpen my straight razor with the Arkansas stone, the result was unsatisfactory. It did improve the edge somewhat, but not enough for a good, close shave.

A colleague at work suggested a Japanese water stone, and Yellowstone compound added to the backside of my leather strop. The water stone I purchased has two sides, one 5,000 grit, the other 10,000 grit. I start with the 5,000 side, then finish with the 10,000 side. I cannot compare these two stones by grit numbers, because Arkansas stones are rated by hardness, not grit. I can report, though, that the fine side of the Arkansas stone does not feel as smooth as the 5,000 side of the water stone.

The water stone does a nice job, but the secret to a really sharp razor’s edge is the Yellowstone compound. I scrape off bits of the compound, and rub it into the back of the strop, as if pushing butter into it. Stropping the razor on the back side of this treated strop results in an extraordinarily sharp edge. I then finish the process by stropping the razor on the smooth side of the strop.

And so it is with my favorite kitchen knife (an Old Hickory butcher knife) and with Kathy’s favorite kitchen knife (a Sabre Bowie knife). If I go too long between sharpenings, the knives see all four stones, beginning with the coarse side of the Arkansas stone and ending with the 10,000 grit water stone. All the knives are stropped with Yellowstone.

This does not mean that I have not used other sharpening gadgets. For many years I used the grindstone on the back of an electric can opener to put an edge on a ridiculously dull knife. I would still use that device, but I haven’t seen it since the divorce. My guess is that it is in the basement workshop of my ex-house.

Jason recently gave me a little device with the brand name Kitchen iQ (for some reason the “i” is upside down in the brand name: silly millennial marketing guru!) that uses ceramic to sharpen knives. There are two “V” shaped slots, one labeled “coarse” and the other “fine” that I use to replenish the edge on our knives while in media res.

There is one other knife sharpening device that I used 30 years ago. It is pictured at the top of this post. I had a bad experience with it, and it has taken me nearly 30 years to “get back on the horse that threw me”. When she divided up the kitchen utensils, my ex-wife made sure this device went with me. She wanted no part of it.

The device, sold by Sears, carries the name “Cedar Block Sharpening Rod Kit” and is just that: a block of cedar wood with two holes drilled in at an angle. The holes are occupied by removable pressed silica rods. Its operation is simple: hold your knife vertically on the inside of one rod, move it down to sharpen, then do the same with the other rod to the other side of the knife. You hold the cedar block still with your non-dominant hand. It does a very nice job, and reminds me a bit of the 10,000 grit side of the water stone.

But if you aren’t paying attention, or if you get a bit sloppy, you can hurt yourself, as I did one Sunday night in the 1980s. The London broil was out of the oven, and I was preparing to slice it with my Old Hickory butcher knife. All I needed to do first was to run the blade on the inside of both rods a time or two.

So, without paying very much attention, I raised the knife higher than the top of the left silica rod, and when the blade came down, it hit the top of the rod. After that, instead of veering right, the knife veered left. I had embedded the knife in the back of my left hand, severing a tendon. The only good thing I can say about that experience is that it was a good, clean incision produced by a knife that was already very sharp.

I visited the emergency room, and I later spent some quality time with an orthopedic surgeon. My recovery was complete. The Sears Cedar Block Sharpening Rod Kit was stored away, I thought for good.

Now I am glad that I did not throw it away. It is very useful. I don’t use it daily, but I do use it frequently.

It is just that I am a good bit more careful now when I use it.

Eighty-Nine Inches

Our Beaufort, SC, home was built in the 1940s. Originally, it was a one bedroom, one bathroom house. It was added to at some later date, probably between 1978 and 1995, and is now a three bedroom, two bathroom house.

The reason for that 17 year guess on when the house was enlarged has to do with polybutylene (PB) piping, which was used fairly extensively in housing water supply applications between 1978 and 1995. Cheap, flexible, and easy to install, PB was considered the “pipe of the future.” Housing experts believe that between 6 and 10 million homes in the country were built during that period with PB piping. It was a wonderful material. That is, it was wonderful until it was discovered that after 10 to 15 years of life it degraded, cracked, and failed, flooding the houses that used it as water lines.

No one is sure why PB piping fails. Some attribute its failure to exposure to the UV light found in sunlight (meaning that if it had been sitting out exposed to sunlight for a long time before being installed, it is more likely to fail). Others think it is due to local issues, primarily periodic over-chlorination of the water supply. While am no more certain than the experts, I tend to favor the latter explanation. The house two doors down from our Madison, GA, home has PB piping, which has not failed, even though the house is at least 25 years old. At any rate, this being America, there was a class action lawsuit sometime in the 1980s or 1990s which was settled for megabucks. Shell no longer produces the stuff, and presumably all homeowners are happy.

There are two things that cause me not to buy a house: aluminum wiring, and PB piping. Aluminum wiring is like an engraved invitation to have a house fire visit. I always look for it when buying a house. Fortunately, I’ve never found it. PB, on the other hand . . .

The reason why I know that the house two doors down from mine has PB piping is because, 13 years ago, I made an offer on that house, and later withdrew it when the home inspector found PB piping. (PB is gray in color; PVC is white. The piping that I could see in that house looked white. As it turns out, it had been painted white.)

So, a few years ago, when we bought the Beaufort home, I was concerned when the home inspector found some PB piping. The only reason we went through with the purchase of the house was because there was so very little of it: 89 inches, to be exact, with 12 inches of that piping on the hot water heater’s pressure relief valve, a position that caused me no concern. That left 77 inches, half of it running up to the laundry room to the hot water side of the washing machine, and half of it running up to the laundry room to the cold water side of the washing machine. These lines were under pressure, and they worried me so much that I finally resolved to replace them, which I did this week.

I spent some time in the crawl space taking photos, then headed off to the local hardware store, Grayco Hardware and Home, on Lady’s Island. Beaufort has a Lowes, which is nice, but when it comes to a job like this, I needed to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about. Grayco has an employee, Dick something or another, who is a plumber. He looked at my photos, sketched out what I needed to do, and sold me the supplies. I grabbed my goodies and headed back to the house to get dirty (it is a crawl space, after all) and wet (no matter that you shut off the water to the house, when you cut into a water line, you get wet).

There is a rule I follow for all household projects. I call it Batten’s Rule. It is simple: figure as realistically as possible the length of time it will take to finish a project, then multiply it by three. I estimated one hour. I finished it in three.

I am happy to report that all went according to Hoyle. My problems were not with the plumbing fixtures, but with the holes through which I tried to slide the PEX I bought to replace the PB. I hate threading needles, running electrical lines through existing walls, and fitting ½ inch lines in holes that just barely accommodate ½ inch lines. But, eventually, the deed was done, and I was able to take a nice shower before heading off to The Jazz Corner on Hilton Head Island.

Even though it caused me no concern, I even replaced the PB on the hot water heater’s pressure relief valve. The house if completely free of PB piping.

I do not understand why the 89 inches was there in the first place. With all the PVC and copper under the house, that little bit of PB seemed out of place. But no matter why it made an appearance, it is gone, and my quarterly work week at the house has ended.

And now I am back home in Madison, just in time to mow the lawn. It never ends.

The Four Color Theorem, or, I Am An Old Geezer

I was introduced to the Four Color Theorem when I was in college. The theorem dates back to 1852, when Francis Guthrie was coloring a map of the counties of England. He noticed that he needed only four colors to fill in the map, so that no two adjacent counties had the same color. Guthrie, who later became a mathematician and botanist (a curious combination) in South Africa, communicated this observation to his professor, the mathematician Augustus De Morgan, and asked whether this was true in general. In other words, given any map containing bounded regions (counties, states, etc.), can we color all these regions with only four colors, and avoid having any two adjacent regions with the same color?

This may seem a trivial, possibly silly, theorem, but its eventual “proof”, in 1976, has divided the math world into two groups: the Young Turks, and the Old Geezers. It turns out that, in 1976, at the tender age of 24, I was an Old Geezer.

The theorem was extremely difficult to prove. By 1890 we had proof that five colors would be sufficient, but the proof that four colors would be sufficient seemed elusive. One proof was published in 1879, and another in 1880, but both were eventually shown to be incorrect. Curiously, it took 11 years in each case to show that the proofs had defects.

In June of 1976, Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken at the University of Illinois announced that they had proven the theorem. Their proof was controversial: for the first time, a computer had played a central role in proving a theorem.

I will not go into the details of the proof other than to say that they used the counter-example method. Let’s say that I want to prove that not all states in the United States are south of Canada. I start by assuming the opposite, that all states are south of Canada, then look for one example (a counter-example) where this is not true (Alaska). Once I have proven the opposite to be false, the original must be true.

The counter-example that Appel and Haken sought was a map where the minimum number of colors required was five. When they showed that this counter-example didn’t exist, the original theorem, that a minimum of four would suffice, was proven. This involved two mathematical properties of maps: reducibility, and unavoidability. In searching for the counter-example, the two mathematicians reduced the number of maps that had to be examined from an infinite number to just 1,476. (This is the reducibility part of the proof.) These maps were checked by computer. The computers of the day were not as fast as today’s versions, so it took more than a thousand hours of computer time to check the maps. The unavoidability part of the proof was performed by hand, actually by Haken’s daughter, and involved the examination of 400 pages of microfiche.

This is the part that rubbed mathematicians the wrong way. I can prove that vertical angles are congruent on a 3 x 5 index card. I can prove the theorem of Pythagoras on a half-sheet of notebook paper. There are other proofs that are far longer and more involved, but I can get through them with a reasonable amount of work. The Appel-Haken proof, on the other hand, is beyond my ability to follow. I can check the math that reduces the number of maps from infinity to 1,476, but the checking of the maps by the computer is something I can’t do. What if there is a flaw in the computer program? How do we know that there is no flaw? And the mind-numbing examination of 400 pages of microfiche requires a determination that few of my fellow amateur mathematicians possess.

There was, in fact, a flaw in the proof, discovered by a masters student in 1981. It was in the unavoidability portion of the proof, the 400 pages of microfiche. Appel and Haken corrected the error, and found that the proof still held. The final word on their work is their book, published in 1989, that corrects the error discovered in 1981, and includes the 400 pages of microfiche. It has the gripping title Every Planar Map Is Four Colorable, and can be purchased here for a mere $121.03, at the time of this writing. That is one expensive paperback.

But the use of a computer to do work that is unreasonable for a human to do still sticks in the craw. The year 1976 was a watershed year in mathematics, separating mathematicians into two groups: those of us, the Old Geezers, who object to the use of an algorithm that, in itself, can’t be proven to be accurate; and the Young Turks, who buy the proof based primarily on the fact that no flaw in the algorithm has yet come to light. It is an unsatisfactory situation.

Mathematicians have continued working on the proof of the four color theorem. The number of reducible configurations has been lowered from 1,476 to 633, but, as before, the checking must be done by computer. Another group of mathematicians has found a way to avoid having to trust the various algorithms that have been used to examine the reducible configurations. They did this by using Coq, a computerized theorem proving program. We are down to trusting one program only.

My view is that the four color theorem is very likely true. It is also my view that we do not yet have definitive proof that it is true. I remain an Old Geezer.

Black Mirror

I have been listening to the Night Call podcast since its inception more than a year ago. (There is one podcast per week, and the most recent one was podcast number 70.) Those of you familiar with the podcast will find it strange that I listen to it. To be honest, I succumbed to the advertising hype surrounding the launch of the podcast. I thought, given the name and some of the pre-launch advertising, that it would be in the same vein as the late Art Bell’s radio show Coast to Coast AM. I was wrong. This is how the website describes the show: “Every Monday, hosts Molly Lambert, Tess Lynch and Emily Yoshida, gather in dark rooms for a free jazz blend of pop culture theory, internet fascinations, and venture down a plethora of half-baked conspiracy theory rabbit holes. Drop us a line with your night call at 240-46-NIGHT or nightcallpodcast@gmail.com, and we'll offer our best advice on life, love, and the coming apocalypse.”

The three hostesses are, I believe, writers for web-based publications. At least one of the three is a movie reviewer. I listen to the podcast for a variety of reasons: I hear about movies or television shows that I would never discover from my friends that are my age; I get information on topics that engage the interest of that generation known as “millennial”; it kills time during my Monday morning commute to work. As to point two, I find myself looking up phrases and abbreviations they use on the air. It seems that “casting shade” has nothing to do with relief from sunshine. I had to look up an abbreviation when a female guest pronounced herself “DTF” with respect to some good looking male movie star. The baby boomers and the millennials are two generations separated by a common language.

But it is thanks to the Night Call podcast that I learned about the television series Black Mirror, a Twilight Zone-style creation of the screenwriter and producer Charlie Brooker. While The Twilight Zone dealt with a variety of sensitive topics, such as racism and nuclear annihilation, in the guise of futuristic or otherwise fictionalized settings, Brooker has focused Black Mirror on the relationship between man and technology.

Season five was just released on Netflix. The first two seasons, plus a Christmas special, were produced for Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. Each of these seasons contained three episodes. Seasons three through five, plus an interactive movie (Bandersnatch), were produced for Netflix. Seasons three and four had six episodes each. For the recently released Season five, Brooker returned to the three-episode season.

My opinion is free, and you will certainly get your money’s worth with my opinion. Given that caveat, I believe that the first two seasons, and the recently released fifth season, represent some of the best television that I have seen.

The very first episode of season one, The National Anthem, was disturbing, but not out of the realm of the possible. Its focus is the public’s appetite for humiliation. While it was undoubtedly critically acclaimed (“serves as a cautionary tale about the power of the collective 'hive mind' that is social media”), if the remaining episodes had been that intense, I would never have finished the series. Fortunately, the second episode returned to a more Twilight Zone-like pattern. Episode three (The Entire History of You), the second best of the first season, introduced me to Jodie Whittaker, who is the current incarnation of The Doctor in the long-running series Doctor Who.

I enjoyed the second season, although I did not think it lived up to the standards set by the first season. But in comparison with seasons three and four, and the ridiculous movie Bandersnatch, season two was high art. It seems that the move to Netflix and the extension to six episodes per season had compromised the originality of the show. I barely made it through Bandersnatch, and was not sure that I should commit the time to see season five. Now that I have seen the series, I’m very glad I did.

All three episodes of season five are good, but if you have time for only one episode, see the second one, Smithereens. It is a commentary on our social media addiction, and its consequences.

I am not a movie reviewer, and my tastes in plot twists may not be yours. Give the series a try. See season one, and if you like it, go straight to season five. You can pop back and try season two after that. As to seasons three and four, that’s up to you. If you are in doubt, try Nosedive, the first episode of season three.

After that, throw away your cell phones.

Que Será, Será

I admit to being saddened at the death, on May 13, of Doris Day. It is not that it was unexpected: back on April 3 of this year, my favorite radio station (Sirius Channel 73, the Forties Junction) celebrated her 97th birthday by playing her hits throughout the day. One is not surprised by death at age 97. Her death seems to be the final break with the Hollywood of a different era.

Even in my childhood I knew she could sing, because of her hit song Que Será, Será, which still played on the radio in the ‘60s (it was recorded in 1956). But for the most part, I thought of her as an actress. Pillow Talk, the light romantic comedy featuring Day and Rock Hudson, would be the first film title to come to mind when her name was mentioned. I was also aware that she had a television show in the late 60s and early 70s. (I was unaware at the time that she did the show to pay off debts accumulated by her third husband and the husband’s business partner.) Recently I saw the two movies she did with James Garner. I highly recommend Move Over, Darling, a 1963 re-make of the 1940 film My Favorite Wife. If you want to relax with an entertaining movie that doesn’t tax the brain, then a Doris Day romantic comedy is what you want.

I have yet to see the 1956 Hitchcock film The Man Who Knew Too Much, which features Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day. It is this movie that gave us the tune Que Será, Será. It is on my “to see” list. What could be wrong with this movie? It features three winners: Hitchcock, Stewart, and Day.

It has been my great pleasure, though, in recent years, to listen to Doris Day, the singer. Her breakthrough as a singer occurred in 1945, when she recorded, with Les Brown and his Band of Renown, Sentimental Journey. For all I know, Les Brown my have recorded that tune a million times, but there are two versions that stand out, one with the Ames Brothers, and one with Doris Day. When I hear the opening measures of Sentimental Journey on the radio, I have my fingers crossed that I will hear the lovely voice of Doris Day, and not the mellow voices of the Ed Ames and his brothers. I could listen to her sing My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time, Day By Day, On Moonlight Bay, Till The End of Time, I Got The Sun In The Morning, and for that matter, the Manhattan telephone directory, all day. Her voice was as sweet and as smooth as any voice I’ve heard.

Her film image was that of a goody two-shoes. I once heard a comedian say that his stereo speakers stopped putting out after he played a Doris Day album. The ever-virginal image is hard to square with the fact that she was married four times and had a son by husband number one. The image, though, has a basis in reality. She was most likely not a prude, but she did turn down the role of Mrs. Robinson in the movie The Graduate because she found the script to be “vulgar and offensive”.

Every animal lover celebrates Doris Day for her commitment to animal welfare. She started at least two foundations devoted to the welfare of animals. Every year on her birthday, her hometown of Carmel, California, held a three-day celebration to raise funds for her animal foundation. She was such an animal lover that she was a vegetarian.

Her likes have been gone from Hollywood for many years, even decades. And now the original is also gone. Fortunately, we live in an age of technology: her music and her films will be with us forever.

I Never Order Waffles at Waffle House

Back in 2001, and again in early 2002, comedian Lewis Black visited The Punchline, in Atlanta, and used recordings of these sessions for an album, The End of the Universe. According to Black, the end of the universe is not “out there” somewhere. It is in Houston, Texas where, Black discovered, a Starbucks coffee shop on one street corner – directly across the street from a Starbucks coffee shop. The skit, which runs a bit under four minutes, is quite funny. You can find it on YouTube.

We do not have that problem here in Madison, Georgia. We had a Starbucks several years ago. I don’t recall ever visiting the place, but it seemed to be busy every time I drove past. It was closed during The Great Recession. It was busy up until the day they closed the joint down, so I do not know why the company made that particular decision. I guess some things are meant to be mysteries. Soon thereafter, a Chick-fil-A moved into the empty building, and it seems to be doing a booming trade.

Madison recently regained a Starbucks, inside the Ingles Supermarket, which brings back to mind the question, why did they shut the first one down? Who knows? Maybe the rain in the Pacific Northwest affected the thinking of the corporate executives. After a month without sunshine, one grumpy CEO may have just come up with the idea to deprive Madison, Georgia, of overpriced, slightly burnt-tasting coffee in a fit of rage against the weather out there.

We do, however, have two of the same restaurant out near the interstate. As you may have guessed from the title of this column, we have two Waffle House restaurants, one just north of the interstate (Waffle House number 773, at 1941 Eatonton Highway), and one just south of the interstate (Waffle House number 325, at 2050 Eatonton Highway). They are located about ½ mile apart. So if you ever find yourself at exit 114 on Interstate 20 in Georgia, you can get to a Waffle House without ever having to make a left-hand turn at an exit ramp.

For those of you unfamiliar with Waffle House, it is (I think) primarily a southern institution, which began in 1955. In fact, every morning that I drive to work, I pass the site of the very first Waffle House, in Avondale Estates. (It is now a Waffle House museum; before that, a Chinese restaurant. Waffle House number 1000 is just down the street from the museum.) The restaurants are generally on the small side: perhaps as many as a dozen booths, and probably fewer stools at the counter. It is a classic grill, where the food is cooked in front of you, and a jukebox stands ready to play the tune of your choice. The yellow sign is always lit, as the restaurant never closes. The clientele is varied: you can find nicely-dressed churchgoers returning home from a Christmas morning service, to drunks very late at night partaking of that old DUI preventative, coffee.

The menu is decent. You can get a T-bone steak, or a pork chop, or ham, or a steak sandwich, or a hamburger, etc. But I generally order breakfast there, regardless of the time of day. My standby is two or three eggs scrambled with cheese, and sausage. I always choose grits instead of hash browns because, well, just because. And if I am really peckish, I top the meal off with a slice of pie, usually pecan.

I have frequented a bunch of Waffle Houses over the years, yet I don’t recall ever running into a surly waiter or waitress, regardless of the time of day (or night). In my experience the food is uniformly good across all the restaurants. And the prices are quite reasonable.

Kathy was in Asheville last week, checking on her rental property and visiting with her granddaughter, Emma. She always leaves me with food to eat, but Thursday night’s dinner just wasn’t enough, so along about 10:30 I decided that hunger pangs did not befit a man of my advanced years. I hauled myself up on my hind legs, and drove over to Waffle House Number 773, the closer one.

The fellow who seemed to be the crew chief that night didn’t appear to be that old, but his official Waffle House name tag bore the appellation (no, I’m not kidding) “Grandpa”. Grandpa took my order, then relayed it to the short order cook using a slang that apparently only they can understand. The only item I could figure out was my order for sausage (two syllables), which came out as “hockey pucks” (three syllables, so what’s the point?). Someone else placed an order while I was there, and Grandpa shouted “chicken with feathers”. I have no idea what that might be.

The three eggs with cheese, order of grits, four slices of toast, sausage patties, and fresh coffee were all very nice, but not quite enough. I topped it off with a slice of pecan pie, then headed home for a little nap before bedtime.

Having two Waffle Houses on the same exit does not, in my opinion, constitute the End of the Universe. It represents, instead, A Mighty Convenience. I’d rather have two Waffle Houses than two Starbucks any day.

And just for the record, I’ve never ordered a waffle at a Waffle House, though I hear they are excellent!

Drug Court

I take the libertarian position on the war on drugs: we’ve lost. What we should do is admit defeat and legalize them all.

Part of what motivates those who commit property crimes and muggings is the high cost of drugs. These miscreants need a good bit of money to feed their habits. They get that money by breaking into homes and mugging innocent people. If we legalize drugs, the cost decreases, along with the need to commit property crimes and muggings. When was the last time you were mugged by a wino in need of a bottle of MD 20/20?

Legalization is difficult for one to accept if one knows a drug addict. The tendency is to look at legalization as enabling the drug addict in his habit, and this is a difficult thing for a friend or family member of a drug addict to endorse. I understand completely. A few years ago, a young friend of mine died as a result of a heroin overdose. He was a talented artist who had done some work for our company, Chile Today Hot Tamale. I do wish this young man had been able to get help with his addiction. But the fact remains that heroin was illegal when he acquired it and overdosed on it. Things could not have been worse if the drug had been legal. In fact, things may have turned out differently, if, for example, the FDA had established purity standards and specifications on active heroin content of the last packet he purchased.

I seriously doubt that I will live long enough to see drug legalization. But I do see a program that appears to be making a difference. This is a difficult thing for me to say, because I also take the libertarian position on government programs: a bloody waste of time and money, for the most part. The program is called Adult Treatment Court Collaborative, commonly known as Drug Court.

I live in the Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit of the 8th Superior Court District in Georgia. This court decided to develop a drug court, to deal with addicts or alcoholics who seem, in the opinion of the judges, to be capable of turning their lives around. The court didn’t have to do this. Drug courts impose extra work on the judges of the circuit, and thus not every judicial circuit has a drug court. In fact, nationwide, there are a bit more than 3,000 drug courts targeting various demographic groups. The drug courts that target adults specifically are less numerous. The latest figure I can find is that there are 1,558 drug courts nationwide targeting adults.

Drug Court is an option available to judges as an alternative to incarceration, with some requirements attached. First, Drug Court is available only to those 18 years of age and older, who have committed a criminal offense and are facing at least two years of remaining or pending jail time. Second, Drug Court is not available to those who have committed the “Seven Deadly” sins of murder, rape, sexual battery, armed robbery, aggravated assault, sexual molestation, and aggravated sodomy. Third, the participant must be able to participate in the program both mentally and physically. Mental participation means that the candidate for Drug Court must not have a brain injury, and must have a minimum IQ of 70.

This is a program that lasts anywhere from 18 to 24 months, depending upon the decision of the judge, and contains a voluntary 6 months aftercare component. If the participant graduates from Drug Court and participates in the 6 months aftercare program, then the participant can petition the court to have any probation remaining on his or her sentence terminated. This is not a given: everyone – judge, prosecutor, sponsor, surveillance officers – must be in agreement. Given what I’ve read about the program, I suspect that some will find jail time a bit easier to do. So Drug Court isn’t for everyone. It is for those who really, truly, want to kick their habits and start life anew.

There are four phases to the program, with different requirements for each phase. There are, however, some features common to all four phases. Each participant is subject to random drug screening. If the participant fails, he or she is off to see the judge, who may decide that an overnight stay in the jail is sufficient. On the other hand, depending upon the judge’s experience with the participant, the judge may determine that the participant needs to serve the remaining two years of his or her sentence. It is also possible for the judge to order a residential treatment program. Drug Court has a counseling and treatment component, and all participants are expected to comply with these requirements, as well as probation requirements. The participant must meet weekly with a case manager, and must attend two or more court sessions per month. I suspect this serves as a reminder of what happens when one strays off the beaten path. The participant must adhere to a curfew (7 PM for phase one up to 11 PM for phase four), have a sponsor, attend community support meetings (AA, NA), and, if the participant does not already have a high school diploma, earn at least a GED.

There is also a work requirement. The participant must be engaged in what the court calls “sustainable employment”. The court’s definition of this term means employment of such a nature that income and payroll taxes are withheld from each paycheck. Our sheriff now spends a good bit of time trying to arrange sustainable employment for the participants. Additionally, there is a $1,000 fee due at graduation. The case managers encourage each participant to make installment payments over the 18-24 month period, so that the participant isn’t hit with this fee in its entirety upon graduation.

The court employs surveillance officers who make random visits to the participants, day or night, at work or at home. They catch curfew violations, and look for signs of drug or alcohol use.

Why do I say that this program is making a difference? Thanks to a series of articles in our local newspaper, I have discovered that I know quite a few participants and graduates. These are hardworking people who I would trust to look after my home or children. They seem to be living productive lives, and each one greets me with a smile. I am sure that, for them, every day is not all sweetness and light. News flash: the same holds true for most everyone. But they are honest and sincere, and they are building a new future for themselves, and their families.

I just wish that young friend of mine had been given the chance these folks have been given.

Who Murdered Aggie Albert?

Those of us who have spent the bulk of our lives in small towns are horrified when a murder occurs in our beloved community. Such was the case with the citizens of Covington, Virginia, in July of 1992.

My first wife and daughter (we had only one child at the time) moved to this small town in Alleghany County, Virginia, in 1982. The county itself is situated in the Allegheny Mountain range (no, the two different spellings are not typographical errors), and is roughly 50% national forest. Given that half the county is owned by the federal government, and half of the remainder is to be found on the sides of mountains, it isn't surprising to learn that the population is small. I suspect that the county's population then was somewhere in the ballpark of 13,000 to 14,000 people. The city of Covington is the only independent city in the county (and, by quirk of law, is thus not a part of the county, even though it is the county seat). My guess is its population was between 7,000 and 8,000 people: a nice, small town.

Esther Agnes “Aggie” Albert was youngest of the eight children of Francis J. and Nomnum Bertrus Albert. One brother, “Boodie” Albert, was a beloved football coach at the high school, and the high school stadium is named for him. At the time we lived in Covington, only three of the children were still alive: Lilly (born 1905), Rosalie (born 1918), and Aggie (born 1923). I believe the three sisters, who lived together, were of Lebanese ancestry. At any rate, they always brought absolutely delicious Lebanese food to the get-togethers at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, on Main Street.

The sisters were devout Catholics and devoted great time and energy to the church. On July 2, 1992, Aggie, retired from her position as a chemist at the local Mead-Westvaco paper mill, was working on a church fundraiser, “The Zany Follies.” Given her devotion to the church and the relative safety one feels in a small town, it was not surprising that she felt safe working at the church late into the evening. (The time that is most often given is around 10:30 PM, though I am not able to establish whether this was the time she left her home to go to the church, or the time she left the church to go home. Since there would be no witnesses to the latter, I assume the former.)

Her half-naked body was found in an alley next to the church on the morning of July 3. She was discovered by a man who had spent the night in jail, which was across the street from the crime scene, recovering from a bit too much booze. He was not a suspect in the murder. Aggie had been strangled and raped.

Her killer was never found.

That same night, a young man in town committed suicide (his body was discovered just a half-hour after Aggie's body was found), and there was some thought that perhaps he killed himself out of remorse for committing this heinous crime. The police ruled him out as a suspect, but did tie him to another, completely different, murder committed the month before.

Over the years, the local rumor mill has churned out a variety of suspects, but never with enough proof to result in an arrest, much less a conviction.

I had moved to Georgia in 1989, and my family (now including two children born while we were in Covington) moved in 1990, after finally selling the house. We learned of Aggie's death in what were, for us, the pre-internet days. This means that we didn't generally learn all the facts straightaway, and we picked up some confusing half-truths. One of the things we heard that caused considerable consternation was that the priest at Sacred Heart was a suspect.

I rejected that possibility outright. The priest that I knew was a good man, with a heart of gold. He had, after all, baptized two of my children. There was no way that I was that poor a judge of character.

But it turns out that the priest I knew had been transferred from the parish shortly after our family left Covington. The new priest was the suspect. The new priest, the Rev. Edward C. Moran, has faced allegations of sexual misconduct on at least two occasions, one of the occasions occurring at Sacred Heart Church in Covington, VA, the summer before Aggie's death. He was transferred from the Covington church in 1994, but once again, in 2005, was removed from a church in Virginia due to allegations of sexual misconduct.

The state did DNA testing in 2002, running the DNA found at the crime scene against known offenders, but did not turn up a match. It isn't clear whether this was due to the fact that there was no match to anyone in the system, or the DNA was too degraded to be of use.

This summer will mark the 27th anniversary of Aggie's death. Unless we have a deathbed confession from the perpetrator, it is very likely that this crime will never be solved.

All the Alberts of that generation are gone. Lilly died at the ripe old age of 92 in 1997, and Rosalie made it to the age of 86, passing away in 2004. The priest who, in my opinion, is the most likely suspect of those I've heard about, appears no longer to be the pastor of a church. There is a Rev. Edward Moran listed as a professor at St. Leo University in Langley, VA. I have no idea if this is the same fellow. All I can tell is that he is either an awesome or a terrible professor, depending upon which of the reviews you choose to believe on the website “rate my professors”.

There is very little good news to this story, but the closest I can find is that the parish priest who, without question, had absolutely nothing to do with this crime, the fellow who baptized two of my four children, did return to the Covington church. He retired from that position July 11, 2018, and apparently still helps out when needed. I knew folks who loved him, and folks who didn't, but he remains one bright point of light in a church that has had its share of darkness lately. So, Father Tom Collins, I salute you, and wish you a very happy retirement.

Mowing the Weeds

Today is day four of my five-day spring break, and I spent it in yard work. As a general rule, I am not a yard person. It is difficult to see the point of mowing the lawn: in a week or two I will just have to do the whole thing again, so why do it the first time? I was inclined just to let the yard go, to be that neighbor, the one that makes all the other neighbors feel superior. That path led nowhere, for a couple of reasons.

The first is a tale of woe from a friend of mine, who was temporarily renting a house while his was being built, or renovated, or something. He was under the impression that the landlord was responsible for the lawn. He was wrong. It turns out there are lawn police in our fair town of Madison. (They probably don't go by that name. I'm thinking, Code Enforcement.) He was ticketed because his lawn needed mowing. That is when he discovered that care and upkeep of the lawn was his job.

Politically, I am a Libertarian, and the whole idea of a government issuing a citation just because your grass is a bit too high rubs me the wrong way. In solidarity with my friend, who, fortunately, is now in his own home not in the city limits, I planned to protest his $25 citation by letting my lawn go, and daring the city fathers to ticket me. That path lead headlong into the second reason why I don't let my yard go au naturel: Kathy wouldn't hear of it.

And so today found me changing the oil and spark plug in my trusty Troy-Bilt, buying a can of gas at the local Golden Pantry, and chasing Lucy around the yard with the mower.

I have learned to enjoy mowing the lawn. It does not require very much thought. I simply follow the line between the cut grass and the uncut grass, a job infinitely easier now that my cataract is gone. I breathe in the smell of spring (i.e., pollen), and let my mind wander.

And today my mind wandered back to October 25, 1992, six days before my 40th birthday. My wife at that time was adamant that I needed to babysit little baby Reilly, who was 11 months and six days old. I, on the other hand, had chores to do, not the least of which was mowing the weeds and ant hills that seem ever to constitute my yard. I suggested that I could babysit if I didn't mow the lawn. She objected: both needed doing. Something in her voice indicated that this was probably not the hill I should pick to die on, if I may be allowed to end a sentence with a preposition. Little did I know that she was planning a surprise birthday party for my 40th: come as your favorite dead person. (Little Reilly came as the Lindbergh baby.) She needed the lawn mowed, and she needed the freedom to go about her planning.

And so I came up with a solution to the problem, which you can see in the picture above, or the video below. I couldn't find safety glasses small enough for Reilly, but I was able to use some ear muffs as noise protectors. And I must say, while little Reilly did look genuinely confused about the whole thing, she took it in stride.

Ah, pleasant memories of yards I've mowed!

TV Nostalgia

I watched a good bit of television as a child, and I remember most of the shows fondly. Today, many of the old shows are available either on DVD or on one of the many streaming channels. I have been revisiting some of these shows, and not simply for nostalgic reasons. I have discovered that most of the older shows were simply better than the modern fare that I have seen.

That statement, of course, does not apply to the technological aspects of the old shows. Modern production values are much better, much more polished. But it seems to me that, for the most part, the writing and acting in the old shows were better.

I began my review of the old shows many years ago, when I purchased the five-season set of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). It took nearly a year for me to view all the episodes. I have three comments: (1) the story lines were even better than I remembered; (2) the graphics and special effects were worse than I remembered; and (3) there were quite a few actors in the series who later became big stars. I am hard pressed to pick a favorite episode, but I believe “The Silence” (Liam Sullivan, season 2 episode 25) edges out “Time Enough at Last” (Burgess Meredith, season 1 episode 8), “Eye of the Beholder” (Donna Douglas, season 2 episode 6), “Two” (Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson, season 3 episode 1), “To Serve Man” (Lloyd Bochner and Richard Kiel, season 3 episode 24), and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (William Shatner, season 5 episode 3).

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (Roger Jacquet, season 5 episode 22), which was adapted from an Ambrose Bierce story, gets an honorable mention. Season 4, the one season when the show moved from a 30 minute to a 60 minute format, gets two thumbs down.

I seem to recall watching something called The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, or perhaps The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, but whatever its original title, it has been repackaged as Rocky and his Friends (1959 – 1961). This series is even more entertaining now than when I was a child. This may have been a cartoon, bit it was clearly written for adults. The animation is just short of terrible, but the stories, from the serialized escapades of the squirrel/moose duo, to the historical adventures of the dog Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman, to the Fractured Fairy Tales narrated by Edward Everett Horton, were top notch, and generally above the comprehension level of a child. The following snippet of dialogue was posted by a reviewer on IMDb, the Internet Movie Database. Boris Badenov (a play on the historical character Boris Godunov) had just set fire to a bridge:

Bullwinkle: “This is an ethical dilemma fraught with portents!”

Rocky: “What does that mean?”

Bullwinkle: “I dunno. I heard it on ‘Meet the Press.’”

Bill Scott and June Foray did the voices of Bullwinkle and Rocky, respectively. William Conrad, aka “Cannon”, was the narrator.

I bought the discs containing the 82 episodes of “Zorro” (1957 – 1959) on a whim. I remembered this Disney Studios series fondly, and now, more than halfway through the discs, I remember why. This is a highly entertaining show, featuring a happy swashbuckler. The star of the show, Guy Williams, plays both Don Diego de la Vega and Zorro. Williams is probably more famous for his role as Professor John Robinson in the campy comedy Lost in Space (1965 – 1968), a show I did not see, but it is hard for me to imagine that he gave any finer performance than he did in his role as Zorro. His smile was infectious, and it was clear that he enjoyed the role. I doubt he did all his own stunts, but he did his own fencing scenes, so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he did at least a few.

Judging by the surnames, there were very few Hispanics on the show. Williams looked the part, but his ancestry was Sicilian. The regular characters (Gene Sheldon, Henry Calvin, Don Diamond, George Lewis, Jolene Brand, Barbara Luna, Richard Anderson) were, for the most part, neither Spanish nor Mexican.

The most pleasant surprise of all was The Avengers (1961 – 1969), a British series. I saw only seasons 4 and 5 back in the 1960s, as these were the first two seasons distributed in America. These two seasons featured Mrs. Emma Peel (a young Diana Rigg) as the athletic sidekick of the suave John Steed (Patrick Macnee), and I am sure that Diana Rigg in leather had something to do with my fond memories of the show. (The discs of seasons 2 and 3 reveal that Rigg was but the second leather-clad sidekick.) The show was quirky, bordering at times on campy. Steed and his sidekicks (Peel was the third of four) seemed perpetually to be saving Britain, if not the world, from mortal peril. Steed was the professional, an employee of some unspecified branch of British intelligence, while his sidekicks were talented amateurs, charmed by Steed into risking their lives for some worthy adventure.

The first season is mostly lost. I believe my discs contain only 3 episodes from season 1, in which Steed plays sidekick to medical doctor David Keel (Ian Hendry). After the first season, Keel is gone, and Steed is in command. He works with a variety of partners before settling on Cathy Gale, a PhD anthropologist perfectly played by my favorite sidekick, Honor Blackman. Gale appeared in seasons 2 and 3. The final season saw Mrs. Peel replaced with Tara King (Linda Thorson). Thorson did a nice job in her role, but it is clear (to me, at least) that the series should have ended after season 5.

Honor Blackman left the show in order to take the role of Pussy Galore in the James Bond movie Goldfinger (1964). One of my favorite post-Blackman scenes occurred in season 4, episode 13, “Too Many Christmas Trees”. Mrs. Peel is sorting through Steed’s Christmas cards and reads one card aloud:

“Best wishes for the future, (signed) Cathy”

“Mrs. Gale!” says Steed. “Ah, how nice of her to remember me!” He then studies the envelope. “What can she be doing in Fort Knox?”

I see that this post is a bit long, so I will stop here. I do have one request. If anyone knows where I can obtain the discs for T.H.E. Cat (1966-1967, starring Robert Loggia), please get in touch with me.

A Proper Barbershop

Last week was my mid-winter break, and I spent the week working on our short term rental properties. According to Mark Twain, “[H]istory doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” In my case he is wrong: history does repeat itself. I seem to spend every break from school working on these short term rental properties.

I had fewer jobs scheduled for the Asheville house, but they seemed to be more physically demanding: hauling out an old sofa, hauling in a new sofa, putting together the new sofa, as no furniture seems to come assembled these days. The other jobs were minor, in comparison. For the Beaufort house, the jobs seemed to multiply. I started with a list of three projects, but minor jobs seemed to keep popping up. Kathy hung a bag that had to weigh 25 pounds on a hand towel rack that was probably designed to hold at most three pounds, and the hollow wall anchors gave way. The new toggle anchors should hold 100 pounds. She lifted the drain lever in one bathroom sink, and the ball rod, many years old, snapped. Of course, the sink is non-standard, so that repair took a bit longer than expected. Still, after three days of hard work, the list of chores was completed, just in time for me to return to my paying job.

The weather was bad in Asheville. We left a cold and rainy Madison for an even colder and rainier Asheville. Fortunately we did not see snow. The day we left Asheville for Beaufort, we left 40 degree wet weather for 77 degree sunny weather. That, of course, was the last day of good weather in Beaufort, the day we were barely there. Although the temperature wasn’t as cold as in Asheville, it was a bit too cool for short sleeved shirts.

Lest you think it was all work and no play, I have to report the two Beaufort excursions that made my week. The first excursion was to The Lollipop Shop, on West Street, less than a block from Bay Street. It is pointless to pretend that I do not have a sweet tooth: I came by it honestly, through the genes. My maternal grandmother loved her candy. I am hard pressed to pick which she loved the most: hard candy, bubble gum, or snuff, as she was constantly sampling one of the three. She would have loved this shop. Their selection of candy is overwhelming. I have narrowed my focus to Jelly Belly jelly beans. I believe they carry every possible flavor, and in bulk. I generally fill one bag with sour cherry jelly beans, another bag with root beer jelly beans, and a third bag with cream soda jelly beans. I cannot walk by the shop without losing $40.

My second excursion was at 7:30 AM, my normal time to visit Harvey’s Barbershop, on Bay Street. With the exception of my back-to-school haircut last August, this has been my barbershop for more than a year now. Sadly, I do not live in Beaufort, so that means I visit Harvey’s about once every 12 weeks or so. I am generally in serious need of a haircut when I get there.

Furman Harvey opened the barbershop in 1936, and the business is now run by his two sons, Ray and Johnny. By the luck of the draw, Johnny has been my barber on all occasions except for the one time that Ray cut my hair. I don’t plan it that way: I’m always a walk-in, and I go to whichever brother happens to be available.

Harvey’s is a right proper, old-school barbershop. Johnny and Ray are barbers: I would never think to call either a “stylist”. The shelf contains the old bottles that are so familiar: Jeris, Clubman, and Lucky Tiger hair tonics. Johnny’s chair has the requisite leather and canvas strops. Of course, the shaving lather is heated. And the conversation is typical barbershop conversation. It is a pleasant way to pass a few minutes, and an excellent way to start the day.

I am guessing that it was sometime during the 1970s that I began getting my hair cut in a beauty salon. It seems that I was not alone, because barbershops have become hard to find. There is a “barbershop” (complete with barber pole outside) in Madison, but that is run by ladies. No hot lather machine there. I am sure there must be one run by men, but I do not know where it might be.

Thus it is that about once every three months I come to Beaufort to knock out a list of chores, and to spend a few relaxing minutes in the company of my barber. A man will travel quite a distance to find a right proper barbershop.

Sleeping With A Movie Star

If you’ve read my past blogs you know I am a tremendous fan of the music of Artie Shaw. In my opinion, he was the finest clarinetist of the big band era, better than Benny Goodman (though I have friends who would debate me on that point). Unfortunately, he had a mercurial personality, and he was prone to quit when things were going well. If there is a better band than his 1938-1939 band, I am unaware of it. Yet Shaw walked out on this successful band, moving briefly to Mexico, only to return in less than a year to form yet another band, which provided music for the Burns and Allen Show on the radio. His inability to stick with a good thing cut into his income: he didn’t record and tour as frequently as he could have had he stuck with one band.

By the same token, he appeared to have trouble making commitments in his personal life. That is, I suppose, the kindest way to introduce the fact that he was married eight times. Two marriages were annulled, and six ended in divorce. Among his ex-wives are four movie stars (Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Doris Dowling, and Evelyn Keys), the daughter of a song writer (Betty Kern, daughter of the magnificent Jerome Kern), and an author (Kathleen Winsor, who wrote Forever Amber). Of course, my favorite of the ex-wives has to be Ava Gardner. She was born near Smithfield, NC, the town in which I was born, and is buried there. She was married only three times (Mickey Rooney, Shaw, and Frank Sinatra).

Between the demise of my first marriage and the beginning of my second is a stretch of time, approximately 12 years, in which I returned to the dark and dismal days of my youth, and found myself dating again. I have to say that dating was a good bit easier the second time around, if for no other reason than the fact that I didn’t have to worry about pimples. The women I met during that time were absolutely first rate. We were no longer teenagers, we had experienced a bit of life, most of us knew what not to look for in a relationship (and perhaps even a few knew what they wanted in a relationship), and best of all, we had more disposable income than we had during our teenage years. Generally speaking, we had a grand old time.

I dated women from a wide variety of occupations (including one world record holder in long distance running). The one occupation that eluded me was that of movie star. That is, it eluded me until just recently.

For some reason, Georgia has become a desired location for the movie industry, and our little town of Madison, along with neighboring towns of Rutledge, Covington, and Conyers, have had our share of movies filmed here. A retired friend of mine has, for several years now, been avoiding boredom by serving as an extra in movies. I have seen him in several movies, including Selma and the relatively recent Hidden Figures. We had lunch with him the other day, and our conversation turned to his “acting” career, for reasons that will soon become apparent. He has been in so many movies that he lost count. He has not seen all the movies he has been in, and in conversation admitted that he couldn’t remember the names of some of them. The pay isn’t great for an extra, but the food is fantastic. His worst experience, he noted, was a 17 hours work day in Covington, due to delays caused by a storm. There was only one meal provided, because the caterer hadn’t planned on that long a day.

Some years ago he put Kathy in touch with the people who provide extras for movies in the area, and soon enough Kathy was called to the big screen. Her first experience was in the movie Pitch Perfect 3. She spent her day on the set of the French market scene. She was mighty excited about the day, and of course, we had to go out and get Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2, which, unfortunately, turned out to be musicals. I do not like musicals. A couple of years ago, when it finally reached the theaters, we had to go see it. It was, surprise surprise, a musical. At any rate, we gave the French market scene our full, undivided attention. I did not see Kathy, and Kathy did not see Kathy, on the big screen. A few months later I saw the DVD in Wal Mart, bought it, and scanned it frame by frame. No Kathy. She was left on the cutting room floor.

Two or three years ago a production company made a movie entitled St. Agatha. The filming was done in Madison and Rutledge, with some post-location filming in a studio in Los Angeles, or Hollywood, or somewhere on the left coast. Kathy was once again called to the big screen, and once again we made a mental note to look for the movie in the theater.

It never made it to a theater near us. I never saw the DVD in Wal Mart.

The other day it occurred to me that we had not seen this movie, so I searched the streaming services, and found it for rent on two of them. Unfortunately, the movie was a horror film, and Kathy ends up with sleepless nights after viewing horror films, so she didn’t watch the movie. (She has missed so many excellent Hitchcock movies!) I watched it, and sure enough, about 35 minutes into the movie, she is there, unmistakably, on the screen during the Funeral scene. About 10 minutes later in the film, our friend, the old hand at being an extra, occupied center stage.

I went to bed last night, and for the first time, found myself sleeping with a Movie Star!

If It Moves, Tax It

One of Ronald Reagan’s favorite quotes had to do with the government’s view of the economy. He said: “Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

You have probably figured out by now that this quotation came to mind because I am gathering data so our accountant can do our 2018 income taxes. It really does hurt my feelings to have to admit that we have someone do our taxes for us. I have done my own taxes since the 1970s, until just a couple of years ago. I did the taxes when they were extremely simple (the early years, form 1040A, standard deduction), and I did the taxes when they were extremely complicated (as when Mesa Corporation converted to a limited partnership, expanding the number of forms in my tax returns considerably). I still do the federal tax return for the parent corporation of Chile Today Hot Tamale. But when Kathy started a couple of businesses in addition to Chile Today Hot Tamale, it all became too much for me. Do I put her businesses on a Schedule C or on a Schedule E? Do I file one form 4562 for her businesses, or do I file two? I don’t need the headache.

The aggravating thing is that, even though someone else does the taxes, I still have to collect the data that goes into the return. This means going through my tax filing system, which for many years now has been a King Cobra Premium Malt Liquor box (“twelve 32 fluid ounce bottles!”) that sits just to the right of my desk. All year long I toss receipts into the box, and once a year I have to pull them all out, cross reference them with the entries in my checkbook, and toss out the items that are useless for tax purposes.

I was encouraged by the recent tax reform bill, because it promised to increase the standard deduction to the point where many would no longer have to itemize their deductions. Deal me in! The problem is that the one itemized deduction that I have almost never been able to take advantage of may, this year, be significant enough to cause me to itemize. I refer to the deduction for medical and dental expenses.

For most of my working life, medical and dental expenses were deductible only to the extent that they exceeded 7.5% of adjusted gross income. Given that I’ve had pretty decent medical insurance up until this decade, and that I have generally been pretty healthy, I have not been able to claim any medical deduction. That was fine by me. The year before the so-called “Affordable” Care Act was passed, I had a gall bladder removed at an out-of-pocket cost of somewhere between $100 and $150. That seems to me to be a better deal than to pay full fare for the surgery, and deduct the expenses afterwards.

Just last year, eight years after passage of the so-called “Affordable” Care Act, I had a cataract removed, and my out-of-pocket expenses were several thousand dollars. This, mind you, came after the so-called “Affordable” Care Act mandated better insurance coverage than before. I have insurance that supposedly covers more, definitely charges more (about triple the pre-ACA premiums), and actually pays less than before. Given the astronomical deductibles associated with my insurance, I’m not sure that the insurance company paid anything at all.

Because of the cataract surgery for me and an outpatient procedure for Kathy, it is possible that I will need to itemize this year. And if I don’t need to itemize this year? I won’t know until the accountant looks at my itemized deductions. Catch-22.

So here I sit, slowly developing a resentment against a government that puts its citizens through this hassle so that it can spend $139,745 per second ($31, 234 of which will be borrowed).

Some years ago, Mark Levin, who served as chief of staff for Attorney General Ed Meese in the Reagan administration, published a book that outlined a set of constitutional amendments he would like to see added to the Constitution. I believe there were eleven in all. The one I liked most of all was an amendment that moved tax filing day from April 15 to the day before election day in November. I would add one item to that amendment: I would prohibit the withholding of taxes. Let every citizen sit down and figure out his or her taxes, write a check for the full amount, and mail them in just 24 hours before voting on the people who came up with this system.

If we had this amendment to the Constitution, we wouldn’t need term limits for Congress.

Back to the Eighties

During the 1980s, it occurred to me that there were a couple of things I didn’t know how to do. The first area of ignorance was how to tie a bow tie. I had mastered a few necktie knots (the full Windsor, the half Windsor, the four-in-hand, and my favorite, the Shelby), but I didn’t have a clue as to how to go about tying a bow tie. That problem was easily solved. My mother-in-law at the time gave me a bow tie for Christmas one year, and so I was forced to learn how to tie the thing. Even in those pre-internet days, instructions were easy to find. I believe the set of instructions I used came from Parade magazine, the glossy rotogravure supplement inserted into most Sunday newspapers. I am now quite proficient at tying a bow tie, even though I try to avoid all occasions that require me to wear either a necktie or a bow tie.

The second area of ignorance was how to shave with a straight razor. I have wanted to use a straight razor (a.k.a., cutthroat razor) ever since I saw the 1959 Hitchcock masterpiece, “North by Northwest”. [If you haven’t seen this movie, stop reading now, and go watch it.] Advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is mistaken for spy George Kaplan. Forced to flee the Bad Guys, he escapes New York via the 20th Century Limited train to Chicago. He spends the trip in the company of beautiful Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who appears to be working for the Bad Guys. I know, this is getting complicated. I’ll cut to the chase. In Chicago, Thornhill pops into the men’s room to shave. He uses the very small shaving brush and microscopically-sized double edge safety razor that, we are to assume, Kendall uses on her legs. Standing next to him in the men’s room, also shaving, is a beefy son of the Midwest, face lathered completely, removing his whiskers with a straight razor. The contrast between the manly straight razor and the tiny lady’s safety razor is obvious.

I nearly bought a straight razor in the 1980s, but I was prevented from doing so by a fluke. The nearest shopping mall to Covington, Virginia (the town where I lived) was about 65-70 miles away, in Roanoke, Virginia. The mall had a cutlery shop that carried nearly every kind of blade known to man, including a few straight razors. I was ready to buy one of the razors, but I was concerned about using it without slicing my face to shreds. The clerk there tried to reassure me, but he did point out that it took a good bit more time to shave with this kind of blade. And then he ended his lecture with “I wouldn’t try doing this at 5:00 in the morning.”

As it happens, at the time I was writing a book, and my writing habits involved getting up at 5:00 AM, showering and shaving, then working until 8:00 AM, when I had to quit working on the book in order to earn a living. If the clerk had said “I wouldn’t try this at 4:00” I would have most likely purchased the blade then. Unfortunately, he used the precise time I was thinking about using the blade as the one time not to use the blade. And so I let it go.

I mentioned last week that Gillette’s “toxic masculinity” commercial had pushed me over the edge. Proctor and Gamble owns the Gillette brand, so I spent some time during the week finding replacements for P&G products. Unfortunately, Proctor and Gamble purchased my beloved Old Spice from Shulton in 1990, so my association with Old Spice, which has gone on for more than 50 years, has ended. No matter: I’m sure that the Mennen after shaves and deodorant I ordered this week will be more than adequate replacements.

I dug out a shaving scuttle that was given to me as a gift back in the 1980s, a scuttle that has a drawing of the U.S.S. Constitution on its side. I purchased a new, badger hair shaving brush. I bought two strops: one of leather (for putting the finishing edge on the razor); and one of cloth (for cleaning the razor). In addition, I purchased a bottle of “1907” strop dressing. All that was left was to purchase a razor.

Straight razors can get quite expensive, up to $1,000 or more. That was out of my league. I decided against the cheap blades, too. No $25 straight razor for me! I wanted a blade that would hold an edge. I settled on the Dovo 5/8 Olive wood-handled razor. I bought it through The Superior Shave Amazon storefront, and it looks to be a beauty. The razor is manufactured in Germany. The reviews were excellent, and the price, $181.32, assured me that I was getting a quality instrument.

I will try it tonight. Since a shave with a straight razor takes a bit longer than with a safety razor, I figured I should do my shaving in the evenings, at least until I become accustomed to using the razor. My goal is to end the first week of shaving with a straight razor without look as though my face had been shoved through a pane of glass.

Unfortunately, this cannot be taken aboard an airplane, and I do not check bags, if at all possible. I wonder if the 20th Century Limited still runs?

The Superbowl

       Superbowl LIII will be played (performed? unveiled?) next weekend in Atlanta, which can only mean one thing: it is time for a nice ice storm. The last time Atlanta hosted the Superbowl, in 2000, the city was struck two weekends in a row prior to the event with ice storms. Everyone panicked, but I seem to recall that it all turned out well, except for the two folks who happened to bump into Ray Lewis after the game.

I hate to admit it, but the Superbowl holds no excitement for me. The last one to really get me going was Superbowl III, fifty years ago, when Joe Namath led the New York Jets to a stunning victory over the Baltimore Colts. Since then, I've watched a few Superbowls, but most years I just give it a miss.

Football really isn't my sport. My high school had excellent football teams during my four years there, but I can't say the same for my college. Clayton (NC) High School was usually in the hunt for top honors. Not so Dear Old Wake Forest. Wake Forest University, during my four years there, managed three wins and one tie. Yes, that was for the entire four years. The year without a win was during my senior year. They certainly didn't get better the longer I stayed there.

I've used this as a joke for so many years that I can no longer recall whether it is true, or not. At any rate, I'll throw it out there one more time. It's the only team I've ever known where the punter was the MVP, four years in a row.

As for professional teams, I've lived in two cities with NFL teams, and neither did very well during my tenure in each city. I moved to Maryland in 1978, and to Baltimore in 1979. The year 1978 was the beginning of a nine-year losing streak for the Colts. I moved from Baltimore in 1982. In 1983, the Colts played their final game as the Baltimore Colts. The team relocated to Indianapolis in the middle of the night on March 29, 1984. The name “Bob Irsay” is still reviled in Baltimore.

I moved to the Atlanta area in 1989, and moved out to the countryside in 2005. Let us stipulate that in 1998 the Falcons had a great season, which netted them an appearance in the 1999 Superbowl. They were unable to defeat the Denver Broncos that year, but any year that results in a Superbowl appearance has to be a good year.

But that was the highlight. I am looking at the Wikipedia article on the Falcons, which refuses to give the win-loss record by year. It does give the overall record for the Falcons: 355 wins, 449 losses, for a winning percentage of 44.2%. The post season is similar, percentage wise: they win 45.5% of the time (10-12). I just don't seem to recall the Falcons as a powerhouse team during my tenure in the Atlanta area.

The television commercials associated with the Superbowl are eagerly awaited each year, but I'm really beginning to get my fill of commercials. It seems that so many now are Deadly Earnest, and Politically Correct. I've used a Gillette Sensor Excel razor for many years now, but once I have used up my pack of replacement blades, it is going into the trash. If I had wanted a lecture on toxic masculinity, I would have joined a feminist church. At any rate, I've always wanted to give the straight razor a try. I can't imagine that the commercials this year will be anything but MeToo-isms.

The halftime show is pure Hollywood: overkill to the 98th power. I have seen a few, but prefer to miss them now. That leaves me out in the cold every now and again (I had nothing to add to the water cooler conversation surrounding the 2004 “wardrobe malfunction” of Janet Jackson), but I can live with that.

It seems to me that the major reason for the existence of the Superbowl is to serve as an excuse for Superbowl parties. I've attended a few, and they usually are great fun, especially if they are attended by others like me, ladies and gentlemen who don't even know who is in the Superbowl. But inevitably there will be real football fans present, people with real interests in who wins, and who loses, and the viewing of the game will gradually become filled with tension. That is generally when I leave the party.

Kathy mentioned something this morning about the Superbowl, and I could have sworn I heard the word “party” in the conversation. I think she has been invited to one, but the jury is still out on whether I am allowed to attend. I wonder why?