“We’ll Always Have Chantix!”

I guess there were lots of items on my plate this past August 25, as I missed a significant anniversary. No matter, I will celebrate on December 25. On that date, it will have been 15 years and 4 months since my last smoke.

I began smoking when I was 16 and finally stopped a few months before my 55th birthday. There were plenty of reasons to stop all along. Health is usually the number one concern, but I never felt any health effects from smoking. That could change later in life. The price of tobacco kept going up and up, thanks to punitive taxes. Smokers were treated like moral lepers. We were consigned to small outdoor areas, even in foul weather. I can remember a brief stop-over at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. It was winter, and I went outside to smoke a quick bowl of pipe tobacco. It was 17 degrees below zero, and I wondered if the bowl of my rather expensive pipe would crack due to the extreme difference in temperature inside the bowl and outside. It was not fun to be a smoker.

In the end, I quit because of a woman. She lived in a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, and I lived in Madison, Georgia. We saw each other for a total of seven weeks spread out over three years, two or three weeks at a time. It was a transcontinental and transpacific fling that was destined not to last. But I did quit smoking because of her.

I was to visit her in the resort town of Coffs Harbour, NSW. I booked my flights, then sat down to do some serious time accounting. I was looking at a bare minimum of 19 hours without a smoke, assuming that one layover gave me a chance to get outside to smoke, and get back through security before the next flight. More realistically, I was looking at 24 hours without smoke. I knew I couldn’t survive that long. That big old 747 would be making an unscheduled landing on some south Pacific island, where the local constabulary would then board the plane to remove me in handcuffs for smoking in the lavatory. No, I couldn’t do that. My only chance was to quit permanently.

The year before, in 2006, I read an article in Chemical and Engineering News on addiction. The nicotine addiction portion of that article was not reassuring: the most successful treatment for smoking cessation was, at the end of one year, only 20% successful. That treatment was Chantix, which required a doctor’s prescription.

Interesting side note: you can no longer get Chantix in a pharmacy: the brand was discontinued after a recall. The recall was for high levels of nitrosamine in the product. Nitrosamine is carcinogenic. For some reason, I find that hilarious! Cigarettes are carcinogenic, and the most successful treatment for cigarette addiction was carcinogenic!

Back to the tale. When I told my doctor that I wanted a prescription for Chantix, he muttered something on the order of “It’s about damned time!” Then he told me that if I was serious about quitting, I would take Chantix for four months.

I started on Chantix the 25th of August, 2007, just about three weeks before my trip to Australia. It was expensive: it was about the same amount of money per month that I had been spending on tobacco. So much for the money I would be saving by not smoking! But I immediately faced a dilemma. My first prescription would run out at the end of my first week in Australia, and no pharmacy there would refill a prescription from a US. pharmacy. If I wanted to continue with Chantix for the four months my doctor recommended, I would have to get a refill before leaving on my trip. That meant laying out another fairly sizable amount of dough. Do I do it, or do I take a chance?

In the end, I took a chance. My one month on Chantix was all that was needed. I haven’t smoked since then.

As for the woman in question, we last saw each other in 2009. We had fun together: in Coffs Harbour, in Hawaii, and at stops up and down the east coast of the US. But this was the very definition of a long-distance relationship, and we all know the common wisdom about long-distance relationships.

But the relationship was worthwhile. Although the relationship died a natural death, I quit smoking because of it, and that ain’t chopped liver.

“Frankly, My Dear”: An Update

It has been two and one-half years since the post entitled “Frankly, My Dear . . .” (May 3, 2020), which is a good time, I think, for an update.

For those of you who do not remember, the original post dealt with my obsession regarding the collecting of movies and television shows. At the time, I admitted that I had 3,046 video files (movies and television shows) that I had not yet viewed, and that it was unlikely that I would live long enough to see them all. In fact, my handy dandy pocket calculator told me that if I view one video per day, every day, I will have viewed them all by August of 2028.

Alas, the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-glay. We are 941 days later (as of November 30, 2022), and I have viewed 858 of the original 3,046 video files. This leaves me with 2,188 videos yet to watch.

Instead of watching one per day, I have been averaging about nine videos every ten days. This doesn’t seem like much off the pace, but it compounds over 2 ½ years. If I can get up to watching one per day, I will have viewed them all by July of 2029. So a ten per cent reduction in watching these shows has put my schedule back by 11 months.

To boost my spirits, and to get back on track, I think I will dive into the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. I have all five seasons! And each video is short!

Unsettled Science

I am not one who believes that the climate has not changed. Indeed, I know the climate has changed, and will continue to change. There is a reason why Greenland is called “Greenland”, and not “Snowland”. The very terms “Ice Age”, “Little Ice Age”, and “Medieval Warm Period” are reminders that the climate changes continually, and not always in one direction.

About mankind’s contribution to the change in climate, I am much less certain. I do not discount mankind’s contribution as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, but I have some serious problems with the magnitude of that contribution. Specifically, I have trouble seeing how the small amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has such a huge impact on greenhouse warming.

According to the federal government, we set a record for carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere in 2021: 414.72 parts per million (ppm). For non-scientists, this is 0.041472%, or, as a fraction, 0.00041472. This is a tiny number compared with, say, the amount of oxygen in the air (19%) or nitrogen in the air (80%). Let us put that number in perspective.

Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, NC, the home football stadium for the NC State University Wolfpack, has 56,919 seats. If that stadium represents the atmosphere, then about 45,535 seats would be taken up with nitrogen gas, and about 10,815 seats would be taken up with oxygen gas. That leaves only 569 seats for all the remaining gases in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, at a concentration of 414.72 parts per million, would take up less than 24 seats.

The composition of the atmosphere changes a bit, depending upon the weather (which is not the same as climate). On a day that we southerners would consider to be nice and temperate (77 degrees Fahrenheit, 50% relative humidity), the water content in the air is about 1%, or 569 seats in Carter-Finley stadium. Water is also a greenhouse gas. Since the concentration of water vapor is about 24 times that of carbon dioxide, why are we worrying about carbon dioxide, when water seems to be a bigger contributor?

I could not get answers to my simple questions for a very long time, and I was beginning to feel lonely and unloved. After all, the United States seemed willing to turn its economy upside down on the advice of a 15-years-old Swedish teenager with no scientific training. I sat around the house, waiting for the University of North Carolina to recall my PhD.

But I have read a book that makes me feel much better. What follows is not the fallacy of appeal to authority; that is, I am not asking you to believe the author of the book simply because he is credentialed out the wazoo. I give you his credentials simply so you will know that he is not a radical right-winger, and not a “climate denier”.

Dr. Steven E. Koonin wrote the book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters. His BS in physics was from Caltech, and his PhD in theoretical physics is from MIT. He was a professor at Caltech for nearly 30 years, as well as a vice president and provost for some nine years. Currently he is a professor at New York University, with appointments in the school of business, the school of engineering, and the department of physics. Best of all, he was undersecretary for science in the Department of Energy during the Obama administration, where he authored the DOE’s Strategic Plan (2011), and the first Quadrennial Technology Review. And as this will have some bearing later on, he wrote the book Computational Physics (1985), which is the foundational textbook for building computer models of complex physical systems.

Unsettled is several hundred pages long, and well documented with a raft of footnotes, so I cannot summarize all of its major points. Please, read the book for yourself to get a good picture of what is wrong with current climate science. I will focus on two points.

Koonin is a careful reader, and he tends to double check everything he reads. When the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) releases a new report on the status of the climate, we generally see extracts from the summaries written for policy makers, and reporters. Koonin is never satisfied with the summary, and he investigates the wording of the actual report. Often, he checks the sources quoted in the report. What he finds is that the “executive summary” is usually not an accurate reflection of what is contained in the report. Sometimes low confidence predictions are stated as facts, and on occasion, the original research papers referenced in the report are misrepresented. He tends to bring these faults to light in newspaper editorials. I have read a few of his contributions to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. So point one is that not everything we read about climate change is true.

Point two: Koonin has very serious problems with the computer models used to predict changes in climate. None are accurate. None. And yet we are basing our energy policies (and as a result wrecking our economy) on inaccurate model predictions. He notes that we have very accurate climate data going back to the 1980s, and some reliable data before then. When the various climate models are set to begin in 1980, with data (not predictions) from that time, and allowed to run, we find that every model vastly over-predicts the temperature rise. If the models were accurate, they would have predicted the temperature rise we have seen in the last 40 years.

There is much more to the book than just these two examples, and I feel that I have done his many arguments an injustice. So do not take my word for it. Get the book, and if you are feeling funky, chase down the papers in the hundreds of footnotes in the book.

And then, relax. The globe is warming, but the end is not near.

The Great Remove

I moved to Madison, Georgia, in the summer of 2005. I was not sure whether I would stay: the job that I had landed just might not be all that great. Because of that uncertainty, I rented an apartment. After one year, I decided to stay. True, the job was not all that great, but Madison was lovely.

In 2006, I bought a three-bedroom home on a quiet street. There was a fourth room that could not be counted as a bedroom, because it did not contain a closet. That room became my office. The house was perfect for the two of us: my dog Ronnie, and me.

Ronnie and I lived there, happily, for a fair number of years. In 2013 I married Kathy, and she moved in with us. Kathy is a big city girl, and Madison, with its two stoplights downtown, is not a big city. Still, she succumbed to its charms and seemed happy there.

Ronnie was very happy with Kathy. Ronnie was a Lab/Chow mix: he looked like a Lab but had the temperament of a Chow. He did not like most people, but he fell in love with Kathy, and stayed in love with her until he passed in 2018. Ronnie’s ashes are still with us. He sits on a shelf in the living room, keeping guard over Kathy until this very day.

My misgivings about the job in Madison were sound, and in 2012 I parted ways with the company. I began to work in Decatur, Georgia, at a school that was about 55 miles away from my little home in Madison. I had a choice, of course: sell the home and move back into the city, or suck it up and enjoy the commute. I chose the latter. I would leave the house every morning somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30, just to avoid the Atlanta area rush-hour traffic. Atlanta during the rush hour (which lasts approximately three hours) is surely a first-order approximation to hell on earth. Why put myself through this torture? There is a one-word answer: Madison.

Madison has a fair number of antebellum homes. There are a variety of stories as to why General Sherman (wash my mouth out with soap for saying his name) did not burn the city. I think I know the real reason, but whether I have the right story or not does not matter. These antebellum homes, the small town atmosphere, the friendly people, the great restaurants, all combine to make this a fantastic place to live. I do not know whether the city has an official slogan. The unofficial slogan is “We will not become another Gwinnett County!” For those of you who are not familiar with the disaster that is the Atlanta Metro Area, Gwinnett County, a suburban county, had at one time the highest growth rate of any county in the country. It is now a total mess: commercial buildings everywhere, houses everywhere, strip malls everywhere, apparently with no planning or forethought. The city fathers of Madison are doing everything within their power to prevent that from happening there.

Last fall, Kathy and I had a discussion about my job and our future. She was ready for me to retire. I was not. We eventually reached a compromise of sorts: semi-retirement in a bigger city. That city would be Asheville, where her two children and one grandchild reside. I informed my school, and while she looked for a suitable home in Asheville, I looked for a job. We succeeded on both counts. I am a part-time teacher of mathematics and chemistry at a private school here in town (a mere 4.8 miles from our home), while Kathy found a house that would satisfy both of us.

The Great Remove from Madison began last summer, and has just now concluded. While there are a few boxes to be sorted and only two rooms still to be organized (my workshop and the garage), the move has officially ended. I can say that because now we have North Carolina driver’s licenses, North Carolina plates on the vehicles, and new voter registration cards. Kathy has already voted, having taken advantage of the slack voting laws in the state that seem to encourage voting fraud. I, on the other hand, prefer to vote on Election Day, and not during Election Month. I will perform my ritual act of civic responsibility Tuesday, at the local Presbyterian church.

The Madison phase of my life has ended. I still miss that little town. But I am not fond of living life while looking in the rear-view mirror. I will enjoy Asheville, even as I miss Madison.

Memorable Students

I began teaching rather late in life – at the age of 49 – but of all the jobs I’ve had, teaching is the best. My present high school is my fourth, and the job is still enjoyable.

When I began, all those years ago, I often wondered what it would be like to see the name of one of my former students in the newspaper, or to hear of that student on the television. That has now happened to me, twice. It is not the experience I thought it would be.

I have been cleaning out files following my move to Asheville, and I ran across a picture from my very first year of teaching. The school that first hired me was a very expensive school: the year I left that school, it charged the same tuition as my alma mater, Wake Forest University. Wake is a private college, and it is not cheap. My first high school was likewise private and absolutely not cheap. It did offer some advantages to those who could afford it, including one-on-one classes. It is remarkable how much progress a student can make if he or she is the only student in the class.

The picture I found was of a student in a one-on-one class with me. He was at the board working problems, while I was sitting in a chair next to the board, offering guidance. I guess it was a photo for the yearbook. At any rate, it ended up in my files.

That particular student, in that one-on-one class, came to us during his senior year. He was barely a senior. He had spent the prior year in a boot camp school, so he had a lot of catching up to do. His grandparents had some spare cash and agreed to pay the very high tuition for all private classes. As I recall, it took the entire senior year plus three summer sessions for this young man to acquire enough credits to earn his diploma. He graduated in late August, and I thought nothing more of him.

Until, that is, the October following his graduation. One morning in October, I cranked up my computer as usual, and opened a web browser. I had set the home page of the browser to the local newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This once-proud newspaper now barely exists, but at the time it was the go-to newspaper for the Atlanta area. My browser opened up, and what did I see but a picture of my student. My first impression was that, since graduating from high school, he had acquired a tattoo of his initials on his left bicep. The reason the tattoo jumped out at me was because his bicep was flexed. That tends to happen when your wrists are handcuffed behind you.

This young man had made the news for murdering his grandfather, and nearly murdering his grandmother. Both were cruelly beaten. I am not clear on motives, but as a naturally suspicious fellow, I suspect that drugs were involved. At any rate, this young man showed up one Monday morning at a bank, trying to cash a check for $50,000 written on his grandfather’s account. The teller was suspicious, and alerted the manager, who alerted the police. The check, as it happens, was forged. When the police arrived at the grandfather’s house, they found his bloody corpse, and the nearly-dead grandmother.

Sometime later the newspaper reported that he had struck a deal. He avoided the death penalty in exchange for life in prison without the possibility of parole. As far as I know, he has been in prison since then. The murder happened when he was around the age of 19. It is truly a waste of a life.

I never did hear if his grandmother recovered.

The second memorable student is another student from that first, expensive school, and what I am about to relate occurred maybe ten years after I had left the school. The only thing memorable about her during her years at the school is that she dressed every day in black, in a style the kids referred to as “Goth”. Other than that, there was nothing about her to indicate that one day I would hear about her on the television news.

I had taken my mother to visit her only living sister. My first morning there, while sipping on a cup of coffee, I heard a news report from one of those morning feel-good shows that all the networks air. I didn’t pay any attention until I heard the name of the person involved: she was my former “Goth” student. On the bright side she had not murdered anyone. On the downside, she sat by while a man died, and she did nothing.

This former student had become a very high-priced call girl on the west coast. One of her clients was a married man with five children who was an executive with a well-known tech firm. She had joined him one evening on his boat at the marina. She sipped wine while he overdosed on heroin. The security cameras from the marina captured this on film. After a while, she stepped over his body to get another glass of wine. Finishing her wine, she left without checking on him, or without calling for an ambulance.

Prostitution is still illegal in California, so they nailed her on that charge. Whether she payed any price for leaving the tech exec there to die without calling for help is a question I can’t answer. As it happens, she was a Canadian citizen, so after she completed her prison sentence she was deported.

Those are my two experiences with former students making headlines. While I wish all my former students good luck and great success in their careers, I no longer wish to see any of them in the news!

Well, Throttle My Body!

I have owned a bunch of automobiles, too many to count, really. All but my current ride, from the 1961 Oldsmobile Delta 88 to the penultimate 1999 Ford Ranger, were manufactured in the 20th Century. In 2015 I bought a two-years-old Ford F-150, my first, and thus far, only vehicle manufactured in the 21st century.

I love my pickup truck. But it has a little problem: it consumes throttle bodies. I have just installed my seventh throttle body on a truck that I have owned for a mere seven years.

Now a throttle body is not exactly a complicated piece of engineering. Back in the Dark and Dismal Days of my Youth, the throttle body (a flat, circular butterfly valve) was built into the carburetor and connected to the gas pedal by a mechanical linkage. When you pressed the gas pedal, the butterfly valve opened, allowing more air into the carburetor. Nowadays, with carburetors a thing of the past and fuel injection all the rage, the same little butterfly valve is located between the air filter and the intake manifold, and of course, it is no longer controlled by a mechanical linkage. No, in our wisdom, we have made this another electronic device, and it communicates vital information (via an air flow sensor and the throttle position sensor) to the automobile's computer.

You can see the problem: when the linkage was mechanical, all was right with the world. But now that the bloody thing is electronic and in contact with a computer, we have no end of troubles. So it is that, prior to my first throttle body replacement in 2015, I had never heard of a throttle body. Now it is the center of my fixation.

I once wrote a letter to Ford Motor Company's vice president of vehicle component and system engineering. I include a portion of that letter below. The letter was written in September of 2019.

"In the spring of 2015, when I bought my 2013 Ford F-150, I had never heard of a throttle body. A couple of weeks ago the Ford dealer in Asheville, NC, installed the fifth throttle body my truck has had since I purchased it. I strongly suspect that the previous owners, who purchased the vehicle new, traded it in for the same problem."

"Apparently this problem is not unique to my F-150. I say that because, back in the spring of 2016, I had to wait for two or three weeks to get my third throttle body installed. There was a nationwide shortage, which I assume meant that other F-150 owners were sharing in my woe."

"I thought the fourth throttle body, installed in the fall of 2016, was the lucky one. After all, I had never made it past six months with the others. Three years was a record. But, alas, three years was its life span."

"I know that Ford Motor Company has a stable of top-notch engineers in its employ. You don’t have the bestselling pickup truck for 40 years running without excellent engineering. Somewhere in your organization is a very bright engineer who knows the story behind these faulty throttle bodies. Better, he knows exactly what I need to do to make a throttle body last."

"Please, find that engineer, and have him contact the service department of Athens Ford in Athens, Georgia. Please have him tell the excellent mechanics there just what they need to do in order to fix my throttle body problem for once and for all."

The vice president had his minion contact me by telephone. He wanted me to take the F-150 to a dealership so they could read the part number for him. I took a photo of the part number, instead, and texted it to him. He assured me I had the latest and greatest all-problems-solved throttle body in place.

That was two throttle bodies ago.

Monday I saw the first symptom that my throttle body was dying: a wrench appeared on my computer display. The F-150 has two different signals indicating something is wrong. The first is the "check engine light" which, when lit, means "you're in trouble." The second is a wrench that appears on the computer display. That one means "you're in deep trouble." So the wrench appeared, along with a loss of acceleration. I drifted over into a parking lot and turned her off. She restarted, and as always with the throttle body problem, she allowed me to get home, but the wrench and the loss of acceleration are warning signs that you are living on borrowed time. Keep driving, and you will eventually be stranded.

Perhaps Asheville is like every other city: everyone is short of workers. The Ford dealership couldn't take me until mid-September. I tried other garages, and the earliest I could get in was the Tuesday after a weekend festival, two weeks away. I need the truck to haul a trailer to that festival, so that was no good. I had no choice but to fix it myself.

My son suggested I order the part from Amazon, which I did. I ordered it Wednesday, and it was here Thursday. It was 50% of the price the last Ford dealership charged me for that part. I watched a 6:49 YouTube video, "Suki's Shop," which showed me how to change the throttle body. Suki did the whole job in about seven minutes. It took me 57 minutes, but I'm not complaining.

Two thoughts occur to me. I have always used Ford replacement parts, as the job has always been performed in a Ford dealership. I just installed a third-party part. Maybe these third-party parts don't have the Ford defect in them that makes them fail frequently. Second, if this one does fail in another six months to a year, maybe I should just buy a spare throttle body and keep it in the toolbox of the F-150. I'll bet I could replace the next one in less than 57 minutes.

The results from a national experiment

Please note that the data displayed in the graph are from that radical, right-wing rag, The New York Times.

Local Hero

Salena Zito is a national treasure. She writes for the Washington Examiner, the New York Post, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and her columns are generally uplifting and inspiring. What else would you expect from a column that she calls "Dispatches from The Middle of Somewhere"? ("In my estimation, there is no patch of geography in this country that is the 'middle of nowhere.' This is America; everywhere is the middle of somewhere.") Her recent column in the Washington Examiner is well worth the time spent reading it. It reminded me that I spend too much time worrying about our self-inflicted wounds of inflation, gasoline prices, food shortages, and addiction to opioids, and not enough time dwelling on the good things that happen every day. This column is my attempt to make up for my past posts that, quite frankly, could depress a hyena.

This is a true story about a local hero. Very few people know about his heroism, and with good reason: it occurred nearly 23 years ago. Our hero was, at the time, 11 years old.

The lad was spending some vacation time with his father, on South Beach, Bald Head Island, NC. He struck up a friendship with another lad of approximately the same age, and found himself at the beach with his young friend, and the young friend’s family. His new-found friend had a half-brother, approximately 18 months of age, a mother, and a step-father. The mother and step-father were in the ocean, enjoying the calm seas, the toddler was in a trough or ditch in the sand, about a foot and one-half deep, that ran along the beach, parallel to the shore, and the two 11-years-old boys were sitting on the beach nearby, doing whatever it is that 11-years-old boys do.

A bit further out to sea, a big barge came drifting by. Big barges create big wakes. The folks out in the ocean noticed the wake, but by the time it came ashore, it created some excitement. The wake moved much further up the beach than the normal wave action, far enough to fill the ditch or trough containing the 18-months-old toddler with water.

Mothers are observant creatures. The mother of the toddler may have been floating out on the ocean, but she saw immediately what had happened, and she realized she would not be able to get to shore in time to save the toddler. So she screamed, in a voice recognizable by one and all as the voice of panic: “GET MY BABY!”

Our hero had not noticed that the toddler was in danger, but the voice of the mother made him look around. He saw what was happening, then turned to the toddler’s half-brother, expecting him to spring into action. But the half-brother sat frozen. So our hero, who later said “I just did what I was told”, hopped up and raced over to the trough.

He plunged his arm into the water at the point where he last saw the toddler, but the toddler was not there. The water in the trough was moving, probably towards the sea. Our hero moved a few feet down the trough and tried again, this time feeling the toddler’s arm. He pulled the toddler out of the trough: the poor little fellow was spitting up water. Shortly thereafter, the mother arrived and did what mothers do: she took command of the situation. The toddler survived, with no ill effects, and the mother was extremely grateful.

After the vacation, our hero returned home to his mother in Atlanta, who soon received a phone call from Ojai, California, inviting the young hero out to the toddler’s home. The young hero flew out to visit with the family, and had a grand old time.

In the intervening years, our hero would hear from the family occasionally, but with the passage of time come the transitions of life. Our hero graduated high school, went off to college, did some traveling, and eventually settled down in Asheville, NC. In those pre-social media days, it was difficult to keep up with folks who moved around the country, and our hero lost touch with the family.

Recently, the half-brother found our hero on social media, and contacted him. A few days later, our hero received a very nice letter from the mother of the “toddler” (now in his mid-20s), and, more surprising, a hefty check. The letter, which our hero shared with me, was one of the sweetest, most sincere letters I have ever read. The mother once again thanked our hero for giving her the opportunity to spend the last twenty-something-odd years with her younger son. She thinks of his actions on that day frequently, and offered words describing a gratitude that can never be fully expressed. She invited him to visit the family, now living in Mexico. Our hero wrote back. Their connection has been re-established.

This, my friends, is America. It is the lad who did something heroic, thinking he was only doing what he was told. It is the mother who recognizes that life is fragile, and that, but for the actions of an 11-years-old child, she would have received a wound that would never heal. It is about gratitude, and humility. It is about personal connections. It is about bringing us together, not pushing us apart.

It is the exact opposite of social media.

The Onset of Wisdom

Every generation that follows ours is doing something wrong. It has always been that way. The World War I generation (my grandparents) undoubtedly thought that the World War II generation (my parents) was filled with ne'er-do-wells, while the World War II generation knew that the Baby Boomers (my generation) were lost causes. What is it with all this loud music, long hair, dope smoking and the like? We Baby Boomers are, of course, sure that our high standards are not being met by the generations that followed us. (Forgive me, but since I do not know the differences between Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, the Millennials, etc., I will just lump them altogether.) But I do see a glimmer of hope in the current generations of younger people. About that, more later.

My favorite philosopher, Clint Eastwood, had a classic line in one of the Dirty Harry movies: "A man's got to know his limitations." There is not an elected politician within a 100 mile radius of Washington, DC, who knows his or her limitations. Acknowledging one's limitations is not how one gets elected. For proof, see the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Government's first response to any problem is "We've got to do something!" In many cases, though, there are very few things the government can do to help a situation, but very many things a government can do to make a situation worse. In the case of this pandemic, the government threw its considerable resources behind developing and bringing to market quickly a shot, orginally thought to be a vaccine, for the Wuhan Flu. That was one of the few things the government could do to make the situation better. Many of you will argue the opposite, and I can certainly see your point.

Most of the rest of the government's response, in my opinion, only made matters worse. Shutting down the economy and forcing people to isolate was a disaster. A recent study from Johns Hopkins University makes that point. Some of the recommendations that we still follow today - masking, social distancing - had little basis in science. But the worst effect of all this was the transfer of power to the Federal government, at the cost of our individual liberties. That happened because the population was dreadfully fearful of the Wuhan Flu. And that was primarily the result of a press corps that slanted the news to hype the fear. Everyone fears death, and the death toll from the virus (we were told) was horrendous.

Within the last couple of weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been a bit more forthcoming regarding the statistics on death from the Wuhan Flu. We discovered that some of the deaths attributed to the virus were deaths in patients caused by something else: the patient tested positive for the virus, so the death was listed as due to the virus. And in a remarkable bit of honesty, the director of the CDC discussed the role of comorbidities, other illnesses that contributed to the fatal nature of the infection.

In an interview on the television show Good Morning America, the director of the CDC discussed Covid deaths between December 2020 and October 2021 for those who had received two jabs. Of those who died, 100% had at least one risk factor or comorbidity. Seventy-eight percent of those who died had at least four comorbidities. If these are the numbers for those who were "fully vaccinated", what are the numbers for the "unvaccinated" who died? One can imagine a similar trend: those who are weakened by other risk factors are more likely to succumb to the virus. This, by the way, is true of influenza in general.

And there are the deaths caused by stupidity. The governor of New York issued an order requiring nursing homes to take patients who had tested positive for the virus. A couple of other states did something similarly stupid, placing those who were contagious in a population with the pre-eminent comorbidity: old age.

If the goverment had been honest about the statistics, and if the press had shed its "If it bleeds, it leads" mentality, there might have been less fear of death from the virus, less power transferred to the government, and a more rational approach to the pandemic.

I have talked with students who, to this day, are frightened to death of catching the Wuhan Flu, even though there is little reason to be afraid of dying from the disease. I have seen students withdraw from their classmates and become less social. I knew one student who committed suicide during the pandemic, though no one can say with certainty that the suicide was a result of the pandemic. The atmosphere of fear is the worst of the pandemic's outcomes for young people.

But there is hope that the current generations of young folks are turning a corner. Recently I witnessed two examples of young people who have had an epiphany. The first has to do with the Wuhan Flu, and the second has to do with government power in general.

I know a young lady who believed the recommendations the various government agencies issued. She had the shots, she wore the mask, she socially distanced, she did everything requested of her. She did not get the Wuhan Flu, but she did suffer some medical consequences that her doctor believes are associated with the Wuhan Flu shots. She now wonders why the government pushed hard for everyone to be jabbed when the long-term consequences of the shots were unknown. And now that we are beginning to see some of the medical consequences of the shots, all the while noting that the shots seem to be ineffective against the omicron variant, she asks why does the government continue this push to get the jabs?

She is beginning to see that our government is not the fount of all wisdom. She sees that this is not a kind and benevolent government, but a government intent on forcing its citizens to do as it wishes.

A student of mine, taking an economics course, had to do a bit of role-playing. His teacher assigned the student a job, earning excellent money, and told the student to take this money and plan his life. Based on data from government websites, the student “bought” a house and a brand new muscle car. He was living the good life, until one of the other students in the course pointed out that the student had not deducted taxes from his imaginary paycheck. After the taxes were deducted, the student went from buying a house to sharing an apartment, and the new muscle car gave way to a second-hand Toyota Corolla. He no longer had the disposable income to travel, or to attend concerts, and the like. He then asked the key question: where does all this tax money go?

These two members of the post-Baby Boom generations are beginning to experience the onset of wisdom.

And It's Another New Year!

Happy New Year to you all! My thoughts on the year that will pass away in a couple of hours are pretty much the same as my thoughts on the year that preceded it: goodbye, and good riddance!

I had high hopes for 2021. The Wuhan flu vaccines were brought to market just after the November elections, and I was pretty sure that would cure all my problems. Enough people would be vaccinated, and the world would return to normal. Boy, was I wrong.

I debated with myself about getting the jab. My health is good, and in all my years I've never taken a flu shot. It has been almost 40 years since I had a case of the flu. My immune system seems to be up to snuff, which is probably one of only two advantages to spending 10 years of my life as a road warrior. (The other is lifetime Medallion status with Delta Air Lines, a consequence of flying one million air miles with them in a span of 10 years.) Plus, at the beginning of the year, vaccines were scarce, and there were older people in poor health who needed the jab more than I did.

In the end, I decided that it was worth a couple of shots for life to return to normal. By the end of March I had received the jabs, and was waiting for a return to normalcy.

We finished the school year under masking and social distancing requirements. Fortunately, graduation last May was a maskless affair, with the promise that the new school year would be normal.

About a week before our pre-school-year work days, I received the email that ruined my year: we would have to wear those ineffective and useless masks. Fortunately, social distancing, while required, was pretty much observed in the breach.

Why do I hate the masks so much, aside from the fact that they are useless? I am partially deaf, and have gotten along for years by lip-reading. I cannot do that with the idiotic masks on my students. Plus, the damned things fog my glasses, and get to be pretty irritating by lunch time as my beard stubble starts to appear. And of course, the most irritating thing of all is that for the last 18 months or so, the only place I have worn the mask is at the school. We follow whatever the CDC says, which I believe is a colossal mistake. But the vast majority of my life these past 18 months or so have been maskless, and yet here I am.

Things got worse. Whereas last school year we were allowed to take the masks off when out of doors, a little in to the school year we were informed that we had to wear the masks out of doors. We follow the CDC. The question is, do they follow the science?

Hoping against hope that the booster would help the world return to normal, I took the third jab. That was a complete waste of time.

The latest variant, Omicron, is spreading like wildfire. It is killing next to no one. Two days ago Bloomberg News had the following headline: "US Covid Deaths Are Falling As Omicron Cases Surge". That really didn't answer my question, which was how many deaths from the Omicron variant have we seen in the U.S. It took awhile to find the answer. It is almost as if no one wants to publish the figure. The figure I have is through Christmas Eve, and that figure is ONE: A Harris County, Texas man who, they helpfully tell us, was unvaccinated.

This is what an intelligent biological scientist would have predicted. Darwin's survival of the fittest is at work here. The Omicron variant spreads rapidly but is not as likely to kill off its host as the other variants. Both these mutations help its survival. And its rapid spread seems to be crowding out the Delta variant.

I have two points to make, then I will leave you to your celebrations. The "vaccines" are not vaccines in the traditional sense of that word. When I received the Salk vaccine, life returned to normal. No more mid-day naps, which were thought to protect against polio, and likewise no restrictions on swimming at a public pool, which also was thought at the time to be a breeding ground for the polio virus. And as far as I know, excluding the disastrous batch of vaccine made by Cutter Labs on the west coast, no one who had the vaccine ever caught polio. (Some 40,000 cases of polio occurred because Cutter Labs failed to inactivate the virus properly.) That cannot be said of the current "vaccine". I heard the Vice President on a video clip the other day, and at first I thought she misspoke. But she repeated this at least twice: everyone she knew who caught the Wuhan flu had been vaccinated. That is less like a vaccine and more like our traditional flu shots. It is a roll of the dice with a flu shot, and some years as many as 60% of those who received the shot still catch the influenza. So, I suggest we stop calling this a vaccine, and call it what it really is: a flu shot.

Point two: the relative ineffectiveness of the vaccine against these recent variants, and the evolution of the virus to a highly transmissible but less deadly strain, means the pandemic is over. It is now endemic, meaning it will be with us forever, like the swine flu, the Spanish flu, the Hong Kong flu, and all the others. Which means that it is time for us to return to normal life and quit hectoring our fellow humans who choose not to get the jab, or to wear a mask, or to wash hands as if suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder. We are going to be living with the Wuhan flu forever more, so get used to it.

I wonder how many years it will take the CDC to reach that obvious conclusion?

The Book of the Year

Back in my single days - before cable television and streaming channels - I entertained myself by reading a book, or listening to the radio, or watching a movie. I would read a book nearly every week. On weekends when I did not have a date, I would listen to the John Batchelor Show out of New York (WABC, 770 AM in those days - he is on WOR, 710 AM these days). His weekend shows featured book reviews, and very often on a dateless Saturday night I would find myself at the computer, ordering the books I heard reviewed that night.

Now, I am lucky to read a book every month. Books compete with the great variety of mysteries one can find on the streaming channels, and most nights, the books lose out to these television mysteries. So I was rather pleased to see that, as of this writing, I managed to read 16 books this year.

Four of the books dealt with world wars. The York Patrol, by James Carl Nelson, was a detailed look at the action that won acting Corporal Alvin York his Medal of Honor. The Secret War, by Max Hastings, examined the intelligence communities of World War II, and how the various enemies (and on occasion, the allies) spied on each other. Operation Vengeance, by Dan Hampton (my most recent read) was a riveting account of the operation that killed Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind behind the Pearl Harbor sneak attack. Since the P-38s used in this operation took off from the island of Guadalcanal, the introductory chapters that detailed the invasion of that island gave me a new perspective on Guadalcanal's importance. But the most enjoyable World War II read was I Marched With Patton, a memoir by Frank Sisson.

I managed to read five novels. A Good Marriage, by Kimberly McCreight, and Every Vow You Break, by Peter Swanson, were okay. I have a tendency to finish a book that I've started, so that is why I stuck with these until the end. I'm sure they are fine, but just not my cup of tea. I've already mentioned in a previous post the Graham Greene novel The Power and the Glory. I enjoyed that novel, as I did 1984, by George Orwell. In light of today's political environment, 1984 seems less like a novel and more like a book on current events. But the best novel I read this year was undoubtedly Find You First, by Linwood Barclay. I will not spoil your enjoyment, should you choose to read the novel, by giving you any further details. I consider the premise behind this novel to be fascinating.

I read Natasha Trethewey's memoir Memorial Drive for two reasons: I once lived near Memorial Drive, and the Wall Street Journal sent it to me free as partial compensation for the exhorbitantly expensive cost of a WSJ subscription. It was just okay. The same can be said for Just Show Up, by Cal Ripken, Jr. I know, as I write this, that I will receive grief for this comment from a friend of mine in Maryland, but that's life. Jocks tend not to write great books, even with the help of ghost writers. And although I admire Cal Jr., he is still a jock, and I am too old to be inspired by a locker room pep talk, especially when it is a book-length locker room pep talk.

That leaves five books. I am going to classify these books as historical works. I mentioned W. J. Cash's book The Mind of the South in an earlier posting, so I will say no more here, other than the fact that I'm glad I finally finished that book. I took an online course from Hillsdale College on the Book of Genesis, by Moses, so I re-read all 50 chapters. This time around I read the New English translation, a 1970 Christmas gift from my parents and my brother. That translation does not contain the beauty of the King James Version, but it is much easier to understand. I managed another biography of John C. Calhoun, by Margaret L. Coit, and her attention to detail in John C. Calhoun: American Portrait, leaves me in awe of historians who write well. N-4 Down, by Mark Piesing, kept me on the edge of my seat. It is the story of the loss of an Italian lighter-than-air craft that was engaged in exploration of the North Pole. And it answered a question that had never before crossed my mind: whatever became of the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen?

I have saved the best for last: Beyond, by Stephen Walker. I grew up knowing every detail that was possible to know about the Mercury 7 astronauts, and the troubles the United States had in catching up to the Soviet Union in the race to conquer space. This book provides a look at the other side. The story of Yuri Gagarin's history-making ride atop an R-7 missile, the most powerful in the world at the time, gave me a new appreciation for his sheer courage. He changed the world forever, and he should never be forgotten. Walker did an outstanding job of research and writing, and he published it on the 60th anniversary of Gagarin's flight. I highly recommend it to you.

The Great Digital Disconnect

My stepdaughter owns a short-term rental in Bryson City, NC. The unique feature of this unit is that there is no internet, and no decent cell phone signal. She named the house "The Digital Disconnet" and it stays rented all the time. Apparently our digital world, with its 24/7 connection to the universe, is so stressful that a little time away from it all is the mark of a true vacation. I often wondered what it would be like with no digital connection to the outside world. I found out last weekend.

A week or so ago a crew was out in our neighborhood, with their spray cans of paint, marking the locations of electrical, water, gas, telephone, and cable lines. (In Madison, these are all underground.) I knew that some digging was in our future, but I didn't know exactly where. The Thursday before last weekend, I received a text message from Spectrum, our internet provider, informing me that we were in an area of internet outage, but that they were working on it. As I drove into the neighboood, I saw the problem: Georgia Power looked at all those lawn markings, pointed to the one that said "George's Internet," and decided to dig there. The Spectrum truck was in our driveway, but there was precious little he could do until a crew came out to repair the internet cable, which was cut, by the way, in four places. Georgia Power wanted to make sure that I would be without internet.

While waiting on the repair crew, which came Friday, the tech decided to check my modem and the connections down at the junction box in front of my house. The took some cabling apart, looked at it, muttered about how dirty it was, and left it disconnected.

All this was inconvenient, as I had a Zoom meeting with parents scheduled for that evening. I ended up doing the meeting in the cab of my truck, parked within wifi range of the Quality Inn at Madison.

And so passed Thursday night, the evening of the first day without internet.

On my trip home Friday I received a text from Spectrum, telling me the repairs were completed. So I was a bit peeved when I arrived home to find that I had no internet. Yes, the cable had been replaced. No, the tech had not returned to reconnect the cables down at the junction box. I called, and the folks at Spectrum told me I could get an appointment at 5:00 PM. The problem: it would be 5:00 PM MONDAY. I burned up the rest of my high speed cellular data by watching a television show on my phone. At that point we were without both internet and high speed data. The data we did have was at a much reduced speed. It reminded me of the old AT&T EDGE network days.

And so passed Friday night, the evening of the second day without internet.

Saturday we had a festival to work. If you have never attended the Bostwick (GA) Cotton Gin Festival, you do not know what you are missing. My favorite columnist, Salena Zito, recently wrote a column about small towns and their festivals. This festival could have been featured in her column. I love small-town American, and that means I love the little crossroad of Bostwick. Once we had a couple of dozen cotton gins in our county. As far as I know, the one is Bostwick is the only remaining operational gin in Morgan County. It is fascinating to see it run.

We used our credit card reader and app to sell products at the festival. Even on reduced speed, we were able to accept the credit cards offered to us. We returned home, and watched a film noir that I had previously recorded: Touch of Evil, a 1958 Orson Wells thriller. The big inconvenience was not being able to ask Alexa what the weather would be like on Sunday. That and having to drive to the Pilot gasoline station to tap into their internet in order to upload the most recent blog posting.

And so passed Saturday night, the evening of the third day without internet.

On Sunday, the lack of internet became a problem. We are working on a project, and we needed to be able to both upload and download documents. This required two trips down to the interstate: we used the Dunkin' wifi in the morning, then the Pilot wifi in the afternoon. By evening, we were exhausted, but reasonably happy. We have a couple of items to put together to finish the project, but that will have to wait for another day. The dog needed a bath, and that took precedence. We had dinner. We read. We went to bed early.

And so passed Sunday night, the evening of the fourth day without internet.

Monday morning, well before sun-up, I was at school, and received a text message from Spectrum telling me that my internet had been restored, and that I should press "3" in order to cancel the scheduled Monday afternoon visit by my local repair tech. Not having fallen off the turnip truck yesterday, I politely declined to cancel the service call, which was a good thing. When I arrived home, I was still without internet, but my friendly repair tech showed up on time, and an hour or so later, I was back in business. It turns out that the Friday afternoon technician simply failed to reconnect some cables at the junction box in the yard. Had he done so, I would not have gone the weekend without my digital connection to the outside world. The tech checked everything: the junction box, the box on the wall of the house, the connections inside the house. He did a great job. I wish he had visited me on Friday.

I celebrated by watching an episode of “My Life Is Murder” and an episode of “The Americans”. I further celebrated with a dinner of Whoppers (2), Coca-Cola, and vanilla bean ice cream. As you can see, Kathy was out of town.

Thus ended Monday night, the evening of the fifth day without internet.

I've had my digital vacation. The most refreshing part of this vacation was its end.

The Guy In The Basement

I have mentioned in the past that I suffer from tinnitus. A bit more than a month ago, Kathy was outside, chatting with a neighbor, the Gladys Kravitz of our neighborhood. Kathy happened to mention that I have been having trouble with ringing in the ear, and Gladys popped into her house, did a search on her computer, then sent a text to me containing the link you see pictured at the top of this article.

In the event that you cannot make out the details of the photo, it is a photo of a woman with a clove of garlic shoved in her right ear. That’s right: a clove of garlic in the ear.

*Sigh*

In 2018, the US spent on average $14,891 per year, per pupil, for the 12 years of primary through secondary education. The same year, the US spent on average $15,908 per year, per pupil, for post secondary education (college, community colleges, technical schools, etc.), and $33,063 per year, per pupil, for graduate and post graduate education. We spend a ton of money every year on education.

So why do we still have people on this Earth who can be suckered by witch doctor medicine?

And it isn't just medicine that fools people who should know better. Surely you have seen the internet ads that tout some previously secret method for cleaning toilets, or tightening loose skin on the face and neck, or saving hundreds of dollars on automobile insurance, and the like. There have been so many ads featuring baking soda and apple cider vinegar that I no longer even look to see what these two miracle chemicals are supposed to do. I gather, from the ads, that baking soda and apple cider vinegar must solve about 5,237 household problems.

I lay the blame for this gullibility to the nature of our citizens. We are all slightly rebellious, and generally distrustful of authority. So when an internet ad begins with “the major drug companies don't want you to know about this simple cure for [fill in the blank]”, we are naturally inclined to say “Yeah, screw those bastards!” And we end up with some of our citizens walking around with garlic cloves in their ears.

So, where do all these implausible ads come from? I have a theory. I can't prove it. You can't disprove it. In other words, it is a perfect theory.

Somewhere there is this not-quite-middle-aged chap, a college graduate, with something on the order of $100,000 in college loan debt. That is why he lives in his mother's basement. The reason he has made no progress on his student loans, and hence lives in his mother's basement, is that he has no useful skills. His degree is useless. Who needs a degree in the Transgender Anthropology of the Hakowiee Indians, or Critical pre-Columbian Queer Feminist Theory? The poor fellow is bitter: he has no future, and he chastises himself for not majoring in, say, English. At least with an English degree he could go door-to-door explaining Shakespeare for tips. But no, there he is, in his underwear, in his mother's basement, scouring the internet for some porn he hasn't yet viewed.

"Why me?" he asks. “I'm a lot brighter than most of those mouth-breathers who know nothing about Jacques Derrida's contribution to post-structuralism, or Michael Foucault's theory of the historical, non-temporal, a priori knowledge that grounds truth and discourses, thus representing the condition of their possibility within a particular epoch. Why, then, am I such a loser?”

Let me count the ways.

As the weeks in the basement become months, he begins to lose confidence in himself, until he actually begins to sound like John Blutarsky, aka Bluto in Animal House: “Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f***ing Peace Corps.”

But then, he has an idea, a brilliant one, an idea that will restore his sense of self-importance. He will show just how stupid the mouth-breathers are. He will come up with the most idiotic ideas he can imagine, post them on-line, and then watch to see the mouth-breathers take the bait.

And that is why we see ads touting garlic cloves in the ear to cure tinnitus, vinegar and baking soda enemas to cure prostatitis, and nonsense like that.

As I noted, it is the perfect theory.

You can buy the theory, or not. But please, PLEASE, when you look at those internet ads that promise the simplest of cures for mankind’s most perplexing problems, stop for a second before clicking on the link, and remember that fellow, in his underwear, in his mother's basement.

Whatever Happened To . . .

When I began this blog, it was my intention to post something every week, but that rarely happens. Life tends to get in the way. I still have a full time job, and that cuts into my free time. My outside interests also cut into my free time. I love to read, but my reading speed is not very fast, so keeping up with my reading tends to take more time than it should. And then, there are the odd things that strike my fancy. Recently, one odd thing was an article published in August, 2021, in the American Journal of Physics that addressed the force necessary to operate the plunger on a French press. (Feel free to read the paper yourself: The force required to operate the plunger on a French press: American Journal of Physics: Vol 89, No 8 (scitation.org). I looked, but as best I can tell, none of my tax dollars were used by any of the 11 authors in the four or five countries they inhabit to come up with this very simple equation.)

Because of these distractions, I find it necessary to write notes to myself about what may (or, more likely, may not) be good topics for this blog. Some time ago, I wrote a note about two lovely and talented singers who appeared on episode 2, season 17 of The Benny Hill Show (March 31, 1986). These twin sisters, Alison and Rebecca Marsh, were featured as cabaret performers singing "Money Makes The World Go Around", but also showed up in other skits, and were in the opening scene as dancers. I was astounded that I had never seen this pair in any other television show, and after doing a little research, I filed my notes away somewhere near a stack of unread books on the coffee table in my office.

That must have been a couple of years ago. In the meantime, the stack of unread books on the coffee table was replaced with a new stack of unread books, which was eventually moved to make room for something else. So today, when I decided that the time was right to do that column about the Marsh sisters, I could not find my notes.

My notes could not have been very substantial, because there is very little available on the world wide web about these two. Aside from this 1986 appearance on The Benny Hill Show, I found one 1993 appearance on a British television show called Red Dwarf (November 4, 1993), in which they played, ahem, concubines. There is also a video of their performance on Spanish television (year unknown) in which they are introduced in Spanish but perform in English. I was able to find video of yet another television performance, but the show and the date are not documented.

Although we do not know their birthday, we do know that they are two of the six children of Reginald Marsh, a well-known British television actor. Marsh was married twice; Alison and Rebecca were issues from his second marriage (1960 - 2001), to Rosemary Murray.

Given the mores of the 1960s, I suspect that the twins were born in 1960 or later. That would have made them at most 23 years of age when the show was taped, and probably younger. I am terrible at guessing ages from appearances, but this does appear to me to be a reasonable guess.

Their appearance on The Benny Hill Show impressed me greatly; the two videos I saw on the web were somewhat less impressive. They may have disappeared from view because they were simply not that good at their craft. Such a pity.

The DVDs of The Benny Hill Show that I purchased covered his Thames Television/ITV years (1969 - 1989). There may be others covering his entire television career (which began in 1955), but given that I have not yet finished all 19 seasons included on the discs, it will be awhile before I search for them. Each show is about one hour in length. Those of you who remember the American broadcasts of The Benny Hill Show (which I first saw in either the very late 1970s or the early 1980s) will recall that those shows fit into a half-hour slot. The American shows were cut-down versions of the British shows: most of the musical segments were removed, as well as the very raciest of his suggestive, yet funny, skits. Benny Hill did love sexual innuendo.

There are other "whatever happened to" questions from The Benny Hill Show. The Ladybirds provided backup vocals, but were also featured periodically in their own segment of the show. After a few years, they disappeared from the screen, although they were still credited with providing background vocals. Why? Hill's best sidekick, Henry McGee, like Hill himself, is long gone, but I am curious as to what has happened to some of the lovely young lasses who were known collectively as "Hill's Angels". Where are my two favorites, Louise English and Sue Upton? And whatever happened to Hill's Little Angel, Jade Westbrook, who showed up in the later years of the broadcast when she was still a small child?

I guess I should do a little more research. But first, I think I will take a listen to Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax".

Words That Warm The Cockles Of My Heart

Three events occurred that set me to thinking about words and their usage. The first event: Kathy found a bit of paper in her mother's possessions that must have been written in the late 1960s. It was a single legal-sized sheet put out by the Lovett School entitled "Home Study" that dealt with homework and studying at home. The second was an article in the August 27, 2021 print edition of the Wall Street Journal by Allan Ripp, a New York PR man, entitled "Old-Fangled Words Are Wondrous, Methinks". The third was an encounter with the book by W. J. Cash entitled The Mind of the South (Alfred A. Knopf, 1941).

"Home Study" was a guide to success disguised as a missive on homework. It was typed, and most likely reproduced by photocopy machine. It posited a theory of how learning actually occurs, and then went into specific recommendations. I was drawn to three items on the sheet. The first was the handwritten comments her father made on this document. "Review with Kathy", "Children should do lessons themselves", "No radio, no TV, except weekends", "No telephoning for assignments", "Children must learn to follow directions", "Must do homework even when there's nothing to write - don't just read, but study". He had written two words on top of the sheet, one above the other: "competence" on top, "confidence" on the bottom, with little arrows from one to another, demonstrating how competence in one's studies tended to produce confidence in one's abilities, thus improving competence. As far as I am concerned, everything he wrote is still true today.

The second item that drew my attention was a line at the bottom of the page, with the number "2" inserted by hand. The whole paragraph read as follows:

"Lovett School expects you to do 2 hours of home work a night. If you are not getting that much homework, tell your teacher."

Naturally, I photocopied this piece of paper and distributed it to all my students, who had a good laugh at the suggestion that a student would tell a teacher that the student is not getting enough homework.

The third item that caught my attention was the paragraph dealing with the importance of establishing good study habits. The last sentence in the paragraph is reproduced here: "And don't raid the icebox or use the telephone until you have mastered your assignments."

Don't raid the icebox. I haven't heard the Kelvinator referred to as an icebox in awhile.

Mr. Ripp's article in the Wall Street Journal was a trip down memory lane. We appear to be about the same age, and if not that, at least of the same generation. His wife responded to his comment about a trip to the "beauty parlor" with the quip: "What are you, 95?" I guess the term "beauty parlor" is now passé. I found myself in agreement with him on the use of the words "cool" and "awesome". I would go so far as to outlaw the overused word "awesome" and substitute in its stead "groovy", a grossly under-used word these days. And who can disagree with his final paragraph?

"Speaking decently is no guarantee of being decent - there are upstanding trash-talkers just as there are scoundrels with silver tongues. But I've found it helps to deploy a kind word, a civil word and sometimes an old word to feel right with the world where the past is ever-present."

Which brings me to Wilbur Cash. The copy of his work that I am reading was given to me by my late mother-in-law. She had once lived in Shelby, NC, and Cash had once been the editor of the local Shelby newspaper. Apparently he was the biggest thing to hit that small town, and newcomers to the community were almost forced to read him. Cash was a fellow Demon Deacon, having graduated from Wake Forest College in 1922. The book was published in February of 1941, and offers what can charitably be described as a controversial view of the South. According to the back cover of the paperback, Time considered it a masterpiece: "Anything written about the South henceforth must start where he leaves off." The Nashville Agrarians, however, did not think so highly of the book. They were not alone. The historian C. Vann Woodward offered several penetrating criticisms of his work, the most damning of which (it seems to me) is that Cash simply ignored any evidence that was contrary to the point he was making.

But this is not a book review. A book written by a 1922 college graduate is sure to contain some phrases no longer current, and Cash does not disappoint on that score. The recurring phrase that caught my attention at first was the "proto-Dorian bond" (and later, the "proto-Dorian rank") which, I think, is a reference to the Doric Knights of Sparta. "Proto-Dorian" appears over and over in the work, but is never defined. And that is not the only Greek reference in the work. I had never, to my knowledge, heard of an "Eidolon". Words such as "douzepers" and "larruped" sent me to the dictionary.

Of course, there are references in the book to "modern" writers (Thomas Nelson Page) and less modern writers (William Gilmore Simms), as well as some of the classic writers (Sallust, Cicero). I had to look up references to the "days of Thorough" and "the quest for the Sangraal".

I thought that Cash had made up one word, but it turns out that "gyneolatry" is an actual word with a real definition. And, as it happens, I am guilty of it.

One final word (pardon the pun): another article appeared in the Wall Street Journal recently entitled "Joe Biden's Presidency Is Incredible - No, Really". A few sentences in the article alleviated my confusion:

"I don't mean 'incredible' in the sense the word has come to be used in the modern argot of our rapidly devaluing language. . . I should make clear that what makes Joe Biden an incredible president is that you can't believe a word he says."

Groovy n'est-ce pas?

Cauliflower Rice Is The New Purple Cabbage

One of the joys of my time of life is the simplicity of mealtime. No longer do the kiddies gather around the table. Nowadays it is just the two of us, and meals are easy.

Recently I have been going through our monthly expenditures, classifying the money we spend: food, entertainment, utilities, you know the routine. I was shocked, and somewhat embarrassed, to note the enormous sum we spend on food each month. Most of that, I am afraid, is due to the fact that we eat out a good bit. After all, when it is just the two of us, it takes very little persuasion to convince us that eating out is the sensible alternative. (If Kathy cooks, I do dishes, and vice versa, so every meal at home is work for both of us.) As for grocery shopping, Kathy tends to buy the non-gmo, all organic, farm-to-table foods: in other words, the expensive stuff. As best I can tell, the major advantage to buying organic foods is that you get to pay more for it.

But another serious contributor to our food bill is the food delivery service. Currently we are with Green Chef, our fourth meal delivery service. As with the other three services, Green Chef provides us with three meals each week. The foods are, of course, non-gmo, organic, farm-to-table. Each of the food delivery services genuflects to the trendy gods.

Our first service, and in many ways our best, was Blue Apron. I learned a good bit about cooking from the excellent recipes and hints that accompanied those meals. Blue Apron provided absolutely everything you needed to cook each meal, except for three items: salt, pepper, and olive oil. If the recipe called for a pinch of Latvian ossenfay and 1.34 grams of Bulgarian shafafa, you simply had to look in the box to find a sealed plastic bag containing a pinch of Latvian ossenfay and 1.34 grams of Bulgarian shafafa.

The Blue Apron meals were delicious, even the ones that had chicken as the meat. (I have eaten so much yard bird in my lifetime that I now avoid it whenever possible.) But there were downsides to Blue Apron. The recipes involved a good bit of preparation. There were no shortcuts. It would take 45 minutes to do two hamburgers and fries. You would wash the potatoes peel the potatoes, slice the potatoes, season the potatoes, and bake the potatoes, followed by chopping the onion, chopping the garlic, slicing the tomato, adding in the seasoning blend, forming the patties, and grilling the burgers. Of course one cannot forget the buttering and toasting of the buns. Yes, the burgers and fries were delicious, but hardly worth 45 minutes in the kitchen. And the meals were selected with taste, not calories, in mind. A delicious Blue Apron meal could screw up your calorie count for the day.

Toward the end of our association with Blue Apron, the calorie problem was partially resolved as Blue Apron began shrinking the sizes of their portions. That was just fine with Kathy, but it left me a tad hungry, after burning all those calories with the chopping and slicing.

Hello Fresh was our second service. Food preparation time with Hello Fresh was less than with Blue Apron, as the recipes were simpler. What killed Hello Fresh for me was yard bird. Initially, we were receiving one fish, one beef, and one chicken meal each week. Kathy tried to get them to substitute pork for the chicken, but invariably we would still receive chicken each week. After the third or fourth conversation with them about the chicken, we decided to move on.

The third service was nice, and each meal was very convenient, but the variety just was not there. After a few weeks we found ourselves repeating meals, something that had never happened with the first two services in the years we were with them. I will not name the service because they did provide good food, and I do not want to bad-mouth them.

Our current service, Green Chef, seems to be perfect: simpler recipes than with Blue Apron, sufficient portions for a large man like me, fewer calories, and a good variety. Unfortunately, yard bird still shows up from time to time, but I am learning to live with it. There is one thing I have noticed, and I noticed this with both Blue Apron and Hello Fresh: they tend to get into ruts with some of the vegetables. By the time we left Blue Apron, we were having purple cabbage with every meal. The fad of the moment with Green Chef is cauliflower rice, which is not even rice.

Rice contains starch, which is a good thing if you are not on a low carbohydrate diet. Cauliflower does not contain starch, which is a bad thing if you are not on a low carbohydrate diet. Granted that one hour after eating rice I start to get hungry again, but with cauliflower rice, that interval reduces to about twenty minutes. That is just not a good thing, to be hungry so soon after a meal.

The country seems to be fixated these days on the vaccine for the Wuhan Flu. Have you had your shots? It seems to me that the government is wasting a fantastic opportunity to increase the vaccination rate. All they have to do is find the salesman who convinced Green Chef to include cauliflower rice with every bloody meal. Find this guy, put him in charge of marketing flu shots to America, and soon we will have a 100% vaccination rate.

And then, with Green Chef no longer under the influence of this mad marketing genius, I will be able to get some real rice with a meal!

The Difficulty In Saying “Goodbye”

My father died twenty years ago. Two years after his death, my mother remarried, sold the family homestead, and moved in with her new husband. When she sold the house, she managed to sell or give away most of its contents. She sold most of his woodworking equipment. One of my daughters wanted the North Carolina twenty cent postage stamp mug. Another needed a bed. I ended up with a Philco radio/record player that my father gave my mother in 1949 on the occasion of their first wedding anniversary, electronic test equipment, and books. Tons of books.

When her second husband died, my mother moved in with my sister, Debbie. The possessions that my mother still owned were put in a storage unit for a brief period of time, and Debbie rapidly either moved them into her house, or got rid of them. So when my mother died three years ago, there was no need for an estate sale.

Kathy’s father died fourteen years ago, but her mother never remarried. When her mother died, six years ago, we were faced with the prospect of cleaning out the house in which her mother had lived for more than forty years. Given that Kathy was an only child, we had no other family members to whom we could distribute her possessions. We ended up renting a storage unit. Over the course of the years we moved various pieces of furniture from the storage unit to other houses, gave items to Kathy’s children, and donated items to Goodwill, Joseph’s Coat, and other organizations. Kathy's mother was a painter, and we inherited several hundred of her paintings. We've hung them, sold them, given them to friends, and donated them, but we still have many in storage.

This month Kathy finally decided that six years with a storage unit was too long, and we cleaned it out. Our garage is now the storage unit, as you can see from the picture above. We would like, one day, to have a functioning garage again, so we will now have to go through the process of keeping, donating, or tossing most of the items in the garage. This, of course, is the difficult part. And while Kathy will have to make many difficult decisions in the near future, her situation has forced me to reconsider my possessions, and the grip they have on me.

I've spent a lifetime building a library that is my pride and joy, and yet, knowing that I will not live forever, I have asked my children to take any of my books they want. I have received very few takers. My children are wise. Most of my father's books are electronics books, and while I have used several of them in my various jobs in the past, there are many that just sit there, never consulted, never to be consulted. Apart from those that may actually be collectors’ items (e.g., Modern Radio Servicing, by Alfred A. Ghirardi, B.S., E.E., copyright 1935), I should get rid of them.

But getting rid of them means saying “goodbye”.

I keep these items because they are a direct connection between me and my father. As long as they are here, I feel that he is here, at least in some manner, and I don't have to say a final “goodbye”. It is silly, I know. My father exists in my memory, not in any of the items he once possessed. Every time I hear myself saying “if the job is worth doing, it is worth doing right”, I have a flashback to my father. The same goes with “if you want the job done right, do it yourself”. And every time the 1937 Tommy Dorsey hit “Marie” shows up on Sirius XM channel 73, I hear my father’s improvised lyrics. “Marie, the dawn is breaking/Marie, you’ll soon be waking” in Dad’s rendition became “Marie, the dawn is breaking/Marie, my belly’s aching”. I will carry my father with me, with or without the books, with or without the electronic test equipment that will never again be used, with or without that classic Philco radio/record player/piece of furniture.

I know all this, in my head. I don't yet know it in my heart.

In order to make room for some of the items Kathy now has in the garage, some of my “stuff” will have to go. Both of us will be making hard decisions in the near future. I believe the hardest decision will be do I burden my children with the desiderata of my life? Should I force them into the position I now find myself?

Sometimes I think “let us have a proper housecleaning, let us get rid of all those items with no value, no use”. At other times I think “I am tired, and I should let my children sort this out”.

I do not know how, eventually, this will be resolved. That will be determined by the circumstances at the time I finally decide to say “goodbye”.

The Little White House

April the 16th! That was my last blog post. I really intended to be more diligent during my summer break, but, as you can see, that did not happen. I had hoped to schedule the post below for the 23rd of April, as we made the trip that is the topic of this post on April the 10th. I don't recall why I didn't make that deadline. But here we are, three months later.

He was not my favorite president: that honor is reserved for either Calvin Coolidge or Ronald Reagan, depending upon my mood. (Given the unprecedented spending binge going on in Washington, DC, Silent Cal currently has the edge.) He was, however, a transformative president. For my parents’ generation, he was THE president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt came to power in 1933, during the third year of the Great Depression, and died, in office, in the twelfth year of his presidency. Though several tried, he was the only president to break George Washington’s precedent of only two full terms as president. Thanks to the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, ratified less than six years after his death, he will remain forever the only president to have done so.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born into a wealthy family. His father, James Roosevelt I, was married to his second cousin, Rebecca Brien Howland. That union produced a son, James Roosevelt. Unfortunately, Rebecca had heart trouble, and died from a heart attack in the 23rd year of the marriage. Four years later he met and married his sixth cousin, Sara Ann Delano. Two years later, Franklin was born, during his father's 54th year. I find it interesting that Franklin continued this tradition of marriage within the family by marrying his fifth cousin once removed, Eleanor Roosevelt.

Franklin was educated by private tutors, and at Groton and Harvard. He entered Columbia Law School, but dropped out after he passed the New York bar exam. After practicing law briefly, he entered the world of politics, following in the footsteps of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt. He was in the New York State Senate for two years, then joined the Woodrow Wilson administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, for seven years. Roosevelt's plan for his next political office showed extreme ambition: he had his sights set on becoming the Vice President of the United States.

Roosevelt left his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in August of 1920, a presidential election year. He had tried to talk Herbert Hoover into running for the presidency, with Roosevelt as his running mate, but Hoover revealed that he was a Republican, and was not inclined to run for the presidency that year. James Cox of Ohio was eventually nominated by the Democratic convention, with Roosevelt as his running mate. This ticket lost to the Warren Harding/Calvin Coolidge Republican ticket.

All that is prologue. The story of Franklin Roosevelt that is most familiar to the public began the following year, 1921, when he was stricken with polio. He was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down, but he had no intention of letting that interfere with his political career. He learned to maneuver for short distances with leg braces, usually supported to one side by an aide. Although his paralysis was not a secret, he was never photographed in a wheelchair. This is where the town of Warms Springs, Georgia, enters the story.

Believing the warm springs in the area to be beneficial, he established a polio rehabilitation center in Warm Springs in 1926. The springs did not cure his disease, but he believed that the springs helped with his symptoms. He eventually built the house that is now called the Little White House in Warm Springs in 1932, while he was still governor of the state of New York. He was inaugurated as President of the United States the following year. It was in this house, on April 12, 1945, at the age of 63, that Roosevelt suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died.

Although the house is a National Historic Landmark, the Little White House is a part of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, State Parks and Historic Sites. In order to get to the house itself, one first passes through the museum. I am not normally fond of that diversionary tactic, but the museum was well done and absolutely worth the visit. The house itself is quite modest, by today's standards, but laid out in a way that I find appealing. I could see retiring in such a house. Of course, the modest size of the house is achievable because of the two adjacent houses: one for visitors, one for servants. In order to exit the grounds, one is forced to go through the gift shop, but the gift shop, like the museum, was well done.

The town of Warm Springs is absolutely charming. We had an excellent lunch at Lightnin' Bugs Bakery and Cafe. I can see visiting this town again.

Fifty Years Too Late

Fifty years! A couple of weeks ago it hit me: sometime during the first or second week of June this year my classmates and I will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of our high school graduation. I sent a message to a friend, asking about a reunion. Postponed, she replied. Apparently we are still feeling the effects of the Wuhan Flu.

Our graduating class contained, if memory serves, 128 graduates. There are several that are no longer with us, and I am still shocked when I hear that one has passed, even though we are all senior citizens. I still find it impossible to believe that a classmate, Betty, is no longer with us. And even though I have not met many of the spouses of my classmates, I still am saddened when one passes, as did Jonnie's husband recently.

I recall the summer of 1971 fondly. That fall I would begin my academic career at Wake Forest University, with most of my expenses covered by an academic scholarship. As was the custom of the time, I had a summer job, working in the shipping department of a spinning mill. Ginned cotton came in one end of the mill, and yarn exited the other end. I worked weird hours: 9 AM until 1 PM, then 6 PM until 10 PM. They called it a split shift. I didn't like it, of course, but it was job, and I had plans for the money I earned.

The aggravating part of the job was my boss. He and I were in the first grade together. Rumor has it he was in the first grade the year before I got there, and I'm pretty sure he was in the first grade the year after I moved to the second grade. I can't remember his name, nor can I remember the name of his good-looking older sister. That summer convinced me that I should look for work that involved my head, and not my back.

Tobacco was still the primary cash crop in the state of North Carolina, and the tobacco harvest usually ended around Labor Day, so the schools did not crank up until after that last summer holiday. Because I was a freshman, I had to report for a week of orientation, so I had to be on campus the week before Labor Day. My mother and I drove to school that last week of August in a 1970 Ford Falcon. I unloaded the car, we said goodbye, and I was, for the first time in my life, on my own.

Earlier that summer I received a letter telling me that my summer reading was to be the 1940 novel The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene. Incoming freshmen were assigned an adviser, and we were told that we would discuss the novel in our advising groups. I bought the paperback version, and had every good intention of reading it. But somehow the summer passed quickly, and I found myself on campus with the paperback unread in my luggage.

My adviser was in the Speech, Communications, and Theater Arts Department (otherwise known as the Jock Department, for the number of scholarship athletes who chose this as a major), and apparently he was no fan of Graham Greene, because, as best I can recall, we never discussed the unread novel. And so it passed that I shirked my first assignment at my new college, and never paid a price.

That paperback remained, unread, on my bookshelf until just a few years ago, when I gave it to one of my children. I have been trying for many years now to downsize, so when my kids come to visit, I force books on them. This may be why they don't visit often. But it has worked. I started with 16 bookcases in our little house here, and we are now down to 15 1/2. A few more years of steady progress, and we will be down to 15.

Shortly after noting the upcoming fiftieth anniversary, my conscience began to bother me. I really should have read that book. Now the copy I bought back in 1971 was gone. Fortunately, a part of my downsizing scheme has been replacing physical books with electronic books, so a few minutes on the Barnes and Noble app resulted in my being the proud owner of a copy of The Power and the Glory, purchased nearly fifty years after that first purchase.

And I have just finished reading the book. It really is quite nice, and I wish I had read when it was assigned. I will not go into the details, because writing book reports brings back bad memories. But I do recommend it, if you are so inclined.

I feel better now. And I just remembered the name of that good-looking older sister of my 1971 summer boss! They say the mind is the second thing to go, so I am happy that my mind is relatively intact. If only I could remember what is the first thing to go . . .

Hear No Evil

My hearing has never been good. The first big hint that my hearing was not quite up to par occurred in first grade. My teacher, a Mrs. Bell, or possibly a Miss Bell, in her wisdom had me seated at the very back of a long row of desks, across from my friend Andy Cobb. One day, clearly exasperated with the behavior of the class, she announced that the very next person who spoke would get a paddling. I did not understand her, so I leaned across the aisle and whispered “Andy, what did she say?” “GEORGE BATTEN!” came the roar from the beast that was Mrs. or Miss Bell. I spent the next several minutes unsuccessfully arguing that I should not be paddled because of my hearing. Subsequently I was whacked several times on the palm of my hand with a wooden ruler. From that moment on I had no respect for that woman. She did teach me one valuable life lesson: life is not fair.

I am quite sure that my hearing loss took a serious turn for the worse during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I had a massive, allegedly portable, vacuum-tube-filled stereo system that my father “fixed up” for me. (I have that system to this day, though I haven’t used it in many years.) In his wisdom, he added a headphone jack to the machine, which I used with a huge pair of over-the-ear headphones. I was absolutely mesmerized with the quality of the sound, and was able to hear things I could not hear through the speakers. And, of course, if I could hear the music clearly for the first time with headphones, I should be able to hear even more clearly at high volume. I remember playing Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft” over and over and over again, at a volume so high that I am surprised my ears did not bleed. This would have been around my senior year in high school or my freshman year in college. I still have that 45 RPM, though the grooves are severely worn. My hearing grew worse.

After finally finishing with school, I took a job in the paper industry. For the next 22 years I worked in high noise environments, and it is at this time that I became serious about protecting my hearing. The hearing test was an annual obligation, and the frightening decline in my hearing was there on paper to see, year after year. I used hearing protection at work, of course, but I even began using it at home, while mowing the lawn. The decline was inexorable.

After leaving the paper industry, I dispensed with the annual hearing test, because I assumed that my hearing loss should level off after I quit subjecting myself to high noise environments. I continued to use hearing protection around the house, and at the gun range. But something happened recently that tells me the hearing loss never took a vacation.

For the past nine months or so I have been suffering from tinnitus. At first it was simply annoying, but eventually it bothered me so much that I made an appointment to have my GP check it out. I was hoping for a simple cause: impacted ear wax. Unfortunately, my ear canals were clean as a whistle. So it came to pass that I made an appointment with the Ear, Nose, and Throat man.

He proceeded to inform me that tinnitus is a frontal lobe problem. According to the National Institutes of Health website, researchers “propose that the limbic system—a linked network of brain structures involved in emotion, behavior, and long-term memory—acts as a gatekeeper to keep the tinnitus signal from reaching the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that mediates our conscious perception of sounds. In people with tinnitus, they suggest, the gate has broken.”

After hearing that this is a frontal lobe problem, Kathy suggested a pre-frontal lobotomy. The doctor, fortunately, ignored her, and opted instead for an MRI of my brain. To Kathy's surprise, they found that I have one. The radiologist has by now reviewed the scan and I suspect my ENT has his report. I will hear the details in a couple of weeks.

By the way, if the technician offers you a copy of your brain scan, don’t take it. I popped the disc of MRI images into my computer, and immediately was beset with worry. Are those amyloid plaques? Does that blood vessel look right, or is it about to blow? Just don’t do it.

This week I had my first hearing test in 21 years. The results were absolutely shocking. A young human with good hearing should be able to hear up to 20,000 Hertz (Hz). That sensitivity to high frequencies does not last for too many years, as the nerves in the ear begin to die off. The higher frequencies are the first to go. Twenty-one years ago I could hear up to a frequency of about 11,000 Hz. This week I learned that my hearing cut-off was somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 Hz.

Things could be worse. The highest note on the piano is just a tad bit over 4,000 Hz, and I can hear that, so for the most part I can still enjoy music. The human voice is pitched much lower, so I can hear most conversations, though I really do need you to add a few decibels when speaking. But the path forward, tinnitus or no tinnitus, is clear: my hearing is in what appears to be an unstoppable decline.

As Kathy pointed out, there is a bright side to all this. To paraphrase a quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “A little hearing loss is good for a marriage.”