Wednesday, December 30, 2009

New Airport Regulations

After the Christmas day attempt by a terrorist to blow up an airplane coming into Detroit with a chemical bomb, TSA has announced that potential new rules will be coming out governing passenger activity.

Now, in addition to the nuisance of having to take off our shoes and be as devoid of metal as an applicant undergoing initiation to a fraternal lodge, they’re threatening to disallow all carry-on luggage.

They’re also threatening to make passengers stay in their seat the final hour of the flight with no blanket, no pillow, and nothing on their laps.

Think about that. An hour. Sitting there. No book, no laptop, no iPod, just staring straight ahead.

Most adults can tolerate that. We tend to be sleep-deprived enough that I suspect many will simply nod off.

Let’s not talk about what’s going to happen with the 6 year old who’s got nothing to do other than annoy his little sister for that last hour. Is this the happy start of a vacation or a trip to grandmas, much less the way to let a businessperson get in their happy place before making a major presentation?

The restriction that keeps you strapped into your seat for the last hour of a flight is of special concern, I suspect, to pregnant women and men over 40 who have bladders the size of a porcelain teacup. An hour – especially immobile and sitting after you’ve drank every single drop of that $7.25 soda you bought in the airport – is a long, long time to go without going.

It’s inappropriate to make a grown adult choose between peeing himself and being tackled by an undercover air marshal, and that’s about the choice that we’ll have to make.

My conspiracy theorist says this is another way to squeeze revenue out of the passenger.

Think about it. If you’re flying somewhere to a business meeting, wearing your suit and carrying no luggage besides your briefcase (containing the laptop you can't take out and use), the airline is only making the price of a ticket off of you.

Now, lest you suffer the indignity of smelling like a urinal at Yankee Stadium on game day, you will have to pack a bag with your suit while packing your "airplane clothes" in a plastic bag to take home and cleaned, like they used to do with cloth diapers.  I suspect most of those clothes would simply be dropped into the trash can in the men's room.

What does the airline get out of this?  $25.00 revenue for the checked bag you didn't have to tote along before.  After all, that extra suit and clean undies are going to have to go somewhere.

The airline revenue will be partially offset by the cost of cleaning the upholstery, although I suspect that they’ll be pretty lax about that.

Pregnant women will likely get a buy if they have an accident. After all, they are excused some loss of control of bodily functions in their gentle condition. Middle aged men just get dirty looks.

The other thing that I predict is an increase in general nastiness from passengers.

Americans as a rule are notoriously bad at waiting. People have changed grocery stores because there have been more than 3 people in line ahead of them. Sitting with nothing to do, especially if you’re cold because the blankie has been taken away, is not going to promote good humor among the passengers.

So we wait and see. At the Charlotte airport on Tuesday afternoon there was no apparent appreciable change in screening procedures. My bag, carrying enough electrical cords and chargers to rewire and power the Space Shuttle went through without a hitch.

Even those little chemical handwarmer things that were in our Christmas stockings made it through without question.  You know what I'm talking about - the ones with the gel inside that gets hot for 12 hours because of the chemical reaction that happens when you snap the little ampule inside of them.

Wow. I feel safer already.

Monday, December 28, 2009

In Praise of Plungers

Thursday night is one of the biggest party nights of the year – New Year’s Eve. People everywhere will be inviting lots of friends and more than a few total strangers into their homes to celebrate with them. There’ll be lots of food and drink, music and everything else that goes with having a crowd of folks over.

From a practical standpoint, that also means that more than a few plumbing systems will have a stress added to them that’s not normally encountered. After all, you take 20 people, put them in a 2 bedroom apartment with one bathroom, and there’s going to be a lot of in-and-out in that part of the house.

Which leads to the eternal question – why do people hide the plunger?

It’s not like we don’t all have at least one in our home. They’re useful – even essential items – that stand as silent sentries until they’re crucial, at which time they leap into action.

You can't have an event that requires a plunger and think, “Oh, I need to get one of those next time I go to the hardware store.” If you need it, you pretty well need it NOW, or there’s the potential for some dire consequences.

The funny thing that goes with this is human nature. Some people who are in the bathroom when the toilet gets clogged go through different variations of the same ritual. It’s a lot like the five stages of grief.

First, there’s Denial. As the water begins to approach the rim of the toilet, the thought, “Nah, it can’t overflow.  You can’t do this. I won’t let you. I refuse to believe this is happening to me.” 

As the water creeps closer to the top, there's Anger.  "Why don't these people manage their plumbing system correctly?  It's terribly rude to let it get clogged with all these guests.  I could get water all over my fancy goin' out clothes, not to mention these Hush Puppies aren't water-tight!"

Anger usually flashes through quickly, though, and is replaced by Bargaining.  A toilet bowl fills at a remarkable pace when it looks like it'll overflow.

“Please don't overflow.  Not with me in here.  Let me get out and you can do whatever you want, as long as one other person comes in and leaves before you flood.  Just go back down and I'll leave.  I promise not to come back in here again tonight. Just let someone else come in before you flow over.”

This phase, of course, is worse for women because their clothes are frequently not designed either for running away or kneeling down to deal with the problem. Guys admittedly have it easier since, if they are quick thinking, they can reach down and turn off the water valve.

Depression is the fourth stage.  "Oh, no.  This is not the impression I wanted to make.  Everyone will think I caused this, and it was SO not my fault.  I'll die if this flows out the door and everyone is watching."

Finally is Acceptance. In some cases, this is accompanied by shouts for help, maybe on the theory that it will spread the blame to some extent.  People might think that the person yelling simply happened upon the situation and is a hero for catching it before the tsunami makes it to the bar.

Unlike a terminal illness, these phases can happen instantaneously, depending on the degree of blockage and the water flow coming in. During acceptance, there is recognition that the toilet is going to flow over, and whomever is occupying the toilet at that moment is going to be the center of some very unwanted attention.  It's going to happen no matter what.

She may have spent hours at the hairdresser and ages putting on her makeup so that it coordinates perfectly with the outfit. Nonetheless, a woman in this position will be remembered as, “the girl who made the toilet overflow.”

Not exactly the tag one would want to carry away from an otherwise nice evening.

Unlike many other conditions, though, remission can occur. If the plunger is available and can be used, it’s sometimes possible to stop the disaster and no one be the wiser (although in my opinion a polite guest does whisper in the host / hostess’ ear that there’s a problem, like they would if toilet paper were running low).

So let's all take a moment before our guests arrive, and make sure that the plunger is there in sight, ready for action.

You don't want this to happen at your party.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xM5uladu6c
(Turn DOWN your volume, these ladies scream a lot)

Lena Belle's last Hurrah

It’s been a busy week. Aside from the usual Christmas hype and activities, we got a call early on Monday morning that the last grandparent remaining to either of us had passed away.

At 93, it’s hard to say it was unexpected, but given that she’d been up and mobile in her wheelchair, interacting with lots of people earlier that day it was a bit of a surprise. She was fine when the nursing home checked on her at 11, and she was gone when they made rounds at midnight.

I only knew Lena Belle Henson for about 10 years. During that time, though, she became something of a surrogate for my own grandmothers. Even when her dementia was progressing and she had no short term memory, she always seemed glad to see me when I walked in the door.

Her funeral was on December 23, which makes it a little hard to stay in the holiday spirit. It hit me when I was bundling the packages up to go to that side of the family on Christmas day. The candy we’d bought for her was under the tree waiting to go to her.  This was also the first time that I hadn't bought my own Grandma her favorite candy for Christmas.

Funny how the most insignificant things can choke you up.

It was my first North Carolina funeral as well. I’d been to a few others, mostly professional obligations where an appearance was all that was required. Attendance at this one started for me with lunch (she called it "dinner") at Belle’s house.

Amazingly enough, the living room was open. I’d only been in there once before in all the time I’d known her, and that was to bring something out. Several of her great-grandkids commented that they’d never been in there, either, so I didn’t feel excluded at all.

At first appearance, it was much like any other living room of a little old lady. She didn’t “live” there, it was reserved for formal occasions. The one most people thought of next prior was her husband, Lemuel’s funeral in the early 1980’s.

There’s a lot of wear left in that carpet.

The room was full of her treasures, though. Aside from the myriad of family pictures, there were dozens of knick-nacks, salt and pepper shakers, and assorted stuff that we tend to collect.

At first, it didn’t look to have any significant value, but then, as different people were cycling through the living room eating the "dinner" that the church ladies provided, someone would pick up something and relate the story about it – an ash tray from a child’s first visit to Washington, DC, brought back to grandma. A music box that was Belle’s own mothers, that a child listened to when lying down for a nap.

Some of the things were truly hideous, the obvious choice of small children with limited resources looking for just the “right” thing for mom or grandma. They were received as treasures fit for a queen, though, and proudly displayed as such.

If you looked at the collection, though, it was obvious that Belle was loved. The choices had a story, and I’m sure that she could have told us about each one of them. Unfortunately, many of those stories are lost, or they will be after this generation.

Lena Belle has now gone to a place where none of us has ever gone, and no first-hand reports exist of what’s waiting. But if being a loved mother, grandmother and surrogate grandmother is any indication, she’s in a good place.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

An Early Christmas

Yesterday was an exhausting day all the way around. It actually started on Friday, with the threat of winter weather that sent everyone into a tizzie. The 6 inches of snow we ended up with didn’t match the 12 to 18 they were threatening, but it was definitely enough to catch the attention of these southern folks. It was the last day of school for the winter holiday for most kids, and it ended earlier than expected on most accounts in western North Carolina.

We had events planned, though, that were not mindful of the weather and could not be postponed. When our friend went back to Colombia in early November, we decided this was the perfect time to update and clean the apartment. It hadn’t been painted in almost 10 years through a variety of tenants and needed a bit of sprucing up. Some of the furniture simply didn’t work very well, there was too much of it, and it just needed to be freshened up.

We started by emptying out the apartment one Saturday a few weeks ago, arranging to get the floors sanded and refinished (they were overlooked during the first renovation), lining up painters and eventually getting a roofer to tackle the leak that’s been plaguing us for months.

We were supposed to have until January 6 to get all this done, but our friend’s visit back to Colombia didn’t go exactly as planned and he had us change his ticket to bring him home early – on December 19, to be exact.

Two weeks is a long time in remodeling talk. Especially if the deadline moves backwards by that amount. We were going along pretty well, except the painters couldn’t get back down the mountain on Friday in time to finish. No fault of theirs, the normally 45 minute trip from Blowing Rock took them over 6 hours. A person can only do what they can do.

Saturday was also complicated by the fact that our youngest son was scheduled to have his knee operated on at 6:30 on Saturday morning. He blew it out during the second Junior High JV football game this season.

So we were loaded up in the snow at 5 in the morning, travelling to the kid’s house to pick him up along with his mom and grandmother, and then head off to the hospital.

The short version of that story is that things went great. Damage wasn’t as bad as originally anticipated, so he’ll have a 4 week recovery instead of a 7 month one. Football appears to be on for next season, although it’ll be wearing a brace to prevent similar twisting in the futurre.

While he was in surgery, the painters called and said they couldn’t get out of their neighborhood, but if I’d bring the 4 wheel drive jeep (kept for just such an occasion), they’d come and work toward finishing up. Since I was expendable, I ventured out on the roads.

Which, incidentally, weren’t nearly as bad as they could have been since it always had hovered right at freezing and there wasn’t a lot of ice prior to the snow. By midday, most of the roads were cleared.

We were out of the hospital with one very happy young man (at that time mostly due to the anesthesia, since he wouldn’t remember most of what he’d been told) and fielding telephone calls as our friend journeyed back from Colombia.

From our perspective, things went without a hitch. Customs wasn’t a problem, his paperwork was blissfully correct and his flight was one of the few that wasn’t delayed or cancelled. He landed within 10 minutes of the scheduled time and by 7:30 we’d collected him at the Charlotte airport and were on our way home, hearing about his adventures in Colombia.

All families are dysfunctional. Some just do it with an accent. We’re all alike, though.

I might not have been quite so excited about arriving home to find that my house had been emptied, all my stuff moved around and some of my furniture replaced. He is, however, a very forgiving fellow and was thrilled with the upgrades, even though it meant he was in our guest room for the night and his house was in disarray. His exhaustion (since he’d been up since before 4 in the morning) turned to excitement as he started deciding how best to add to the renovations.

Overall, it was a great day. The snow is mostly gone and no more is forecast until Christmas Eve.

It was one of the best early Christmas presents we could have received.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Winter Weather

For the first time since I’ve lived in North Carolina, a major snowfall seems likely to happen in our area. It’s been plastered all over the media for two days now, and we started to see moisture come from the sky early this morning.

Everyone who lives here seems to think this is a sign of impending doom, significant snow being such an unusual event. Hickory is in the “foothills” of the mountains, which is to say that the horizon is much, much too close for someone who grew up on the plains, but we still have to travel to actually be “. . . in the mountains,” with ski slopes and things like that.

This means that winter usually lurks in the background, like the hint of carrot in a carrot cake, enticing but not overwhelming.

Enticing, assuming you’re a fan of winter.  If you're not it just sucks.

Human behavior about the weather is therefore somewhat puzzling. At the first hint that there might – maybe-- possibly – be snow somewhere within a 100 mile range, everyone immediately runs to the grocery store to buy bread and milk.

It would seem to me that the more important thing is that the power stay on. Central heat, lights and the internet all seem to require this magical elixir of current for us to stay comfortable.  Peanut Butter sandwiches and cereal I can do without.

After all, electric blankets are kind of pointless in a power outage.

And of course, without power for refrigerators all the milk that people rushed out to buy will spoil.

We seldom got big snows in Oklahoma City when I was growing up. More frequently there was bad weather at the farm near Woodward, but that was just a bit of an inconvenience for my grandparents, not a major problem. With little to slow the wind from the North Pole other than a barbed wire fence, snow drifts could be a problem with even a few inches of precipitation.

One year they had a major snowstorm. Phones were always spotty, so of course they went down at the first sign of an icicle. Power was more reliable, but even it was off and on. With houses so far apart, electricity could easily be on in one location but not at another.

My grandparents were fortunate to be surrounded by caring neighbors as well. Grandpa was a paraplegic, having contracted polio in the late 1940’s and was confined to a wheelchair thereafter. Grandma was a tiny little woman who took care of him and did the physical operation of the farm. They lived a mile and a quarter off of the “blacktop”, an unlined 2-lane road that went from one rural community to the other.

The day after this big snowstorm, they heard a four-wheel drive vehicle laboriously making it’s way down the dirt road from the black top. It sounded as though it was in and out of the ditch several times, and finally pulled up to the door over an hour and a half later.

Out popped two members of their church, gentlemen who were worried about them and decided to bring them food and to make sure they didn’t need anything. To say this stunned Grandma and Grandpa is an understatement.

The guys came into the house to find a pot of vegetable soup simmering on the woodburning stove. This was frequently how she warmed her soup that had been made and home canned summers before, so the fact that the electricity had gone out wasn’t especially troubling to Grandma.

The soup was for supper, but things were far enough along on the propane powered stove towards dinner (the mid-day meal) that they invited them to stay.

Typically, this would have been something along the lines of steak in mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes, a vegetable or two, hot homemade rolls and either cake or pie for desert. Grandma was used to cooking as if there were numerous hungry farmhands expecting to be fed.  Extra people appearing at mealtime seldom had to worry about leaving hungry.

Grandpa, for his part, was dumbfounded that anyone would even think they needed help. The only inconvenience he’d noticed was that he couldn’t read the daily newspaper, since it was brought by the postman and there was no mail delivery due to the weather. He was reading magazines by the light of the kerosene lantern that had been brought in and returned to service.

Their condition was secure in part because they had two cellars – one, a traditional cellar with steps to go underground, that had a wall easily ten feet in each direction that was lined with shelves, crammed full of home-canned fruit and vegetables from their garden. Potatoes, onions and other root vegetables were in boxes and overflowing onto the floor as well.

The other cellar, built into a dirt bank next to the house, was dubbed the “pillbox” and was more convenient because his wheelchair rolled right into it whenever there was inclement weather. It was a lot more like an extra bedroom than a cellar. This always had a huge freezer that held whatever couldn’t be home canned, along with whatever beef, pork or chicken Grandma had stockpiled.

For two elderly people who ate little, they could easily have lasted months without leaving their house. To think that they needed food brought to them was kind of silly.

The guys from the church probably realized this pretty quickly, especially when they returned up the dirt road with big mason jars of the hot soup for their own suppers later that evening.

It’s very different than the panic which ensues at the first sign of a snowflake in the Carolinas, a condition which is observed with some confusion by all those who have migrated from locations north.

And as much as I hate to buy into it, I have to go to the grocery store before the weather hits and we get snowed in.

Not for bread and milk, which we could live without for 24 hours. But for Coffee, without which we cannot.

Besides, the shelves were long ago emptied of bread and milk.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Of Meat and Men

Last week the New York Times Magazine reported on a study of several hundred British dairies published in the journal Anthrozoos that discovered that cows that have names give, on average, about 6% more milk than those that aren’t named.

Undoubtedly, this was a government study as anyone who grew up on a farm could have told you that without needing either a PhD or a grant. On my grandparents farm, our animals were all named. Naming the various creatures was, in fact, was a big deal when we were growing up.

For several years, the bull was named “Charlie”, not because he happened to be a white Charlet, but rather because that was the name of the man from whom my grandparents bought him. Charlie had a wandering eye and refused to stay in our pasture, jumping the fence to visit the trollops one pasture over whenever the opportunity presented itself. In an effort to improve the bloodlines, he was eventually replaced with a red-white faced Hereford mix named “Andy”.

It came from his habit of following the pickup through the pasture and the line from the old gospel song, “And he walks with me, and he talks with me….”

Most animals on family farms got some type of name, or at least a nickname by which they could be identified.

In college, I had different roommates who had families that raised pigs. In one, the current tenant of the feed lot was named either “Bacon” or “Pork Chop” alternately. The other picked the cartoon stand-by of “Porky” and “Petunia” for theirs.

Another family always named their beef steer “Hamburger”.  A steer, incidentally, is a male that sings soprano.

See, when you grow up around animals, you have a pretty clear understanding that while you like and respect the beast, he or she is eventually going to end up in the freezer. There was never any doubt that the ultimate purpose of these animals was to feed the humans that cared for them.

One year, when money was especially tight and cattle prices were very high, my grandparents went to the sale barn not sure how they were going to buy a calf to raise for next year’s meat. Eventually, a very small, undersized little animal was shoved into the ring, and it was immediately obvious that he was blind as he stumbled and ran into the walls, bleating pitifully.

No bids were forthcoming. The auctioneer finally quit trolling for offers and said, “Will anyone pay anything for this calf?”

Grandma’s best “church-singin’” voice sounded out across the stands, ”I’ll give a dollar!” and was immediately followed by the auctioneer’s hammer. Spooky, as he was dubbed, rode home with them that afternoon.

Most of the animals went on to obscurity. Although they were named, and were cared for and respected, they were not intimates with whom you forged strong personal relationships, especially given their career paths. Once in a while, though, one stood out in the family’s lore.

Woody was a black and white Holstein that we raised when my youngest brother was about four. My brother happened to be at the farm when Woody was transported to the meat locker, an exciting event for everyone because a metal cage was attached to the back of their pickup and the steer was then driven up an elevated chute and loaded into the back of the pickup, grand marshal in his own private, if somewhat final, parade.

A month or so later, you went back to the meatlocker and nice white paper packages of hamburger, steak and roasts were carried home and stocked into the freezer.

Not long after that was a holiday, maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas. The entire family had gathered, tables were pushed together and some 30-odd folks bowed their heads as Grandpa asked the blessing on the meal, the centerpiece of which was a huge roast, courtesy of that same Holstein.

Grandpa was always thorough in the task of blessing the food, and there was the opportunity for your mind to wander off if you weren’t careful. This also meant that the end of the prayer could have occurred without your realizing it, leaving that moment of silence immediately afterwards before the food started being passed around.

One person was paying attention, though. As Grandpa’s “Amen” sounded, my brother’s tiny little voice piped across the table, “Poor old Woody, all chopped up. Let’s eat!”

The fact that the cows are named isn’t why they give more milk. It’s the fact that they’re respected and cared for, if not loved. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to escape their fate, but simply that they’re going to have as good a life as possible before that end.

Of course, it’s simply not possible to name 2,200 cattle in a commercial operation. But you have to wonder if the meat and milk might not be better if you could.

Monday, December 14, 2009

News of my absence

I haven’t posted much on here in a couple of days. Part of that is good (maybe all of it is good, I’m not sure yet). I haven’t had a cold that’s kicked me in the butt like this for several years. I’ve gone beyond the mere inconvenience to the wracking cough and congestion that won’t give up.

I keep worrying that I’m going to hack up a lung, and I hope that Theraflu isn’t addictive.

It, and the assortment of other remedies I’ve tried since the Wild Turkey incident the other night, have impacted my ability to think very clearly.

Fortunately, I have a live-in editor who has the password to my blog and can say, “No. You sound like one of the crazy people from the internet. We won’t be posting that.”

This has cut my productivity a lot.  Believe it or not, coherent thought is sometimes necessary to do a blog.

I’m not yet recovered, a point that was driven home last night. I’d tried to return to my normal bed and abandon the couch. The pillow placed firmly over my face to stop the coughing indicated that I hadn’t yet reached the point to reintegrate with society – or the other people who live here.

Hopefully I’m on the mend, though.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Corporate Holiday Cards

It’s the time of the year when the mailbox brings holiday greetings. Yesterday there were half a dozen or so, which I managed to rescue from the rain that before they looked like Tammy Faye after a three day tent revival.

It was somewhat disappointing to find out that four of them aren’t from friends or relatives – people with whom I’d actually like to connect or reconnect – but are instead merely business contacts that are camouflaged as holiday wishes when, in reality, their purpose is to curry favor of a customer or donor.

Do these holiday greetings make anyone think, “Wow. That was a great card. I need to go buy more stuff from them!”

Somehow I doubt it.

At our house, most of them go directly into the recycle bin unless they’re really incredible looking. Since a high end corporate card can run upwards of $5.00 each, you don’t see many of those any more. I can’t say that I blame companies for that budget cut, either. But you have to admit it’s a bit pathetic to see a big display of holiday cards set up on someone’s piano and then when you start looking through them you realize that they’re from the gas company.

Does anyone think there’s any sincerity in holiday wishes from the cable company? They sure weren’t showing that jolly spirit when I had to make an appointment for repairs two weeks out and then wait for them to show up sometime between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., with an adult over 18 home that entire time to receive their representative. Do they think that sending out a card will make up for how they treat people the rest of the year?

After all they are monopolies and I don’t have a choice about doing business with them. It just ticks me off that they’re wasting money on cards and postage when they just asked for a rate hike.

Some cards are actually annoying. I have an “account representative” at the bank that tells me how much money my retirement account is losing in a monthly statement. He not only sends cards during the holidays, but a couple of times a year (usually after a vacation) I get these seemingly random cards, always with pictures of his kids on them. It always takes me a few minutes to realize that these aren’t some long-lost cousin’s children, but are in fact kids I’ve never met before playing at the beach or showing off some fish they’ve caught on a camping trip.

The cards don’t make me want to invest more money with him. They do make me wonder they have to charge me an annual service fee of $15.00 and then spend $5.00 of that sending me a Christmas Card. If I get three cards a year, is that where my service fee is going? Am I funding my own greeting?

Charitable organizations aren’t much better. Some seem to think that you’ll feel obligated to send them money if they send you return address labels, a bookmark or some other little whiz-bang gizmo that you can’t live without. Anyone who’s ever sat on the board of a not-for-profit tends to look at them and go, “Why are you wasting money that way? That trick hasn’t worked since the 50’s.”

Besides, I’ve got more address labels than I can use in 10 lifetimes, even counting the ones that went through the shredder because they have advertising on them for organizations that I would not support. It’s amazing the mailing lists you can get on without even trying.

Another nonprofit I know of sends out cards that are individually signed by the Executive Director. They send out about 15,000 cards a year, and she takes almost a week to sign each and every one and then addresses them by hand.

There’s no note, nothing personal about them. It’s just a corporate card that happens to be hand signed under the organization’s printed name. She thinks it makes them “special and meaningful.” I think it’s a tremendous waste of time for an employee who’s pulling down six figures annually, especially when this same person then has the audacity to call directly several times a year to mention how busy they are and talk about how she doesn’t know where she’ll find the time to get it all done, usually while requesting donations.

The urge to point out that if she’d been a better steward with what she’d already been given in terms of both time and money, she might not need to be back at the trough lookin’ to feed again is pretty strong.

That doesn’t happen, of course. Most of us hold our tongues, though, having been brought up right.

We get the cards, keep the pretty ones on the piano, put the others in the recycle bin and, at least for a moment, our thoughts are directed toward that group either for good or ill. At the same time, we get to enjoy the ritual of opening those from family and friends with whom we haven’t had contact since last year, maybe to be told of a new grandchild or career, and to share the joys (and sorrows) in their lives.

It’s all part of the holiday season.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

VooDoo Medicine

Everyone has their limit.

I understand and fully appreciate that. We’ve all melted down over something that might be relatively insignificant, but when heaped upon other events, it is simply too much for human nature to ignore.

Thus, I found myself about 3:00 this morning (still sleeping on the couch) facing a man in his underwear holding a glass that had fully two ounces of Wild Turkey and a splash of honey in it, insisting, “Drink this”.
"What is it"
"DRINK IT!!"

Apparently my racking cough, which had gotten progressively worse through the evening and into the night, was disturbing even on in different room and on another floor.

It’s not like this is a new remedy. In our family lore, I was told of a maternal great-great-grandmother, Granny Bransol, who drank whiskey from a spoon on a more or less continuous basis and referred to it as,”. . . nasty old cough medicine.”

I suspect this camouflage was to protect her position in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which was one of the major social outlets for women in western Oklahoma at the time. Their advocacy of prohibition was somewhat inconsistent with a hip flask in the purse of the President of a local chapter.

We’re not opposed to alternative medicine in this family. Any sniffle or ailment results in a call to the kid’s mom to “voodoo us up,” she being the resident expert on homeopathic remedies. If told to sacrifice a chicken by the light of a full moon to cure some malady, I’d at least give it a shot.

After all, there’s no co-pay or insurance forms to fill out.

I suspect that last night's cure was further prompted after a new book had arrived at the house – Best Choices from The People’s Pharmacy by Joe and Teresa Graedon. They have a very popular radio show on NPR that offers all types of alternative remedies. This handy-dandy book simply makes it easier to find them than going to the web site at 3:00 in the morning.

This is also why, after I was trying to catch my breath from downing the whiskey, I was forced to surrender my feet to be slathered with Vicks Vap-o-Rub and encased in cotton socks.

I don’t know which of the remedies worked. I do know that I was able to sleep until that same man came downstairs, this time fully dressed.

I’m just glad the cure didn’t call for a belt cinched tightly around the neck until the coughing stops.

Who Gets the Bed?

Now that the cold and flu season is upon us in North America, and we’ve had the big H1N1 scare about how bad this is going to be if we don’t get our shots, there’s still one important unanswered question.

If one person in a couple gets sick, who has to leave the bedroom? The sick guy, or the healthy guy?

There’s an argument to be made for each side. The sick person needs a bit of pampering. They should be able to wallow in their own bed with their regular blankets and pillows, not to mention the ambient noise and conditions that are normal to them. This, presumably, would promote more rest and help them get healthy faster, not to mention the fact that the best television is probably in that bedroom, maybe even with an extra cable box, so there’s more to occupy their time while convalescing.

On the other hand, the sick person is probably going to stay in bed all the next day. There’s not a thing in the world to stop them from hauling themselves out of the sick room and back to their bedroom (for access to the good TV and their own bed) or down to the living room (for a change of scenery). The healthy person has to get up and go to work and needs to be rested for the next day, plus they shouldn’t be subjected to the potential for contamination from the “sickee”.

If you’re the one who’s put out of your normal bed there’s no doubt that it interrupts your sleep. The house sounds very different from another room, especially if that’s on another floor. Ordinary creaks and noises can leave you convinced that there are either burglars or ghosts, or both, that are trying to force in and take over the place.

A fever doesn’t help this perception, either.

In our house, those sensations are compounded by the fact that we have lots of lamps on timers in almost every room, so if you forget to turn one off it will suddenly come on with a “clunk”, startling you out of whatever doze you’ve managed to embrace and emitting a dim glow from the next room.

I have been sleeping on the couch in the den for the last couple of nights. Not, fortunately, because of any transgression that’s resulted in my exile, but because that slight tickle in my throat that I noticed on Saturday has grown into a full blown cold.

These things are never convenient, but normally I would have just gone to the guest room to sleep. Unfortunately, before I realized what had happened we’d had the kids in to help and had emptied three rooms of furniture in anticipation of the last bit of remodeling in the house.

Unfortunately, that means that all the stuff from those rooms is shoved into the guest room, making the bed inaccessible. The couch in the den was the next best option.

Fortunately, there’s a nice television with 500 channels available.

Monday, December 7, 2009

The Regulation of Flesh Eating Fish

In Arizona, the Goldwater Institute (a conservative watchdog agency) brought a lawsuit against the Arizona Board of Cosmetology.

It seems that the Arizona Board of Cosmetology has decided that it has the authority to regulate a practice that is gaining popularity at nail salons, where customers pay $30.00 to plunge their feet into a clean (?!?!?) tank filled with fish who nibble on the customers feet, removing dead skin.

I can see how the Goldwater Institute would take up this cause, because if there was ever free-enterprise at its peak, this has got to be it.

After all, whod’a thunk that you could get people to pay money for this?

Now, mind you, I’m not judging. But since I swim like a rock and seldom go into water where I cannot see my feet for the specific purpose of PREVENTING little fish or other critters who happen to live in the vicinity from chewing my feet off, I can’t imagine that this is a treatment that I would embrace any more than being bled by leeches.

In the central United States, there is a practice called “noodling”, where grown men – I suspect usually under the influence of alcohol if not stronger substances – jump in the river and start feeling along the banks for holes in which enormous catfish make their homes.  There don't seem to be any women noodlers, seemingly having more common sense than the male of the species.

These are the whoppers – 50 pounds up – and they “feel” for the fish in their lairs.

Mind you, if I “felt” one of these, the immediate area around where I was swimming would have to be evacuated because of man-made pollution in the water.

Braver – or drunker – men than I, however, embrace this sport and once they find the fish they reach into it’s mouth to encourage it to bite down and be dragged out of its hole.

This in water that has the consistency and opaqueness of coffee with creamer in it.

Injuries in an extreme sport like this would seem to be inevitable. Grandpa Johnson swore that his cousin had an arm bit off when he was a child while engaged in such activity.

I have no idea if this is true, since Grandpa was prone to kidding and the alleged victim, as with so many urban legends, was long dead before I came along.

Probably because he tried to keep noodlin’ when he only had one arm.

A few years back we went snorkeling while in the Carribean. I was more than content to blow up my vest and float around while sucking roughly half of the Atlantic Ocean into my lungs through the snorkel, looking at the pretty fish from a distance. It was, in my opinion, the equivalent of driving through a nice neighborhood to look at the homes. Nobody was really hurting anything.

One of the guys that was with the excursion, however, decided to “call out” a very large eel for us to see.

If polled, I suspect that no one over the age of 16 had any desire to see an eel any way other than through the glass at an aquarium. Under maritime laws excursion boats are not a democracy, though, and the will of the majority does not always prevail.

After failing to lure the beast out with bait, he decided to poke at him with a stick to encourage him to come out and visit with the tourists.

Eventually, Mr. (or Ms., I’m not sure) Eel came out with a vengeance, attempting to sink it’s teeth into the guy with a stick while everyone still in the water who was paying attention attempted to perform a miracle and walk on the water out of the immediate area.

I was on the boat enjoying a complimentary drink already. After that, I wasn’t much inclined to get back in the water, whether I could see my feet or not. This was THEIR ‘hood, and I was just cruising through from the wrong side of the tracks. What business do I have agitating the locals?

So with this background, I’m amazed that a salon owner can convince people to pay her – PAY HER – $30.00 to let them put their feet in a tank with these fish, who will eat their flesh.

Although it sounds like a “B” movie, this is a free market economy at it’s best, and it’s begin thwarted by some regulatory people who have no respect for the need of simple, honest working folk to have their flesh eaten by fish.

Oh, the reason for prohibiting the practice?

The little fish can’t be sterilized.

I can see how that’s a problem. I bet there are few veterinary schools that teach fish sterilization, at least as a core course. It looks like they could put them on little birth control pills, though, rather than having to sterilize them. Then everyone’s needs could be met.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Newspapers and Trivia

I miss newspapers the way they used to be, when metal type was set by hand, rather than the computer massaging the articles so that they came out exactly right.

It has nothing to do with the quality of writing, which is another topic all together.

I liked those little filler lines that used to go in, that gave you visual sound-bites of information in those pre-computer days.

“Madagascar primarily exports agricultural products coffee, vanilla, shellfish, sugar, and fiber.”
“Babe Ruth was born on February 6, 1895.”
"Woodrow Wilson’s first name was Thomas. His middle name was Woodrow.”

Useless facts, but for some reason they have always stuck in my brain. My nephew observed on more than one occasion that this tendency is probably the reason I can not remember where we parked the car at the mall. I’d used up all my available memory with bits of trivia.

Now, of course, you go to the internet to find out anything you want instantly. With the availability of WiFi, Blackberries and iPhones, facts about anything you want are almost always available.

Those factoids of information were like the prize in a box of CrackerJack, (first created in 1896). You never knew what it was going to be, it was of little value and intended for immediate consumption after which it could be discarded without consequence.

I wondered who found all these tidbits, and did they have a “fact-checker” following along behind them, sending memos, “No, Jim, you’re wrong there. Champagne was originally invented by a Benedictine Monk, not a Dominican. If you’re not more careful with your research, it’s going to reflect poorly on your next evaluation.”

Or, like the tour guides on those open topped buses that show you around big cities, do they simply make up stuff that sounds reasonable, figuring it’s not likely to rise to the level that anyone sends a letter of outrage to the Editor?

“I was deeply offended to see that the quality of journalism for your paper has fallen to the point that you fail to recognize that the Hoary Marmot (Marmota caligata) is a separate and distinct creature from the Yellow Bellied Marmot (Marmota flaviventris), as is obvious from the distinct black feet which are readily apparent. I chose to no longer waste my time reading such shoddy journalism. Please cancel my subscription immediately.”

As with so many other functions newspapers no longer perform, there’s no longer a need for these fillers. Computers set the type perfectly, making the story fit the space available, stretching or shrinking the print as needed.

You can find an endless supply of random facts at http://www.mentalfloss.com/amazingfactgenerator, a particularly addictive site for those who suck up and store minutiae just in case we ever get picked as a fill-in contestant on Jeopardy.

Having this endless supply of trivia available may be helpful if you’re an information junkie like me, but if you emerge from the bathroom and suddenly announce, “About one in every 30 American births results in twins,” you’re likely to get a very different reaction from the family than you would if you’d had the newspaper in there with you.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

World AIDS Day

Yesterday was the 22nd annual World AIDS day. As has been our custom for quite some time, we went to the ALFA memorial service.

For those not in the know, ALFA is the HIV / AIDS service organization serving nine counties in Western North Carolina. You can get more information about them at http://www.alfainfo.org/.

It’s almost impossible to be a gay man in your 40’s and not have been to several of these services. While there have been some similarities over the years, there are also differences.

There are fewer wheelchairs and walkers present, as individuals who have been infected with HIV / AIDS now find that it’s not a death sentence, but rather is a chronic condition that carries a significant life expectancy if one receives proper treatment.

The services are more upbeat now than in the early 1990’s, when there was still so much information about the disease and how it was spread.  The panic has subsided, to some extent.  The work remains, however.

The visible manifestations of the disease in those who are infected are much more subtle than initially. In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, there was an immediate and distinct wasting of the body as muscle mass was lost and could not be rebuilt. Now, with proper treatment, many individuals who are positive for the virus frequently show no outward symptoms.

This is, to some extent, both a blessing and a curse, since some who are infected and do not appear sick refuse to modify their behaviors, continuing to have unprotected sex or share intravenous drugs with others who make poor choices regarding their own protection.

The music with the service is much more upbeat, in our case having been provided by the Lenoir-Rhyne University Gospel Choir. Many colleges, especially those with church affiliations, were reluctant to participate in such events initially.  http://www.lr.edu/

We now see interfaith participation in the services and a broad spectrum of participants and attendees.  Last night's service was hosted by the Unifour Christian Fellowship, a church that has been a very active supporter of ALFA over the years.  http://www.ucfc.net/  They are a group that put their boots on the ground to carry out their message of support.

The messages brought, in this case by a missionary who works with AIDS patients in Africa and by a pastor who has been HIV positive for over twenty years, are not those of despair but rather testaments of victory over the disease, although all acknowledge that there is much more to do.

There are, however, similarities that have remained in the services over the years.

There is the recognition that the stigma associated with the disease causes many people to decline to be tested, or to fail to obtain appropriate treatment out of fear that their condition will be discovered.

There is a request for volunteers to get involved and help those who are afflicted and affected by HIV / AIDS. Aside from donating money or food or office supplies or whatever, or offering to act as chauffer to someone who can no longer drive to help them get to the grocery store or doctor appointments, one of the most fundamental ways a volunteer can help is to approach those with authority over school systems to allow educational materials that are based in the realities of society today be presented to young people.  Informative, fact based data is the only way to enable them to consider the consequences of their actions and hopefully make rational decisions regarding their own safety.

It continues to amaze me that entire school systems refuse to allow any educational materials other than abstinence only be presented to their students. Invariably, these are the school systems that have the highest incidents of teen pregnancy.

There is a recognition that the client base for groups such as ALFA continues to grow, despite attempts at education and availability of testing.  More and more clients do not discover that they are infected with HIV until they have some catastrophic illness and are diagnosed with full-blown AIDS.  This is the equivalent of discovering that you have cancer not when it is a small lump in a woman's breast, but after it has spread through the lymphatic system, encroaching upon the entire body.

The services always end with a candlelight vigil, where the names of those who have passed to another realm are recalled. The readings start somewhere in the 1990’s, the lists from prior to that being simply too long to read. A difference, though, is that the lists get shorter for each year as medical advances and information became available.

Those for the last few years usually contain only three or four names.

Finally, there’s a moment of silence, as we contemplate the flames in the crowd, vigil to the messages in our hearts to which we cannot give voice.  Longing for those who had their lives cut short by this disease.

Those in attendance recall the names of those who were not mentioned.

For me, those names include Jerry and Rick. Steve. Skip and Joe. All who fought the good fight, but finally relinquished their hold on this earth to journey on to the next reality.

We remember them especially on World AIDS day, and hope that the list of names continues to get shorter each year.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Roses and Orange Blossoms

Something happened this afternoon that hadn’t happened to me in a long, long time.

I found myself in close with a woman to whom I was not related and noticing her perfume.

It was not an especially enjoyable experience for me for a number of reasons.

We were at the gym. I was 20 minutes into my aerobics and was more interested in staying upright than noticing anything else. It took all of my extra brain cells to pry the cap off my water bottle and not spill down the front of my shirt like a 2 year old graduated from his tippy cup.

I first noticed this particular young woman when the fan in the gym caused a breeze to blow from her direction to mine. The odor was unmistakable.

It was something like a strawberry milkshake that’s been left on the dash of your car for a couple of days.

In August.

Immediately, as I felt my sinuses closing in, I began mentally cursing the marketing people who made this monstrosity seem like a good idea. There didn’t seem to be a feasible escape.

Of course, the gym was full and there really wasn’t an opportunity to move even if I’d wanted.

I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of dispensing evil odors myself, although primarily when I was younger and didn’t know any better.

Mom received uncountable gallons of Avon’s Roses, Roses, especially popular in the 1970’s and 80’s. It was popular because it was a double-duty gift; not only did it offer what was then perceived as nice stinkum, but came in a decorative decanter like good scotch. Even empty, it hung around as a reminder of Mother’s Day, 1968 until the bottles finally got knocked off and broken.

Probably the worst olfactory sin that I ever committed happened on vacation in the early 1970’s. We went to Florida and I returned with a tube of “orange blossom cream perfume” for each of my grandmothers.

Mom’s mom resolved the issue by putting hers on the shelf and, “saving it for good,” she said, whenever asked why she didn’t wear it. Occasionally, during the summer, she could be cajoled into putting a tiny drop on her neck. I note that a tiny speck was sufficient to clear the barn, and she tried to make certain that company was unlikely between the time of application and a bath.

My other grandmother, having raised 3 sons and likely encountering such “gifts” in the past, knew that a quick and firm response was the only way to deal with it.

She smeared the entire tube on in one fell swoop, I suspect also when she was relatively certain that she would not encounter anyone else and a bathtub was at hand. After that, she could honestly say that it was all used up and, travelling to Florida being the only way to acquire a supply in those pre-internet days, there was no chance of replenishing the stash.

The young lady at the gym was too young to have been trying to make a grandchild happy by using up a present.

The next time I ponder adding a scent to my body......I'll try to think of Roses and Orange blossoms first.