What Would Jimmy Do?

As both faithful readers know, I was born in Oklahoma and have Native American or American Indian blood. I’ve never made too much of it, but over the years I’ve collected, and been given pictures, proverbs and stories handed down through the various Indian tribes, especially Cherokee. Sometimes some of them just pop into my head for no apparent reason — I’m sure it has something to do with the current situation or something that someone says that sparks that memory.

Yesterday, two popped into my head — “You should never criticize someone until you’ve walked two miles in his moccasins. By then you’re two miles away — and — you’ve got his moccasins.”

The other was a story of good and evil….
An old Cherokee told his grandson, “My son, there is a battle between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, jealously, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, and truth.”
The boy thought about it, and asked, “Grandfather, which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee quietly replied, “The one you feed.”
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I read an interesting article in this morning’s Washington Post. It was titled, “The end of everything,” and discussed the fact that there is a trend in the publishing world to title books that proclaim “the end…” such as The End of History, The End of Nature, The End of Education, The End of the Free Market, The End of Courtship, The End of Power, The End of Money… anyhow you get the idea.

Well, that got me to thinking — I have nothing against education, the free market, courtship, money or any of the other book titles listed in the article, but there are a few thing I wouldn’t mind seeing the “end of.”

So, in no particular order, here’s my list: How about the End of Salesmen, The End of North Korea, The End of Divas, The End of On Location Storm Reporters, The End of Texting While Driving, The End of Trash on the Highways, The End of Baseball Caps Worn Backwards, The End of Red Mulch, The End of Mosquitos, The End of “irregardless,” The End of Stupid People, The End of Hangovers…

The list could go on and on, but I have other things to do today. I thought the newspaper article was interesting because i hadn’t noticed so many “end of” books being available but also the fact that so many authors chose to include “end of” in the title. The fact is, most of these books acknowledge right away that the “end of” doesn’t really mean the end of… the End of Education discusses bad education, good education, changes in education, some history of education, views on eduction, questions about education, levels of education, continuing education — but never gets around to saying that there is an end to education or even suggesting why such a title was chosen.

Now if I sat down to write an “end of” book, I’d be sure that the reader had no doubt that it was the end, or at least something that I wanted to end. For instance, if I wrote a book titled The End of Free Ads, I’d at least make a case for ending the promotion of “Free!” Pretty much free anything is never really free — it’s always only free if you buy something else. I’ve never heard anyone advertise free air to breath or free sunsets to watch. Even things that contain the word ‘free’ — for instance, the ‘free market’ are not free… but I digress. The subject of this blog was things that are ending — so guess what we’ve come to?
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Well, I said it would never happen — no more moving. But the weather finally go to me. This cold weather is ridiculous. We’re moving to Hawaii!!

Got real lucky and just the right person(s) came along and we got a great contract on our house. Unfortunately because of the short timeline we weren’t able to go house-shopping in the islands. So we rolled the dice and put our trust in the realtor and bought from just a picture. It’s small but is right on the beach. The only downside is that Claire will have to get rid of lots of stuff — but no more cold weather!!! And — I’ve signed up for surfing lessons — the surfboard comes with the house. Can you believe it?

You’re all welcome to visit, but don’t expect to spend weeks and weeks —everyone’s welcome, but just make your visits short.

Oh, by the way, happy April Fool’s Day!
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We had lunch with Kelly, Chris and Emily today and I asked Emily about the Easter Bunny. She doesn’t really grasp the concept yet and I guess I can see why. The idea of an egg-laying rabbit isn’t intuitively obvious — especially when you’re two and a half and have been told all your life that eggs come from chickens, or ducks, or birds or maybe even an alligator — but never a rabbit.

Among other things, we can thank the Germans (or blame them) for the Easter Bunny. Rabbits have been associated with springtime since ancient times. The Hare and the Rabbit were the most fertile animals known and they served as symbols of the new life during the Spring season.

According to our friends Anne and Winfried, the first edible Easter bunnies were made in Germany and were made of pastry and sugar. The Easter Bunny was introduced to American folklore by German settlers in the Pennsylvania Dutch country in the 1700s.

German children looked forward to the arrival of the “Oschter Haws” almost as much as they looked forward to the the coming of Christ-Kindel on Christmas. The children believed that if they were good, the Oschter Haws wold lay a nest of colored eggs. The children would build their nest in a secluded place in their house or barn — boys used their caps and girls used their bonnets to make the nests. I would guess that today’s fancy Easter baskets evolved from those early “nests.”

Happy Easter! Don’t forget the day isn’t just about chocolate bunnies….
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Well, here it is the 24th of March and the weather prediction is for 2 to 4 inches of snow tonight. Since I have no earth shattering topics on my mind at the moment, I guess I can fall back on the reliable topic of conversation — the weather.

People often start a conversation with strangers by talking about the weather — it’s sort of a “neutral” topic of conversation and its usually safe to use it to strike up a conversation, most anywhere and with most anyone. It’s maybe not wise to bring up politics or sports with some random guy standing in line at the Food Lion — you risk getting into some sort of petty squabble, but talking about the weather is almost always “safe.”

Talking about the weather is easy — true that it doesn’t offer any new insight into anything or in any way advance the cause of humanity, but I’m not sure it’s just so much hot air…

Talking about the weather is in all likelihood, boring — and some weather conversations are particularly annoying to me. I hate to get an e-mail, or phone call, in the middle of winter from someone living in a warmer climate saying, “It’s 90 degrees and sunny and I just went to the beach.” Everyone gets good weather and they get bad weather — just accept that and don’t try to make yours look better or rub it in…. I hate the question, “Is it cold enough for you?” I guess I’m supposed to think that is clever, but it’s annoying. Same thing if you change “cold” to “hot,” “wet,” “windy” or any other “weathery” term — annoying! Some people complain about the cold and then they complain about the heat — you can hate the heat or you can hate the cold, but come on, you can’t hate them both.

Then there are those people that always remember when it was worse, they usually say something like, “It’s not so bad, remember how much snow we had in 2011?” Somehow, I don’t mind that so much, it comes across as being positive.

Oscar Wilde said, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” Maybe so, maybe not, weather is a common ground, it affects everyone and starting a conversation with it often leads to more interesting topics. Of course around here, we often substitute the Redskins for the weather — “How ’bout them “Skins?” is a conversation starter.”
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If you’ve ever called our house, there’s about a 99.999% chance that Claire — or no one — has answered the phone. I rarely answer our home phone — I say it’s because it’s never for me anyhow, if people want to talk to me, the call my cell phone. That really is true, but the fact is that I just don’t particularly like to talk on the phone.

I got to wondering why that is and here’s some of the reasons I came up with…..
First off, I have a hearing problem and if the connection isn’t all that good (very common around here with cell phones) then I don’t hear all that well — if I have to “work” at the conversation I certainly don’t want any part of it.
Usually the phone is for Claire and if I answer it I get way too much information. As I discussed in a previous blog, women like to talk — about everything. Men usually only talk about what is relevant… If I answer the phone and it’s one of Claire’s friends, the conversation doesn’t consist of “have Claire give me a call” —  I usually have to listen to why the caller called in the first place. Not to be rude, but it really doesn’t matter to me if someone’s great aunt’s granddaughter ran off with the postman or that they’re taking a cruise to the Panama Canal….
Another reason I don’t care for phone calls is that they aren’t scheduled — no matter what you’re doing, when the phone rings, you’re expected to drop everything and talk about whatever the caller has decided you must have time to talk about. I don’t just sit around waiting for phone calls — and whoever is calling is expecting your undivided attention. Another problem is that whoever called is expecting an immediate response — I’m not good at that — I prefer to think about my response a bit, but on the phone, you’re expected to provide an immediate response.
I’ve noticed that when I’m talking on the phone neither the person on the other end or myself time our responses properly, so we’re constantly interrupting one another….
Some people that call just want to talk — they don’t want a conversation, they just want to talk….
It seems like it’s hard to get off the phone — the conversation just seem to keep going forever even after both parties have said goodbye — maybe multiple goodbyes….
Most phone calls take forever to get to the point — people seem to think they must ask how you’ve been, what you’ve been up to, etc. before they can get to the reason for the call…..

I mentioned previously that I do answer my cell phone — but cell phones in general annoy me as much as any phone — sometimes more. Some people appear to have the phone to their ear all day long, no matter where they are or what they’re doing. Sometimes I have feeling that some people I know don’t have any idea what I look like because they’re always looking at their cell phones when we’re together.

But I guess the real reason I don’t answer the phone is that whenever I do, there’s usually someone on the other end.
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Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Seems like every year I think it’s necessary to write something about St. Patrick or green, or beer, or Ireland, or something….
Well, might as well carry on the tradition, even though there is a limited amount of material and most of whatever winds up here has already been said — probably even by me.

Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, even though he wasn’t Irish. His real name was Maewyn Sccat — his Romaniciaed name was Patricius, that later became Patrick. He was born in Britain to wealthy parents and was taken prisoner when he was about sixteen by a group of Irish raiders that attacked his family’s estate. He was taken to Ireland and pretty much kept as a slave for six years. He wrote about hearing God’s voice in a dream telling him it was time to leave Ireland. He escaped and walked nearly 200 miles to the Irish coast.

After returning to Britain, Patrick has a second dream in which a angel told him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Based on that dream, Patrick began his religious training, studying more than fifteen years, becoming a priest and later a bishop. He was sent to Ireland where his mission lasted more than thirty years. St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated on the day of his death (March 17 in AC 461.)

The significance of green — while pretty much universal around here, in Ireland identifies you as Catholic. Irish Protestants are identified with orange…
Just before the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland if you wore a shamrock in your hat, it signified your support for the Rebellion. That contributed to the saying, “the wearing of the green.”

So here’s to St. Patrick and his day….
Here’s to a long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one
A pretty girl and an honest one
A cold beer – and another one!
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A few days ago I wrote about curmudgeons and pretty much admitted that I might actually be one (not that that’s a bad thing.) One characteristic or trait that possible curmudgeons have is that they want things like they used to be.

One thing I’d like to be like it used to be is knobs. Yea, knobs — have you noticed they’re disappearing? I’ve been aware of the trend for quite some time, but it’s getting worse. I first noticed it becoming a problem shortly after we moved to West Virginia. During the move, a cheap plastic knob on our washing machine broke. No big deal — knobs are cheap and easy to replace…. Well, I couldn’t get a knob in West Virginia; I was able to find a replacement in Fairfax, Virginia, but it had to be special ordered and I had to drive 50 miles to pick it up. Because it was a special order, I had to pay shipping, stocking fees, and who knows what else — the 99 cent knob cost almost $10, not counting gas. Now remember, I wasn’t being picky about the knob — just about any old knob would do — didn’t have to be a Maytag or even a washing machine knob. I went to Radio Shack. They used to have a whole wall of knobs — all colors, big ones, small ones, round ones, pointed ones, plastic, metal, you name it — you could always find a knob at Radio Shack. Do you know how many knobs Radio Shack had? None!! Not one knob. How could that be? Little did I know it was about to get worse.

When I was growing up, everything had knobs. As you entered the house, the front door had a knob (our front door doesn’t have a knob — in fact, none of our doors have knobs.) Radios had knobs — one to change the station, one to adjust the volume, some even had knobs to change bands to short wave or FM and to adjust the bass and treble. Television sets used to have knobs. If you wanted to adjust the volume or change the channel, you got up out of your chair, went to the TV and turned a knob. Kelly and Chris’ kitchen cabinets don’t even have knobs — I never know which side of the door to try to open… and then — there’s cars. My car is 12 years old and it has maybe three knobs. It’s got a lot of buttons, switches and levers and levers that contain buttons that you flick, push, pull, twist and apply every other movement known to man (some having to be accomplished simultaneously) to get the desired results. And it’s got a touch screen. Claire’s car is a couple of years newer than mine and it only has one knob – maybe two. I have no idea how the windshield wiper lever/push/turn/button control works — I’ve finally just set it on automatic and take my chances. Claire’s car has also upped the number of functions controlled by a touch screen.

Go look at a new car and you can bet that almost everything is controlled by a “touch screen.” Now I’ll be the first to agree that all this touch screen technology looks way cool, but the curmudgeon in me says it’s not a good thing. Here’s why — if you’re using the touch screen on your iPad or iPhone, you’re looking at the screen and interacting with it — directly. When you’re driving, ideally you’re looking out that big window in front of you (I know, most people you meet are eating, texting, fixing their hair, or something else, but that’s another issue) and you operate most controls by “feel.” At most, they only take a quick glance. The problem is touch screens have little buttons on a glass screen — there is no “feel” and you have to take your eyes away from the big window to find the right “button.” If you’ve ever looked in the cockpit of an airliner, you’ve probably noticed a lot of levers between the pilot and co-pilot seats — those levers all have different shaped knobs. Pilots manipulate those levers by touch, they don’t have to look to see which control they’re moving.

Most of the cars I’ve owned (until the last few) had a knob on the dash that had the word “LIGHTS” printed on it. You pulled it out and the lights went on. You pushed it in and the lights went off. Our current cars have the light control on a lever on the steering column and they all work differently and you have to work to get the lights off or on when you want them on or off — apparently the car now knows better than you to not turn the lights on if the ignition isn’t on or the car isn’t running and that they shouldn’t turn off for 40 seconds or some amount of time the car thinks you need the lights for…. I’m still not sure what was wrong with the knob — pull, they’re on; push, they’re off.

A number of years ago, you’d sometimes hear people say, “Don’t you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence?” Well, guess what? There is no knob!
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In my “working days” when one of my projects needed money that hadn’t been budgeted, I found that when I went to the boss or the board it was always easier to get more money than less. If I indicated that I needed $5000 or even $500 to complete a project, I was deluged with questions about how it was to be used, why didn’t I foresee the need for it earlier and on and on. However, if I needed $5 million for the project, I got the usual grumbling but not near the number of questions. The fact is it was easier to ask for more money.

I attribute this to the fact that $500 means something to most people — but most people really can’t comprehend larger amounts, like $5M. Most people are not very good at comprehending large numbers. Each year at Antietam they light a candle for each causality of the battle – about 25,000. I thought I had an idea of the magnitude of the number 25,000. The first time we went there for the luminary event, I had trouble comprehending what I saw. I think most people have a handle on numbers and quantities until some arbitrary number is reached and then their brains default to “a lot,” “a bunch.” “gargantuan,” “humongous” or some such description of something incomprehensible. Once a person reaches that number, it’s almost impossible to get past it.

Now, all that aside, on to the subject of this blog — the National debt. Ever since I can remember, its been big, humongous or whatever term you’d like to use. It always seemed fairly serious to me — I know if I owe money, I worry about it. But apparently most people, and certainly the people in Washington aren’t terribly concerned. The reason, I think, is that no one can begin to comprehend the magnitude of the problem. Most people’s minds can’t comprehend numbers in the trillions. I’m guessing here, but I’d bet that no person, organization, or country has ever had a debt as large as the U.S. does today – ever – in the history of the world!

I’m not sure what the National debt is — it’s gone up since I started writing, but it’s at least $15 or $16 trillion. The media tries to explain it using examples like, if you spent a dollar a second, $15 trillion would last close to 470.000 years, or if you turned $15 trillion into a stack of thousand dollar bills, it would reach over 943 miles. Another interesting observation that attempts to put these huge numbers in perspective — if you had gone into business on the day Jesus was born, and your business lost a million dollars a day, day in and day out, 365 days a year, it would take you until October 2737 to lose a trillion dollars — and our debt is many trillions. I haven’t done the math, but I bet these scary examples are fairly accurate — the problem is it’s still hard to relate to the numbers. It’s a serious problem and Washington takes long weekends….

I don’t have an answer, but I blame everyone in Washington. Everyone should blame them and maybe we ought to work on that number thing — a trillion is a lot; 16, 17 or 18 trillion is mind boggling.

Even if we can’t get our head around the numbers, we should all agree that this is a serious issue. Maybe if we can just equate it to our not being able to pay our American Express bill it will become ‘real’ to us. Thomas Jefferson once said that if he could add just one more amendment to the Constitution it would be a complete ban on all borrowing by the federal government. Think things would be different today if we’d taken his advice?
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Claire often refers to me as a curmudgeon. I seem to have noticed that she uses that term more in the past few years — maybe that’s because I’ve been trying to listen to her more lately — expanding my sphere of selective listening. To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t know what a curmudgeon was — I’d heard the term, but when it became apparent that I might be one (in some opinions) I thought I better extensively research it.

The dictionary definition is “a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.” Now I don’t really see myself fitting that description. I’ve never been accused of being a “yes man” or always agreeing with everyone. I express my opinion and think that is often interpreted as being difficult or cantankerous. Actually I’m just being honest.

Curmudgeonry (not sure if that’s a word, but it should be) is — falsely —believed to apply to grumpy old men. In fact, a curmudgeon can be any gender or age. It is basically a character trait. A true curmudgeon is absolutely convinced that almost all the current problems are caused by young people — another point for me not being a curmudgeon. I think a couple of problems were the fault of middle aged people.

So here’s some reasons I think maybe people think I’m a curmudgeon — and — some reasons I think I’m not.
Sometimes I’m accused of being crabby — I’m not; I tell the truth, and of course some people don’t like that.
I’m sometimes accused of being negative — I’m not; I don’t like, or dislike, something just because it’s popular or “trendy.” If a great new restaurant opens and I don’t like it, I say so — I don’t care that everyone else is raving about it.
Some (most) people think I dress like a curmudgeon — I don’t; I dress for comfort. After years of “business dress” I can do without those ties, button down shirts, shoes that have to be polished… I wear things that feel good.
Sometimes I’m accused of thinking I know better than anyone else — — well, ok; that’s usually the case and it’s difficult to stand or sit by and see mistakes being made. I usually have the solution to most problems. I am a supremely independent thinker and very wise with the belief that such power should be used for the good of mankind.

A lot of people are classified as curmudgeons along with me — Andy Rooney, Ebenezer Scrooge, Oscar the Grouch, Maxine, the cartoon character (see, a female), Archie Bunker, Dr. House on TV, Grumpy of the Seven Dwarfs, all cats, the Grinch…. I’m not sure that’s necessarily bad company to be in (except for the cats.)

Obviously you can tell I think Curmudgeonry has gotten a bad name — people should spend more time listening to curmudgeons; they’d learn how to solve real world problems.
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