Lake Superior State University continues to do God’s work with its annual list of words so overused they should be banned forever:
A movie about a “maverick,” his journey “from Wall Street to Main Street,” his “desperate search” for a “monkey” and a “game-changing” revelation about his “carbon footprint” probably would make the nation’s word-watchers physically ill.
Especially if it were the “winner of five nominations.”
All those words and phrases are on Lake Superior State University’s annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. The 34th version of the list was released Tuesday, which means, “It’s that time of year again.”
The school selected only 15 words, though, when the list could have been a lot bigger. What about “webinar” or “under the bus” or “hope” and “change” and, by God, don’t get me started on this one, “world class”? And maybe “bailout” and “meltdown” will make next year’s list.
Like many people, I wondered why it was there was such international silence at Hamas constantly lobbing rockets into civilian areas of Israel but such loud international outrage when Israel finally retaliated. Alan Dershowitz puts it much better:
There have been three types of international response to the Israeli military actions against the Hamas rockets. Not surprisingly, Iran, Hamas, and other knee-jerk Israeli-bashers have argued that the Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians are entirely legitimate and that the Israeli counterattacks are war crimes.
Equally unsurprising is the response of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and others who, at least when it comes to Israel, see a moral and legal equivalence between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that responds by targeting the terrorists.
And finally, there is the United States and a few other nations that place the blame squarely on Hamas for its unlawful and immoral policy of using its own civilians as human shields, behind whom they fire rockets at Israeli civilians.
The most dangerous of the three responses is not the Iranian-Hamas absurdity, which is largely ignored by thinking and moral people, but the United Nations and European Union response, which equates the willful murder of civilians with legitimate self-defense pursuant to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
Even those who don’t like Israel should be motivated by self-preservation enough to not encourage terrorists in their activities. It is, as Dershowitz pegs it, “moral idiocy.”
(Author’s note: Several years ago, I had fun writing a serious of columns called “Remembered truths” that examined the wisdom (or lack of it) in familiar proverbs. Following is the one I wrote for New Year’s 2001 that took off from “Time and tide wait for no man.” Sometimes, I read my stuff years later and wonder, “What in the world was I thinking?” But sometimes, as with this piece, I find I still like it.)
She was one of the sexiest-looking girls I knew, even if she was only a sophomore. All during our speech classes when I was a senior, she sat right there in the front row, crossing and recrossing her legs while I desperately tried to remember the words I was stumbling through. Whenever I tried to talk to her before or after class, I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I stammered out questions: Could I have a stick of gum? Would you let me have a piece of paper? Borrow your pencil for a second?
Then I met her on the street one day the summer after I graduated, one of those chance encounters fate can hinge on. We chatted briefly, then she said, in words I remember precisely to this day, “You know, you never talk to me in class unless you want something.” I said something stupid - I don’t remember what, exactly, but it had to have been extraordinarily stupid - and we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. I never saw her again.
It occurred to me a few years later - duh! - that she might have been giving me an opening, one of those verbal signals people use to let you know a relationship hasn’t been all it could be but might be better. And it went right over my head. It might not be the biggest missed opportunity in my life, but it’s certainly one of the most memorable.
Then there was the time I was on vacation with family in Colonial Williamsburg. It had been a scorching day, and we’d been walking around in the sun. We sat down at one of the inns, and I ordered a drink I had never heard of before, but whose name intrigued me. It was, I believe, the best-tasting drink I had had up to that point in my life. “This is so good,” I said, “that somebody is going to market it and make millions of dollars. We ought to look into that.”
Don’t be silly, everyone else said, it’s not exactly an alcoholic drink and not exactly a non-alcoholic one, either; it’ll never catch on. I decided they were right and put it out of my mind. It was a mixture of lemonade and burgundy, and they called it “wine cooler.”
Regrets? I’ve had a few.
It was John Lennon, I believe, who said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.’” You listen to the rules and follow the schedule and don’t take too many detours, and before you know it, you’re in a place you never dreamed of, wondering how you got there. Along the way, there have been some happy surprises and unexpected pleasures. But between the cracks and crevices have slipped some chances not taken, paths not chosen. If you get to a certain age and don’t have some regrets, you’re just not paying attention.
That’s a valuable insight, one that comes to some early, some late and some not at all. I got it at age 35. That was the birthday when I finally realized I wasn’t still just a few months out of high school and that my “real” life wasn’t the one I’d get to whenever I got through fooling around with this one. This is the only life I have ever had or ever will have.
There’s a reason people keep making NewYear’s resolutions, year after year, though they’ve kept few of the old ones and know full well they won’t keep many of the current ones. It’s just their way of keeping the faith, acknowledging that life happens, and it can happen for you or to you.
I’ve come full circle in my opinion of resolutions. I started out making them every Jan. 1, because everybody else did and that was what you were supposed to do. Then I had my youthful rebellion stage - resolutions were human folly, even evil - they wasted our time with wishful thinking. Then I decided they were useless but basically harmless, so why waste energy worrying about them? Now, I think they’re actually valuable.
When we make NewYear’s resolutions, we’re pausing to measure the pluses and minuses of our lives. At this admittedly arbitrary point in time, we’re taking stock, looking in those cracks and crevices and noticing all those missed opportunities and neglected paths. Yes, it may be wishful thinking, but at least we’re aware of where our lives have landed and have some determination that we can move them, with our own will, further down the road.
And all marking of time is arbitrary when you think about it - all those birthdays and anniversaries, years and decades and centuries. Time marches on and the universe advances, indifferent to the sparks and fizzles of the specks of our lives colliding into one another. Considering how very long the stage has been here, and how brief our strut across it, what possible difference does it make if something happened in 1492 or 1493? What’s the point of putting marks on calendars? Why capriciously put marks here and there and say the time in between the marks means something?
Because we have to. What is music but our attempt to create an ordered structure out of all the noise that is out there, to make a sound that soothes us instead of jarring us? And what are inventions of dates but our attempt to create an understandable human structure out of the chaos of time? The calendar is just another musical instrument. So we stop, occasionally, and notice things and take stock. We remember birthdays. And celebrate anniversaries.
And make NewYear’s resolutions.
It’s too late for me to make a million from wine coolers, but maybe the next time I think something new is worth exploring, I’ll trust my own instincts. I probably couldn’t find the girl from speech class, and even if I did, she might have changed or not be the way I remember her (and I certainly won’t be the way she remembers me). But surely I’ll be paying more attention the next time somebody drops me a hint. Regrets? Oh, yeah. But, then again, too few to mention.
If it’s true that time and tide wait for no man, another proverb is also true: Better late than never. If we’ve blown some chances, there are other opportunities still to be realized, just one resolution - one kept resolution - ahead. All it takes is the acknowledgment that real life isn’t something we’re going to get around to any minute now.
But you already knew that, didn’t you? You just haven’t done anything about it yet.
Have a happy New Year.
Rep. Bobby Rush says he doesn’t think any U.S. senator would be caught turning a black man away from serving alongside them.
[. . .]
Rush, D-Ill., dared Senate Democrats Tuesday to block Roland Burris from becoming the Senate’s only black member, urging them not to “hang and lynch” the former state attorney general for the alleged corruption by his patron, Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
[. . .]
In an interview Wednesday, Burris didn’t back away from Rush’s assertion. “It is a fact, there are no African-Americans in the United States Senate,” he said on NBC’s “Today.” “Is it racism that is taking place? That’s a question that someone may raise.”
To even try such race-baiting with an African American about to enter the White House is pretty brazen even for Chicago politics, but in the past such tactics have worked pretty well. But Barack Obama is siding with the Senate Democrats who say they want nothing to do with a Blagojevich appointee, so maybe we’ll see the beginning of the end of such nonsense. (Not that Senate Democrats are guaranteed to win this battle. In a 1969 case, the Supreme Court rebuked the House for not seating Adam Clayton Powell and said Congress did not have discretionary power to refuse to seat new members who were constitutionally qualified. The court was talking about elected membes, though — who knows if the ruling would apply to appointed ones?)
As an aside, Rush’s admonition against “hanging and lynching” might sound odd, but it’s not wrong — the two aren’t the same thing. “Lynching,” probably from Charles Lynch, a Virginia justice of the peace of the Revolutionary War era who favored the quick dispatching of Tories, just means extralegal killings. People have, in fact, been lynched by shooting, stoning, burning and any number of creative ways besides hanging.
There has only been one certifiably great movie about lynching that I know of, 1943’s “The Ox-Bow Incident” starring Henry Fonda. Here’s ( watch?v=lljIrAfBzYs ) the scene in which Fonda reads the letter from the lynched man; it’s a compelling indictment against mob rule. People are so racially sensitized these days that they’re afraid to even say the word, but lynching as a metaphor for lawlessness and the mindlessness of mobs, especially in an Old West mythology context, could still be a useful rhetorical device.
Darn, just when I was thinking about investing in Soylent Green:
Citing the impact of the recession, Indiana’s environmental agency has halted funding for state grant and loan programs that support recycling and pollution prevention — a cutoff that will persist through at least through summer 2010.
[. . .]
Carey Hamilton, the executive director of the Indiana Recycling Coalition, said she’s worried what the funding cutoff would mean for the nonprofit coalition’s 160 member groups statewide involved in recycling, composting, source reduction and other efforts.
I have a suggestion. Open at least one new landfill in each of Indiana’s 92 counties. There is plenty of land available – contra the Green myth that “We are running out of landfill space!” — and digging the holes and hauling the garbage would provide lots of jobs.
This is a minor irritation, really, but if I hear about one more “self-titled” album, I’ll scream. I know that this means to say that the album has the same name as the artist or group, like Bob Dylan’s first album, “Bob Dylan,” or Led Zeppelin’s first albumn, “Led Zeppelin.” But it just sounds wrong, you know? I still think, when I hear it, “Oh, he named the album himself instead of making someone else do it; how nice” or “what a clever album to be able to title itself.” One of these days, a critic will write about somebody’s “eponymous debut album,” and I’ll faint dead away.
There are two movies out at the same time that I want to see enough that I might not wait for the video or cable release, pretty unusual. One is “Marley & Me” from the book by John Grogan. Many of my journalist aquaintances couldn’t bear reading the book because the very idea seemed like such maudlin drivel. But I actually liked it. Books about animals have to be seriously underwritten if they’re to walk that fine line between honest sentimentality and contrived treacle, and I thought Grogan did a pretty good job. As this critic notes, Grogan captures (and I hope the film does) both the joy and sadness of life with an animal companion:
They can frustrate and anger you, but they give such pure love and joy that they easily get forgiven, and that’s what gets them into your heart.
With other people, we always have to figure out their motives and hidden agendas. Dogs and cats are just what they are, and that’s good enough. Treat them well and they’ll . . . well, they’ll be themselves. Here, from a link provided by one of the commenters, is Jimmy Stewart on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson explaining the whole thing. Watch Johnny trying not to tear up.
The other one is “Frost/Nixon,” partly because I want to see if a taut mystery can really be made from such well-known material (it was done with “All the President’s Men,” so why not?) and partly because I continue to think Richard Nixon was the most fascinating and compelling character of my lifetime. I don’t know if I’ve said so here before, but he always seemed to me a tragic figure in the classic sense of that term — someone who had the potential for greatness in him but suffered a downfall because of his character flaws.
The trailer looks pretty good. I watched the real interviews, and seeing Frank Langella as Nixon say “I’m saying that when the president does it, it’s not illegal” is still pretty chilling.
This change has been needed for a long time, so three cheers to Gov. Mitch Daniels for proposing it:
INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana allows local government employees to serve on their own governing bodies — meaning they can vote to raise their own pay or give themselves other perks at taxpayer expense.
But Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Local Government Reform Commission want the practice to be banned. Daniels says he’ll ask the Indiana General Assembly to bar local government employees from being elected to the governing bodies that oversee their jobs.
It’s just stupid to create such blatant conflicts of interest by allowing people to serve in both the legislative and executive branches of the same political unit. Our editorial page has specifically not endorsed candidates we otherwise thought well of — such as City Councilman and city police officer Marty Bender — because of that conflict. The candidates always say they can be objective, even recuse themselves when necessary, but I think they end up too close to the issues to always know when they have a conflict.
Awww, poor babies. They go all the way to Atlanta expecting to have a real good time, and guess what? There’s nothing to do:
When it comes to efforts to lure conventioneers, Atlanta’s got the hotels, the easy access to the city via the nation’s busiest airport and even the attractions with the Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola.
Now what the city needs is a little more nightlife.
[. . .]
But downtown, where most of the conventions take place, is missing the after-hours component.
Keeping conventioneers coming is critical to Atlanta’s $11.4 billion tourism industry. Conventioneers’ dollars keep hotels and restaurants full and help keep businesses like florists, caterers and linens suppliers operating.
Both ACVB and GWCC board members agreed that getting nightlife downtown is easier said than done. To attract after-hours hotspots, more residents will have to move downtown and suburbanites, many of whom view the area as unsafe, will have to visit more frequently than an occasional sporting event.
Granted, actual Atlanta is barely above 500,000, but the metro area is above 5 million people, and there’s nothing to do? So Atlantans are just going to have to move downtown so the night spots will open so the conventioneers will come so they can get drunk and bore their co-workers for years with stories about what fools they made of themselves. Sounds like a plan to me. Let’s get to work on that here. Just plunk down a couple of hundred thou for a Harrison Square condo, and do your part to save downtown.
I think every place I’ve ever lived I’ve heard the complaint, “There’s nothing to do here!” But, really, there are mostly the same kinds of things to do just about everywhere. People who complain about nothing to do usually really mean they have nobody to do it with. If you can’t get drunk and stupid with your co-workers in any city in the country, something’s wrong with you.
The concept of “environmental refugees” has been around for more than 20 years — those are people displaced by things like tsunamis and hurricanes and such. Now, apparently, we have to start dealing with “climate refugees“:
Millions of people are predicted to become climate refugees as global warming increases. A new international pact will be needed to protect their rights to live.
Global warming caused by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions has been linked to a host of environmental disasters. These include sea-level rise, flooding, spells of droughts and cold and other extreme weather conditions such as frequent hurricanes and cyclones. As such natural catastrophes push inhabitants to flee to safer places, environmental refugees are fast becoming an international security issue.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that there will be 150 million environmental refugees by 2050. The Institute for Environment and Human Security, affiliated with United Nations University, estimated the number of environmental refugees at 20 million in 2005 and predicted the number could be 50 million as early as 2010.
In spite of millions in danger of becoming refugees, at present there is no international law to protect their rights. UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, does not recognise climate or environment refugees as these categories are not included in the list of legal refugees under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention.
I felt like a climate refugee myself for a few days last week. Good thing I found a hotel room, or else I would have had to trudge to New York and throw myself on the mercy of the United Nations. I think the climate-change hysterics have gone so far now that it’s pointless to stay outraged at them. I think we can safely go to the Elvis Costello “try to be amused” stage.
Of course, Barack Obama is set to take office, and he believes this nonsense, or at least says he does, so maybe we shouldn’t be too amused.
The number of crashes at Houston intersections with red-light cameras doubled in the first year after their installation, according to a city-financed study released Monday.
But Mayor Bill White argued that the cameras’ presence prevented even more collisions and that the study proves the monitoring program is keeping drivers safe.
Critics of the initiative, which mails $75 civil fines to drivers photographed running red lights at 50 intersections, said the study shows that cameras actually cause more crashes and bolsters their argument that the program is more about generating revenue than protecting the public.
If you read the whole story, you see that the study’s conclusions are a trifle ambiguous and open to interpretation, which is pretty much the result of most studies of the red-light cameras. What is not in dispute is how lucrative the cameras are — the ones in Houston have generated more than $20 million in revenue since 2006. No matter how much officials protest that the real issue is traffic safety, it’s clear that money is at least as important to them, which is why the issue won’t die in Indiana.
Two different ways to face tough economic times. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels:
No money for new state programs. No money, potentially, to fully fund some existing programs at current levels. And no money for state pay raises.
For Gov. Mitch Daniels, the national recession — which has pushed Indiana’s unemployment rate above 7 percent and cut into state revenues — means he’ll be spending a lot of 2009 saying no.
That includes saying no to some of his own wish-list items, including making full-day kindergarten available in all school districts and establishing a new college scholarship program.
Officials with the City of Fort Wayne are hoping the incoming Obama administration will deliver some late Christmas gifts to boost jobs and the condition of local infrastructure.
Mayor Tom Henry’s administration would love to see an Obama Presidency hand over ten million dollars to help the city purchase the old OmniSource land on North Calhoun Street, and get it ready for re-sale to a prospective developer.
No, no, no and gimme, gimme, gimme. Come on, Mitch. Get with the program and get in line. Your patriarchal edicts — you probably think of them as embodying “prudence” or something equally silly — are pathetically old-fashioned. We have officially entered the era of Government Can, So Government Must, and those who don’t buy in will be left out.
Ah, well. I thought my ice storm distractions might have helped tame my bailout rage a bit. Guess not. Panicking and tragically overreacting and thus endorsing redistribution from the prudent to the profligate still seems like madness to me.
I don’t know why people think newspapers are in trouble. They’ll still be indispensable as long as they provide such information as this, in an article titled “4 ways to safely open a champagne bottle”:
Don’t mar what could be a perfect start to the new year with a champagne cork injury to your eye.
It sounds like a long shot, but Dr. Chi-Wah Rudy Yung, chair of the Indiana Eye Injury Registry, has seen it happen. A champagne cork can fly out at speeds of up to 50 mph.
I could have put my eye out! The article advises that the champagne should be chilled to at least 45 degrees and that the bottle should be held at a 45-degree angle away from the person popping the cork. And, for goodness sake, “Make sure there is nobody standing in front of you when you open it.” Got it?
The best way to open a botle of champagne, as anybody knows, is to give it to a woman and let her hit a ship with it. It provides an entertaining diversion, and you don’t have to drink the crap.
I was attacked so savagely that I had bleeding wounds. My best girl was so frightened that her bladder gave way. She did it to me, and I did it to her. That’s how I spent my Christmas.
Boy, if that isn’t the ending that makes you want to know the beginning, just like they taught us in writing school, I don’t know what is.
Saturday before last, I did a column for the editorial page about the ice storm we all woke up to on Friday. Every year about this time, I wrote, more than a little cavalierly, “people stop talking about everything else when they realize winter is actually here again and won’t go away for a few months.” That was when I still thought I was taking Monday and Tuesday off in order to ease into the holiday, wrapping presents at a leisurely pace and chopping vegetables for my made-to-order Christmas omelets. That was before I became one of the 100,000-plus who lost electricity to the storm.
I joined that not-so-elite group about 4 a.m. Sunday, a time I can swear to because I had been suffering a bout of insomnia and was in the middle of watching “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” on cable when the WORLD AS I HAD KNOWN IT ended. Raymond Massey/Abe had just humiliated himself by asking Ruth Gordon/Mary a second time to marry him, after running out on the wedding the first time because he wanted to be a lazy, shiftless lawyer instead of the great role model Barack Obama would need to compare himself to, when, without a whisper of warning, the house abruptly went quiet and dark. (The two things I had been thinking just before that moment: 1. Behind every great man is a pushy broad; 2. Ruth Gordon was not even close to pretty on the best day of her youth.)
After a few hours of shivering on the couch, I went to Hall’s across the bridge on Bluffton Road for some bright lights and a hot breakfast. At first, I thought the people huddled there over steaming cups of coffee were far too calm for such a catastrophe. Then I realized they were probably among the ones who’d been without power since early Friday morning. They weren’t calm, they were just too beaten down to care anymore.
NOT a KERSOENE can, OK?
Fortified, I ventured to the Do It Best store at Southgate, finding to my great surprise that they still had some kerosine-powered heaters left — guaranteed to warm a 20 by 20 space without sucking all the air out of the room if your house is as drafty and poorly insulated as mine. Well, it didn’t actually say that about my house, but it’s what I believed, so I snapped one up, along with a kerosene can (not to be confused with a gas can; apparently, you will blow the city up or something if you put one of the liquids in the wrong carrier, so just watch it, OK?). It turned out to be a useless purchase, though. After hitting half a dozen gas stations, I realized there was no kerosene to be had in Fort Wayne, at least not without devoting all day to finding it. So I now have a kerosene heater ready to go to the basement and a kerosene can to fill up and put in the shed; I will be prepared for the next 100-year ice storm!
But I was woefully unprepared for this one, I decided as I returned to my rapidly cooling house that would probably be unbearable by nightfall. This called for something drastic and clever and befitting my status as the descendent of hardy Appalachians who braved the wildnerness of rural Kentucky. I must be courageous and resourceful in order to survive the coming nights. A full restoration of power to all was not promised until Wednesday, and at least two nights were forecast to be at zero or below. There was only one answer — get a hotel room! I started making calls and after about 45 minutes of ”sorry, we’re fullly booked for tonight” finally found a vacancy at Candlewood Rooms and Suites out on Lima Road just this side of I-69. I secured a reservation for one night — this was going to be a one-day-at-a-time, play-it-by-ear experience.
I need to point out here that I had also been in touch with my friend (frequently referred to here, so “my friend” is getting pretty tiresome to write, but she treasures the privacy my use of her real name would deprive her of, so let’s just call her K from now on, ‘K? You don’t need to know why). She had been trying to get her parents (in the powerless-since-Friday bunch) to go someplace warm for the duration, but K-Daddy and K-Mama, 83 and 79 respectively, are of hardy German stock, which means they will not budge once they have decided it is charming to be stubborn about something. I told K I had gotten a suite instead of a room. She could tell Mom and Pop that Leo had already paid for the thing, and would have to pay the same rate whether they showed up or he ended up there alone. I meant she should be a pushy broad and work on their guilt, but I didn’t come right out and say it. (She’s one of the people whose persistence forced me to come up with a rule for all those who keep trying to improve me; you get a pass the first two times, but the third time is nagging). She did my suggestion one better, though. Her parents had finally gone out for a hot lunch somewhere, and while they were out, she packed a bag for them. When they got back, she thrust the bag at them and said, “Guess where you’re going?”
The first night passed uneventfully, with K-Daddy and K-Mama in the bedroom and me on the couch. We each had our own TVs, and the kitchenette had a refrigerator for keeping soft drinks cold and a microwave with which to reheat Mig Macs. Ah, wilderness! I slept fitfully, mostly from worrying about my cats Dutch and Maggie. They would be cold and, perhaps, frightenend. I always leave at least a light or two on overnight — this would be their first time in total darkness in years. I left the hotel about 10 a.m. Monday, mentioning to the clerk that I was going to check on house and kitties. “You know, we allow pets,” she said. No, I didn’t. “It’s just $12 a day extra, and you can’t leave them in the room alone without putting them in carriers.”
It turned out I was glad she had mentioned it. The first thing I noticed about the house, other than the immediately apparent continuing lack of electricity, was that I could see my breath. Not a good sign. Neither was the fact that the dripping water I had left on at the kitchen sink and in the downstairs bathroom had turned into icicles. Sure enough, the cats’ water had frozen in the bowls. Luckily, neither cat was on the main floor. I found their carriers, upended them and opened the doors so the cats could be dropped straight in. Maggie was the first one to wander by, so I scooped her up. Usually, she’s the feisty one, and she still has all four claws, but, happily, I got her safely encarriered (brand-new word; feel free to use it anytime) in quick order. But Dutch must have sensed the upcoming trauma (they normally get caged and carted off only for their yearly trips to the vet), so he was not to be seen. So I spent some time putting together their traveling kit of bowls, cat food, litter, extra litter box — it all fit in one big plastic garbage bag. I left Maggie in her carrier and took the kit to the car. I finally had to hunt Dutch down and drag him up from the basement, howling in misery. He is declawed, which means he has to use his back paws to do any damage, which he did, a very nice puncture wound just above my left wrist — another shirt with blood-soaked sleeve ready for the rag bin. Finally, it was off to Candlewood, with barely enough room in the car for me, the cat carriers, the garbage bag, the kerosene heater and the kerosene can.
If you have stuck with me so far, bless you, but don’t feel guilty if you want to bail. It should be obvious by now that this is more a cathartic exercise than an attempt to communicate anything meaningful. But I’m getting pretty sick of the story myself, so I won’t give you a play-by-play of my four days at the hotel. Besides, when the temperature went above 60 degrees (!) on Saturday, it seemed to almost erase the whole experience from memory. Had I really been trapped in a bitterly cold, electricity-less world, or was it just a bad dream? (Why are we such wusses? K wondered at one point. How come our ancestors seemed to handle such adversity so much better? Well, they didn’t have all our toys, for one thing. Just consider old Abe, before he hooked up with Mary. He studied by the light of the fireplace, sitting on a dirt floor. There was probably an animal skin hung over the lone window to keep out the insects and cold. What they had every day was just one step up from our worst weather nightmare.)
Sunday night at the hotel, I worried about the cats. On Monday night, I worried about whether the pipes at my house would freeze. On Tuesday, with the K family’s house back online and the cats and I more or less on our own, I worried about how I would manage to get to work if my house were still frozen and I had to leave the cats at Candlewood. Through it all, I worried about how I could fit in Christmas on Thursday since I had to work on Wednesday and I hadn’t even bought stuff for my omelets and everybody’s presents were strewn across my cold, cold, couch, still unwrapped. I worried about the weather and my sister driving up from Indianapolis and maybe sliding off the road somewhere (also frequently referred to here, so let’s call her “Judy,” since that is her name). And did I mention that Maggie was a perfect lady in her new surroundings, happy to be warm and safe, but that the normally placid Dutch periodically turned psychotic on me, pacing the suite’s living room and howling at the top of his voice? I think he thought I could snap my fingers if I wanted to and make his familiar surroundings magically and instantly appear.
It all worked out pretty well, actually — so well that I don’t think I can buy a lottery ticket for a week for two; I’ve used up all my luck. K-Mama, the pushy broad, suggested we postpone Christmas for a week and volunteered to stay with Dutch and Maggie while I worked on Wednesday. My anxiety level immediately dropped by half. When I checked on the house at lunch on Wedesday, the electricity was back on, the furnace was working, and the water flowed through my thawed and unburst pipes. I could have gathered up the cats and taken them home that evening, but I’d already paid for the night at the hotel, and we weren’t having Christmas anyway. Screw it, I thought, I’ll just finally have a relaxing night and take the cats home on Thursday. So that’s what I did. K helped with cat-management — scooping up Dutch and holding him while I got Maggie in her carrier. But Dutch was the angel this time — I think he must have howled himself into an “OK, whatever” zen-like state. It was Maggie, with all four claws, who fought and scratched and screeched and peed on the floor and left both my arms dripping blood.
But we got home by 11:30 a.m. The cats went off to sulk and think about forgiving me, and by noon on Christmas day, I was snoozing on my own couch. I have my omelet fixings, as well as hash browns and pancake mix. My presents are all wrapped. Judy is coming on Wedesday evening, and the weather forecast is favorable. Christmas, I learned this past week, is about what and why, not when. Part of the celebration is thinking about it and planning for it in the days just before the actual day. I’ve had a chance to do that now, and I’m starting to feel the spirit. While you’re bringing in the new year (or recovering from the night before), I’ll finally be having my Christmas story. So I guess I lied at the very beginning when I said I was giving the end of the story.
A blue-ribbon panel of scientists is trying to determine the best way to detect and ward off any wandering space rocks that might be on a collision course with Earth.
[. . .]
Congress asked the academy to conduct the study after astronomers were unable to eliminate an extremely slight chance that an asteroid called Apophis will slam into Earth with devastating effect in 2036.
On second thought, maybe I’ll put off worrying about this one. My new rule is, it ain’t really a problem unless I hear it from Al Gore. And if anybody in government does start taking the possibility seriously, there’ll go another $20 or $30 trillion. I’ve paid and paid already — don’t come to me to bail out the planet.
Suggestion for the Allen County Public Library: Don’t follow this example of the Bartholomew County Library Whatever the increase in fines collected, it will be more than offset by the bad feelings generated, especially if the agency uses some of the more notorious collection techniques:
The library loses about $50,000 a year in items that aren’t returned. To recoup that money, they hired a collection company to bring in fines and books.
[. . .]
Once a patron is turned over to collection and still refuse to pay, it could become a negative mark on your credit report. If you still don’t pay, you could end up in court.
A library should have the reputation of being the most customer-friendly institution in town, don’t you think?
CARMEL, N.Y. - A 14-year-old freshman at Carmel High School was suspended after he brought bullets into school Tuesday, police said.
[. . .]
After an investigation, a male student who was interviewed admitted that he accidentally brought the bullets to school.
He told police that he had gone target shooting under parental supervision and had gone to school without realizing he still had the ammunition in his pants pockets.
If it is an overraction, it’s not just the school’s – New York state law makes it a juvenile delinquency offense for anyone under 16 to have ammunition on school property. This obviously isn’t about safety, or at least just about safety — it’s about making a point. The five .22 rounds (”bullets” in the story) in question, whether they were really brought in accidentally or not, aren’t going to hurt anybody unless they are thrown really, really hard.
Majel Barrett Roddenberry, once called “The First Lady of Star Trek” by the Chicago Tribune, has died. She played various roles in the original series, but you probably know her voice if you’ve caught an epidode of any of them:
Roddenberry had another distinction: Beginning with the original series, she supplied the coolly detached voice of the USS Enterprise’s computer — something she did on the various “Star Trek” series.
She also was the voice of the Starship Enterprise for six of the 10 “Star Trek” movies that have been released, as well as the 11th, which is due out next year.
I keep waiting for voice-actuated computers to become the norm, and I wouldn’t even mind if it talked back to me if it had Majel’s voice. Here’s a tribute to her: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJfkYjrbPS4
A New Albany man isn’t happy about an increase in property taxes so today, he made his feelings known in a public way.
He showed up to pay more than $21,000 in taxes, using dollar coins in protest of taxes which have gone up 48% over the last two years.
Just because you have to do something, that doesn’t mean you have to be pleasant about it. Hey, he could have used pennies if he really wanted to tick ‘em off.
“Ornery” is a cool word, by the way. Most of the time I’ve heard it used, there was an element of admiration involved, as if the person described was disagreeable in a lovable, cuddly sort of way. But it really means having an ugly disposition or temper.
This sounds so matter of fact and, well, ordinary, doesn’t it?
A wintry mix of snow and sleet that switched fully to freezing rain coated roads for area motorists’ commutes Friday morning. Allen County authorities this morning have declared a Level 2 emergency.
There might be something more daunting than fighting the effects of an ice storm to get to work, but I can’t imagine what it is. Having to cross a raging river then weaving through pillars of fire, maybe. After extricating my car from its block of ice this morning, I thought I was finally ready to crawl to work at 5 miles an hour, but a few blocks into the trip, I had to get out and remove two large tree branches from the middle of the street. Only 9:30 a.m. and already exhausted.
They should have let me write that lead: “Winter just absolutely sucks, Fort Wayne residents discovered today.”
Oh, darn, I was so hoping I’d get to see how an “orderly” bankruptcy might work– the unstructured ones are so messy – but President Bush apparently chickened out:
The White House has decided to come to the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler by providing them with $17.4 billion in low-interest loans to keep them afloat, ABC News has learned.
The money for the loans will come from the Troubled Asset Relief Program fund, signed into law this fall to bail out the financial industry.
But I’m pretty sure this still qualifies as “abandoning free market principles in order to save the free market.” As one who was involved in the late, great effort to save villages by destroying them, I think I’m a pretty good judge of such things.
Indiana University is working to add teeth to its nearly year-old smoking ban, because too many students are flouting the rules that forbid lighting up in all public places, which includes the outdoors. In a story about the effort, a univeristy official has a weak moment and blurts out the truth:
Dan Rives, associate vice president for administration with IU human resources, said the ban is about changing behavior, which can’t happen overnight.
Non-smokers don’t like smoking, and the goal is to end all smoking in all places at all times. Let’s at least be honest about the issue.
The economic downturn has forced Richmond officials to make a tough and unpopular decision:
In order to balance the budget for 2009, the board voted to close the 85-year-old, nine-hole course at Glen Miller Park and turn it into a three-hole practice facility.
The board also chose to lease out the maintenance at the 18-hole Highland Lake.
The decision was reached after a public meeting Dec. 10 when speaker after speaker implored the board to find other ways to save money rather than close a course.
I have mixed feelings. The libertarian in me says golf isn’t something government should be providing in the first place, or at least it should be way down on the list of priorities after all the necessities are taken care of. But as an urban dweller, I recognize that such amenities are among the things that make a city bearable, even more livable. I’ve been a bowler rather than a golfer, so I’d have no dog in the hunt if the issue came up here. But anybody can bowl (as long as the league players leave a lane or two open on occasion). Not everybody can afford to join a country club.
I also wonder if this is one of those cases in which officials deliberately do something they know the citizens will hate in an attempt to get them on board with bashing the state for the financial squeeze. Nah, they wouldn’t be that devious.
This story about a man who died — probably from exposure — outside a McDonald’s in Indianapolis is interesting:
A man found dead behind a Far-Northside McDonald’s on Monday had been dropped off by a Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy.
[. . .]
Ocasio, 40, Indianapolis, flagged down a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department deputy about 9:50 p.m. Sunday, department spokeswoman Vicky Dunbar said.
Reserve Deputy Michael St. Pierre saw Ocasio was not dressed properly for the weather and picked him up, Dunbar said. Ocasio wanted a ride to 10th Street and Shadeland Avenue in Indianapolis, Dunbar said.
St. Pierre was patrolling the Carmel area and could not leave, Dunbar said, so he dropped Ocasio off at the McDonald’s shortly after 10 p.m.
But what’s really fascinating is the argument among the more than 150 commenters. There is the to-be-expected venom from idiotic flamers, but there’s also a philosophical discussion. What is the duty of the officer involved, and what does “beyond the call of duty” mean? Shouldn’t he have recognized that the man had been drinking and wasn’t dressed properly and gotten him someplace safe, even if it meant a night in jail? But the police do have duties to perform and can’t stop to rescue every person who is making a bad decision. The man was responsible for his own actions — it was enough that he got dropped someplace that would have been safe had he gone in.
This participatory stuff is often better as a concept than as an actual practice, but when it works, it’s kinda cool.
