Thursday, November 28, 2013

When Life Gives You Lemons


Dear blog reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. To all of my Illini and Hoosier friends who faced nature’s wrath a week and a half ago, I hope that your power is back on, the tree limbs are being cut up, and that all of the contractors you encounter are honorable. To the homeowners in Kokomo whose 2nd story decided to detach and go on a walkabout into the middle of the road, wow, that must have been quite a ride.

A week ago last Sunday it was 60 degrees. Saturday, it was below freezing. What did these two pictures have in common? They both featured bicycle rides in winds that were above 25 mph. Last Sunday, the wind was actually above 30 miles per hours. They were straight out of the South. This made my trip South an arduous task, but I could turn north and I was on fire. It was a good reminder that I am not as good as the 30 mph with the wind at my back or as poor as the 6 mph with a stiff head wind.

It was a week of entertainment for the lovely Miss Beverly and me, her humble escort. We went to see Jim Gaffigan and Garrison Keillor at Ball State. In an aside, Ball State has some very good shows and the price is often less than going to the same show in Indianapolis. Check it out.

I rarely do reviews. It isn’t that I don’t have strong, insightful, and accurate opinions about others. I do. I just rarely go out for entertainment. Number one, Bev and I have not been in the position to afford anything other than the cheap seats. Which always made me wonder, why would I want to pay that much money to watch a show on a video monitor? Suddenly, we find ourselves in an empty nest and the nest is lined with a bit more money that had been previously earmarked for our children’s upbringing.

Gaffigan was very funny. He had a couple of very funny riffs; one about going to weddings, another about Hot Pockets. Keillor was completely different. I have been a fan for a long time. I have been to see Prairie Home Companion three times. Once, the lovely Miss Beverly and I got on a train to Minneapolis in early February to spend the weekend in a romantic bed and breakfast. It is a little known fact that global warming has been traced back to that weekend. I’m just saying. It was a romantic bed and breakfast with the lovely Miss Beverly, and it was Minneapolis in early February. While Garrison is a huge star in the public radio world, it is a case of a big fish in a little pond so the tickets have always been affordable and the seats are good.

This show was different. It was a one man show.  He came out and started singing; singing songs that the audience knew and had sang from memory at one point in their lives. After a couple of songs, we received a wonderful invite to join him. He said that adults are seldom asked to sing along. It was a beautiful moment; 1700 people of common musical heritage, singing from their Psalter; Back Home Again, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, and I Come to the Garden Alone; all a cappella.

It struck me that he was right. We are not invited to sing as adults very often. Even in the rich church tradition that I experience, the invitation does not often come. I am sometimes admonished to sing when it dawns on the leadership that Sunday morning has become a concert with the band pumped up loud; loud enough that my lips are moving but I’m not sure that any sound makes it past my lips. It was a blessing; singing in the dark; our voices mixing and covering one another’s weaknesses.

It brought to mind Mark Twain. In fact, several things from the evening brought to mind Mark Twain. Samuel Clemmons, near the end of his life, turned very bitter. He had lost his wife and three of his children. The despair and vitriol are evident and strident in his writing. The essays were not published until 1960, in a book called Letters from Earth. The letters are written by Satan to the archangels Gabrielle and Michael. One of the major points in the essays was that the author had serious doubts about Christian’s claims to be looking forward to worshiping God forever. He claimed that we get bored of singing after 20 minutes. We get tired; start looking through the bulletin; wondering how long the sermon will last because “you don’t want the roast to burn back home.” That observation has resonated inside my head; usually when I have exhausted the bulletin and after I have “rested” my eyes for the second time during the sermon.

However, the singing a cappella in that darkened room old favorites stirred something an ignited a hope that there is something inside me that could reach out and touch the forever.

After singing, he launched into a review of his life; about growing up in Minnesota with his people. He described their stoic optimism forced upon them by their lives is northern Minnesota. Through the evening, he wove the maxims preached by his people and how they intersected with the events of his life. He mentioned repeatedly how lucky he had been. As he told stories and jokes, it struck me that this is what an evening with Mark Twain must have been like. It is remarkable what Mark Twain accomplished; the time period in which he flourished. How do you become an icon without Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Commercial radio had not become a phenomenon. He crossed the country to perform shows in front of sold out audiences. He became one of the wealthiest men in America and certainly the wealthiest entertainer. He was the Oprah of his time.

While Twain’s themes struck a strident tone, Garrison’s theme revolved around the luck in his life. The luck of events and opportunities that presented themselves after set backs; the luck surrounding his work in radio, leaving Minnesota; the luck of meeting the one teacher who could inspire his immersion into literature. It is interesting to see the results of the ruminations of the introspective.

Life exerts its pressures and blessings on us all. It appears that we take those influences in and make of them what we can. One sees the setbacks and turns bitter. Another sees the setbacks and recognizes how they forced a good turn into luck. I hope that I see the setbacks as a test persevered through and not broken by. For that, I am thankful.

Take care,

Roger.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

A free education shouldn't be cheap?


Dear Blog Reader;

I hope this finds you doing well. We have done it now. The first snow fall of winter has fallen on us this past week. A frigid Canadian cold air mass has snuck across the boarder and visited an inch of the white stuff upon us. Obviously the wooly worms are exacting their revenge for my Hilly Hundred shenanigans. It will be gone shortly. We will survive this season of our lives somehow.

Speaking of seasons, the Sharritt household is in the throes of pumpkin pie season. The lovely Miss Beverly loves pumpkin pie. In fact she could eat it year round. Fortunately, she married me, and I am able to place boundaries on her pumpkin pie eating fondness. Specifically, she loves store bought pumpkin pie. This is an odd thing when you look at it logically. Bev is an excellent pie maker. It’s true and not just family bias. She entered the Indy Star’s pie contest 5 years ago and came in 3rd in a controversial judging decision. The winner was some holiday confection. It was the middle of summer for goodness sake, and they went with the pie that would have slipped Santa Claus into a diabetic coma.

Yes, the lovely Miss Beverly is a documented expert pie maker. However, she is not a competitive pie maker. She loved the creative part; creating a wild black raspberry cream pie with a lemon crust. She enjoyed the testing and tweaking. She reveled in having 20 friends over for a tasting. She disliked the being judged.

The irony is that the lovely Miss Beverly, she of pie making expertise and artistry, loves store bought pumpkin pie. She of the light and flakey Crisco infused crust loves the 10 inch Costco cardboard crusted pumpkin pie. So every October through December, we experience the pumpkin pie season.

This week the hankering overcame the lovely Miss Beverly. I know the look in her eye. Sitting at the dinner table, she will peer longingly at the empty kitchen counter and sigh. After a few minutes, she will start to fidget. Finally, she will get up, walk to the freezer pull out the emergency tub of Cool Whip and put it into the fridge to thaw out. When she does that, I know that it is time. It is time to put on my coat, drive to the local Marsh and bring home a store bought pumpkin pie.

That is why I found myself at the store on Thursday evening having the following conversation with the checkout girl.

 The check out girl said “I can’t believe this pie is so expensive. The 8 inch pie is only two inches smaller but costs much less than the 10 inch pies.” (Note to Marsh management, please train your staff to not ridicule the customer for spending more money.)  Fearing that this youth had wasted my property tax support of her public education, I tried to help out by saying “It’s close to the same price.” Receiving a blank stare in return, I pushed on. I am an educator at heart.  “You see volume is pi r squared.” This isn’t exactly right. That is the formula for area. You would have to take that product above and multiply it by the height. However, I figure that you had to start someplace. I will introduce that concept when I buy a 10 inch pecan pie next week.

Any who. Bambi, or Barbie or Constance or Jessica or whatever her name was, looked at me in all seriousness and said “no pie are round.” Who am I kidding? I would have been proud of her if she had that much wit. I would have walked around the check out counter and given her a hug. I would have looked into her eyes and said, “very good job. Excellent job! Geometry may not be your strong suit but you have a literary wit about you. You’ll be okay.” Actually, she just stared at me blankly. Still uneducated prepared to buy $5.25 eight inch pies over the $8.00 10 inch pies for the rest of her life.

The sad part is that sometime during the past week, she or one of her cohort probably looked up at a math, science, or English teacher and whined, “Why do we have to learn that? We’ll never use it in real life.” I believe that there should be a zero tolerance policy for those words in schools. If you open your pie hole and let those words escape, you should be forced to spend the next week in a room without your “smart” phone, speaking and writing in full sentences, pondering where two trains will collide if they leave two cities, traveling toward one another, on the same track that is located 1.6 miles from your suspension room, at different speeds, carrying toxic acne producing chemicals that will form a 2 mile diameter “zit zone”, answering the question; how many phrases can you hook together with comas and semi-colons and not get a grammar ticket? How’s that for a real world application, dearie? Answer: It doesn’t matter. A 2 mile diameter “zit zone” will miss me by more than a half a mile so I stopped caring about your stupid story problem long before the actual question.

The list of things that are explained by useable knowledge that can be gleaned from a free public education is expansive; when to fill the gas tank so you aren’t doing the long trudge of shame with your $20 red gas can, why do ice cubes freeze together into a solid block when they are obviously melting, why your fritos are more expensive since the ethanol boom, or why a 8 inch pie for $5.50 is more expensive, per volume than a 10 inch pie for $8.00. In fact it is nearly half a cent per cubic inch more expensive. So you paid about 46 cents too much for your cheap 8 inch pie.

Don’t worry though. As Paul Simon predicted, the world will ensure that your “lack of education hasn’t hurt you none.” It will put pictures on the cash registers and have them count out the change for you. It will print calculated tip amounts on the bottom of your receipt. It will even put a green logo on the gas pump so that you can feel like you are doing the right thing while “driving” world food prices up.

It will even be glad to charge you a half a cent more for your pie and make you feel better in your clouded thinking. Those half cents add up during the pie season. Now if you have learned something from today’s lesson and sworn off your 8 inch pie ways, it is important to know one more thing. While your pie is just “2 inches larger”, you had better get an extra tub of cool whip just too even things out.

Take care,

Roger

Sunday, November 10, 2013

A pressing memory?


Dear Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am pretty good. Although the past two nights as I have finished my bike ride, I have witnessed two pair of glowing green eyes about 3 feet off the ground staring back at me from the hydrangea field. This field is about 200 yds from our front door. No those four eyes don’t belong to a pair of ghosts, or two really tall raccoons. It is a pair of assassin deer stalking me; coming ever closer, moving in for the kill. Am I worried? Nah. Just another 100 yards closer and I will walk out on my front porch early one late fall morning and I will bag me some venison. You don’t threaten a man on his own property without some serious repercussions.

You said what, Roger?, readership has reached an important milestone. This past week the 12,000 pair of eyes has perused these missives that I enjoy putting together each week. Thank you for your support. If you are a frequent reader, feel free to become a follower by clicking some line off to the right -à. I don’t know if it helps build readership, but it does give a face to people who really enjoy the blog and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling as I write.

Big doings in the Sharritt household this past gray November week. The lovely Miss Beverly has been hard at work making something for someone that involves fabric. I would share more but it is a secret. Also, it is a secret for someone who often reads the blog. So I hope that you will understand my furtiveness in this situation. Just know that someone will be very surprised and very pleased with the results of Miss Beverly’s artistic vision and handiwork. Is it you? Come now, you know that I can’t tell you that. Patience friend, please have a little patience.

On Tuesday evening, while frantically working with a nearing deadline, the lovely Miss Beverly looked at me with her lovely eyes and said, “I just want to say that I wish we would have kept that rolling iron 27 years ago.”

The incident of the rolling iron is one of the seminal events that our young married life was built upon. It was an event that showed us the stark differences in personality that would have to be compromised through in order to become one as our married life matured through the years. Thankfully, we have not often become a couple that marked victories and defeats in the marital balance sheet, taking care to keep a most careful ledger. There is no bitterness or rancor that has festered through the years of this seminal event. It has become one of the myths of our marriage.

Back when we were young and newly married, we loved to go to auctions. The thrill of the hunt was intoxicating. Stalking other people’s junk, finding their treasures, preparing to pay pennies for what was rightfully theirs, all combined for heady fun. Often times, these auctions were estate sales. Loved ones had passed and had so many accumulated knick-knacks, towels, and dish ware that the heirs could not possibly absorb it all. So after Billy Bob and Bobby Sue had pulled out the good silver, china, and quilts, the rest was piled on tables out in the yard for the neighbors and the curious to stake their claim on the remains. Every once in a while you would stumble across an auction where the heirs could not play nicely, and divide up the good stuff amicably. Each of as many as a dozen sides sure that Mom and Dad would want them to have the Mercedes, or the one carat diamond ring. Each one just as sure, prepared to state under oath that mom had said, just a week before her demise, “I want you have take the pie safe, when I’m gone.”

These auctions were a study in family dynamics. Sisters pitted against brothers, standing immovable at strategic spots in the auctioneer’s line of vision. Their arms encircled their purses. Their checkbooks grasped in white knuckled panic. Eyes danced between adversary and item. One could see brains doing the accounting of love. The careful observer could see the signs quickly, and really push the suspense to a climax by throwing a “uninterested” third party bid at a pivotal moment. This diabolical action would cause the head and heart computers working furiously at full capacity to nearly explode. You ask what we did before facebook and the internet. This is it. On Thursday, we would look for the auctions in the paper. On Saturday, we would get up and go watch some people.

The auction in question was a very low key affair; no drama. Which isn’t completely true, the lovely Miss Beverly and I brought our own. Things were progressing nicely. We had gotten a very nice green overstuffed rocking chair, and a TV. We were in solid agreement, in perfect lockstep, when the seeds of controversy were sown. It was a fairly large accumulation of stuff to be auctioned this day. Every auctioneer knows that you have to keep a certain momentum going or the crowds will lose interest and drift away. Following the laws of economics, supply will swamp demand and they will be selling wheelbarrows full of junk for a quarter.

To combat boredom and auction fatigue, they opened up two rings. Bev and I separated and I suddenly lost focus. I will admit that I love technologically complex contraptions that solve one small problem. If I were to deny it, I would be proven a liar by a simple perusal of my craigslist search list; unimog, big green egg, tandem bikes, shopsmith etc. . .

On this fine summer day, I saw the thing that would make everything right with the world. My discovery was an epiphany. The clouds were breaking up and a single shaft of sunlight shown down illuminating an automatic industrial sized steam roller iron.

This is what the Sharritt household needed. I hate ironing. Bev had never shown a desire to iron. Someday we might have jobs that required nicely pressed clothing. This was what we needed. The problem was there was no time to consult with the lovely Miss Beverly. It was the next item up for bid. To run and find her in the other auction ring, bring her over, explain the wonderful advantages to having an automatic steam roller iron, and decide on the appropriate highest bid, it would have all taken too long and they would auctioning the old golf bag with a rusty putter and driver poking out of the top.

This situation demanded swift and decisive action. I was stunned when they had trouble getting a starting bid of $50. The caller lowered expectations to $25 then $10. Still, no one started us out. Suddenly in the grips of inspiration, I blurted out “a dollar.” The dollar bid is the equivalent of saying “I will take it off your hands. Let’s get moving.” My bid was barely out of my mouth when to my shock and surprise, I heard the words “sold to number . . . 103.” I had done it. I had secured freshly pressed shirts in perpetuity. Surely, one of my children would inherit it. This would insure that my offspring would be sharp dress men that the world would go crazy over for generations to come.

I could not wait to show the lovely Miss Beverly this treasure. I must admit that I was a bit naïve. I thought that automatic meant that all you had to do was throw a shirt on top of the throat to the rollers, turn on the switch and it would pull them through pressing out the wrinkles as they passed between the massive, padded, steam-filled, rollers. Looking over my prize, figuring out how it would work, I was a bit disappointed at the lack of capacity. There was no hopper on top. With a hopper, the busy family could load it up turn on the switch and press an entire week’s worth of clothing hands free. After a bit of cogitation, I figured that twenty minutes with some cardboard, utility knife and some duct tape the capacity problems would be solved.

I was hopeful and dying to show the lovely Miss Beverly my revolutionary new find that I purchased for a dollar. This is where my naivety failed me. I was showing off the many advantages of our new automatic industrial steam iron, when Bev pointed out that you couldn’t just throw your shirts, pants, underwear, and socks on top and the wrinkles would automatically be pressed away. No you had to carefully fold your clothing and feed them through carefully or the wrinkles would be pressed into the fabric.

Carefully fold them and feed them through? Are you sure? It says automatic. Carefully fold them and feed them through? That would be like the automatic dishwasher that I have the scrap and rinse the dishes for in order for it to “wash” them. That is bogus. Bev assured me that it was bogus but true. I had spent a dollar to carefully fold and feed cloths into the “automatic” iron. This was a definite technological step backwards.

And this is where the fun began; where our different temperaments showed through. When that auctioneer said sold, I heard him say “we have entered into a covenant. You will pay me $1, and you will take this piece of crap home.” I said in my mind, “Yes, I will pay you $1 and I will take this fantastic automatic industrial sized steam roller iron and make my life better.” The lovely Miss Beverly entered into no such covenant. When the word sold flew out of the auctioneer’s mouth, she entered into an agreement to pay $1 and leave that piece of crap here if she wanted to.

You can see that the storm was coming. Two different world views were heading toward a collision course. Thankfully, life’s circumstances would force a solution. We were poor. Consequently, we were still driving an old 74 Camaro with little back seat room and no trunk room. Something would have to be left behind. We could take the chair and TV, or the TV and the iron, but not the chair and the iron. Something had to be voted off of the island. I knew that the TV and the chair would work. Bev’s logic managed to penetrate my delusions of hands free ironing. I could see the validity of her argument. I had wasted a dollar on a pipe dream. However, there was still the covenant. “You will take this piece of crap home.” After much huffing, puffing and muttering, the laws of physics proved themselves firm and unyielding. You cannot put 10.5 cubic feet of things into a 10.25 cubic foot space. It was a 45 minute drive home. So a covenant rescue trip to bring home the iron was a 90 minute fool’s errand.

So, we left it; sitting on the edge of a bean field a little worse for wear with a few scratches with the pushing and pulling of trying to have it all. It became a little story of our life together. Then in a moment of kindness and grace this week, Bev remembered it and thanked me for the memory of something I was willing to give up 27 years ago. It seems that old iron could press one more time; a memory on our hearts.

Take care,

Roger

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Stop messing with me.


Dearest blog reader.

I hope this finds you doing well. I am fine. Yes, looking through properly focused glasses gives one a different perspective and a better outlook on life.

I finished last week's blog with the thought of coasting down hill after a long trip up hill. I did not realize how prophetic those sentiments would be. All week long, I had nothing to write about. There was that one thing at work, but I have made it my personal rule not to write about work. I was tempted. I was walking through the valley of the shadow of idea death. I had nothing and three of my prime writing days were past. I should have been in full editing and revision mode, and I had nothing.

Thankfully, life continued. Government is still ignorant and is happily churning out ideas that make my libertarian heart cringe; stupid, vapid ideas providing easy opportunities for ridicule and derision.

First, my friends at the N eophytes S tanding A round got caught red handed, or is that red eared, for listening to German chancellor, Angela Merkel’s cell phone calls. The Germans cried foul.  All of Europe has cried that "You can't spy on your allies." The Germans have demanded an apology. To which I reply in nationalistic fervor, "don't hold your breath." I do not remember any apology from the N ubbin S couring A colytes to the American people for eavesdropping on our phone calls or for reading this blog without contributing to my reader stats. Far from apologizing, I have read of no repudiation or cessation of the practice. You will know when I have heard the apology, and the practice has stopped. I will immediately stop using the clever ruse that I have successfully employed to confuse certain unnamed supercomputers, but don’t hold your breath.

So while the Germans were turning blue from holding their, waiting for an apology, breath, our local government was busy playing nanny state, bending the laws of nature, the calendar and recognized holidays. They changed Halloween from October 31, to November 1 for child safety; the big sissies. They got too scared to dress up in scary costumes and scream boo at the doors of friends, neighbors, and strangers. If a miscreant youth had tried to extort cheap chocolate candy from me on November 1 without the official auspices of the authorities, I would have released my Rottweiler on the grounds on my spacious estate. This would have provided a challenge since I don't own a Rottweiler. Maybe I could have rented one. Who knows?

I just know that I dislike sissies and I don't like people who don't have the good sense to regulate their own lives. Sure, it was going to be a stormy Halloween night. The weather guy gave us plenty of warning. Bored, for a lack of hurricanes this season, he hit the panic button for central Indiana severe weather potential on Wednesday. "Beware strong winds, heavy rain, high potential for severe weather", were his clarion calls. In more self-reliant times, hearing the sincere and maybe accurate predictions, tough minded people would have had two choices.

The more timid could be sad. They could say "I am sorry kids. It is too dangerous to go out this year. Maybe next year." Clearly, this would be an unpopular and possibly crushing decision for the youths of central Indiana. However, the parent's tough minded gift would have been more valuable than two bags of candy; teaching the youths that life is full disappointment, there is always next year, and this too shall pass.

The more brazen and adventurous could dress their children up as witches wearing ruby shoes; secretly hoping that they would win the most authentic costume when a house landed on them. Clearly, this would be a popular and possibly crushing decision for the youths of central Indiana. However, this parent's tough minded gift would have been more valuable than two bags of candy; teaching the youths that life may be dangerous but you can't let fear rule your life, get out there keep your eyes open and get ready to run if a house is about land on you. Thankfully, my niece and nephew in Illinois is counted in the second camp. Michelle and Joe were proud of the fact that they just went anyway was we were discussing the topic this weekend during a visit.

First it is Halloween. What's next Christmas? Rather than calling on a drunken reindeer with his red nose so bright to lead the way on a foggy Christmas Eve, are we going to postpone Christmas until the weather is safer? What would happen to Boxing Day? Would it cause panic attacks in Canada or England? Will Boxing Day the 26th or the 27th this year? When will the governor declare the change? It’s just too much.

It won’t stop there. The next thing you know the nanny state will decide to change the time twice a year. The next thing you know I will be having the following conversation with the Lovely Miss Beverly when waking up in the Illinois relative’s bedrooms on the first Sunday of November.

Bev: “What time is it?”
Roger: “Depends.”
Bev: “On what.”
Roger: “The ipad says 6:47. At home it is 7:47. Yesterday, it was 8:47. Ouch!
Bev: “What’s wrong?”
Roger: “That made my head hurt.

Take care,

Roger.