Can't the Golden Rule be learned?

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I feel that I must take a moment to apologize to my New England readers. No, I stand by my negative opinions about your cheating coach and quarterback. I do want to apologize that our wimpy weathermen and women sounded an alert and declared a winter storm warning for five inches of very fluffy snow. It is a bit embarrassing to call that a winter storm when you get feet of snow over and over again. It is just wrong that we would empty our grocery store shelves for what must seem like flurries for you.

I have another bone to pick with the weather people. What in the heck is the difference between a Winter Vortex and a Siberian Express? I do not remember the Niagara Falls freezing over with last year’s Winter Vortices. This year and a week of fast moving Siberians and we have pictures flying around the world of Niagara Falls doing its impersonation of an ice apocalypse. It is very convincing as an ice apocalypse I might add. I used to whine and complain that my kids never had a desire to take up the sciences and discover teleportation. I am mostly over it now. However, I would like to see Niagara Falls frozen over. But I don’t want to see them badly enough to drive 12 hours to go see them. A three second teleportation, now I could do that. I probably don’t need to see it for more that about ½ hour. I could zip right back then; download the video to YouTube and be ready for my Sunday afternoon nap.

I wonder if you were to teleport me from Niagara Falls would you teleport the air that was around me too. If it does, it stands to reason that you teleport blocks of cold air from one point to the other. How cool would that be? Pun intended. You could get a block of Siberia’s finest and teleport it to the beach where your sister is escaping from the ravages of winter and in a second have her rueing the day she posted that beach sunset on Facebook with the taunt "wish you were here" . The best part is she couldn’t do anything back to you. What is she going to do teleport a block of 80 degrees back at you. I say let her try. Oh wait a second, while I get my swim trunks on. I don’t want to sweat in the 3 flannel shirts that I am wearing these days.

I suppose that a sister could show some real imagination and teleport an alligator up to my living room. That would cause some real discomfort in a hurry. But it would be a warm alligator; every cloud and its silver lining. Things could get out of hand in a very big hurry. The next thing you know, the government would have to get involved. They would have to say “thou shalt not teleport alligators to another individual’s house; not even if they had taunted you with a blast of Siberian express while you were resting on the beach.”

There goes the government short circuiting our natural learning curve. Given a few months we would quickly figure out why the Golden Rule is golden. It works. If everyone uses it, no alligator bites in retaliation for Siberian Express attacks. Oh sure there would be an incidents of missing fingers and I suppose even a few deaths while the learning was getting started. But don’t we have enough rules to handle that? It seems that a few manslaughter convictions would set things right. You could publish pictures and results on Facebook and by and large people would straighten up and fly right all on their own. As would be natural with any learning curve some people would fail to get it. But in the end they would thin themselves out.

 And without all that red tape.

Take Care

Roger

Jealously raises its ugly (pale) head?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. It is a bright Sunday morning. We have sent our best to friends in New England. We figured that we would try to help them inflate their footballs with 26 mph sustained winds and gusts of over 40 mph. So we have sent our little gusts of wind over the tundra to mix with the moisture off of the coast and viola what were some gusty winds and a few intense snow showers will be a full blown blizzard for you.

 Enjoy! Gorgeous days like today temp me to run out and take a picture of the nearest sunbathed

thermometer hovering around 10 degrees. Then I will download it to Facebook and taunt all of my friends who have ran off to Palm Springs and Florida and places of warmth. “Weather’s great here. Can’t wait until you get back.” Yeah we can’t wait until you get back because you are going to be the first ones we eat when things get tough. Make sure to keep basting in that coconut oil suntan lotion. Yummy.

I swear that is what is going to happen if any more of you send back pictures of your tropic destination with sun, surf, and sand in the background. Have a little pity. I have used the pages of this blog to try to get you to show a little restraint in the past. But you blithely go and taunt us; the wretched ones staying behind, feeding your cats, walking your dogs, bringing in the paper, and making sure that your water pipes did not freeze. You repay these acts of kindness with some shells and pictures of paradise that deepen our winter of discontent.

I know that I should be happy for you. You earned it. You have been a great neighbor. Enjoy, take a break. Relax and rejuvenate. Does it mean that I am a small minded, petty, jealous person? I am afraid that it does. It is time to name my shortcomings, repent and hopefully struggle to become a little better person. "Great tan friend!"

Take care.

Roger

Getting It Right.

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The groundhog did or did not see his shadow. Who knows and why do we let the Pennsylvanians rule the roost of prognostication? What does a Pennsylvanian ground rodent know about the weather in say Nebraska or Oregon or Arizona? For that matter do Arizonans even participate in this annual ritual? What do they care if they have 6 more weeks before it gets up to 80?

Enough questions! You didn’t come here for questions. You came here for answers. I read the other day while laughing at the picture of the groundhog biting the Mayor’s ear. I read that the groundhog gets the prediction wrong 40% of the time. He is worse than a coin. I don’t think that it is his fault though. We should just turn around the criteria; six more weeks of winter if he sees his shadow. Viola, he is suddenly correct 60% of the time.   

It would not be that hard to recalibrate. No one really remembers if it is shadow or not that is the winter longevity predictor. We rely on the TV to tell us each year. Maybe a weatherman had weather dyslexia and got it all jumbled around and it stuck. Show a little flexibility you weather cultists. Just change it around. Shadow equals winter; sun equals spring and the little rodent gets it right 60% of the time. Which thinking about it is more often than the weatherman gets it correct. Wait a minute! I get it. Oh you are tricky you weather people you. You have latched on to this myth, reinforced it with a delightful movie and convinced us that you are the authority because at least you get the forecast right more often than the groundhog. You are very tricky.

I have been in a confessional quandary the past few weeks. Three weeks ago the lovely Miss Beverly waxed rhapsodic about my perfect performance of laundry folding in a guest blog. I was very flattered. It felt good but for the life of me I couldn’t pinpoint what I did differently from all of the other times that I have folded the laundry. By the time that the feat was spread far and wide, all evidence of laundry proficiency had been swept into the closet and drawers. Oh how I wished that I had known what magic I had pulled out of the dryer. I rue the day that I decided long ago to not get a GoPro. I could have been filming myself doing laundry in hopes of capturing the image of perfect laundry. What steps did I take? How did I get it right this time?

I have improved my laundry skills over time. I have learned things. I have figured out that the lovely Miss Beverly likes her slacks and pants folded into thirds. No problem. Well okay there is a problem with that. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. They are a pair of pants after all. They have two legs which even the lovely Miss Beverly puts on one leg at a time. For symmetries sake, they should be folded in half. I suppose the one plus two does equal three which is a trick that could help me remember. But I have persevered and learned it through 29 years of trial and error. I have learned no reds with the whites. Actually, I learned that at Purdue that institution of higher education. Yeah, I learned that the first week.

But I have not learned all that I performed on that one magical weekend. The next week while doing the after doing the laundry. I admitted that I had not performed as admirably. I admitted that I had forgotten what I had done correctly the previous week. I knew that somehow I had sorted the folded laundry just right. However, I could not for the life of me put my finger on the sorting pattern. The only thing that I could figure is that the stars had aligned just right and the order that the laundry went into the washer and then the dryer was aligned perfectly for the folding procedures. Like a million monkeys in a room with a million typewriters for a million years, one of them will type the complete works of William Shakespeare in between bouts of throwing feces at one another.

That week was my one shining moment. I do wonder if it was all of mankind’s one shining moment. Was I the monkey that knew the Juliet was calling for Romeo from that balcony and could answer Hamlet’s question about being or not being? I do know that pulling static charged socks from the lovely Miss Beverly’s lacey things was such sweet sorrow.

Speaking of such sweet sorrow; I had a moment this past week of such perfect clarity that I was experiencing a perfect day. On Wednesday morning, I got up bright and early for my morning bike ride. There was no ice on the roads and there was a full moon. I decided to ride my bike outside. The weather was perfect; 28 degrees and little wind. Also, the two inches of snow that had fallen recently was still on the fields.

It must be an odd sight for my neighbors. This 52 year old lunatic walking his bike to the end of his snow covered drive at 5:00 a.m. He sits down in the middle of the snow cleared road and changes into his bicycle cleats. How they must scratch their heads his warning lights blinking on his bike and his helmet sitting there for 3 or 4 minutes changing shoes. It must be strange driving by for the next hour seeing a pair of shoes discarded in a snowbank by the mailbox. “Why in the world are there shoes in the Sharritt’s side ditch? I wonder if they are free for the taking.”

It would no stranger of a site than if they had been following a mile later when I turned onto 750W. Coming out of the darkness of a small woods, my bike gaining speed descending into the Fall Creek valley, I burst into the bright moonlit landscape; the moon’s light amplified by the flat snow covered fields on either side of the road. I opened my mouth and shouted nonsense in celebration of such a perfect morning. The entire time tears were streaming down my face because my audio book of Harry Potter had reached its climax as Harry goes to face Voldemort.

Isn’t that the way; especially in the winter? You climb out of your hole. You do the chores? You go on a bike ride and sometimes it turns out perfect. When it does, you just have to celebrate. But maybe we shouldn’t just celebrate the perfection. Maybe we should celebrate all of the times that we tried.

Take Care

Roger