I hope they love dandelions.

Dearest Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The world that I live in is a bit upside down.  We have been sitting here all day waiting for the big snow. The day started out promising. Waking up, the snow had started by 8:00 a.m. and by time for church we had a couple of inches on the ground. I was of two minds with this development. I am getting stronger every weekend with my training for the big ride. The one thing that I am having trouble with is the fatigue from the activity. Riding 50 to 75 miles in a day makes me sleepy. I wanted to ride today but was doing the secret happy dance on the inside. I secretly planning a snowy afternoon nap. Low and behold, two hours later the promised snow was delayed and the earlier accumulations had melted. So I got up and put on my riding cloths and road 26 miles, with 25 mile an hour winds. I didn’t ride very quickly for most of it. However, the miles are over and here I am.

I am sitting in front of a screen typing away as the snow starts in earnest. It is hard to believe that 6 Sunday’s from today I will be writing the first blog after the 1^st day of riding. Looking further into the future, ten Sunday’s from today, Grace will be married 24 hours. The die has been cast. The wedding has become this huge event at the end of spring that our lives have been pointed towards for a while now. The Sharritt’s, those intrepid do it yourselfers, have taken on a list of tasks in the hopes of trading work for money.

The first was freeing the wedding meadow from the thorny clutches of the honey locust trees. Eight weeks worth of cutting, cussing, and dragging cleared out the area surrounding the ancient oak tree in the meadow down over the hill. It will be beautiful. April showers and warmer weather will bring greener pastures. I will get out the new rotary mower and start manicuring the acre and a half along with the adjacent acre parking lot. There are three thorn tree piles that must be ruthlessly dealt with. I will show them the fires of hell and drive the prickly demons scratching and clawing into the very bowels of the pit.

In September, we began another fool’s errand. Larkspur was one of our favorite early summer flowers when we farmed. The 2 foot spikes of lavender, pinks, blue, or white are striking flowers. They are fairly easy to grow when you know the secret handshake. Don’t worry. I am going to share it with you. That way you will be tempted to go out and save hundreds of dollars for your daughter’s wedding. I know. I will put it out on PinInterest. The secret is to plant the larkspur in the fall, let it germinate and watch it grow on in the spring. June 1 is a bit ambitious. June 15^th is a pretty easy goal for these beautiful flowers. But who knows? Last year’s 80 degree days in March would have been perfect.

So last August, we bought a lot of seed. The seed takes 6 weeks of cold temperatures to encourage germination. So I threw them into the fridge with the hope of a mid September sowing. The rains had returned by then and I planted 8 rows of Larkspur in a little garden we have right off the back of the house.

Larkspur takes a lot of patience and faith. It will sit there nearly 3 weeks before it germinates. In order to improve our chances of success, a second planting in needed. Fall and cold weather was on the way. The second planting had to be made two weeks later before the first had even germinated. Successive planting, is the best chance for success in farming. Low and behold a week after the second planting the first planting decided to make its appearance. Two weeks later, the second planting emerged lush and green. That was great. All that had to be done then was wait.

Wait we did. Late October, November, December, January, all passed without undue frigid weather. The snow cover from time to time was helpful. February 2^nd dawned cloudy and gray providing the faint hope delivered by the shorthaired brown rodent oracle from Punxsutawney. An early spring was proclaimed and hope sprang within our bosoms. Why do we put such faith in our oracles? We all know that the overgrown rat could not and cannot predict the meteorological epochs of our time. However, over and over those six weeks, I believed that spring was just around the corner. The weather would turn, the larkspur would break dormancy and the race would be on for June 1^st. Now insult upon injury, we have snow on the 25^th day of March. At this rate, the daffodils and tulips will not have bloomed by June 1^st.

So stay tuned, it will be a race to the finish. We have a couple of tricks up our sleeves. There may still be time to get the larkspur blooming by June 1^st.  And if not, it reminds us that the wedding is not the marriage. Marriage is a series of hopes and dreams. Plans made and followed; some successful; others not so much. Most of all marriage is a series of successful compromises.

Hope they love dandelions.

 

Take care,

Roger

The Chicken Crossed the Road?

Dearest Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. It leaves my typing fingers a little sore. I upped the training rides for the Cover Indiana ride this past week. 50 miles at a 15 mph clip a week ago Saturday; 75 miles yesterday at only 14 miles per hour, plus assorted 15 milers after work. I have no idea if that is good or not; if I will be able to complete six consecutive 60 mile rides. It does give me pause.  The poet in me thinks that the first down stroke on that Sunday morning in May will be the hardest. The realist in me says “are you crazy? The 10,000^th through the 10,000,000^th will be much harder.” In the end, I am pretty sure that I will be better off if I don’t take both of them with me. I choose either the poet or the realist and stop dithering.

The 75 mile trip is just a little longer than the longest leg of the Cover Indiana tour. It has been very cool to have this big goal for the 1^st week of May. It is what got me out yesterday; the sky was gray and overcast. In places on my ride, the clouds came down to the ground and I was riding in the fog and light mist. It is a goal that convinced me to wonder “where do you go for 75 miles?” It is a goal that delighted me to find that you can go from my door to my daughter’s door in 76 miles. So I went the extra mile to catch up with Grace, eat a wonderful pasta lunch and an get the opportunity to warm up as my body cooled down. It is a goal where I confused March 16^th low 40 degree weather with May 6^th 68 degree weather, so I did not wear enough warm weather gear and felt like an ice cube the last 10 miles with the 14 mph wind cutting through me.

While my legs were pretty tired at the end of both rides, I am more concerned about how I am going to hold my head up out over my handlebars for the 360 miles this May. You wouldn’t think that it would be a huge challenge. I don’t have a freakishly large head. I manage to walk around all day long without propping my head up. I don’t have to take 5 minute breaks every hour to lay my head on a pillow or let my chin slump to my chest. I have had pretty good luck at keeping my head erect all day long. However, it appears that different forces are exerted on the noodle when leaning forward on a bike for 3.5 or 5.5 hours while riding the back roads of central Indiana.

My fifty miler did give me a certain amount of confidence that I can make the entire route in six weeks. Actually, it was not the 50 miles. It was the 32 mile mark. I had been following the same route as previous rides. In the past, at the 32 mile mark, I would have been getting to the end of my rope. I couldn’t go any further. However, last week, I felt really good at 32 miles. Hope is at the end of the tunnel. I was confident that I will survive the first day of the six day journey.

The confidence that was garnered at the 32 mile mark was lost at the 73 mile mark yesterday. I was three miles from home. The best I could muster on my bike with a 14 mile 41 degree cross wind was a paltry 12 miles per hour. I was coming up on the 500 S – SR 9 cross road. I had to stop; look both ways; do the story problem. If a semi-truck leaves that spot 300 yards away at 55 mph and the tired biker leaves his spot at 2 mph, will they meet? Thankfully, I was so tired that the truck was past before I could write out the answer. In that moment, I wondered how and doubted that I was going to make it those last three miles. How am I going to make it 360 miles in May? So the chicken crossed the road; trudged on home, changed out of its bike shoes and slowly put one foot in front of another into the house; goal accomplished.

My other training is going fantastic. I am currently sustaining a pint a day ice cream habit; no problem at all. My head is not getting heavy. My legs are feeling good. My spoon hand is getting fit and toned. I am so ready, to eat the ice cream that you are bringing to meet me on the road. I am ready, to spend and evening with you and yours on an early May evening with the flowers and future of summer opening up to us. I am ready to write every evening about all of those things you want me to write.

I hope that your training is going well.

Take care,

Roger

Epic times?

Dearest Blog Reader.

That was an epic week. I hope that yours was also, but if not, I am prepared to let you live vicariously through me.

Monday night the town of Ingalls declared their intentions in public forum to annex our farm. In one fell swoop, the Sharritt family 197 acres will nearly double the town size.  Annexation is probably one of the least democratic functions of government. Over the last fifty years of my life I have not wanted to be part of a town or any organized living arrangement. I have specifically eschewed such kind of arrangements. I have always felt that what’s mine is mine and yours is yours. Live your life any way you want. Paint your house any color you want. Hang your clothes on the cloths line in the back yard. Let your dog run off the leash. Don’t pick up your dog’s poop. Build a big shed out back and never quite get around to putting shingles over the tar paper finally resorting to covering it with blue tarp.

I do not care. Just don’t annex me. I don’t need your foundation protection services (volunteer fire service). I can provide my own animal control. I have 197 acres. I don’t need your parks and recreational services. I have consistently held these views. If I would have been able to vote in Ingalls elections, I would have been a one issue voter. With this democratic influence, the board would have represented this kind of sane thinking. But no, it is filled with people who want to protect their own property values by making you do things with your property rather than make improvements to their own property. So in more than 30 days but less than 60 days, they will vote. Then I can run for town council. I think that I will ban shingles on all new construction.

Wednesday night, I woke up in the middle of the night. Distraught, beside myself, I had a recurring dream about peanut butter cookies. Peanut Butter cookie dreams for me are code for all things which are arbitrary bull crap and since it is arbitrary it is patently unfair and wrong. It is a bed rock of my existence. If you are a long time reader, you may remember “Where does it say that” from February 2012. Suffice it to say the annexation on Monday and a situation at work on Tuesday comingled and clawed their way up through my subconscious so that eyes bolted open. Sitting straight up in bed, I silently said "That's arbitrary bull crap", slid out of bed, padded into the man cave, turned on the mother hen, and proceeded to self-administer 2 hours of counseling by working through all that bothered my and reciting the serenity prayer repeated. Thankfully, it was good counsel, sleep came and my advice, when implemented in the light of day, made things better. Although, the ancestral lands will be annexed in a couple of months.

Friday came, Bev and I committed to supporting her sister and family by going to the viewing for her mother-in-law. The viewing was in Corydon (yes, Indiana’s first state capital). We took off in the late afternoon on Friday, enjoyed watching the blue Herons south of Columbus. Iconically, they looked like the bombers over England as they flew overhead in their V-formations against the gray backdrop of a low, clouded, Indiana sky.

Then a few miles from Scotsburg, a thump, the yellow low tire light confirmed that we had a flat. Bev and I did great. We jumped out, identified the offending tire. We positioned the car for maximum protection against the truck vortexes as they zoomed past. We popped the trunk and with a few Indy 500 moves were back on the road within 15 minutes. Thankfully, we were within 3 miles of an exit that had a Walmart with a service center. So 45 minutes later, (an hour from the pop), after extensive sociologic study of the denizens of Walmart on a Friday night in rural southern Indiana, we were back on our way.

Certainly, we were still worried about arriving so late but we had gone that far and we did have cookies that needed to be delivered. As we wound our way through downtown Corydon, cataloging the names of nut trees on street signs, we turned at the corner of Chestnut and knew that we had arrived and everything was okay. It was a sign from the Almighty. Off to the right, the Butt Drugs sign shown brightly in the dark wet street. What 13 year old doesn’t draw comfort and inspiration for any thing butt? Butt Drugs in a 13 year old mind is magic. There are so many things that can be done with it. Trust me, some boring weekend, You Said What, Roger? will go about plumbing these depths so to speak. For now I leave you with the Youtube video of their commercial.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYYdF0zcuSI

After spending an hour with people who love one another and loved their mother and are comfortable in their own skin, we recognized the sign of being blessed by their welcoming warmth and kindness.

Saturday brought a groggy awakening to the social event of the late winter. Beverly, she of gifted hospitality, had invited 20 friends over to make wedding pennants for Grace’s wedding. This thousand word picture should explain the magic that occurred. 1225 feet of pennant covers our house now and portends a season of celebration as Grace’s and Chris’ wedding approaches. Bev’s example has inspired me so much. I think I will invite my guy friends over and we will make an outhouse out in the wedding meadow by lashing thorn tree trunks together in a privacy enclosure. Even bears like to poop in the woods in rustic style.

 

 

Finally, the path to the Cover Indiana ride continues to unfold in training rides. I traversed 70 miles last weekend and 80 miles this weekend. You too can exercise your giving by going to the website that follows and click on the donation button. Take a few moments to think about what you want your sponsored leg ($60) blog to be about.

 

http://www.hfhcoverindiana.org/

Butt drugs is all mine. You will have to exercise your imagination a little harder to conger up your own epic topic.

Take care.

 

Roger

Late Winter Therapy?

Dearest Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I must admit that the feelings of panicked claustrophobia are starting to rise in my sternum. I look out at the ice covered frozen tundra, sun pouring through my blog writing nook window, mother hen at my feet. I am despondent. When will it end; this endless winter? I braved the boxing day “blizzard” and the deep darkness of January. I rejoiced when the Ground Hog did not see his shadow. Yet, I sit here struggling through my birthright as a Hoosier. What was the dromedary back breaker? I believe that it was the facebook post last evening from a so called “friend” Their son was enjoying the evening practicing baseball; spring training for little leaguers. Argh. Looking at the young man all tanned, smiling, in short sleeves, is that perspiration on his brow, it was almost too much to bear.

Who am I kidding? It is too much to bear; hence the despondency. When I close my eyes, I can see Klinger on MASH running out of the mess tent, tearing off his fur coat, yelling “I can’t take it anymore.” I really can’t take it any more. In six short weeks, I will have rendered unto Caesar that which he felt due. The tulips will bloom. The wedding meadow will be mowed, and this day will be a distant memory, but today it seems so far away. I have an ache in my heart for warm weather, spring flowers, and growing gardens. In theory, in 9 short weeks, I will be embarking on the big bike tour. (Thank you Sue and Amy for your sponsorships).

I believe that the only thing that makes this day bearable is the hope that if it stays cold for a while longer, if we commit to leaving our flannels on the bed until early May, the apples will bloom at the appropriate time and we will be blessed with unpasteurized apple cider from Tranbarger’s apple barn in late September. Won’t it be worth it? The golden brew of fuji, MacIntosh, Granny Smith, red and golden delicious, all squeezed together. Their nectars of sweet and tart mixing together, trickling out of the press as the pressure builds, running down the trough to the holding tank.

 

The first gallon bought along with 2 pecks of an assortment of apples. Service paid for with the question. Change given with a quick answer; "pretty good, should have apples through October." And then at home, the lovely aroma caresses your nose as you open the gallon jug straight from the fridge. You carry the glass out to the patio, sit in the Adirondack, and look out over the woods, the leaves starting to change, and you savor what you have not had for two years.

Then you understand, the cold should persist through early or mid March. Last year, was wrong. Cutting the grass the second week of March is not what God intended. Patience will be rewarded. In time, everything will be put right. While the earth is tilting back to the sun, it is too early to reap all of its benefits. Its lengthened presence is really just the harbinger of the good.

Wait. Wait. Wait. It will come. It will be okay.

Take care,

Roger

Pigtails are forever?

Dearest Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. I am trapped inside with cold weather; waiting for the sun to melt the little snow, that fell last night in an unexpected squall, from the road so that I can get a good ride in. As I sit here, I am contemplating the 10 boxes of pigtails on the kitchen table. “Pigtails” is my affectionate nickname of compact fluorescent bulbs; the squiggly cork screw reminding me of a pig’s tail. I suppose that if I a bit more precise in my nicknaming processes, I would call them albino pigtails. However, the nicknaming exercise has never been one of precision. For example, while called chief, I have never worn an elaborately plumed headdress.

Back to the boxes of pigtails on the kitchen table; these are the culmination of a Costco trip by the lovely Beverly. As she came around the corner, passing the samples of pulled pork, a cheesy sandwich wonder, and a small splash of coffee, they were laid out in spectacular display; box upon box, row upon row. A banner is spread above proudly proclaiming that with the rebate, each box is only a dollar. One dollar for four bulbs, two bits for a quad, is a deal that is hard to ignore. According to the box, for this one dollar, you will be able to excite photons for 40,000 hours. 40,000 hours of illumination for 100 pennies. That is 4.5 years of 24 hours a day lighting. That is impressive.

Let’s see here; 4.5 years a box. “How many boxes did you get Bev?” The silence spoke volumes. One, two, threee, fourr, five, sixxxx, sevinnnnn, eighttttttt, nineeeeeee, tennnnnnnn. We got 10 boxes of pigtails. That is 400,000 hours of photon excitement. 45 years in the light. Amazing. It is a good thing that I have just passed the 1/3 marker post of the race of my life. I am making a note, just in case I find myself standing in Costco wondering how many lights we need to illumine our path through old age. We will need 12 boxes of lights at the age of 95. That should just about do it. We should get to 150 illuminated.

Sensing that a 45 year supply of light bulbs may be perceived as a bit much, Bev quickly leapt to her own defense. “We have a lot sockets. It’s not like we will only burn one light at a time, doggedly unplugging a lamp, moving from room to room in search of an outlet.” “Of course not,” I respond. “We have to have two lamps. We have to leave one of the two plugged in at all times in order be able to find the outlet when moving from room to room in the classic leapfrog maneuver.” I found out that wasn’t what she meant at all. She meant putting one of the pigtails in all of the 30 or so sockets through out the house. If that is the case, it is completely possible that the one we put behind the knee wall in the attic where we store the Christmas decorations and keep the digital TV antenna will still be viable long after the world is wiped out by a meteorite striking in Siberia.

It is nice to know that future highly evolved cockroaches will have the opportunity to stumble upon this lost technology and be left in frustration when they turn on the light in a cold house and have to wait 15 minutes while the phosphorus molecules become excited enough to emit little bundles of light.

We all have that something don’t we? Well at least everyone in the Sharritt household have that something; that something that you just can’t get enough of. It appears to be pigtail florescent light bulbs for Bev. For me, it is utility knives. I cannot get enough of them. I need one at arms length at all times. Who knows when a box with particularly tough packing tape may arrive from the tightest ship in the shipping business? The only thing standing between you and that new Lands End coat may be that 1 inch retractable razor sharp blade. There is another bonus to owning tons of utility knives. If all of the utility knives are lying around your house and workshop, then jihadists maybe thwarted in their evil attempts at mayhem.

I have to admit that I am also partial to flashlights, tomato product, and toilet paper. But the toilet paper is totally legit. When I was growing up, there were times when the supply at home ran out and we were forced to using leaves, corn cobs, and other products in “off label” use so to speak. I and my sisters were permanently scarred. Scarring that runs so deep that in one case an entire closet was tasked to hold only this most precious of commodities. So for Bev, the thing is energy saving long lasting light bulbs.

It is good to know that as long as the electrical grid is intact the Sharritt household can leave the light on for you.

Take care,

Roger

This just in; I just read the fine print the 10,000 hour average life is “based on normal household use of 3 hours a day. These bulbs last up to 10,000 hours.” This is very disappointing. It would appear, if I am understanding their convoluted advertising bs, that the bulbs last for 1.5 years when burning 3 hours a day. Well, in that case, we’d better get back to Costco.

Take care,

Roger.

A cautionary tale?

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Last Sunday, I found myself sitting in front of the mother hen trying to bring my core temp back up to an acceptable level. The mother hen is a space heater that Bev and I move from room to room in order to keep comfortable during the cold winter months. Things have moderated in the past week, but mother hen continues to provide deep and immediate comfort.

We like to sleep in a cold room. We are gone most days at work. Consequently, we find it difficult to heat the house instantly to the balmy 72 degrees demanded by our ancestors, and by upbringing ourselves, when they heated the house with the brute force of a 60% efficient gas furnace. A house that was poorly insulated; where half of the storm windows fit so poorly, they rattled in the wind, and at some points, snow could be seen drifting in. This was done with furnaces so powerful that stepping on the register could cause pain or even leave waffle brands on the bottoms of feet. Sitting on the register required asbestos shorts or at least a pot holder. Such were those heady days of inexpensive natural gas.

Not so today, the 99% efficient furnace/air pump, throws heat into the room barely the 98.2. The same temp of we the people. Longing for the olden days, Bev and I bought a space heater. We are ever mindful of the danger that its comfort giving warm could turn on us in a moment of inattention and set our quilt on fire as we try to create that magical bubble of 80 degrees in our immediate vicinity. We love the mother hen and the warmth and protection she creates.

I mentioned that I was sitting in front of the mother hen trying to warm up. I had just gone on an invigorating 23 degree bike ride with 16 mile per hour winds blowing in my face half of the time. Argh! I was so cold. In the delirium brought about by the burning sensation of frost bit toes warming up ever so slowly, I panic trying to remember if you warm up frostbit extremities with warm or cold water. I panic further hoping that the wrong choice won’t leave me with some sort of permanent damage.

Some place along this mental journey, I some how remembered that it wasn’t this bad last year. I went on numerous, enjoyable, even balmy bike rides in January and February.  In fact on Super Bowl weekend Bev and I rode bicycles around downtown Indy with light jackets on. Oh it was glorious; watching the world bask in the glow of Indianapolis’ wonderful party. Do you remember the build up to the Super Bowl? The city fathers and mothers assured us that if it snowed we would just remove the snow. Every thing would be okay. We are Midwesterners. We can handle a little snow. We won’t panic like Jerry Jones and those Dallas Texans.

As it turned out, our human sacrifices paid off. The weather gods smiled upon us. We were able to zip down the line, drink plenty of over priced beer, and mob up to the stage for the free LMFAO with nary a glance at the “warming” station. We are Indianapolis in the middle of winter. We don’t need no stinking warming stations.

Those were heady times. We are Indianapolis and things turned out okay. Better than okay, we were great.

That was then. Now a year later, the mommas and the papas of Indianapolis are making noises. We can do that again. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. We have the plan in place. We can snaz up the zip line. We could zip line over pits of alligators; our toes mere inches from their fearsome snapping, bone crushing jaws. How hard can it be? We have proven that we can keep the lights on through the half time show.

Well this is your old uncle Rog, with a bit of advice. We live in Indiana. It is February. Last year was a mirage, an anomaly, a freak of nature. Yes, it was probably brought on by inappropriate removal of flannel sheets from beds during a brief warm spell in January. The lack of apples this past year has chastened us. We will leave our flannel sheets on through the first week of May. Won’t we!?

If we have the Super Bowl again, the weather will not be kind. The cold Ying will slap last year’s Yang right in the face. And city fathers and mothers before you go writing checks you can’t cash about our fantastic snow removal abilities, we are not good at snow removal. Case in point;  the major interstate going past the “international” airport was closed down for hours because of a snow “shower” on the Thursday before the Super Bowl. Talk about great publicity. We would have had more public scrutiny, than Beyonce’s whoha in that outfit she was wearing, with elephants walking down the interstate. Another case in point; Homeland Security opened the emergency center for a six inch blizzard the day after Christmas. We won't stand up against the wrath of nature.

No! We are Hoosiers. We know our place in the cosmos. Sure we are hospitable. We will lick the world’s face like a big ole Labrador in search of acceptance. Deep down, we know that we live in a place where the winter winds will turn against us. Our leaders want us to believe that Mother Nature can be controled, contained, and coraled. We know better. We know its not nice to fool mom nat.

Take care.

Roger

Friends Forever?

Dearest Blog Reader;

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The weather was a bit cold, then warm but windy and stormy, now cold and windy and snowy. As a result, training for the early May ride about, came inside to the stationary bike. It was either that or do my best abominable snowman wicked witch of the West impersonation. That is just too much role playing with riding my bike at the same time.

Thanks to everyone who has started to save their pennies for supporting me in the Cover Indiana bike ride;  Even better, I am getting word of some really good ice cream flavor suggestions. Vanilla, French vanilla, homemade vanilla, all natural vanilla, Neapolitan, cookies and cream, butter pecan, moose tracks, chocolate champion, double strawberry, birthday party, banana split, monster cookie, peanut butter panic; those are the flavors from one company. So many flavors yet so little time, we may have to extend the tour of Indiana. I will keep giving updates. If none of this makes sense, please read last week’s blog. It will all make sense then. Miss a week; you miss a lot.

I have struggled with the Monti Te’o. Do I write about him? Is there anything else to be added? Was he telling the truth? Is he an idiot? Is he just naïve? Is he a big faker; a hoaxer? I have heard it all. “That’s impossible.” “I believe him.” “It could happen.”

It appears that the Couric interview allowed the public opinion jury to come in. A Purdue professor said that based on his facial expressions Monti Te’o was telling the truth when being interviewed on Katie’s show. Monti was genuinely hood winked says non-tenured assistant professor Chris Krowel. That settles it. The Dr has spoken. He uses technology to measure muscle micro movements. I am impressed. This scholar of retail sciences actually measured how believable Monti’s facial expressions appeared to people who believe that Alec Baldwin is really just a misunderstood boob who can actually laugh at his bad behavior. Monti is believable to people who believe Lindsey Lohan is prepared to turn her life around. The same people who believe Peyton Manning actually sets Pappa John’s sales promotional strategies, believe Monti when he says that he was the victim of a horrible prank.

In a side note, Dr. Krowel can now use this sarcastic endorsement in his curriculum vitae on his way to tenure. Way to go Doc.

Fine! I get it. The masses have spoken. Monti (can I call you Monti) was the victim of a cruel hoax. He was in love. He was in love with a cruel and manipulative man/woman; which to me is even sadder than if he had been a perpetrator of this mess. Monti may be the poster child to generation C; the connected generation. Youse guys are connected via your smart phones, tables, laptops, twitter, facebook, you tube. You are hip, happening, and in the know about everything. You know the what, how, when to who almost before who does. You can face time, skype, with people from around the world for a little bit of nothing and more minutes on your data plan.

You can order tickets, check your homework, take your tests, find out what your friends are wearing to school, learn about tornados, crime, or gun toting, rampaging homicidal school shooting crazies. All of it received, processed, and believed instantly.

You are  CONNECTED!!!!!

The problem is what you are connected to is not experienced. The warning of Monti’s “experience” is that something is lost when it is not touched, wrestled, grieved, and lived. How can a romance be lived without touch? How can great loss be lived without sudden separation? How can love be lived without connection? They had a “romance” and never touched. He “lost” his true love and never participated in any ceremonies of grief; no reaching out to other survivors to share the burdens of grief.

Gene Roddenberry, that soothsayer who gave us Star Trek and thereby such great future insights like cell phones that flipped open like a “communicator”, tried to warn us in one of his episodes. In the Gamesters of Triskelion Captain Kirk and company came upon this collective consciousness that did away with bodies a few millennia before the Enterprise’s arrival. The collective kept a few tractor beams around grab Kirk and some crew and have them do battle to provide stimulus for their oversized brains. Read it in Wikipedia. It’s all there.

The point being. . .  Well I’m not quite sure. Oh yeah. It is better to experience life. Connectedness is messy. It will hurt. There will be discomfort. But it will be a bit easier to know the hoax when you see it.

Take care.

Roger.

 

 

This just in from Dr Chris Krowel, non-tenured assistant Purdue Professor. "this man has no micro muscles to move. No one believes him.