tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72747572465385047962024-03-18T21:00:16.825-07:00Old Geezers Out to LunchAmusement, Information & Reflections by Gentlemen (and an Occasional Woman) of a Certain AgeThe Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.comBlogger199125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-26254171572076955732018-04-24T14:27:00.001-07:002018-04-24T14:27:05.884-07:00Mad Mercurious Meets Crazy Margaret<h3 class="post-title" style="background-color: white; color: #555544; font-family: tahoma, "Bitstream Vera Sans", "Trebuchet MS", "Lucida Grande", lucida, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; margin: 5px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-weight: normal;">Oddly, I get along pretty well with Crazy Margaret. Or maybe it's not so odd. You be the judge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;">Crazy Margaret is how some in the neighborhood speak of the aging single woman living across the street. She is by no means a lunatic—just somewhat eccentric. Marsh keeps mostly to herself. She rarely, if ever, attends neighborhood picnics or other events, and her most notable actions come during disagreements with her immediate neighbors to the north and south of the family home that she inherited when her mother passed away some 30 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Quite a while back, </span>Margaret picked<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> a rather serious fight with her immediate neighbor, Fred, over the low mechanical noise generated by his whirlpool hot tub in the backyard. The noise was terrifically offensive to Margaret—a call-the-police-and-file-a-complaint kind of thing. At Fred's suggestion, I once stood in his backyard and listened to the hot tub while it was running; its low hum was barely audible to me, and I'm a guy who generally detests mechanical noise.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;">The feud eventually grew heated enough that Fred and his wife packed up and left the neighborhood, but the memory of this battle is what others in the neighborhood remember to this day, and it colors how Marsha is viewed by pretty much everyone. Actually, though, Paul was a kind of stick-up-the-ass Republican, so I'm not altogether sure Margaret didn't have point somewhere there.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;">Still, there are reports of other neighbors across the street and along the next alley who have had similar strange disagreements with Margaret over petty matters, so perhaps she is a bit on the batty side. Her wild mane of gray hair blowing every which direction does a lot to feed the sense that she is a bit "off." And she is the one person in the neighborhood who shuts off her lights and refuses to answer the door on Halloween. Her reputation as an iconic curmudgeon, then, is somewhat deserved. </span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">T</span><span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">he unfriendliness to kids alone should color my perception of Margaret, but inexplicably, we get along pretty well. She has a deep appreciation for my front yard garden beds, and very often when I'm digging in the dirt in the afternoons, she will make her way across the street to exchange admiration and pleasantries for a few minutes. And I have an appreciation for the classic Camaro owned by her father, which Margaret occasionally brings out of the garage for a spin around the neighborhood in the springtime. She hasn't yet offered me a ride, but there is still time. When I run into Margaret at the local ice cream shop, our exchanges are always quite friendly.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;">I am the exception here, as Margaret doesn't seem to get along too well with many people. Not that she is unfriendly with everybody, but unless she has a bone to pick with you, she generally ignores you and rarely seeks you out for conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;">Or maybe she sees something of a kindred spirit in me. I'm not without occasional surly grumpiness myself, especially when it comes to my neighbors across the alley who cavalierly blow their driveway snow into my own carefully shoveled driveway. And I've been known to be "assertive" with the teenagers who stomp on our garden flowers as they retrieve basketballs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: tahoma; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;">Dammit. There goes that joker with the pit bull who never has a plastic bag when his dog craps on the boulevard. Pardon me while I go discuss it with Margaret.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-weight: normal;">Preview<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-55019756497252087492017-11-18T13:04:00.001-08:002017-11-18T13:04:52.122-08:00Century.....Link?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cd6Jqick72Q/WhCgFqxJgyI/AAAAAAAADV8/7vkEN-0PryEKPml9VVlbN9rCsuPHt4PlwCLcBGAs/s1600/telephone%2Bwoman.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="437" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cd6Jqick72Q/WhCgFqxJgyI/AAAAAAAADV8/7vkEN-0PryEKPml9VVlbN9rCsuPHt4PlwCLcBGAs/s400/telephone%2Bwoman.png" width="347" /></a></div>
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I've checked to make sure, and have confirmed that the CenturyLink technical support and customer service departments are open until 5:00 pm EST, and it's still only noon in Minneapolis. Still, it's not until the third attempt at running the gauntlet of the automated response system that I get through to a live tech support representative, who announces herself as Emily.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"How can I help you?"</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I've had plenty of time to rehearse this and know that my chances for success are b<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">est if I succinctly and accurately describe the precise problem.</span></div>
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I say: "CenturyLInk is our provider for both phone service and internet/television. But every time the phone rings or anytime we hang up the phone, both the television and internet go dark for 5 to 10 seconds before coming back on"</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
She says nothing for a moment. Then "yes?"</div>
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"Is there something we can do about it?" I say.</div>
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"I will put you on hold to find out," Emily says, "Remain on the line, please."</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
My I-phone timer tells me that 24 minutes now pass before Emily returns to the phone. "My technician wants to know if you have an RF filter installed."</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"I have no idea," I say. "The internet service was installed about 4 months ago. Maybe the service guy installed one, but I don't know."</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"There really needs to be an RF filter," Emily says, with a note of accusation in her voice. "Also, your phone and internet are listed as two separate accounts, on two separate DSL lines. They really should be just one."</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"I thought so too, back when they installed things," I say. "But Century told me they couldn't merge them and had to install them as separate DSL lines."</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"That's wrong," says Emily, again with the note of accusation as though I have steered this situation. "You need to call tech support, tell them to connect you to customer loyalty, and then tell customer loyalty that you need these two accounts merged."</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"You ARE technical support," I say. "I just called tech support, and I'm already talking to you. Can't you just patch me through to customer loyalty?"</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"I can't connect you," Emily says. "You have to call technical support back, and tell the next person you talk to that they need to connect you to the customer loyalty department."</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I consider this for a moment. "But Emily," I say again. I've already called tech support, and that's why I'm talking to you. Why would calling the same number again help?"</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
"Not NOW," Emily says impatiently. "When the office reopens on Monday."</div>
</div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-66991835911117116862017-10-16T15:59:00.000-07:002017-10-16T15:59:19.079-07:00Old Men of the YMCA: 10/16/17<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p4_or5SGtw4/WeU5Nch_S1I/AAAAAAAADVE/RuMaKNYWidATh53URfm8LPdjmw9b7S5bQCLcBGAs/s1600/whirlpool.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="455" data-original-width="701" height="258" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p4_or5SGtw4/WeU5Nch_S1I/AAAAAAAADVE/RuMaKNYWidATh53URfm8LPdjmw9b7S5bQCLcBGAs/s400/whirlpool.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I had only been in the whirlpool for a few minutes after my afternoon swim when a new fellow, Douglas appeared. I know many of the other old men who visited the YMCA in the afternoon, but Douglas, about 60 years of age and exceedingly fit, was new to me.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was alone at the time, so when Douglas soon began a rather peculiar behavior, only I witnessed it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After a few minutes of routine soaking, Douglas announced that he was going to submerge himself entirely, but reassured me that he would come up again. This was a bit puzzling to me, since I’d never seen a grown man do this in the whirlpool before. But I shrugged in nonchalance—each to his own. I figured perhaps Douglas wanted the benefit of the whirlpool jets directly on a sore neck, or something similarly benign. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But I wasn’t prepared for the fact that he was planning to submerge for rather lengthy periods of time. On the second plunge, I watched the second hand on the wall clock approach close to 2 minutes before the guy came up for air. I was, in fact, almost ready to go down after him when Douglas finally did come back up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A few minutes followed during which Douglas recovered from his adventure. On the third dive, Douglas had only barely submerged himself when Frank came out of the locker room door and climbed into the pool. He would be the third guest in the water, though he did not yet know it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The turbulent surface of the pool, along with a fair amount of foam, pretty much hid whatever was under the surface, and so Frank had no idea there was a third inhabitant lurking below. I suppose I could have warned Frank that the pool, in fact, held three souls, but I confess to feeling a little impish at this point. I was rather looking forward to the sudden emergence of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Douglas from the depths, just as Frank had settled in for a relaxing soak. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What I did not expect, though, was that Frank would sit directly on top of aquatic Douglas. But so he did. A most entertaining melee ensued as Frank shot up and out of the pool, having sat directly down on a large mass of soft, living organic tissue lurking in the depths. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It could not have been more fun for me if it had been the creature from the black lagoon, rather than merely Douglas, who now sheepishly climbed out of the pool with an apology to Frank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Frank, for his part, was literally speechless for several moments as we watched Douglas exit to the locker room.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Once things settled down, I also apologized to Frank, acknowledging that while I had been looking forward to the seeing his startled expression when Douglas rose up out of the water, I by no means expected that Frank was going to sit directly on top of him. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Fortunately, Frank had a sense of humor himself. “You would tell me, wouldn’t you?” he said, “If there are other people down there?”<o:p></o:p></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-75251309347994609232017-09-19T06:49:00.001-07:002017-09-19T06:51:29.868-07:00Old Geezers at the YMCA, Sept. 17, 2017<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Four old white
geezers, ages ranging from about 62 to about 75, were sitting in the hot tub at the
YMCA, soaking up warmth after their swims has drained the heat from their slowly declining
circulatory systems. Knowing what I know of the clientele, we were
middle and upper class folks, several retired, the others on extended lunch
breaks or in semi-retirement with afternoons free. One was working a sore knee in front of one of the whirlpool jets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Two young men in
their late 20s or early 30s sauntered up to the whirlpool with a casual rolling
gait; both were extremely muscular with a hardness to their bodies that was in
decided contrast to the comfortable pudginess of the old white guys already in the
whirlpool. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">A slight but
obvious nervous tension appeared in several of the old white guys. The
newcomers were men of color, and appeared to be of mixed ethnic background—I
took them to be Hispanic and African American. This is not where the nervousness
in the white guys arose, but rather in the fact that the newcomers were
liberally tattooed with images that might lead one to believe that they might
have some present or past affiliation with gang life. One young man had blue
teardrops tattooed below one eye, as well as several intricate and aggressive
tattoos on his arms and legs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The other young
man had a huge tattoo of a crucifix on his chest and belly. The scrollwork on
the cross was intricate and complicated, reflecting a good deal of time and
skill by the tattoo artist. The cross-arm of the crucifix ran fully across the
young man's nipples and the vertical post of the crucifix started just
below his chin then ran south to disappear beneath the waistline of his swim
trunks toward his pubic area. On each side of the crucifix, just below the cross
member, was a large word that together read "Suffer, Jesus," the words separated
by the vertical post of the crucifix.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">I found myself
puzzling the presence of that comma, and reflected on the difference that it
would make for that comma to be missing. "Suffer Jesus" might be
interpreted </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman";">liturgically </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">as "Allow Jesus into your
life," while "Suffer, Jesus" wanted to be read grammatically as an
imperative, a rebellious order telling Jesus that he should suffer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Either way, it
was a slightly shocking tattoo in this environment, and I think the palpable
nervousness of the old white guys was mostly because of this single tattoo and
wondering what it implied about this pair of powerful young men of color.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">I was expecting the
scene to play out in uncomfortable silence for several minutes as, one-by-one,
the old white guys slipped out of the hot tub and scurried into the nearby
shower room. Instead, though, one of the old guys said "Hey, where did you
get the bottled water? Is it sold here?" I hadn't noticed that the young
man wearing the crucifix tattoo had entered the hot-tub holding two ice-cold
bottles of water. "<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">"No,
man," said crucifix man. "I buy them at Munch and Pump for $.45
each."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">"They sell
bottled water upstairs," the other young man said, "But it's highway
robbery at $2.50 a bottle, and they are really small bottles."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"I know," said another of the old white guys,
unheard until now. "How in the world do they justify that much money for
simple water?" <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Several minutes of relieved sports-related pleasantry now passed between
everybody in the hot tub, then the young tattooed men stood to exit the whirlpool.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"Here man," said crucifix man
to the old guy who had first asked about the water, handing him one of the
bottles. "I've got two, and you look hot." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The old guy accepted the bottle of water, and started to
make noises about paying the young man back. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"No sweat," said crucifix man. "It's just four
bits." As the two young men headed for the locker room, the other one
turned back with a pleased and slightly surprised smile on his face "Have
a good day, dog." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-35558797308026654482017-08-22T11:59:00.000-07:002017-08-22T12:13:58.807-07:00Citizens of 4F: August 22, 2017<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
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<u></u><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The seasons change with lightning swiftness in Minnesota, and during this morning's walk to the bus s</span>top,<span style="font-size: 12pt;"> I can clearly see we have now entered the transition, the saddle season between summer and autumn. Yesterday saw what might well prove to be the last summer thunderstorm, a long heavy rain storm driven by southern winds carrying lots of moisture up from the Gulf of Mexico. Today, the skies are a piercing blue and the wind is a cool gusty breeze from the northeast. Yesterday's upper 80-degree temperatures have been replaced by buoyant air in the mid-50s. By mid-afternoon, we may well be back in the upper 80s, but we have now reached that season where mornings and evenings will clearly belong to autumn while summer is still fully present in the mid-day hours.</span></div>
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It's the kind of morning where the beverage I purchase from Starbucks to drink on the bus ride might be either iced latte or hot chocolate, and either would be perfectly appropriate. Today, anyway, I choose the iced latte.<u></u><u></u></div>
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Some of my fellow passengers on the bus this morning are wearing long-sleeved flannel shirts or light sweaters in acknowledgment of the autumn soon to be upon us, while others hold tight by wearing short-sleeved polo shirts in anticipation of the warmth that will mark the mid-day hours. Both forms of dress are fine today.<u></u><u></u></div>
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These days of transition always fill me with a kind of extreme, pleasurable melancholy. I am critically aware that there are a limited number of these summer-autumn transition seasons left for me to fully enjoy. I am approaching 62 years of age, and in 20 more years, I will be an old man of 82. My father passed away at 82 after two difficult years confined to a care facility, and for the men of my family, he did well to live that long; most expire in their 70s. So a realistic degree of optimism tells me that 20 more good years is a reasonable projection for me. If I'm really lucky, it might be as many as 30 more seasons, but however you look at it, it must be acknowledged that the clock is ticking. It is self deception to pretend otherwise. <u></u><u></u></div>
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Oddly, this is not a depressing thought at all, but one that makes this particular morning all the more glorious and wonderful. The temporary nature of life fills me with a kind of painful love for the world and all the things and people in it—a fondness that simply wouldn't be possible if we didn't recognize that life is a limited gift that will end some day. It is death—or more precisely the recognition of death—that makes life so wonderful. It can be argued, even, that a life must end for it to have any meaning at all. <u></u></div>
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On a store at 36<sup>th</sup> Street and Lyndale Avenue, a large mural with the single word "LOVE" has been painted across the brickwork in an old-fashioned serif-font typeface. The word is brightly colored in warm southwestern hues across the side wall of a pet-food store. A man sits on a promotional bus-stop bench with his back to the giant word, oblivious to it. </div>
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I wonder at the intended grammar of the word in this setting. Today, I choose to read LOVE not as a noun but as an imperative verb. I think the artist intended it as the prescription for how we should behave in the world when faced with a clear sense of life's mortal quality. Love. <u></u></div>
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How is it, I wonder, that in all the days of bus trips along this route, this is the first day that I've recognized this mural?</div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-26440100589728830632017-08-18T07:02:00.000-07:002017-08-22T12:00:02.687-07:00An Angry GeezerI'm now categorized as an "young old guy" or "mature middle-aged fellow," depending on who is doing the labeling. To my 87-year old mother-in-law, I'm relatively young, while to my kids, I'm clearly a dinosaur.<br />
<br />
But however I'm labeled, I will tell you that in my six-plus decades on the planet, the last year or so has seen a level of social, political, and cultural rest the likes of which I have not seen since the 1960s and early 70s. And I'm fairly certain its going to get worse before it gets better.<br />
<br />
Now, philosophically I believe in principles that lean in the Buddhist direction. In other words, I believe that on a universal level it is tolerance, compassion, and equanimity that have the power to eventually create peace and happiness for everyone.<br />
<br />
What I believe and what I'm able to practice are two different things, though, and I fully acknowledge that I'm not a great Buddhist yet. In immediate terms, I'm pissed as hell at our president and his chief priest Steve Bannon and the 35% of Americans who appear to be their disciples. <br />
<br />
The problem with a Ghandi philosophy of peaceful, non-violent social resistance is that it takes so damned long, and in my American experience, I observe that it is usually genuine physical action that brings about change. And yes, sometimes that action borders on the violent. In the 1960s and 70s, it was only at the point where the Black Panthers stopped being peaceful neighborhood activists and began stocking their headquarters with guns in defense against police raids that civil rights change began to accelerate. And it was at the point where college protestors began throwing tear gas canisters back at police that we as a nation grew truly weary of the Vietnam war.<br />
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It's now been shown that Donald Trump's most recent fake fact—that the violence in Charlottesville, VA involved equal culpability by white supremacists and members of the Antifa crowd—is so much bull dung. Objective reports verify that the right-wing crowd arrived with clubs, helmets, shields and pepper spray in anticipation of conflict, and that Antifa members became physical only when the right-wing began pushing and shoving and punching ordinary counter-demonstrators. Left-wing violence was indisputably an act of self-defense. After all, who was it that drove a car through the crowd in an act of murder?<br />
<br />
Nor does the insistence that there were "fine people" to be found on the white nationalist side of demonstration seem to hold any water. Virtually all the advertisements and posters announcing the Charlottesville event either featured the confederate flag, or more blatantly stated things like "White People, Take Back Your Country from the Jews!" Where, I wonder, are the fine people who come out to participate in an event defined in such a way?<br />
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I'd like to be able to frown and discourage all violence wherever it occurs. Maybe white supremacists and Neo-Nazis can indeed be defeated through peaceful disagreement over a period of many decades. And I'd also like to be that guy who gathers up cockroaches, takes them outside and releases them into the wild. However, I'm an imperfect human being, and in practical terms I feel that cockroaches of any ilk need to be stepped on, or at least chased back into the shadows and made afraid of the light.<br />
<br />
This is not to say that I believe we necessarily need to physically assault members of the Neo-Nazi crowd wherever we find them. There are levels of violence that can be pursued in a war against these bastards. On one level, all disagreement—verbal and political—is an act of violence. I do believe that we need to make it clear, at least through the verbal and political violence of word and opinion, that we do not tolerate that which is intolerable. White supremacists need to be insulted, derided, chastised and in every way made to understand that we do not tolerate their beliefs and do not accept their right to spread the disease. And decent people do need—and in fact have a responsibility—to physically protect themselves when attacked. To practice tolerance with this crowd is like accepting the right of small pox to exist.<br />
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As for Steve Bannon, if he were to suddenly step in front of my car on the street while jaywalking, I would apply the brakes—but I fear that I'd think for a long, long moment before doing the right thing.<br />
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<br />The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-50790963861235484842017-06-27T11:27:00.000-07:002017-08-22T12:03:11.207-07:00Citizens of 4F: June 27, 2017<div class="MsoNormal">
The United State of Trump motors on. The legislature now has made it clear they want to move 22 million Americans off their health insurance in order to redistribute wealth back to citizens who are already affluent, and the Supreme Court is about to once again give businesses the right to discriminate based on religion and sexual preference. Recent special elections in which Republicans have won 4 out of 4 tell us that we have moved from the U.S.A to U.S.T. and aren’t swinging back, despite or melancholy hopes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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So this morning on the #4 bus into downtown Minneapolis, I began to evaluate my fellow passengers according to demographics that I can’t ignore.<br />
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In the last election, Minnesota went narrowly for Hillary Clinton, but only by the smallest of margins. And since this morning’s passenger assortment is mostly white and male, it seems pretty likely that it hews close to the national average that elected The Orange One into office. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So….<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arguably, the unholiest of the four<br />
riders of the apocalypse...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Of my 25 fellow adult passengers on my bus this morning, half of them are standing in the aisle and did not vote at all in the last election, and may not have ever voted. These folks, studies suggest, may not know who the vice president is, nor their U.S. senators, and almost certainly do not know who their U.S. Representatives are. And as regards state politics, the only elected official they may know by name is the current Governor, though even that is not a slam-dunk. Such is the level of disinterest and apathy. Not that I can blame them, exactly. If the options are sitting next to Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi, aren’t we all tempted to stand?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of the remaining 50% on the bus, perhaps one voted for an off candidate, such as Gary Johnson, who ran as a Libertarian, or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. Or maybe they got no votes at all. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BwTP7-h-Sa8/WVKfUBM8nFI/AAAAAAAADSc/M9QjTfGjAccQqb9QmWb5MJ3Fo5oSl73eQCEwYBhgL/s1600/Rand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="511" data-original-width="577" height="176" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BwTP7-h-Sa8/WVKfUBM8nFI/AAAAAAAADSc/M9QjTfGjAccQqb9QmWb5MJ3Fo5oSl73eQCEwYBhgL/s200/Rand.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...followed closely by this numb-nuts.</td></tr>
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</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Of the other 12 or maybe 13 passengers on my bus who did vote in the last presidential election, 6 or 7 sitting on the right voted for Trump, and 6 or 7 sitting on the left voted for Hillary. Pretty much a tossup. In other words, out of 25 passengers on this bus, the Dems and Repubs each talked only 6 or 7 into taking a seat. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Many of us liberals saddened and depressed by the last election have spent much time in the last few months imagining that we must now convince one of the 6 or 7 Trump voters with their butts planted on the right side of the bus that they must switch seats to sit on the left. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But think about it for a moment. The reality is that 2 or 3 of those folks already have “Deplorable” labels on their underwear or maybe even tattooed on their inner thighs. (Hillary may have been stupid to say so, but she was right). And sitting next to them are a larger bunch of folks willing to overlook deplorable labels because they are too fearful of ethnic minorities or a gay people or liberal women.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not that the Ragin' Commie is much better.</td></tr>
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Do we really thing any one of these people is going to change seats? You’d have more luck converting a Baptist into a Hindu than to talk a Trump voter into taking a seat next to Bernie Sanders or Al Franken, who are yacking up a storm sitting just behind me. And don’t get me started on Nancy Pelosi, who none of us want to sit near.<br />
<br />
But here’s the thing. About half the passengers on this bus didn’t vote at all. They are just standing in the aisles, bored and frankly repulsed by what they see. All that’s necessary is to make friends with a single one of them. What is shameful about our nation is not the 25% of passengers that sit on the right side of the bus, and not even the 10% or 15% of 'em with "deplorable" stamped on their underwear. No, what is shameful is the 12 or 13 passengers that are standing up while we on the left ignore them.<br />
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Forget about those sitting across the aisle, my friends. They ain’t movin’. If we didn’t win a single one of the four recent special congressional elections when the Republicans are led by the worst excuse for a president since Warren Harding, who are we kidding?<o:p></o:p><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--fxJEyELLeU/WVKfPVvJfRI/AAAAAAAADSk/2zPtyclCvMwXOoZgcGYcCZfMXGuE-HWOgCEwYBhgL/s1600/Pelosi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="645" height="150" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--fxJEyELLeU/WVKfPVvJfRI/AAAAAAAADSk/2zPtyclCvMwXOoZgcGYcCZfMXGuE-HWOgCEwYBhgL/s200/Pelosi.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And here I have no words...<br />
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But I suggest we each have a look at those folks standing in aisle, the ones who have no desire to sit by any of the four loudmouths shown here or others of their ilk. Offer up the seat next to you to a single standing passenger and make friends with him or her. Suddenly, the bus changes its destination, and we’re headed back towards America. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-86769014217200445472017-06-22T14:29:00.004-07:002017-08-22T12:03:56.617-07:00Enough is Enough<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another recent horror involving a policeman killing a young black man occurred right here in Minneapolis-St. Paul, as you probably know. The case is that of Philando Castille, who was shot to death by a patrol officer in the Twin Cities neighborhood of St. Anthony by Patrolman Geronimo Yanez. Yanez was acquitted by a jury this week in Ramsey County, where St. Paul is located. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now, I am not one who thinks that EVERY young black man who is shot by police is the victim of murder. For example, in the Ferguson MO case, after reading carefully, I could see how a jury might give the police officer the benefit of the doubt. There was another case in Minneapolis last year, in which in which I wasn't </span>pepared<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> to automatically throw the cop in jail for using deadly force. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But Geronimo Yanez is a different matter. I don't know if you saw the dashboard video (look for it if you haven't), but once I saw it, I cannot see how a reasonable jury would not find criminal blame for the cop. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It plays out like this: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">1. A young black man named Philando Castillee passes a St. Anthony squad car, and the driver of the squad car, patrolman Geronimo Yanez decides to pull Philando over—ostensibly because his tail-light is out, although later he says "the wide-set of the driver's nose made me think of a robbery suspect." Translation: Philando is black. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">2. Philando pulls over gently to the curb, waits with his hands on the wheel, rolls down his window. Upon being asked for his driver's license and registration, he hands the officer his registration, then very politiely and quietly says that he has a firearm. The officer says, "Then don't reach for it."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">3. Philando says "I'm not reaching for it," but does begin to reach for his wallet, which is in his back right pocket, behind the front pocket where the handgun is located. Also in his wallet is his permit-to-carry. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">4. Upon which, Officer Yanez screams not to reach for it, and simultaneously pumps seven bullets into the car, five of which hit Philando, another going through the seat into the back seat near where the toddler daughter is sitting strapped into her car seat. Less than a minute has passed since Yanez got out of the squad car. When you view the tape, it is the incredible speed with which the tragedy unfolds that really hits you. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">5. As Philando dies, he cries out "I wasn't reaching for it."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Later on, there are some telltale quotes from Yanez on the matter during an interview with BCA officials investigating the shooting. One is the fact Philando's wide set nose "reminds" Yanez of a recent robbery suspect. Two, that Yanez smells marijuana in the car, and immediately upon being told that Philando owns a gun with permit, he wonders if Philando is a drug dealer, or carries a gun to protect himself from other drug dealers trying to rip him off. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Two things don't pass the smell test here for any reasonable person. One, no Minneapolis area police officer bothers at all this stuff as small as a burned out tail light. There are just too many more serious matters to think about. There is no way any white man ever gets stopped for something like this. Second, marijuana is a minor, minor thing in the Twin Cities these days, and no policeman imagines that this a casual smoker is some kind of big time drug dealer. The officer stopped the car simply because Philando was a black man, and being a black man, he's assumed to likely to be a drug dealer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">(By the way, Philando had been stopped 49 times by police in the last few years, virtually always for nonsense reasons, most of which did not even elicit a ticket.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">6. The handgun that Yanez later claims to have seen on Philando's leg is later found still in the young man's pocket. During interview and at trial, much is made of the possibility that the gun simply fell back into his pocket after Philando is shot to death. Yeah, right. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">7. At trial, Yanez trotted out the standard policeman's defense: "I feared for my life." And the jury bought it, hook, line and sinker. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Enough is enough. We all know that if Philando had been white, he would still be alive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don't think officer Yanez is a bad fellow, necessarily. But he is a terrible cop, and he panicked </span>in a<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> a way that was utterly unprofessional and criminally liable. But in today's culture, fear is used to justify just about any crazy thing you do. And policemen have learned that the way out of any such tragedy is simply to say that they feared for their lives. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The thing is, just because you are afraid (or say you are), does not excuse negligence that kills another human being. Even if you are a policeman, you should be held accountable for serious lapses in judgment. This may not have been murder, but it sure as hell was negligent manslaughter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Undoubtedly I have some bias in this, since my son-in-law is a young black man who has braided hair about the length of Philando's. Being a dark-skinned black man, white police officers undoubtedly would even see a resemblance between my son-in-law and Philando Castille. And David, too, gets stopped or followed by cops for nonsense, bullshit reasons. All the fucking time. I am scared to death for him. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">God in Heaven. Enough is enough. Fear cannot be used as an excuse to justify any goddamn behavior you like. Not even for cops. Especially for cops. </span></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-65207072410171621692017-02-05T16:07:00.001-08:002017-02-05T16:21:08.469-08:00Why I Am Optimistic<div>
"Nothing can be changed until you first recognize it." -- James Baldwin.</div>
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The ascension of Donald Trump and his cohorts into the White House has certainly discouraged me much of the time and even depressed me on frequent occasions. Yet I have also been aware of a paradoxical feeling of optimism that occurs at rare fleeting moments. The odd thing about this is that the optimism has not been a matter of defiance—it's not an optimism I somehow muster in spite of the Trumpites. No, the fact that we are now confronted with Donald Trump and his awful tribe is the very reason I'm optimistic.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SJHo2oWBE2U/WJe8dbUVP_I/AAAAAAAADNU/nsJ0V8MzR4oxCaw862-CQl6fQ5Hp0ZRzQCLcB/s1600/Trump.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="302" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SJHo2oWBE2U/WJe8dbUVP_I/AAAAAAAADNU/nsJ0V8MzR4oxCaw862-CQl6fQ5Hp0ZRzQCLcB/s400/Trump.png" width="400" /></a>Up to now, I haven't really understood exactly what this was about. On the face of things, there is precious little to be happy about when you look at the state of the nation. But I now realized that we are are in the process of learning something valuable about ourselves as a nation because of Donald Trump. It's a little like learning that that awful itch in the middle of your back is not an allergy but is actually shingles. The recognition feels awful at first, but then you start strategizing on how to deal with it. </div>
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We are beginning four years in which Donald Trump—with his lips and jaws being moved by Steve Bannon's hand and arm firmly stuffed up the President's rump—will be speaking in ways that will graphically show us the very worst things about our culture and prejudices. These are realities which America has really wanted to pretend did not exist, but will now confront in unavoidable ways. </div>
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We are learning that there is a substantial part of America that hates the poor and the sick. This is not hyperbole in any way. Much of the current rhetoric is implying pretty openly now that if you are reach and healthy, it is because God likes you, and if you are poor or sick, it is your own fault. There is a decided strain of Manifest Destiny theory at work now in America. We genuinely believe that America should win, and the implication of this is that the rest of the world is expected to lose. <i>This really is who we are.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Fully half of America does not believe in religious freedom or tolerance. We don't. We don't want Muslims to be among us, and we don't really care much for Jewish people, either. We really want to be a Christian nation, and <i>as a nation </i>we have elected a President who pays lip service to what we secretly wanted to hear all along. <i>This is really who we are.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
America hates brown and black people. We will begin by barring and expelling Muslims from a few countries, and we'll build some kind of barb-wire fence to the south, but once this is successfully accomplished, it's a quick step to closing the doors on those pesky Nigerians and Congolese and Koreans. It is not a matter of feeling safe or wanting to protect jobs. We simply don't like anyone non-white or non-Christian. <i>This is really who we are.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
America places no particular value on education. The President who speaks for us wants a Secretary of Education who does not believe in public education. Despite our pretense at valuing education, many of us don't believe in evolution and don't believe pollution has any effect on climate despite scientific evidence. <i>This is who we are. </i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We don't like women very much. We are afraid and threatened by them, and, like our President, we would like them to "dress like women," and do what men tell them to do. This is not a purely male thing, really, because a great many voting women don't like themselves or their fellow women very much either, and are relieved that the President is setting rules of behavior for them. <i>This is who we are. </i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJriBzxD_M4/WJe8l3ly_6I/AAAAAAAADNc/GZ1jKLZWiZALPaJ3SW9092Gvd_Gn9DCtACEw/s1600/Bannon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJriBzxD_M4/WJe8l3ly_6I/AAAAAAAADNc/GZ1jKLZWiZALPaJ3SW9092Gvd_Gn9DCtACEw/s400/Bannon.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></div>
<i> </i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A lot of these truths have been present all along, but up to now we've uneasily pretended that we are better people than that. No more can we hide; we are quickly learning who we are as a nation, and the necessary lessons will be some unpleasant ones. <span style="text-align: center;">This is the reason for my optimism, and I assure you that I do not say this with any sarcasm at all. Over the next four years, it will be very hard to avoid self-awareness about who we are as a </span>nation,<span style="text-align: center;"> because we have a President who vocalizes our worst impulses. Self awareness is always a good thing. </span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A local newspaper recently interviewed some small-town Minnesotans, and one woman in a little community of 10,000 people confessed that while she had voted for Trump largely because of nervousness about Somalis in Minnesota, she was now surprised about how bad she now felt about herself when the refugee ban went into effect. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was very encouraged when I read this article. The next four years will see a lot of us feeling bad about ourselves as we recognize things about ourselves through the example of our President. We will not be able to pretend that Donald Trump and Steve Bannon are "other." They speak for us. They are us. This will prove to be a very good thing. Our President and his staff will be showing us our ignorance, our prejudices, our intolerance, all our dirty little secrets, and I genuinely believe that learning these things about ourselves will only be a good thing in the long run. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You cannot cure a horrible disease until you recognize you have it. </div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-29771435436638407772017-02-03T07:23:00.001-08:002017-08-22T12:03:38.805-07:00Citizens of 4F: Feb. 2 2017 <div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p><span style="font-size: 12pt;">I don’t ride the bus downtown all that often anymore. I’m
only asked to be at the downtown office once each week, and with my emeritus
status nobody makes an issue of it if I decide to skip even that visit and
choose instead to work from my cozy home office on Thursdays. And when I do go
downtown, for the last few months I’ve tended to drive. Initially this was out
of deference to a surgically repaired knee that allowed me to park in front of
the building for free, but then it became habit. Habit is what often happens if
you don’t carefully consider your choices.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But the knee is nearly healed now, and I’ve vowed to walk
the six miles home after work today, so the #4 bus is where I am this early
morning before dawn. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Things change quickly when you don’t pay close attention,
and I’m startled this morning by how many different faces are on the bus this
morning. From my elevated seat midway back in the big electric hybrid bus, I
find myself studying one of the unfamiliar faces, Margret, who sits as close to
the front as she can. Margret bears a passing resemblance to Stockard Channing
from the era of the movie “Grease. ” She has the same short dark hair and
similar features to Ms. Channing. In age though, Margret is pretty close to Stockard
Channing’s current age, which makes the very dark hair a bit out of place and artificial.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Margret talks steadily to the bus driver, and from nature of
the conversation I know that they are new acquaintances, since the dialogue
speaks to basics about their families, their jobs. If they had known each other even
a few days, some of these questions and answers wouldn’t need to be discussed.
The pitch of Margret’s voice is such that I can hear her clearly. I cannot hear
the bus driver at all, but can get the gist of the conversation just from
Margret’s questions and answers. I learn, for example, that Margret cannot
tolerate caffeine any longer, and that her favorite vacation spot is Florida.
She has three grown children, only one of which really likes her. Her husband
passed away three years ago, and she can’t believe it’s been that long. Seems
like last week that he passed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People like Margret fascinate me and make me a little
jealous. She is one of those people, as is my wife, who thrives on social
communion. People like this seek interaction with people, the more people the
better. In moments of discouragement or dejection, these folks gain energy from simple social contact with many people. For
others of us, though, rejuvenation is found in solitude. Though I’m not a traditionally
religious fellow, it is when I’m in utter solitude in a natural setting—deep in
a woods or off in a prairie meadow—that I feel the presence of the gods. It’s
not that I believe with Jean Paul Sartre that “hell is other people,” exactly—I
very much enjoy being with a few close friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But a crowd of people surely isn’t heaven for me. Walking alone in the
mountains, though, is indeed nirvana. I do envy Margret, though. Life would be easier, I think, if crowds of people invigorated you. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is still completely dark in this early morning hour, and
as the bus passes Bryant Park, strings of white LED lights in the skeletal trees
reflect down into the smooth surface of a skating rink. The reflection in the
ice looks like strings of translucent pearls. A lone young man who is wearing hockey-style
skates sails noiselessly around the ice, doing maneuvers that seem more like
figure skating than hockey moves. I’m charmed by the idea of this young fellow
choosing to go out for a skate at 6:45 am in the morning. It is a very
Minnesotan thing to do. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the bus begins to fill up, the conversation between
Margret and the bus driver begins to quiet down. Whether this is because they
have exhausted the conversational topics appropriate between strangers, or
because they don’t want to disturb the now-larger group of passengers, is
unclear. Politeness would be a likely reason, because this, too, is a very
Minnesotan virtue. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I recognize very few of the passengers today, but near Lake
Street, the bus is boarded by Frank, whom I do recognize. Frank is a 70-something
black man wearing a cowboy hat and western-style suede jacket covering a white
chef’s uniform. It’s never been clear to me which downtown restaurant he works
at, though it has to be one that serves breakfast. Frank pats each of the
passengers in the first few seats at the front of the bus—the two facing rows
that traditionally has been the home of the passengers who
like to chat amiably across the aisle in the mornings. Further back in the bus,
the passengers tend to be those who spend the time scrolling on their smart
phones or reading the newspaper. Or those whose recreation is studying the
other passengers and imagining their lives.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although the up-front passenger greet Frank warmly, after he
sits down Frank quickly fades into silence. Though a friendly and social man,
I’ve never seen him engage in a lot of chit-chat in the morning. He always
seems quite comfortable to be alone with his thoughts. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As we near Franklin Avenue, I see a Victorian-style home in
which the residents have placed one of those programmable electric signs in the
front picture window—one of those that can be programmed to flash verbal
messages. This one flashes a two-line message: “Nasty Women,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Live Here,” it says repeatedly in red lights
arranged in small dots. I reflect on my good fortune to live in a city where
the liberalism is strident and sometimes slightly angry. For example, the very
next day after Donald Trump’s edict regarding restricting entry to the U.S. by Muslims, more than 5,000 people spontaneously appeared in front of
the Federal building in downtown Minneapolis in protest. Nearly 100,000
appeared during the women’s march after the presidential inauguration. I very
much like this quality of my city. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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The sky has pinkened by the time I step off the bus at the
corner of Hennepin Avenue and Fourth Street in downtown Minneapolis. I am
slightly sad to be leaving the bus, and I think that someday when I have
transitioned into full-time retirement, I shall sometimes ride the bus in the
pre-dawn hours. Just for the fun of it. <o:p></o:p></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-6088246203193343372016-12-21T02:41:00.000-08:002016-12-21T02:41:28.405-08:00A 2:00 a.m. Musing<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was a younger man, I tried lived according to a belief that went something like this: <o:p></o:p></div>
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“I am the author of my own experience.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is not an uncommon belief for people in the first half or two-thirds of life, and is probably a necessary one. Most people have this sense, and sometimes hold it to be true for the duration. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who knows—it might even be the correct equation. Some people would insist this it is so, and I am in no real position to say they are wrong. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But as I enter what is almost certainly the third trimester of life, I become aware of another possibility. What if:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The infinite and wonderful universe, though some unspoken intent, has caused a constellation of unique experiences to come together, bonded by a mysterious gravity of individual awareness. That single constellation is what I’ve conveniently thought of as “me.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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So in my approaching old age, I’ve begun to think the reality might be different, that “I” am not the author of my experience at all, but on the contrary, am authored by the experiences and awareness gifted to me by the universe, by God. Perhaps even my willfulness—which has caused me some pride but also some heartache--is really just the play of natural laws moving within that one little constellation of experience I have labeled “me”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Strangely, this idea does not seem to reduce me at all; on the contrary, it feels like freedom.<o:p></o:p></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-8321615353383528132016-11-17T13:29:00.000-08:002017-08-22T12:05:13.734-07:00And So it Goes (November 15, 2016)<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;"><i>The girl is on a roll. We welcome back Sehr Wenig for an encore. May there be many more to follow—the editor</i></span></div>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">At the beach <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_169423321" style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(204, 204, 204); position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">Sunday</span></span> morning, a man stood with his back to the ocean, FaceTiming with family. "I love you," he said again and again in heavily accented English and the high, tight voice people use with children. "Goodbye. Goodbye. I love you. See you soon," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">I made my way past this handsome man wearing $1200 black leather Berluti tennis shoes and a Prada jacket, with a yarmulke somehow attached to a large bald spot.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">When I passed him again on my way back up the beach, the man pointed to my nearly-full trash bag and asked, "Why are you doing that?" </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">"I'm tired of being sad about the election and need to do something positive."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">"You’re sad about the election?"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">"Y</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">es. Very."</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">"Why? There’s hope in America again!"</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"Hope?" Bagnell Dam burst inside my chest. "I had breast cancer this year. If they repeal Obamacare and allow insurance companies to refuse coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, I will be uninsurable if I lose my job. And it's not just me. Twenty million will lose health care entirely. Millions more will be vulnerable. That's not hope. And health care is just one issue. Hundreds of other issues will hurt millions of others."</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">"Sorry," he said in a voice that dripped with not-at-all-sorry.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">I moved down the beach, filling yet another bag with trash and wondering why a wealthy man—who clearly loves his family and is devout enough to cover his head out of respect for God—is not compassionate enough to care about people whose lives may be damaged by Trump’s presidency. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">A few hours later, Donald Trump appointed Steve Bannon—a man whose “news” organization publishes a steady stream of anti-Semitic and white nationalist rhetoric—his “Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.5pt;">And so it goes.</span></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com329tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-9650025617520463452016-11-13T17:47:00.001-08:002017-08-22T12:05:40.637-07:00And So it Goes (November 13, 2016)<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
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<span class="im" style="color: #500050;"><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><i>The editors are pleased to welcome back our favorite female Geezer, Sehr Wenig. </i></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ver5GwHfz4w/WCkV7vesm0I/AAAAAAAADL4/2eJijXcPVEkOS_xVPZqwOmv_cGiOnfosgCEw/s1600/IMG_0334.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ver5GwHfz4w/WCkV7vesm0I/AAAAAAAADL4/2eJijXcPVEkOS_xVPZqwOmv_cGiOnfosgCEw/s400/IMG_0334.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">As a Minnesota Geezer lost in LaLa Land, I go to the beach nearly every weekend.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">When I went to the beach a few weeks ago, a taco truck was parked on the PCH, its owner clearly living there. This morning two more food trucks had joined the sad parade. As it happens, these particular trucks come to the one-way street outside our office every day, feeding streams of computer engineers and movie marketers and media types. Imagine catering to privilege every day and then sleeping on the cold metal floor of a make-shift kitchen every night so you can get up and do it again.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">As usual, a homeless black man slept in a blue sleeping bag, huddled against the seawall. Last week his drug paraphernalia was nestled in a toddler’s hiking boot, just within reach. This week the little hiking boot was nowhere to be seen.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">Down on the beach, a 30-ish Mexican man and his 8- or 9-year-old son threw stones into the water, laughing at good throws and groaning at bad ones.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">A 40-ish woman sat on a rock, playing a guitar. The man wrapped around her from behind corrected her fingering now and then as she learned a new song. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">The woman's long, mousy brown hair was tucked into a newsboy cap. The edges of a rip in the sleeve of her whiskey-colored leather jacket fluttered in the breeze as she strummed, and she tapped the worn-through toes of Stuart Weitzman boots that probably cost a thousand dollars, long ago and far away.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">Eventually, the man took the guitar and began to play softly. "F*ck you," she cried. "You're so much better than I am. It's not fair!"</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">"No, baby. Not better. Just been playing longer," he crooned.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">"You make me so f*ck'n mad with the way you play."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">Now dancing to the man’s tune, the bone-thin woman smiled broadly. The pockmarks on her face glowed in the sun -- a rosy contrast to the blackened edges of every tooth.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";">"You can see my human-icity on my face," she said. "You like that word? Human-</span>icity<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";">." </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">"Humanity," the man murmured. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">"I like my word better," she replied.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">I couldn't hear his response, but it made her wild.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">"I asked you never to mention her. Never speak her name in my presence," she shouted. "I beat her up, you know. Beat her ass in the CVS parking lot. Knocked her off her bike and kicked the shit out of her."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">"How dare she tell people I set her husband on fire. I've never set anyone on fire in my life. Except myself."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">The tide rolled in, accompanied by the giant sucking sound of water rushing in and out at the same time. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve been distraught since the election, filled with fear and rage toward racism and misogyny and Islamophobia. I’m still outraged but have to admit things looked ever-so-slightly different from this vantage point.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">If this woman were my daughter or my sister or my mother and IF I believed Trump's wall would “seal our borders” to keep drugs out of our country, it’s possible I might have voted for him. It’s even remotely possible I would have chanted, "Build that wall," along with the crowd -- not as a way of throwing stones at people like the young father and his son, but out of desperation and misguided belief this "strong man" could save a woman I loved. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">But I do not believe Trump is strong, and I do not believe he will save anyone. Or that he even cares to try. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">Before leaving the beach, I filled a trash bag with bottle caps and empty beer bottles and chip sacks. On the way back up the sand ramp, I noticed someone had placed a bag of groceries on top of the rock that shelters the homeless man.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #141414; font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-size: large;">And so it goes.</span></span></div>
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The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-19711915442470280782016-11-12T13:22:00.002-08:002017-08-22T12:06:02.389-07:00A LIberal Geezer Emerges from a Funk.....I'm a long veteran of mindful exploration, and when the hobby manages to stay this side of narcissistic navel-gazing, I've learned a thing or two about the workings of that oddity called the Mind of Mercurious.<br />
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One thing I'm aware of is that the old noggin has an interesting way of concocting its own stories. The stories it hatches sometimes ask to be called "truth," but close examination shows that pretty much every story contains a good measure of fictional story-telling. When in a buouyant, jubilant mood, deep looking reveals an inner story that is preposterously upbeat; and when in a melancholy mood, you'll often find an inner story with a rather dismal plot line.<br />
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There is no right or wrong to this, and I'd be the last to suggest that there is some kind of "power of positive thinking" dumb-ass self-help advice to be had here. It's just the way it is: the mind tells stories, and sometimes those stories are bright and happy, and sometimes they are dour and discouraging or frightening. Period.<br />
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Since Tuesday evening, I've been in as discouraged a mood as I can ever recall, a melancholy bordering on clinical depression. The catalyst, of course, is the election of the Orange Ogre. The depth of this melancholy has puzzled me a little, since incompetence in public officials is nothing new in the world, and in my lifetime I've rolled with Richard Nixon, agonized over Johnson, lamented over Carter, fumed over Reagan, laughed at W.<br />
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So why, I wondered, is Donald Trump's election hitting me so goddamn hard?<br />
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I've begun to see the reason in just the last day or so. The inner story I've been telling myself has a plot synopsis something like this: "Fifty-nine million of my neighbors and coworkers and distant family members voted for the Orange Oaf because they <b><i>like</i></b> his racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, lying bullshit. My nation is full of bad human beings who don't give shit about anybody but themselves."<br />
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That's enough to depress anybody, I suppose, especially if you have believed that people are basically good. It's like waking up and discovering that your father was actually Hitler.<br />
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But in the last day or so, I've come to understand that while Trump is indeed a lousy waste of oxygen, quite a lot of his non-deplorable voters were acting on another inner story, the opening lines of which went something like this: "Fuck Washington. My kids are drinking poisoned water, my faucets are blowing methane gas from frack explosions, and the goddamn bankers get richer while I'm working at Walmart for $7.00 an hour and can't afford health insurance."<br />
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The reality is that for a good chunk of America, Washington—both Democratic and Republican Washington—has betrayed them, again and again. They voted Trump because he was the one guy who didn't represent Washington, and they voted for him for the same reason Bernie Sanders gave Hillary a hard time, and for the same reason that Trump beat all those polished Republicans in the primaries. He was different. The others were all the same. And this time, anyway, being different was more important that being good or even decent. Hillary is a far better human being than Donald Trump, but she is life-long politician, and middle America knows where that story leads.<br />
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Pretty sure I'm right about this, because now that we're finally listening to those middle Americans, what we're hearing is that a whole bunch of Obama voters from 2012 voted for Trump this time; that a number of Bernie voters ended up casting their lot with Trump. In a race this close, that's the ballgame, folks. A Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would very likely have won Ohio, Pennyslvania, Michigan, Wisconsin—and then my inner story looks much different.<br />
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So I offer something of an apology to the young Democrats, among them my daughter and some offspring of other Geezers. We had it wrong. I'm not sure if Bernie Sanders was the guy, but it needed to be somebody outside the box. If I had it to do over again, I would have hoped for Elizabeth Warren, who is as feisty as Bernie Sanders without being mean, who REALLY would take it to the banks and Wall Street, and who is scary smart. If the young democrats are shrewd enough to chuck the old school once and for all and nominate a revolutionary next time, Orange Otis will be out on the streets in four years.<br />
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<br />The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-47630782521111442932016-10-27T09:34:00.000-07:002017-08-22T12:06:36.528-07:00A Slice of Geezer Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This geezer is an early riser. 4:00 am often finds him comfortably awake in bed, at which time he meditates quietly for a bit of time, until he hears the first jet airline landing at the airport five miles down the road. Generally the airport traffic is kept to a minimum in the six to eight core hours of the night, and the sound of the first landing plane in the distance announces that it is approaching 5:00 am. The weather can usually be determined with good accuracy merely by listening to the sounds of the air traffic. The geezer always knows if it is cloudy or clear, just from the sound of the jet engines in the far distance.<br />
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A quick shower, and the geezer brings in the newspapers, makes a cup of coffee and heads up to his small comfortable office upstairs. His time will be his until 7:00 am, and this first magical hour or two in predawn darkness will be spent checking emails to see if there are friends or business colleagues to respond to, reading the newspapers, and sipping the first cup of morning coffee. A year ago, the geezer would already be on the way to the bus stop to start a work day that generally consumed 12 hours of the day, 60 hours of the week.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A man's leather recliner from Hom furniture is his castle. </td></tr>
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If the papers and personal emails are concluded, the geezer now sometimes turns to one of the small freelance jobs that may await. They are tremendously easy for him, even fun, because they lean on 30 years of experience in home improvement and gardening subjects, and all he does here is simply review on-line articles young writers have written, add or correct small details that he knows implicitly from years of experience, then publish them. He has come to marvel a little at the ingenuity of some of these young writers, so influenced by the "Real Simple" and "maker" mentality of the day. The money isn't the point; it is fun, almost recreational work. If there remains anything not done, he'll do it easily later in the day while watching the World Series on television. This part of the day will continue until 7:00 am, no later.<br />
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At 7:00 sharp he turns to the real work, usually deep substantive editing of some book manuscript on a gardening, home DIY, or pop culture subject. This work is salaried, done for the same company for which the geezer served as a VP for many years. But it is a return to the joyful work of making words communicate helpful information to people who want to know how to do things. Years ago, he gravitated to this business because of the magic of manipulating mere symbols into books that had meaning and rhythm and purpose, and now he has returned to that world after a long pressure-filled sojourn into the corporate level of publishing.<br />
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At 9:00 am or so, after two or three hours of fully absorbed and entertaining work, he takes his only break of the morning, usually to walk downstairs and refill his coffee and maybe grab a piece of fruit for breakfast. Occasionally this break is spent calling an old friend in California, who is also an early riser and will be up and alert. She has been struggling, and now recovering, from breast cancer for the last year. She thinks that her geezer friend calls as an act of charitable support, but in reality she is a true geezer in her own right, and the call is medicinal for him. He enjoys the company of another skilled word person and longtime friend, and he finds the wit of the conversation helpful to his editing and writing, and to his soul. Occasionally, when they become too engrossed in discussing some book or philosophical concept, the geezer will find he's gone past the 20 minute break he's allowed himself. If so, he'll make a mental note to extend his workday just a little.<br />
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Even an extended workday, though, rarely extends past 2:00 pm at the latest, since he is now contractually obligated for merely 30 hours a week. So at 1:00 or 2:00 pm, his work day is over, and he emerges from his morning of productive solitude. After a quick lunch, he then sometimes turns to whatever small home projects may be going on at the moment, often tackling them together with his bride. A number of little home improvements projects are always underway, and a couple of hours will be spent pursuing them. This time of year, it is often some outdoor work preparing the extensive gardens for winter. This too, is purely enjoyable work. In fact, at the end of the day, the geezer often reflects that the day hasn't included any work at all, since it has all seemed like recreation, like one big hobby.<br />
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At late afternoon, the geezer sends his aging body on to some kind of therapeutic physical activity—an hour at the gym exercising a bad knee on a stationary bike, or an hour in the pool swimming, or an hour or two of a good outdoor walk at one of the many parks in the area. Because all of this is meditative for him, none of it ever feels like a duty or therapy.<br />
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Soon to follow will be dinner with his bride, who has spent much of her day pursuing her own charity endeavors and work-for-pay assignments. These days, dinner is an informal affair. Relieved of the daily meal preparation for four people in a family, the geezer pair now may take a car ride or walk to pick up a variety of tasty little salads from a local deli counter, or may order Chinese takeout, or they make some kind of little meal, often from kale and tomatoes and eggplants still growing outside in a garden that has not yet succumbed to frost. On some days, the geezers don't formally eat at all, but kind of graze from tidbits of nice little dinners left over from earlier days. The family discussion is of what's happened during the day, what the grown kids are doing, what mutual friends are up to, who has called that day or who needs to be called, discussion of social engagements pending that week, or drawing attention to whatever has been happening in the world, politically or culturally. Mutual outrage and ridicule directed at Mr. Trump is often heard.<br />
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After dinner, a small glass of good Scotch may appear on the end table, a fire may appear in the fireplace, and the geezer browses the cable news networks for political insight, or may go back to the finish the wonderfully skillful news stories that pack the New York Times newspaper that was begun this morning. Now there is sometimes a television drama or two to watch, but these days most of the programs are painfully boring to the geezer, and although his bride has a few programs that she follows, more often the geezer himself turns to one of six to ten books on the end table. At this moment, there are books of psychology, buddhism, poetry, Taoism, eroticism, politics, hard-boiled crime fiction and pop music biography to be found in the stack. The eroticism has been cleverly turned so spine lettering faces the wall; the geezer is a bit shy about certain proclivities.<br />
<br />
At some time in the evening, the geezer usually opens a laptop computer play to take his turn in an online game underway with old, dear friends living around the country. Very often there is a keyboard chat exchange while this is underway, and sometimes when all the geezers find themselves online at the same time, the entire evening is spent in mutual insults or in discussing some political issue of the day with frantically typing fingers and abrupt and frequent audible laughter. Once this game sees its nightly play, the Geezer usually checks in on one or more online scrabble games underway, one with his grown daughter, and one or more with other friends. Sometimes here, too, there is a chat exchange or two (or 200) that ensue.<br />
<br />
Other evenings often find the geezer answering text messages or dialoguing by email with other friends. Sometimes, even, the geezer participates in The Facebook or The Twitter, where he has a whopping 35 Friends and follows a massive number (12) of Twits. Make no mistake, he is a thoroughly modern geezer.<br />
<br />
One or two nights during the week may find the geezer and his bride out and about in some kind of social activity, or at a restaurant, or just walking the neighborhood. It is rare that you find them in actual partying, though it sometimes happens. At this comfortable stage, good socializing may well be taking in a concert at the park bandshell, or taking advantage of 5-buck movie night with senior discount at the local film theater. Sitting quietly in a dark theater with other movie watchers has always left the geezer with an inexplicable sense of archetypal communion. He and his wife spend more time in theaters than the pope spends in church.<br />
<br />
10:00 pm usually sees the geezer watching The Daily Show, or making a last pass through CNN and MSNBC, or checking in on the enemy at FoxNews. The glass of Scotch has been sipped to extinction over the course of the evening, and the fireplace embers are nearly faded. More often than not, the Geezer will be asleep by 10:30 or 11:00, and while this seems very early to retire, it should be remembered that he will be awake in 5 or 6 hours.<br />
<br />
The geezer likes his life beyond all measure.<br />
<br />
<br />The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-19030517538884984752016-09-19T15:26:00.000-07:002017-08-22T12:07:06.989-07:00Neighborhood (Manure) StormNow working a mere 30 hours a week, I find myself with a little free time on my hands, and among the amusements I allow myself is reading the on-line postings for our neighborhood chat board. It serves a rather large zone of the city, perhaps 1500 or so homes, maybe more. The chat board is a place in which neighbors alert one another that there's a rash of garage break-ins occurring in one corner of the neighborhood; or that that loud boom at 2:00 am the other night was just a power transformer blowing out. It's the place where garage sales are announced, where people ask advice on good chiropractors working in our area. That kind of stuff.<br />
<br />
It's also a place for a handful of eccentrics and occasional crackpots practice their writing skills. So the chat forum also has its entertainment value. One fellow spent two pages the other day bitterly complaining about a single small dog turd left in the grass of his boulevard. Another writer described in very peculiar fashion that he'd seem some crazy person trying to eat the face off a child at a local park (no such event ever happened).<br />
<br />
Another writer recently reported that a teenager up to late summer hijinks was seen streaking naked around the Walgreen's parking lot—conjecturing that this was certainly a manifestation of either sexual predation or drug use, rather than a 16-year old running naked on a dare. This guy then proudly GAVE CHASE to the young man, finally cornering the kid on the shores of a small pond. An old man driving his car to chase down a naked teenager was apparently in the boundaries of proper behavior, while a kid running naked on warm night after being dared by his friends is the stuff of felonies.<br />
<br />
My wife realized a week or to ago that I had begun to post my own replies to a few of these letters, and warned me then that nothing good was likely to come of it. She knows me well. But I sometimes can't help but drop in a quiet reply note on the chat board. And if this has the effect of gently baiting one of the eccentrics and his minions, well, whose fault is that?<br />
<br />
To the fellow outraged by a teenager streaking in the night, for example, I replied with an outraged agreement over "today's youth," then went on to express my own similar outrage at a kid who had stepped on plants in my garden, and finally asked if anyone knew the telephone number whereby the FBI could be alerted. Hyperbole, all the way. If you were keeping score, you'd get big points for putting sarcasm over on the writer of the letter without him catching it. My success rate exceeds 50%.<br />
<br />
It's all meant in rather good fun, really. I actually like the lunatic fringe. They are more fun than the dreadful "I found a baby sock, is it yours?" folks.<br />
<br />
But the other day I came across a fellow's rant about a careless driver in the neighborhood. Now, a rational neighbor might alert the chat board to be on the lookout for a possibly dangerous driver, and that would be that. Good old fashioned public service. This writer, though, went through a creative writing exercise that included phrases like "assholedness" and "jackassery," not to mention a host of other misspellings and vitriolic raging. The tirade went on for perhaps 700 words or so, and was done not to inform, but to rant.<br />
<br />
With an admitted lack of cleverness, my quiet printed response, one among two dozen from other neighbors, was "Perhaps review grammar before next post?"<br />
<br />
Lord in heaven, what a shit-storm ensued.<br />
<br />
"Jim" appears to have quite a following, since in addition to several "likes" given to my own comment, a half-dozen of Jim's tribe began to publicly accuse me of malicious cruelty. Then one decided to go on a personal quest—first with a long public response saying that she'd complained to the board's moderator that I had inappropriately "attacked a fellow neighbor." The board's moderator responded by suggesting gently that "Jim's" complaint had been a little inappropriate to begin with. This perhaps is what set Joyce in to hyper drive.<br />
<br />
Unhappy with the response, Joyce then decided to send me a personal, non-public message bitterly accusing me of vindictively attacking Jim. (Personal messaging is a rather unusual thing in our chat forum, reserved generally for situations in which somebody gives you their phone number after offering to magnanimously take that incontinent old dog off your hands, for example. )<br />
<br />
It was fascinating. Let's remember, my comment was merely "Perhaps review grammar?"<br />
<br />
Joyce was, she said, a teacher of college English, and as such had reviewed Jim's essay before hand, and had verified that it was both grammatically fine, and semantically brilliant. Furthermore, Jim was a scion of a fine old family within the community, and had earned the right to be guardian of the roadways. He had the ears of police officers everywhere. Hitler himself would not have attacked Jim as cruelly as I had done.<br />
<br />
Hmm. This was getting distinctly entertaining.<br />
<br />
The first dumb thing I did was begin playing along, by responding to Joyce in the same private chat mode. I feigned professional interest, asking what dictionary I might refer to for a definition of "jackassery." And I asked for a citation in Chicago Manual of Style or the AP Style Book where Jim's interesting use of punctuation in and around parentheticals was promoted. (Clearly, I have, too much time, on my hands.).<br />
<br />
Escalation ensued, and before I knew it I was into eccentricity beyond my pay grade. Soon Joyce announced that she was "watching me" (her real words) and would report any bad behavior to the police. <br />
<br />
Any rational person would realize that this was some serious lunatic nonsense going on now, and would have responded with dead silence and getting the hell out of the neighborhood chat forum altogether. Is that what your Geezer friend, Mercurious did? No, of course not. Instead, I stupidly replied to Joyce once more, saying that her "stalking threats" were scaring my little kids, and that my dear little Jenny was crying her eyes out about the "crazy lady hunting us." (My own daughter is 27, is not named Jenny, and eats dumbasses alive for breakfast in a way that puts me to shame.)<br />
<br />
You may now be relieved (or perhaps disappointed) to hear that we now take a step backward from the gate to the crazy farm.<br />
<br />
This story does not end in tragedy or even juicy drama. Two more rounds of private messages ensue, in which first I learn that "Joyce" is actually "Jim's" wife—not his English teacher—and that her angry accusations are her means of rather touchingly defending her hubby—who apparently has a medical condition marked by a very, very thin epidermis. This is proven when Jim himself actually private-messages Mercurious, apologizing for his inappropriate name-calling—and then kind of weepingly acknowledging he is a bad writer but is trying to get better. (Dunno, maybe my own leg being pulled? I kind of hope so.) And Mercurious also apologizes for inadvertently creating personal insult rather than simply communicating compositional criticism.<br />
<br />
Mercurious, "Joyce" and "Jim" are now fast friends. We'll be vacationing next spring to the foothills of the mountains near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, in an enclave that caters to our kind.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-91847206871182853282016-09-14T10:40:00.000-07:002017-08-22T12:07:25.848-07:00Mr. Wells, Time to Go Back to Fargo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GvQqKJiu6mE/V9mK4anoesI/AAAAAAAADKA/qb_GOi2ST_8ee2rwTbV72Kp7Um-8ogFHgCLcB/s1600/Wells.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GvQqKJiu6mE/V9mK4anoesI/AAAAAAAADKA/qb_GOi2ST_8ee2rwTbV72Kp7Um-8ogFHgCLcB/s400/Wells.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The Mercurious household has for many years banked with Wells Fargo.<br />
<br />
Wait until I finish to call me an ignorant jackass.<br />
<br />
I'll grant you there is no real reason for this banking loyalty except laziness and simple ennui. For many years we banked with a very good local banking corporation known as Norwest, and when they were acquired by Wells Fargo a couple of decades ago, we just went along for the ride. And never bothered to dismount.<br />
<br />
Wells Fargo has been known for years as one of the better (or at least less evil) giants of the big national banking conglomerates. It did not, for example, hang its tits fully out the car window in the outrageous mortgage debacle that threatened to bring down the entire US economy in 2008 and 2009, and overall it is viewed as the best managed of all the huge banking corporations. Seriously: that's its reputation.<br />
<br />
That's not to say that Wells Fargo hasn't annoyed me. The fact they have gradually and systematically tried to increase the fees they charge to consumers for the right to hold their money and lend it out to others at 5 to 23% interest is pretty damned outrageous, after all. The not-insubstantial minimum balance I've graciously kept in their vault for 20 years has likely earned them many times that amount in credit card or mortgage interest charged to some other customer. And for funding them, they try to charge ME a fee.<br />
<br />
But I understand that gone are the days of my youth, where the local hometown bank would at least give you utterly free checking simply because you were loaning them your money to fund their business.<br />
<br />
And after all, you simply can't find a major bank anymore that offers this kind of old-fashioned customer service, so I felt no reason to drop Wells Fargo. I mean, it served no purpose to give my money to Citicorp instead.<br />
<br />
Another source of annoyance has been the fact that every single time I have business at the bank teller window, the Wells Fargo employee has ALWAYS tried to convince me that I should consider opening some kind of different, additional account. I mean this is pretty ludicrous, and I've told them as much: what could be the possible purpose of opening a second savings account that gets .00000102% interest rather than the impressive .0000001% I'm already getting? An extra .37 cents annually in interest is simply not worth the time to fill out the application. If you want a real laugh, look into the mutual fund offerings from a major bank. This is the reason why low-fee brokers like Vanguard are doing so well.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Merurious and I are not stupid, so of course the only cash we keep in Wells Fargo is the emergency, disposable fund balances—just enough to keep fees to a minimum—yet each time you approach a teller, they check your balance and if it reaches some kind of lip-smacking threshold, they try to talk you into stepping into the back room to discuss "options for your money." It's gotten to the point where I preempt them by saying "No, I don't want to discuss options for my money. Let's discuss options for you to shut up and deposit these checks. "<br />
<br />
Now, of course, we know why they've been doing this. Those Wells Fargo employees have been offered incentives by management to talk poor schmucks into opening additional accounts of dubious or nonexistent merit. And in many, many instances, it appears they were going ahead to open those accounts without even permission on the part of the customer, simply to reap the in-house commissions. This is called criminal fraud, my friends.<br />
<br />
It gets worse, of course. This is not a few bad-apple employees, but 5300 of them (that we know about so far) who did this illegal no-no and have been caught at it. All 5300 have been fired, of which 10% were the managers who either planned the fraud, actively looked the other way, or were too incompetent to have watch-dogged their direct reports. The head of the division that perpetrated this fraud, Carrie Tolstedt, recently retired with a $125 million bonus, proving that not only was she a criminal/incompetent, but her own bosses were, too.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1u6jYsy7I84/V9mKFs5L7SI/AAAAAAAADJ8/3Mf2XRXjo5YcOUl6zRDE-LNbWRwWaYzsQCLcB/s1600/carrie%2Btolstedt.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1u6jYsy7I84/V9mKFs5L7SI/AAAAAAAADJ8/3Mf2XRXjo5YcOUl6zRDE-LNbWRwWaYzsQCLcB/s320/carrie%2Btolstedt.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carrie Tolstedt, one of Wells Fargo's brightest stars. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The truly scary part, of course, is that this is the banking corporation widely regarded as the best in the nation. What the hell then, is going on at JP Morgan, Citibank, Bank of America? One can only guess.<br />
<br />
If Hillary Clinton has any brains at all, she needs to pick up at least this part of the Bernie Sanders platform: the banking industry in America is an evil, greedy giant that will take us down if we don't do something quickly.<br />
<br />
It's making my local Ben & Marvin's Credit Union and Barbecue Shack looking ever more appealing. At least their I get a free order with ribs for my minimum balance.The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-10094296383358438572016-08-30T06:32:00.001-07:002016-08-30T06:49:44.525-07:00Patriotism ConsideredI'm not a fan of patriotism. It makes me uneasy.<br />
<br />
This is sentiment you are best advised to keep to yourself, most of the time, most places, because patriotism these days, and for most people, is regarded as a virtue second to none. But I find patriotism to be a dangerous sentiment. During the playing of the national anthem at public events, I stand and take off my cap, out of respect to military servicemen, mostly, and in celebration of joining with like-minded people in a large public gathering. But I do not sing, and the flag does nothing whatsoever to moisten my eyes.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sMWqZzwYflM/V8WHl_z1LhI/AAAAAAAABIw/apjgpEny4jUFWvPNQ8yGFD4g8DaE2i8dQCLcB/s1600/Olympics.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sMWqZzwYflM/V8WHl_z1LhI/AAAAAAAABIw/apjgpEny4jUFWvPNQ8yGFD4g8DaE2i8dQCLcB/s400/Olympics.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At the time, this was regarded as unpatriotic.....</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I arrived at my uneasiness regarding patriotism, I suppose, as a result of living my formative years through the 1960s and 70s, the Vietnam and Watergate years, where it became evident that blind support of the policies of one's nation caused too many people to ignore its problems. When I was a late teenager and young adult, there was a common bumpersticker that said "America, Love it or Leave It."<br />
<br />
To which my silent response was always "Fuck you, buddy." If you truly loved your country, it seemed to me, the adage should be "America: if you Love it, Change it for the Better." The people who unconsciously waved the flag at every opportunity always struck me as simply too lazy to really think hard or see clearly. In the satiric novel Cat's Cradle, author Kurt Vonnegut defined a grandfalloon as a false "karass"—a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless. His example: any nation, any where, any time. To this day, that seems to me an excellent way to look at blind patriotism. It is an automatic emotion that can too easily be manipulated.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KgzeNFKKsFA/V8WI1C5suLI/AAAAAAAABI4/bXezHNtiYpUDBPhMrPGXAmiD6oUyurukACLcB/s1600/nazis.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KgzeNFKKsFA/V8WI1C5suLI/AAAAAAAABI4/bXezHNtiYpUDBPhMrPGXAmiD6oUyurukACLcB/s400/nazis.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">.....while this was the epitome of patriotism. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I see it as a short step from blind patriotism to blind nationalism, and it was rabid nationalism, after all, that allowed the National Socialist party to rise in Germany in the 1930s. Following your nation's leaders wherever they go is a potentially dangerous enterprise. It's no surprise that it's a form of blind patriotism/nationalism that political parties are using today to try to garner support. So many people wave the flag without thinking about it, that the candidate who manages to identify himself as the patriotic candidate will almost always win.<br />
<br />
Civic devotion, it seems to me, should be aimed at the higher values that are hopefully part of the nation's mission statement, or aimed at individuals within that nation and their rights to pursue those values. There is nothing whatsoever holy about the imaginary lines that create national boundaries, or about the flag used to symbolize that artificial territory, for that matter. A true patriot would celebrate a foreigner coming to America to join us in freedom; they would not want to build walls to keep folks out.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_6ECyoP2444/V8WJVAR49dI/AAAAAAAABI8/-DShNMdr1NgC28mut4gCIFlLf43eM8IkQCLcB/s1600/Nixon.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_6ECyoP2444/V8WJVAR49dI/AAAAAAAABI8/-DShNMdr1NgC28mut4gCIFlLf43eM8IkQCLcB/s400/Nixon.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A gathering of John Wayne and other "patriots" in 1969. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So I have some sympathy for actors, musicians, athletes and other prominent people who take a stand on national stages to point out when national hypocrisy raises its head. In 1968, John Carlos and Tommie Smith upon winning the 4 x 100 relay event in the Olympics bowed their heads and raised fists covered with black gloves to protest the treatment of black people in America. Their reward was to be stripped of their medals and publicly humiliated—for a while. History now suggests their move was a heroic one, and both men are now rightly respected as folk heroes.<br />
<br />
This week, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick says he will not stand during the national anthem this season, out of protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. I honestly don't know what his motivation here is, but before ridiculing him we'd be well advised to realize this protest carries significant professional risk for Colin, and we'd also be well advised to remember John Carlos and dozens of others for whom true patriotism was not about waving the flag, but about expressing their public shame of it when the nation was behaving shamefully.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LBdJr6ingmI/V8WJuQMBQmI/AAAAAAAABJI/G896qzjjStgB0xp8DsvW9PcISW6wI4WrgCLcB/s1600/woodstock%2B1%2B.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LBdJr6ingmI/V8WJuQMBQmI/AAAAAAAABJI/G896qzjjStgB0xp8DsvW9PcISW6wI4WrgCLcB/s400/woodstock%2B1%2B.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Woodstock festival, I'd submit, was a far more patriotic <br />
demonstration of democracy than any Donald Trump rally. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
John Wayne made dozens of movies in which he played military heroes. But John Wayne also supported McCarthyism, and seems to have ratted out colleagues in order to advance his career. History shows that John Wayne was no patriot at all. The judgment of history is much different for people like Arthur Miller, whose play The Crucible lampooned McCarthyism; or Edward R Murrow, who always saw McCarthy for what he was and had the courage to say so.<br />
<br />
I will continue to rise for the national anthem, but the warmth of my feelings will be for the fellowship of the people around me, for the memory of those who have served to preserve my ability to enjoy that fellowship. It will be out of respect for human values, not dedication to a nation or flag.<br />
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-85810872304202838352016-08-27T13:59:00.003-07:002017-08-22T12:07:54.452-07:00Minneapolis Streetwalker: August 25, 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LR8Wzv0wjJI/V8H2RUSWotI/AAAAAAAADIo/qnuvIR44RpIQTgJMwHbZ-psWmEPyZo-MwCEw/s1600/IMG_1710.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LR8Wzv0wjJI/V8H2RUSWotI/AAAAAAAADIo/qnuvIR44RpIQTgJMwHbZ-psWmEPyZo-MwCEw/s400/IMG_1710.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe it's because my left knee is throbbing tonight, or
maybe because the time of day reminds me that a good friend a couple of thousand miles away is likely at
this moment under a radiation machine getting zapped for cancer treatment. Whatever the reason, as I sit at the Lake Harriet
band shell watching a free outdoor evening concert, I find myself musing about
the various injuries and wounds and illnesses that are part of the human
condition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My recent goal to walk the length of every street of
Minneapolis over the next few years is off to a steady but slow start, hampered by a leg brace
protecting my surgically repaired knee. On most days, I go to a neighborhood somewhere in the city to walk a bit toward the overall goal. On this day, the last few hundred yards of
walking involved Ms. Mercurious and I walking from our parking
spot to the outdoor band shell on the shores of a pretty city lake beset with sail boats cruising in the early evening light. After a day of activity, the knee is now communicating with a rhythmic throb—not
angrily, but just letting me know its feelings on the matter. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are plentiful signs among the audience members that I am by no means alone in having a physical challenge, which in my case is only a temporary thing. Off to the right, a young
woman wears a plastic boot over her lower leg, possibly recuperating from a
bone fracture. Up at the front of the seating area, a couple of people are in wheelchairs—whether due to injury or chronic condition is not entirely clear.
To our left is a fellow with his left arm and shoulder in a sling. Elsewhere, I
spot a variety of canes and walkers and other assistive devices. The free concerts
draw a lot of geezer patrons; I feel right at home here. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1-yvTYhLys/V8H2QPn0rYI/AAAAAAAADIU/cQ4bmNP30UQtXDUUSOXCS0HQLzObnAFwACEw/s1600/IMG_1705.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1-yvTYhLys/V8H2QPn0rYI/AAAAAAAADIU/cQ4bmNP30UQtXDUUSOXCS0HQLzObnAFwACEw/s320/IMG_1705.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For some reason, my attention is especially drawn to a man
sitting ahead a few rows and off to the left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There is something weary and a little forlorn about him. He is about 70
years old and has the appearance of a former club biker winding down after a hard
life. He wears a somewhat battered black leather jacket, and his shoulder -length
white hair hangs, curtain -like, from a head that is entirely bald on top. His white beard is now carefully trimmed at the neck and high on the cheeks, but I imagine that back in the day it may have a ferocious thing, a full and
prickly bramble. From his sleeves I can see signs of indeterminate tattoos peaking out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man does not look overtly unhappy or irritable, but neither is there any expression of contentment or happiness. Most in the crowd,
even those sitting alone, are slightly smiling at being part of a crowd
listening to pleasant music on a truly wonderful, cool summer night, but this
fellow’s expression is blank and best described as resigned and perhaps just
slightly morose. I notice that his right leg is slightly shorter than his left,
as evidenced by a thick-soled orthopedic shoe on that foot. Is this a
congenital problem, I wonder, something that has made him feel different since childhood, or is it the result of some serious motorcycle accident? My imagination, as always, tends toward the dramatic explanation In any
case, I am slightly concerned for his seeming lack of joy tonight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I glance around the crowd, again taking in the individuals
here and there with signs of injury or chronic disability. I am of course only spotting the individuals with obvious visible signs. Many, many more people in the crowd likely have invisible problems or traumas, current or historical,
that can't be identified by sight alone. We are all very much alike in this respect.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-83nF8jJDf-k/V8H2QAyHA-I/AAAAAAAADIY/k0QBkRM_WCktYnSqVNMhQc6wJr6jjwqBwCEw/s1600/IMG_1706.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-83nF8jJDf-k/V8H2QAyHA-I/AAAAAAAADIY/k0QBkRM_WCktYnSqVNMhQc6wJr6jjwqBwCEw/s320/IMG_1706.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
About the only people who do not yet have some form of wound or pain may be the little kids playing about the aisles and the
space in front of the music stage. Some of them have those magic sneakers that flash
neon lights in response to some strange generating machinery in the heels; their feet flicker in the night like high-tech fireflies. When the kids got too rambunctious, some of the parents rein them in. I wish they parents would simply let their kids dance. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One pretty little dark-haired girl in a sun-dress
pirouettes in circles with her arms clasped together behind her back, and on each revolution her
broad smile reveals deep dimples in her cheeks, evident even from thirty feet away
in deepening darkness. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the right mood, I sometimes get a precise sense of
what a child will look like in old age, or what an adult likely looked like as
a small child. It's as though I see people as lenticular portraits—as toddler, teenager, old-timer—all at the same time. In this little girl dancing to the music, I now see early echoes of an adult I know. When she was a youngster, I'm sure the woman I'm thinking of looked and behaved a lot like this little dancing girl by the lake.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even these apparently carefree kids, though, will eventually
know some woundedness, if they don’t already. It is an unavoidable part of life. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Odj0FRgOYuA/V8H4b6jeLWI/AAAAAAAADIw/QVeMH3imO5YXXIySW2KIRYkkXpphY4RdwCLcB/s1600/couple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Odj0FRgOYuA/V8H4b6jeLWI/AAAAAAAADIw/QVeMH3imO5YXXIySW2KIRYkkXpphY4RdwCLcB/s320/couple.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you think all is a slightly depressing thought to have on such a night, you'd be quite wrong. My mood tonight is not at all melancholy. Instead, I find something reassuring about the observation, as
it seems to me that our shared experience is what unifies the crowd tonight.
It is our ability to accept and transcend ordinary human pain and frailty that has brought us all here tonight to enjoy the
music and the evening. In the final measure, music, art, and other forms of social communion are really a means of both articulating, and rebelling against, human limitation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A sentient being, the mystics will tell you, is any creature
who is capable of suffering. On this night, we are all gathered for a free concert in the
park as sentient beings, quietly and elegantly sharing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> the </span>discomfort and the related
ecstasy of the human condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lg1K6ZZw384/V8H40MUj3hI/AAAAAAAADI4/fBd9JcGVwvU4ot9hdzzIXwBWNgUURDG_wCLcB/s1600/IMG_1711.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lg1K6ZZw384/V8H40MUj3hI/AAAAAAAADI4/fBd9JcGVwvU4ot9hdzzIXwBWNgUURDG_wCLcB/s400/IMG_1711.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is a cool night, and Ms. Mercurious senses that I’m growing
chilly in my shorts. She was wise enough to wear long pants. As she extends her lap blanket to over my bare leg, I glance down, and realize that what she has
offered me is the colorful quilt that my father-in-law was given as a patient
undergoing treatment in the hospital for a terminal illness last year. After he
passed away early this year, my wife adopted this blanket as a warm remembrance
of her dad. This is the blanket with which she now covers my scarred knees, and the warmth it gives
me is as much about its symbolic value as its colorful cotton threads. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the song ends, the aging biker applauds softly with
genuine appreciation. He stands up, and with a slightly arthritic groan he
walks past me out of the amphitheater. Our eyes meet as he walks by, and I see he now has a quiet smile on his face.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-90436529170149358042016-08-14T07:25:00.002-07:002016-08-14T07:25:23.932-07:00No Time, Like Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Since I am a Geezer, after all, it's no surprise that the last few years have put me face to face with various intimations of mortality. Recent years have seen us bid farewell to both my father and father-in-law at ages 83 and 90, respectively. Several good friends have become breast-cancer survivors, and even my recent knee injury, though little more than a glorified mechanical issue, has reminded me that the body physical is a resource that wears out eventually. Late last year, I turned 60 years old, and an instant later I'm now looking at my 61st birthday in a few months. It's not that 61feels particularly old to me, but it does remind me of the fact that when another 10 such moments or so, I will be 70 years of age, and at that point it becomes a little hard to ignore the reality.<br />
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All of which makes a Geezer consider quality of life and what goals and aspirations one should have when you can no longer pretend that you are not a Geezer. I find the concept of a "bucket list" to be silly, at the very least; still, one can't ignore wondering where to put your energy and physical ability while the energy and physical ability is still there for the putting.<br />
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One of my best friends this week was faced with a medical decision as she concludes treatment for breast cancer. One option would have statistically increased the odds for a longer life, but only by a matter of low single-digit percentages. Following that course of action, though, would give her a 50-50 chance some rather serious side effects that could greatly compromise quality of life. Either way, these things are merely statistical odds, but she chose to think of the option as long life vs. good life. After a period of contemplation at the beach in Santa Monica, she is choosing to maximize the chances for a good quality of life at the possibility of making it shorter. With her good life, she wants to roam the country a bit with a camper trailer she owns, perhaps traveling with her granddaughters from time to time. She wants to write books, and meet people and see things she's not yet met or seen.<br />
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Which is a very admirable thing, I believe. And this makes me wonder a bit what I hope to do with the 10 or 15 or perhaps 20 decent years of Geezerhood ahead (for the males in my clan, 80 years of age is a pretty ancient patriarch).<br />
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The goals, I realize, are pretty modest and accomplishable. I want to spend some time roaming the southwest US, where the desert relaxes me and connects me to a sense of the earth's majestic age like no other landscape. I also want to spend time in the mountains again—either in Colorado, Canada, or Alaska, where I sense the incredible drama of time. To see some places I've not yet seen, I want to travel some places with my bride, to other places with good friends. I want to be the daycare provider for grandchildren. I want to once again own a friendly dog.<br />
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And I want to walk every street in Minneapolis.<br />
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I'm not sure where this last aspiration came from, but I'm sure it has to do with the fact that I've been almost unable to walk for the last month and am thus reminded of how precious physical mobility is. I checked into this, and learned that there are just over 1200 miles of officially sanctioned streets in Minneapolis proper, and doing the math reveals that it should be easily possible to walk this territory over the next 10 years. A pace of 120 miles a year is, after all, less that 2.5 miles a week. In good times, I probably walk that much each day.<br />
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So on a pure distance basis, this is laughably easy, though of course in practice it means driving to various neighborhoods, some of which are not particularly safe. And it means doing it on minus-20 degree days in mid-winter. And on days when it is raining. And on some streets that are barely streets at all, but cruddy little alleys behind railroad tracks, etc. etc. Still it's a modest goal, really.<br />
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My son and I were hanging out yesterday. He was, I think, still caring for the invalid in some manner. For the first few weeks of surgical recovery, the family was taking pains not to leave me alone, and with my wife gone for the day, he showed up at the house once again yesterday. I explained to him that I now have limited mobility in the bad knee, enough to let me fold the leg into the car and actually drive myself, but we ended up hanging out anyway, watching the olympics. Then we took a drive to get milk shakes and go to Barnes and Noble. On the way, I mentioned my goal of walking Minneapolis over the next few years, and upon leaving the bookstore, he glanced into my shopping bag and the street map I'd purchased. Shaking his head and said. "I should have figured. You're gonna cross off the streets on this map as you walk them, aren't you?"<br />
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There is no time like the present. Early this morning, I drove up to the far reaches of north Minneapolis and walked around three whole blocks, with knee brace unlocked for 30% range of motion. My speed should get better with time.The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-42147861173290125762016-07-28T17:20:00.001-07:002016-07-28T17:20:21.970-07:00Slow DownThree weeks ago, the universe decided to issue one of its lessons to me, using its pesky and often annoying "laws of physics." The lesson was: "Slow down, you dummy."<br />
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The circumstances of the lesson? On the July 4 weekend, while racing to change clothes in order to join a beach party and begin social consumption of some very fine Scotch with a good friend, I slipped on the basement stairs at my mother-in-law's house. (Mind you, no whiskey had yet been consumed.) When my left heel bounced down two steps and met the immovable object of the concrete slab floor, my patella tendon in the knee snapped loose, launching my left knee cap up under the skin of my lower thigh. The patella tendon is what secures your tibia to the rest of your leg musculature, and without it your leg is about as useful as that of a marionette that has had its strings cut. It flops around like a really big chunk of pasta.<br />
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Sow down! the universe was saying to me. Slow down, you dummy, or I'm gonna hurt you. There, you had it coming.<br />
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What ensued, of course, was surgery and the prospect of a long recovery that will occupy the remaining weeks of summer and all of the autumn. The irony of this was that the universe issued to me exactly the same message six years ago, when a similar accident on a different set of steps executed exactly the same injury to the other knee. At that time, I was hurrying to get steaks on the grill at a father's day picnic. So I darned well should have already learned this lesson.<br />
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The next months will see this lesson from the universe will be reinforced and reiterated, because surgery for tendon reattachment and the subsequent recovery and rehabilitation makes "slowing down" mandatory. Nothing whatsoever happens fast with a knee immobilized for many weeks. If the universe seeks to impart such a lesson, this is indeed the injury to do it.<br />
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Doing things slowly is not in my nature, and so this is a hard lesson for me to learn. My whole life I have done things in a kind of restless frenetic manner that borders on manic impatience. I walk fast, I eat fast, I read fast, I work fast, I play games fast. There are Saturday mornings where I have pulled a thousand weeds from the garden, done the grocery shopping, and washed three loads of laundry, all before 9:00 am. Fast.<br />
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I have taken a kind of perverse pride in this speediness, and it's true that in some cases this pace has served me well. In the professional world, completing tasks quickly is usually a very good thing, and my speediness has never compromised quality in an overly harmful way. In the business world, doing lots of work very well is much more valuable than doing very little to utter perfection. I have always been somewhat proud of the fact that I accomplish a lot, and do it quickly.<br />
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The universe does not agree with me, however, and as they say, pride goeth before a fall. In my case, literally.<br />
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Recuperating from knee surgery has seen me vacillate between being grumpy over not being able to do some things at all and not being able to do anything quickly, and increasing moments where I'm beginning to understand the merits of patient slowness. Virtually everything I do takes at least twice as long as it once did, and some things take even longer. Certain bathroom routines involve virtually disrobing from the waist down to accommodate a massive leg brace, and putting on shoes can take me five minutes or more. A simple walk around the block was a 30 minute endeavor the first time I did it, and making a meal is a painstakingly slow process.<br />
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But there's nothing for it but acceptance, which I am doing ever so gradually and a little grudgingly. There are two ways to approach such a reality, I'm finding. My natural impulse initially was to be annoyed by the whole thing, and indeed some of the time this has been my reaction: grumpiness bordering on melancholy. Gradually, though, I find there are meditative virtues to the slow life. If it takes you 15 minutes to walk a hundred yards, you begin to see things in the flower beds, the houses, that you never saw before. If it takes you several minutes to walk past a single home, the opportunity to meet the homeowner and strike up a meaningful converstation is much better.<br />
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Each act of walking become an exercise in meditation, if you are utterly focused on every movement. When just preparing for a shower takes 15 minutes, the feel of warm water cascading over sore muscles is enjoyable indeed. The other day, it took the better part of an hour to pick fresh zucchini, tomatoes, kale and green beans from the garden while teetering precariously on crutches. But my word, the salad and shrimp stir-fry tasted better than I ever remember.<br />
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Today, I found myself in one of my grumpy moods for awhile, annoyed at all the things I cannot do at the moment. But a few minutes ago I joined my wife on the deck, where we sat in web chairs next to one another but facing in opposite directions, reading our respective books. I glanced over at the teak bench and for moment and despaired over the fact that it badly needs to be refinished and that I cannot do it at the moment. But relaxing into the reality of this enforced inactivity, I began to admire the look of the grayed wood,and found a strange reassurance in the fact that nature always has its way with mankind's efforts to preserve things and have things our own way. Settling into the moment, I leaned back to admire the wisteria vine that has formed a green nest of the deck, and recognized that in the shifting wind patterns and cool temperatures today there is a hint of September coming.<br />
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And for this moment, anyway, I found complete satisfaction in the slow life.<br />
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<br />The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-34462667172688747662016-05-19T20:06:00.000-07:002016-05-19T20:06:11.598-07:00Beauty by Accident<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As some of you have gleaned, gardening is for me a meditative tool for understanding things about myself and about the workings of the world.<br />
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My level of calm and contentment at any given moment is in almost direct proportion to the time it takes me to get the dirt out from under my fingernails at the end of the day. (A TMI tidbit: repeated vigorous fingertip lathering of the wiry-haired naughty regions during a shower is almost as good as a toothbrush or nail brush for getting dirt out from under the fingernails. Much better than shampooing the more silky-haired noggin.)<br />
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But I digress. What I'm observing while now sitting in an adirondack chair in the shade today is how often beautiful things evolve by accident<br />
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Several years ago I planted several shrubs in a small front-yard island to form a kind of backdrop for a little concrete birdbath. The intent was to shield the birdbath from the street, but to make it visible from the house. Among the shrubs there is nine-bark, a flowering spirea, a yellow-leaved barberry, and some other shrub whose name I've forgotten (yes, I'm that type of gardener). There was also a weigela that unfortunately went to that great compost heap somewhere along the way. A clump of volunteer monkshood has grown up it its place—not a shrub, but big enough to be kind of shrub-like in its impact, and also providing dark indigo flowers in the frigid fall, well after the first hard frost.<br />
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The little shrub island has languished a little for years, barely acceptable but never achieving the look I hoped. At various times I considered major renovation on the mess, but because I didn't really see in my mind's eye a replacement goal, I just waited. Historically, I've not been a patient man by nature, but ever so gradually over the years I've come to understand that change is inevitable enough as it is. The world changes between each blink of the eye anyway, so I no longer feel all that compelled to speed change along unless some inspirational idea hatches to drive me to action. "If you don't know what to do, wait until you do," a friend once mentioned to me. And I agree.<br />
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As I look at the shrub grove now, though, I find that it has evolved into something resembling perfection, at least for this moment. The shrubs form a solid mass of backdrop leaves shielding the street and framing the little bird bath statues and iris in the foreground. Its foliage colors complement one another in a way that pleases me, especially in that amber light near dawn or dusk. Several little songbird families have taken up within the dense leaves (my favorite is a pair of chickadees clearly nesting within), and a white-tailed rabbit has a den somewhere inside, too. The presence of a rabbit is itself not a happy thing for a gardener who grows lilies or lupine, but the damn little beast makes my wife and daughter smile, and for this moment, at least, the whole vignette produces an effect that seems quite perfect to me.<br />
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This is the way gardening has been for me—the way life has been, for that matter. Perfection very often erupts almost by accident out of ingredients that just a little while before were clearly, and sometimes extremely, flawed. Better late than never, patience has become a decided virtue for me as old age begins to dawn. Lacking an inspirational idea to guide, my best decisions have been to watch and wait until things inevitably evolve into something entirely different and sometimes wonderful. After all, you can always leap into action if things turn to real crap.<br />
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Critics will point out that the pleasant little shrub grove would never have happened if I had not planted those shrubs some years ago—an act of deliberate will, and hardly accidental. True enough, I grant you. But then I would point out that this present beauty would not exist if I'd rushed into a an act of replacement too quickly, simply because the plantings failed to obey my immediate will.<br />
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And it's also quite true that our acts of will don't always get it exactly right. There is still (and always) an element of accident that steers the most deliberate of plans. After all, this little snapshot of perfection I perceive today doesn't exactly resemble that vision I had six years ago.<br />
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In my perfect vision, there were no rabbits in the garden, just red-tailed hawks to manage the rabbits.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-88395679743001333522016-05-01T06:17:00.001-07:002016-05-01T06:17:18.249-07:00I'm Not Worthy.....I'm a Geezer, but a relatively young one—a Baby Boomer geezer. I'm not even in the same class as the geezers of the Greatest Generation. Mind you I have some degree of traditional Greatest Generation mentality. I'm known to try and fix things rather than buying new stuff. And I'll sometimes cobble together weird stuff from stuff laying around. I once created for myself a pair of lawn-aeration sandals by taking a pair of old oversized boots, cutting a wooden insole exactly the right side, inserting them into the boots, then driving long nails through the soles pointing downward, so that I could walk across the lawn and drive deep aeration holes into the turf. At the time, this was far more satisfying than spending $40 once a year to rent a lawn aerator.<br />
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Still, I don't hold a candle to the old-timers of yore...<br />
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We're now in the process of helping my now widowed mother-in-law clean out her house in anticipation of moving from a sprawling country house on a large lot overlooking Lake Pepin along the Mississippi River in southern Minnesota, into a smaller, manageable home in town. My main contribution to this endeavor is do the outdoor repairs, and to clean out and stage the items from the garage and shed for the upcoming garage sale—the stuff owned and stored by my father-in-law, who passed away this winter at age 90-and-ten-months.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Boomer's table saw, patent-pending. </td></tr>
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It's a fascinating exercise, as I've learned more about this man than I knew from 40 years of being his son-in-law. But that's perhaps the way it is about any man—if you really want to know him, spend a couple days going through his garage.<br />
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Boomer was clearly a fairly obsessive/compulsive fellow, judging from the sheer amount of stuff he squirreled away. While he did not qualify as a hoarder, he was still able to store an enormous amount of strange paraphernalia into a simple two-car garage. Mind you, this was a garage in which he still parked two large Buicks. We now know that when he said he was going out to "clean out the garage," what he was really doing was rearranging things so that more stuff could be stored out there.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Industrial pressure tank plus <br />compressor plus flexible copper tubing <br />equals perfect home air compressor</td></tr>
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For the most part, Leonard only saved stuff that he could envision <b><i>using </i></b>some day. A great bulk of this stuff probably created in him a visual image of some kind of secondary McGiver-like role some day. For example, many years ago he somewhere came across what seemed like acres of extruded metal grating, as well as hundreds of feet of galvanized plumbing pipe....which he stored away behind the shed.<br />
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WTF? we all thought. And then one day we drove down to visit one weekend to find that Boomer had built a flight of stairs 60 steps long down from the high bank of his yard all the way down to the lake shore at the base of the bluff. Each step was cut from that rigid extruded metal that he had cut into precise tread size, and the railings were fitted pieces of that galvanized piping.<br />
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Rather than throw away an old refrigerator, he put it out in the shed, where he used it as an airtight storage cabinet for paints and solvents.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bench grinder featuring washing<br />machine motor</td></tr>
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He was like that, and most of things I've now pulled out the rafters and off the shelves is stuff I can visualize a projected use that lived in his mind. Fifty-five empty coffee cans with lids.....120 empty burlap potato sacks...a huge roll of very heavy reflective mylar fabric....a partial leftover roll of old linoleum from a kitchen installation 30 years ago.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />This portable rolling tool cart uses the <br />back end off a child's tricycle for the <br />rolling end. Opposite end uses wooden <br />handles off an on old wheel-barrow. </td></tr>
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Other stuff was harder to visualize a use for. A coffee can filled with 12 severed heads of golf 4-irons. Where does one get a bunch of 4-irons, and what possible use did Boomer intend for them?<br />
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The garage and home has held fully 22 coffee makers, ranging from monstrous 60-pot "event" pots to little Mr. Coffee pots. And <span style="text-align: center;">fully 12 of these no longer work. But Leonard was a tinkerer, and surely imagined that he would play with the wiring and fix them some day. There is a strange home-made table saw cobbled together with spare parts and an electric motor and welded together by hand. The thing weighs about 200 pounds, but is still entirely functional. A huge bench grinder that built in the same way.</span><br />
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But one item really tells the story of who my father-in-law was. Deep in the back of the shed, I ran across this item, and it took me a minute or two to figure out what I was looking at. Instead of buying a commercial lawn edger, Boomer created his own, by taking a 12-inch table saw blade, filing down the teeth to a workable length, welding it to some kind of metal motor spool, then attaching it to a leftover mop handle he had stored with 20 other discarded broom and mop handles up in the garage rafters, and voila....<br />
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Seriously....I am not worthy.<br />
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<br />The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-32310847752963420562016-04-26T15:21:00.001-07:002016-04-26T15:21:02.639-07:00Blink, and Spring is Over<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It may not look like it to my friends from Arizona and California, but it has been a early spring in Minnesota, as seen in these photos of my yard, taken just moments ago. With daffodils already largely faded and tulips in full bloom, this represents is a pretty advanced state of affairs for an April 26 in Minneapolis.<br />
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To appreciate a Minnesota spring, you have to keep your eyes open practically to the point of foregoing sleep, as it arrives and is over in just about a blink of an eye.You can quite literally go to sleep one night with mere buds on the trees, and wake up the next morning to open leaves.<br />
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I sometimes say to outsiders that a Minnesota spring, while beautiful, is about ten days long. This is only a slight exaggeration, as we indeed have had years where the temperatures shift from below zero to the mid 80s in the space of 10 days (It happened one year in the mid 1980s). <br />
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As evidence of this, I offer three shots of the same front yard—although taken in different years, they represent the same yard on an April 15, an April 25, and an April 30.<br />
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Only today I hung my winter coats in the spare closet upstairs. Tomorrow, I'll be firing up the air-conditioner.<br />
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Happy spring, Geezers.The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7274757246538504796.post-55096870389099715852016-04-18T13:06:00.003-07:002016-04-18T13:07:10.465-07:00We're Back.....I owe a thanks to Geo for reminding me how long its been since we've posted here. No, we have not closed down Geezers. The truth is that your fearless editor has seen a number of life changes, some good, some not so good, but in concert, these have greatly distracted me from the all-important work of entertaining and educating approximately 2,537,666 rabid followers of these pages.<br />
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Of the many issues distracting your editor and the other Geezers:<br />
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• A political season that is simply guaranteed to demoralize any self-respecting Geezer. What can you say when its almost certain that our next President will be Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, or Donald Trump? It's a horrifying state of affairs, to be sure—too absurd to even satirize, I'm afraid.<br />
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• The death of your editor's father-in-law. My wife's father lived a fine life until age 90, but a death in the family is a difficult thing in any circumstance, and in our case it also involves coaxing an aging mother-in-law out of an unmanageable house—a home that has served as repository for some 3 million plus knick-knacks and items of paraphernalia, each of which must be pried from her grasp. A considerable amount of time recently has beens spent doing plumbing, masonry work, and light carpentry in preparation for selling the old gal's house.<br />
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• A good friend struggling with cancer, which certainly occupies some degree of your editor's thoughts. Best wishes to Sehr Wenig, who you may recall reading here in the past, publishing some fine pieces as the only Dame Geezer to grace these pages. She is actually doing some rather fine writing these days as she makes her way through the midst of the chemo phase of treatment, and perhaps can be coaxed back onto Geezers to share some of her experiences.<br />
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• A change in your editor's employment status. After 31 years of office-based and executive work of a moderately high level, I've now cut my working hours in half and am working from home. You might think that this would give me all the time in the world to grace the Geezer world with wisdom, but in reality I've found such enjoyment in gardening, a return to true editing, hanging out at the gym with the other old men, and otherwise practicing simple enjoyment of life, that the pull of Geezers has taken a back seat of late.<br />
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But enough of such relaxed laziness. I am far too early in the Geezer years to neglect the public any longer by puttering around, so with this notice, I promise that the world shall hear from the Geezers on a regular basis from here on, until the end of time or the end of Donald Trump's second term as President, whichever comes first.<br />
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....No, please.....that's enough applause. You embarrass us.<br />
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<br />The Geezershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12132213545989946724noreply@blogger.com12