Spring is Coming. Really.

As has been true for the last week, it was pretty cold this morning in Minneapolis. My car started, but reluctantly. But by late morning when I had to head to an off-site meeting from the office, I noticed that it had warmed up noticeably.

Here's what the dashboard thermometer looked like at 11:00 am in Parking Ramp C, after the cold of early morning eased:

WTF!!

Where the hell is that global warming I've been promised?

This is what fighting an apartment fire at -13 temps looks like
(two nightsago on the U of M campus near where I once lived).

Since we had just a taste of unseasonable winter warmth when the mercury reached 46 degrees last Saturday, the most recent five days have looked like this: morning low -13 to an afternoon high  of 1; low of -13 to a high of 2; low of -8 to a high of 1; low of -12 to a high of  1.

If you average the hourly figures, the average temperature during this stretch has been -7. And that's been in the balmy urban island of Minneapolis. A couple hundred miles to the north, the lows have been -27, -33, etc.

Back in high school physics class, we were taught that cold is really nothing more than the absence of heat energy. That is utter horse shit, because anybody who lives in a northern climate can tell you that cold is an aggressive,  active force that is much more than the mere absence of some other principle. Cold hunts you in the winter here, aggressively and slyly. To say that cold is the absence of heat is like saying Mike Tyson is the absence of Scarlett Johanson.

Another falsehood is the claim that once you get below zero, all cold feels pretty much the same. That's also horse shit, because cold takes on a different feel when you get down to about -15. This is the point where a car when started in the morning will have squared off tires for a few minutes until they roll themselves out to roundness again; where the foam seat cushions in a car are stiff as hardened sand; where the power steering system shrieks at you before the system warms up enough for fluids to flow liquidly. This is also a temperature where the snow will squeal in pain when you walk on it, and where the inside of your nose will crust with ice after moments of breathing through your nostrils.

And it doesn't end there. The coldest air temps I've personally experienced are  in the -35 to -40 range, and at this temperature, actual clothing begins to stiffen, and ice will form on the liquid lubricating your eyeballs. If you spit into the air at this temp, the spittle with freeze with an audible snap and drop to the ground like a hail stone.

And it doesn't end here, either, though I'm fortunate not to have experienced the -55 to -60 below

Not a terrorist. Just a typical business executive commuting
by bus in a Minneapolis winter. 

temps known in parts of northern Minnesota. That's a zone where home furnaces can really never keep up with the attack of the cold on a dark winter night, and where you'd damned well better have a wood-burning heat source to back you up in case the furnace breaks down altogether, which does happen when a furnace is forced to roar constantly for six or seven days at a time without a break. People up there sometimes sleep in fully insulated snow-mobile suits, because furnaces may be able to keep indoor temps only slightly above freezing, and if they break down may cause death to sleepers. I've known cabin owners in the north who literally burned all their furniture in the wood stove in the dead of winter when a propane furnace went bad during weather that left roads impassable.

This morning, before walking to the bus, I donned:

Two pairs of socks, including a thick woolen pair
Long underwear bottoms
Sturdy pair of gabardine business casual slacks
Long-sleeve undershirt
Long-sleeve dress shirt
Long-sleeve v-neck sweater
Thin fleece North Face jacket
Insulated boots
Thick full-length woolen overcoat, reaching to mid calf
8-foot long woolen scarf, wrapped several times around my neck
Woolen driving cap
Woolen earmuffs.

At the bus stop corner, I first bought a cup of steaming coffee from Starbucks, but could not drink it fast enough, because ice began to form on the surface within five minutes of standing outside. And despite the sartorial statement my clothing made, I was experiencing numbness in my toes, hands, and face within 20 minutes of waiting for a bus that was running late.

At the shop downtown where I bought a breakfast sandwich, the clerk mentioned that he had found a great spot to ice-fish for crappies (a pan fish similar to a sun-fish) on one of the city lakes over the weekend. "How's the ice?" I asked. "Okay so far," he said. "Two feet thick right now, but I'm afraid it won't be by end of January. Could be three feet thick by then. My auger may not reach far enough."

This is a climate where a common winter complaint is that the lake ice is too thick to allow for ice fishing.

* this grumpy essay is spoken entirely tongue-in-cheek. I'm well aware that man-made climate change is real, and that the overall temperature of the planet has increased dangerously  in recent years. I just wish a little of that heat would visit us in Minnesota in December and January.

Citizens of 4F, December 30, 2013

This was an unusual day for 3-year-old Frankie, a regular passenger on the morning north-bound 4F bus into downtown Minneapolis.

Frankie and his mother board the bus near the start of its run, in the inner ring suburb of Richfield, and so they are already seated when the bus reaches my stop, which is at the point where the bus just enters crosses the city boundary into  Minneapolis proper on its morning run into downtown. 

Today was different because Frankie was a happy child,  an unusual state of affairs for him. After many dozens of mornings watching him and his young mother, I've concluded that Frankie probably lives with one of the conditions commonly identified as being on the austism/asberger's spectrum. My wife, who worked in the public school system, tells me that it's now the standard theory that attention-deficit disorders also are related to this spectrum, so I'm assuming at the very least, Frankie suffers from a very severe case of attention deficit. 

On most days, his face wears a constant expression of troubled consternation, as though he lives in perpetual conflict with his own nature. Looking out the window of the bus offers him no more than a few seconds of focus, and neither can he be occupied with any of the books or games that his mother provides him on the bus ride. His squirming is constant, and it is rare that he is at peace for more than a few seconds at a time. He is really not disruptive to other passengers, but neither is his mother ever able to do anything but tend his constant needs. His little forehead is almost always furrowed in emotional discomfort.

His mother is very young—certainly no more than 20 or 21, and perhaps even younger, and it's to her credit that I've never seen her lose her temper with Frankie. She is so young that it's possible the Aladdin backpack she carries with Frankie is not her son's at all, but is an artifact of her own recent childhood. 

Today, though, Frankie is for the first time a bit more like other little boys. This morning is the exception that proves the rule.  Beneath his parka, he wears a tee-shirt that says "Hey Dude, Your Girlfriend Keeps Checking Me Out," Frankie sits on his mother's lap facing backwards toward me; I'm two rows behind them.  When Frankie catches my eye, he begins to play the familiar hide-and-seek game that's common to most kids.  He moves his head behind his mother, blocking his view of me, then pops his head back to see me once again.  As soon as my eyes shift back to meet his again, he breaks into a quietly delighted smile.  It pleases him enormously to see our shared recognition of one another. 

The game goes on for nearly 15 minutes—a period of focus virtually unheard of for Frankie. When Frankie and his mother get up to leave the bus at the Lake St. connection, she glances back and smiles at me.  It pleases her to see Frankie occasionally behave like a typical child; it may give her hope for his future. Frankie, too, smiles at me over his Mom's shoulder as they leave the bus, and I wonder if he will develop the skill to remember these occasional calm moments at those frequent times when his awareness again begins to vibrate out of control. 

A Civilized Conversation Begins to Degrade....

Interviewer:  "The wisdom of the Geezers is now something of a legend, and I'm wondering if the group of you can comment on a subject of interest to young men aiming toward Geezerhood some day. That subject is that of fathering children in the modern world. Your commentary frequently borders on the curmudgeonly in tone, so I suspect you have some things to say on the subject."

Mercurious:  "Bold, sometimes rabid opinions, really are the territory of the Professor, but you're right, this is one subject the Geezers can certainly comment on. 

"Personally, the first piece of advice I'd give young men setting out on the path of fatherhood—and the principle most often ignored these days—is this:  Be the adult. Your kids do not need you to be their friend. They need you to be the responsible adult to set their boundaries for them. Far too many namby-pamby men think that being a father means being a buddy. There will be time for that when they grow up, perhaps, but when they're kids, be a genuine adult father to your kids. Handing off to you, Professor."

The Professor:  "Insist that your children talk to you.  They don't have to like you, they don't even need to respect you (of course, that would be nice) but they need to know that talking to you is a "condition of employment" as far as being a kid.  This should be no problem; kids enjoy talking to their parents—when they are young.  The difficulty some parents have is caused by allowing an early pattern of distracted communication to develop, in which the parents are too busy to focus upon and talk with their children. This dysfunctional pattern often kicks in at the magical age of three, when (most) kids explode with language and are almost totally uninhibited about their spoken thoughts. Most three year olds have limited things to talk about, and most parents of three year olds are very busy, tired or, usually both.  It is easy to let a pattern develop of being together without truly talking.  (This is becoming VERY concerning in today's world, where kids—and parents—are equipped with distracting electronic devices all the time.)  

 "Not talking is a delayed-symptom type of thing: it is not much of a concern when kids are young and their lives are relatively simple, and for the most part played out in the view of parents and teachers. The challenge comes when the child reaches, say, middle school, where an age-appropriate impulse for independence starts to kick in, and social pressures become much more difficult to spot and control.  Woe to the parent who has teenagers who are not in the habit of talking with their parents (and I believe nearly the only thing that brings children through some of those tricky "middle years" are habits formed in earlier years when they were more malleable.)

"If the default social mode of the family is developed so that it is more strained, awkward and difficult for kids to sit with their parents in silence, then teenagers will talk; but if the habit is that silence is typical and comfortable, there is no way that a teenager suddenly becomes chatty during those typical teenage emotional states:  confusion, in-over-their-head anger or fearfulness, or debilitating, distracting horniness.

"Meals, of course, can be a big help in all of this.  Formerly, car rides were a big opportunity.  I myself tried to build in a bedtime ritual of having a ten-minute chat over a glass of juice or milk with the little ones before they went off to bed.  They had little to say, really, so usually we just went through their day, hour by hour, and I asked them what they did.  Value in terms of content? Usually close to zero.  Value in terms of establishing a lifelong pattern: (as they say in the adverts) Priceless." 

Mercurious: "I have to say, Professor, that the proof is clearly in the pudding. I've seen your interaction with your grown kids, and you've clearly done something pretty right. Yours is an admirable family dynamic, to be sure. What say you, Mr. Math?"

Mathematician:  "So the core of the advice from my esteemed colleagues seems to be "discipline" and "communication". I can't say we had either of those in abundance in my childhood. Not that my sisters and I were particularly mute or surly. But our evening meals were not the gabfests the Professor remembers. And as for discipline, well, my Dad didn't try hard to be my best friend but I honestly never remember him even raising his voice to me, or my sisters. And I may have been too much of a milk toast to warrant the occasional correction, but I guarantee my three sisters richly deserved the dressing downs they never received. 

"What we did have in my family that made things work was a strong sense of place, or traditions. One felt the need to do things a certain way because that's what we did. Work hard. Study hard. Don't complain. Respect your elders. Hold family dear. Perhaps because my maternal Grandmother lived with us and cared for us when we were very young, my siblings and I all shared that common worldview. When I go out to shoveel another frickin' Minnesota snow off my drively in the barely dawn, I can still her my Grandmother's voice: "A job worth doing is worth doing well. Sometimes I wish her advice had been more like, 'Have another. You can do that other shit tomorrow.'

"My wife and I have tried to imbue our kids with a sense of tradition. We have endlessly talked to them about the rich histories of my family and hers. The kind of stories and traditions that almost every family has. Either that worked or my kids are very good at hiding their transgressions. Not that they are exactly what I'd like them to be. But they have a good sense of who they are, backed by a good understanding of from whence they came. That's about all they really need, which is good because the next generation will likely grow up with considerably less than we had. But that's another topic.  For later. 

Mercurious: "Well said, Math.  The success of your strategies is also clear to anyone who simply looks at your family. In our family, we probably spent more effort on creating new traditions rather than following historical traditions, as some of those felt stifling and onerous. But I'm well aware that our kids have appreciated the life-rhythm reassurance offered by the repeated activities that became our own family traditions.

The Professor:  “Nicely observed, Mathematician, especially the observation about tradition. I REALLY struggle trying to understand those people who don't get how tradition works and who, thus, undervalue (or are sometimes actively antagonistic toward) tradition.

Interviewer: “Geezers, any further thoughts?  I know you to be immensely opinionated, so surely you have other advice...."

Mercurious:  One other thing. Let your kids be kids. Give them the free time and space to explore

the world and themselves and figure out who they are and what they want to be. When we Geezers were young, summers were largely a time to wander about rather aimlessly, playing sandlot baseball with buddies, hanging out at the municipal swimming pool, roaming hillsides or just generally getting into mischief. We most certain DID NOT have every moment of every day scheduled for us by our parents. And I think we turned out much the better for our parents having the good sense to let us be kids."

Interviewer:  "Thank you Geezers....

Mercurious:  "Wait a minute....

Dr. Golf:  “You said one other thing. Now you’re starting yet another thing.”

Mercurious:  “…On the subject of tradition... Tradition seems like a double-edged sword to me, capable of both good and ill. You can argue that tradition was also what prevented first women, then black people, from voting. Also what prevented gay people from having rights. And certainly there are some religious traditions that have been corrosive. Math, you of all people must roll your eyes at some of those traditions. If you adhere to tradition, then must you of necessity believe that change is bad? Tradition, after all, is partly about arch defense of the status quo. Where does "tradition" end, and lazy inertia begin? A complex subject, I think. Tradition is both a human necessity, and sometimes a human foible.

Interviewer...."Perhaps another time, we can explore that....

Professor: "Hold on, hold on. Mercurious doesn't get the last word this time.

"Of course tradition—like all powerful tools—has its down side along with its positive value. My basic concern is when people reject a tool such as this one on the basis of its misuse. 

"The Geezer in me is tempted to reject the Internet as a tool because of its misuse in the form of ugly anonymity detached pseudo-communication.  Our esteemed Mathematician has developed an aversion to most things religious—to what extent this is related to observing its dubious use in gloomy Lutheran settings growing up in Minnesota is a judgment I am not in a position to make.  

"To me the salient concern is: when you know a tool exists that can do what no other tool can, don't you think you should at least learn as much as you can about such a tool? 

"As a professor at reasonably selective college, I work with a lot of people possessing a fair amount

of "grey matter" intelligence.  It is doubly frustrating to encounter very intelligent people who opt out of a struggle to understand how something like tradition works based on the many negative things to which it contributes.  Ditto religion, ditto technology (for that matter, ditto following sports and being a sports fan.)  Learn about these tools, try applying them in a sophisticated manner, and determine their sensible place in (or out) of your lives.  It's the knee-jerk reaction by intelligent people that gives me pause."

Interviewer:  "Thank you for that final thought...."

Mercurious: "Listen carefully, Professor. I'm not rejecting the concept of tradition, only asking you to be more precise. You're the one that said tradition is always good, without qualification.  So who's being knee jerk?

Mathematician:  "There goes Mercurious, getting the last word again. Sheesh. Edit this, dip stick!" 

Dr.  Golf  (to Interviewer): "Welcome to my life. These pseudo-intellectual mutts never shut up."

Interviewer:  "Thank you, Geezers, one and all. And special thanks to Dr. Golf."

Snow Sabbath

After a brief hiatus, during which time he has returned to his home in the United States, married off his eldest progeny, and endured caustic demands for creative output from the editor, the Professor returns to these pages to grace us with his wit and wisdom once again. 

One of the chief pleasures of being a Geezer is that you can cast negative judgment with almost complete impunity.  "What’s he complaining for," people with ask themselves, and then quickly and easily move on to an answer to their self-directed rhetorical question: “Because he is a old geezer, of course.”  But if a Geezer is to be true to his calling rather than merely playing a simple cliché version of an old Geezer, he must question himself even more rigorously than others do.  (Mostly because he views himself more seriously than others do.)  The true Geezer must look deeply into the great “whys” of existence, chief among them being the always important: “Why don’t I like this?”  

Today’s “why don’t I like this” is of seasonal significance: snow days. Specifically, why I don't like them.  (A "snow day," for the edification of our southern readers, is a term used in the northern climates to signify a day where routine social or civic activities are cancelled due the presence of heavy snowfall). 

As I turn on a morning news program here in the northeast U.S. and hear all of the closures due to snow, I cannot help but think

In our day, the kids were so hearty that we
even held ORGIES in the snow!

that this wholesale cancellation of activities due to mere snow has done got out of hand.  Part of my bemusement with this trend is due, I would think, to my upbringing in Minnesota. 

Minnesotans make little of a foot or two of snow, and Minnesota PAPER BOYS know there is no such thing as a snow day!  As a boy, the closest I recall to getting a "snow day" from the paper route was when our city manager/coordinator

As a paperboy, the Professor was a
joy to all he encountered. 

couldn't get up College hill to drop off my copies of the St Paul Pioneer Press for me to deliver.  Not to worry: he called nice and early at 5:30 a.m. to let me know that the papers could be found on the curb two blocks down the hill and were in a plastic bag so the still-falling snow wouldn't make them soggy before I got there to pick them up for subsequent delivery.  Snow cancellation?  Fat chance.

And my parents weren't really fans of the idea of snow cancellations either.  (I can't blame them: if I had eight kids running around a house with three bedrooms and one bath,  I would want to trundle them off to school—or ANY open building for that matter—that would take them for the day.)  I remember my own surprise one morning when the temperature was 35 degrees below zero and my mother opined that the nuns should consider a school cancellation because of cold. I articulated my surprise, given her history of skeptical attitude toward snow cancellation.  The logic of her reply made sense: "cold weather can kill you, but I can't remember anyone getting killed by deep snow (except your great-uncle Alphonse who shouldn't have decided to shovel both his and his neighbors snow in one go...he was just showing off)." Nonetheless, we were sent off to school that morning in the 35 below temps with the sensible advice to keep our tongues off of any and all iron pump handles.

And among the most irritating of all snow cancellations to a Geezer is the cancellations of CHURCH SERVICES.  What in God's name is the good of being a devout Christian if your pastor doesn't even have the confidence (in you, God, or both?) to conduct services, out of fear that members will come to ill trying to get to church.  

But underneath all of my inflated concern about the knee-jerk cancellation of everything in sight after merely the FORECAST of snow, there is a larger concern about what these cancellations say about society.  Today's fondness for the snow days is a symptom of a larger, more concerning development. Put briefly: people declare snow days because we are DESPERATE for snow days—we're desperate for any excuse at all to truly, actually give ourselves a BREAK (or should I say "brake?")  

For thousands of years, cultures have followed broadly-held rationales that allowed hard-working, driven people to take a break without thinking of themselves as slackers (to use today's terminology).  This was a variation of the "Sabbath" practice, where a day of idleness was usually (but not always) woven into religious observations.  The same impulse is what prompted numerous state-sanctioned  "blue laws" forbidding shopping and other commercial activities on designated days— laws that were in effect up to recent memory, but which are now gone everywhere.  

Our "go-go" scheduling leaves us with feeling that should  we knock off for an entire day  there must something wrong with our work ethic; and if a gap in our schedules does present itself, we immediately and nervously schedule some activity or another.  Children's activities—formerly exempt from weekends (or at minimum, from Sunday)—now seem to be mandated 7 days a week.  

Social history shows us that we need a regular break, both physically and emotionally; we need to change our regular pattern of doing and being; we need a sabbath, or at least the equivalent.  Why won't we give ourselves a break?  I wonder if it is because of an unconscious fear that we won't be able to hold ourselves up as paragons of industry when talking critically about others who are less fortunate and to whom we are so anxious to affix the label "lazy" because we don't want to provide adequate social support.  

For whatever reason, we are are desperate for a break, and when  an excuse like bad weather (or even the possibility of bad weather) presents itself, we seize the moment.  I guess it's better than having no break at all, but surely this isn't the way to nurture a sane, healthy culture. Lord knows we can't call it a "Sabbath" but can't we figure out a way to carve out some time for rejuvination?  The appalling encroachment of commerce into our most recent Thanksgiving is only the most recent evidence that we are not headed in the right direction. Could we not all just agree that on occasion it's all right to stop?   

Maybe that's why snow cancellations make me grumpy...after all, there must be SOME reason, mustn't there?

Geezer Shame

'Tis the season for corporate bribes.

No, not real hard cash, which might be somewhat useful. In the publishing world where I exist, what gets exchanged this time of year is enormous boxes of candy, fruit baskets, monstrous collections of holiday cookies, cheeses, nuts, sausage, etc. etc., all deluging us from Asian printers, prepress color houses, paper manufacturers, copy machine vendors, design studios, the more prosperous freelancers....all the folks who trying to create just a little bit of good will that might sway us into given them our business in the upcoming year. As the publishing business has become unbelievably competitive in recent years, the quality of the bribery has also increased.

Sounds great, but alas, my willpower suffers when faced with mountains of fine chocolates and exotic cheeses heaped in the lunchroom from dawn to dusk. Each time I refill my coffee cup (which is often), there the temptation lies....

....there's only so much restraint a middle-aged guy should be expected to exercise. I'm not a lecherous old coot in the normal sense—pretty girls are entirely safe from me— but fine Swiss chocolate does have the power to create a certain kind of lust that leaves me occasionally powerless.

I'm hiding this lust from my wife.  I eat dinner dutifully each night, unable to confess that I've cheated on the evening meal just a few hours earlier, with an entire harem of beautiful candies perfumed with raspberry sea salt and wearing naughty lingerie of caramel under tight black dresses of rich chocolate.

I'm so ashamed.

Citizens of 4F, December 17, 2013

Sylvia is one of those people who is either blessed or cursed (depending on your view) by being born without the gene for social restraint.

Her work schedule often puts her both on the same inbound morning bus and the same outbound evening bus as me, and so I see a lot of Sylvia. She is a slightly round woman with longish hair, somewhere in her late 30s, wearing large round eyeglasses that would seem more appropriate on an older woman.  When I first started observing her, I thought that perhaps Sylvia had been riding for many, many years, since many people on the bus seemed to be close friends of hers. I quickly saw, though Sylvia is just one of those people who will tell anything and everything, to almost anyone, any time, any where. The people she talked to so openly weren't close friends at all. She just doesn't have any sense of social restraint at all when it comes to talking with strangers.

If you find yourself sitting next to Sylvia, usually it's only a matter of a moment or two until she turns in her seat, leans forward, and enters into a spirited, if somewhat one-sided, conversation with you.

It would be rather easy to simple label Sylvia as a sadly lonely woman who talks to bus people because she has no one else in the world to converse with. She seems more complicated than that, though, because judging from her conversation, it appears that her management job at the bank entails a fair amount of responsibility and routine interaction with others seems to be something she's good at.

Sylvia will describe every aspect of her life to the people around her on the bus, and she does so in a voice that carries pretty much throughout the vehicle. For several consecutive mornings recently, she described the office intrigue that went along with her yearly performance review at work. (She was not viewed positively by her supervisor, who dislikes single women, we're told.) Her principle audience for this conversation was the monkish Thomas, an elderly gentleman who very politely listened, nodded, even offered an occasional word of encouragement.

On another morning, a woman (and everybody else) was treated to a pretty detailed description of Sylvia's extended family, some of whom live in the area, others as far way as Seattle. She is particularly close to her half-brother; doesn't much care for her sister, even though she is a full sibling.

Not everybody listens politely. Some newcomers to the bus shift uncomfortably when Sylvia begins to talk directly to them, and a few even get up to change seats. For those who have been around a while, though, Sylvia no longer draws any attention. She is just one of the gang, although a little eccentric. We know lots and lots about her, even though we've never heard her actually give her name.

Much of the time, Sylvia just describes the minutia of her life in pretty exhaustive detail. Occasionally, however, a bit of philosophy falls out of the sky, apropos of nothing else that's been going on at all. This morning, Sylvia was unusually silent for most of the ride into downtown. It wasn't until the final passengers boarded the bus when only standing room remained, that Sylvia finally spoke, boldly:

"If you've decided to change yourself because of somebody else, it never works," she said to everyone on the bus. "The only reason to change if for yourself, and yourself alone."