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NOVEMBER
2, 2024 This election season, we Pennsylvanians have found many cards like this in our mailboxes. The cards don't influence my choice of candidates, and they usually go straight into the trash. But this one that arrived yesterday caught my eye due to its utter negativity. On November 5th vote against the worst candidate for Attorney General, it screams. The three complaints against him include that he's a career politician. He might put that another way: he's devoted his life to public service.
On the back, the card proclaims that another candidate should not be our Auditor General and a third is unfit to be Treasurer. All are Democrats. The card denouncing these radical progressives was paid for by the Commonwealth Leaders Fund. It does not mention the opponents whom the Fund prefers nor explain how they would be better. Remember when candidates optimistically pledged to do good things for us if elected? Remember when they spent their money telling us why we should vote for them, not why we should vote against the other guys? Times have changed, it appears.
OCTOBER 31, 2024 I'LL GIVE IT TO YOU! I'M HALLOWEEN! In olden times specifically 1909 in New Haven, Connecticut Cole Porter enrolled at Yale. Some 25 years later, he wrote Anything Goes. In that musical, a comic character called Moonface Martin tries to stop the action by shouting, Hang on! I'm saying my prayers! Don't be fooled by the clerical collar. Moonface is a gangster, Public Enemy Number 13, and he's less familiar with the Gospel of Matthew than with Amos 'n' Andy. He prays:
At home, my cell phone is usually powered off. Incoming calls get forwarded to the answering function on my landline phone. Usually when that phone rings, a telemarketer hangs up without leaving a message, and I can ignore it. The phone didn't ring for a couple of days. Then when I wanted to make an outgoing call, the display said NO LINE. Sure enough, there was no dial tone. So I powered up my cell phone and called Verizon to report the problem. An automated voice asked me a number of questions and listened to my spoken answers. Then another voice asked me some more questions. Eventually I was scheduled for a service visit between 9:00 and 5:00 two days later. But then the next morning the landline phone rang with an automated message that my prescription at Rite Aid was ready. The telephone proved to be back to normal! I assume there had been a glitch at Master Control. I called up Verizon's reminder text and replied fixed, and a return text thanked me and noted that the service visit was canceled. Afterwards I pondered the fact that it felt as though I had conversed with two helpful customer representatives and a pharmacist and a service technician who collectively solved everything over a period of two days. Yet in fact I had spoken to no one. Only robots. This modern world is still amazing to a 77-year-old like me.
Youre probably familiar with the phrase eke out a living. Eke, pronounced eek, is a verb that means to achieve with difficulty. There was once a different English word also spelled eke, except it was an adverb and was pronounced ache. Like the German auch, this eke meant also. William Shakespeare sometimes used it. Geoffrey Chaucer eke employed it two centuries earlier:
Mickey Rooneys passing earlier this year prompted me to watch his 1935 appearance in the film of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream. Comic actor Joe E. Brown eke was in the movie, playing the character called Flute. In Act III, he had a punning line describing the young Pyramus: most brisky jew-venile and eke most lovely Jew. And eke? There are alternative possibilities like and also or and at the same time or as well as. However, those would not have fit the iambic meter, so Shakespeare chose and eke though the word had already begun to fade into obsolescence. (He also spelled the preceding word juvenal.) But Joe E. Brown must not have been familiar with Middle English vocabulary. He knew not eke (ache), but only eke (eek) as in Eek! A mouse! The actor raised his pitch and squeaked the word as eek! The meaning seemed to be most animated juvenile and horrors! most lovely Jew. I cringed slightly.
Herewith, I wish you ghostly dreams and eke a happy Halloween!
OCTOBER 24, 2014 BUZZED BY BASEBALLS BY THE BAY
At least that was the theory, when bishops' books resolved the world, writes Wallace Stevens. We cannot go back to that. Those who get their facts from more reliable sources have concluded that the universe is more than two million times older than the Bible would lead us to believe. In particular, in the Victorian era Charles Darwin deduced the fact of evolution. Edward Dolnick has written that Victorians were reluctant to give up humans' central, divinely created place in the scheme of things. But the truth grew harder and harder to ignore.
OCTOBER 19, 2024 EARLY TO BED AND EARLY TO RISE As a freshman in college, some of my classes met at 8:00 AM, an hour dreaded by many fellow students. However, I felt the need to get up even earlier than necessary to prepare. Not wanting to bother my roommate during the predawn hours, I went down to the basement of Burton Hall to do my studying. Nowadays in retirement, I've resumed that routine. I've connected my lights to a timer that creates an artificial sunrise at 4:30 AM. I get up and do a little walking around the apartment, then sit down at the computer to tend to creative tasks. In the evening, I recline in front of the television at 6:00 PM and soon doze off for First Sleep, well before lights out courtesy of the timer at 9:00 PM. After midnight, I'll arise briefly to update the calendar and take my daily medications before settling in again for Second Sleep. (In The Squire's Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote of a king's daughter who slepte hir firste sleepe, and thanne awook.) Such habits might seem odd. But I'm not the only one. Aristotle wrote that rising before daylight ... is a healthy habit, and gives more time for the management of the household as well as for liberal studies. Then in the evening it's sensible to retire once darkness has fallen. And older adults tend to sleep more lightly and a little earlier than they used to. University of Colorado football coach Deion Sanders says an 8:00 PM kickoff time is the dumbest thing ever and the stupidest thing ever invented in life. Who wants to stay up till eight o'clock for a dern game? It's a pet peeve for Sanders, writes Brent Schrotenboer in USA Today. 8:15 PM is normally when he might go to bed. His Buffaloes previously played three games on Fox that started at 10:00 AM local time (noon ET); those games were favored by many players and much more in tune with Sanders' personal early-bird work schedule which includes rising before dawn. The local morning radio hosts must also rise before dawn, and they have similar feelings. They've been grumbling all this week about tomorrow night's Jets at Steelers 8:20 PM kickoff. That's after their bedtime and the bedtimes of many of my fellow septuagenarians who will be there, including the Steeler veterans being honored for winning the Super Bowl 50 years ago.
OCTOBER 17, 2024 THE VILE USE OF TAKING TOBACCO On this date 420 years ago, England's King James (of Bible fame) noted that a recently discovered American drug was originally used only by the better sort persons of good calling and quality who could afford it and only as an alternative medicine. Now tobacco was being excessively taken by a number of riotous and disordered persons of mean and base condition. The king was on record as opposing the addictive fad, which was a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomless. Therefore, to discourage the recreational use of this awful drug, he raised the tobacco tariff. Effective as of October 26, 1604, the import duty would be the present-day equivalent of $137 per pound, 40 times what it had been. A pound of tobacco can fill roughly 200 pipes. Merchants would of course pass the tariff cost on to consumers, to whom it would mean an additional 70 cents per pipeful.
A newspaper could print those tragic headlines every day. Those are the average daily U.S. gun violence statistics, according to this from Tom Begnal. Thats a major reason I dont share some peoples love of firearms. Another reason: Ive watched nature documentaries on TV. They celebrate the lives of the wildlife with which we share the planet. On one, an English barn swallow literally feathers its nest. There are ducks in the barnyard, and occasionally a downy white feather is shed and the breeze carries it off. In slow motion, we watch a swallow fly toward the feather floating in the sunshine, grab it in its beak, take it to its home in the rafters of the barn, and drop it into the nest. So charming. Or weve all seen scenes of bear cubs playing with each other. Their mother comes by and starts to teach them how to catch fish. So cute. Once, changing channels, I came across a scene of an adult bear standing up leaning against a tree, scratching his back. Aaah, that feels good. The bear relaxes, contented. Suddenly, BANG! The defenseless animal flinches, stumbles, falls to the ground, and dies. We cut to two hunters with their rifles and sniper scopes, congratulating each other on the ambush murder theyve just committed. So disgusting.
OCTOBER 12, 2024 THIS WEEK For me, several recent days were occupied with medical matters, starting on Tuesday with my annual immunizations to forestall COVID-19 and the flu. The next morning I fasted so I could have a routine blood draw at the request of four different physicians. Afterwards, no longer having to think about those chores, I ate a hearty breakfast. It was a good cool day for sleeping, so before long I was blissfully unconscious under a blanket. But my test results soon appeared via an application called MyChart, so I was not finished. On Thursday I spent 45 minutes updating a giant two-page spreadsheet where I can compare my numbers over the past few years. I entered the latest 48 parameters. Of course, I don't know what most of them imply, but I see nothing surprising. I'll get a second opinion next week at my semi-annual visit with my primary care physician. In sports, specifically college football, there was a headline a few days ago on The Athletic: Does the Vanderbilt-Bama upset even matter? Of course it matters, to Alabama and especially to Vanderbilt. But to ask the question is to presume that the only outcome which really matters is the eventual national championship. Baseball sportswriters have long had a similar fixation. We need more to discuss besides the latest game, so let's look at the standings. Who's leading the league? We need even more, so let's speculate on future trades. And lately the same attitude infected NASCAR, where during an April race the announcers feel compelled to discuss how the results could affect who'll make the all-important postseason playoffs in September. The WNBA Finals opened on Thursday with a thrilling 95-93 overtime win by the four-time champion Minnesota Lynx over the New York Liberty. Game 2 will be played tomorrow afternoon.
OCTOBER 10, 2014 TICK TICK TICK TICK Ages ago, CBS News introduced a series called 60 Minutes, anchored by Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace. They needed a graphic design.
The program was described as a news magazine: three separate mini-documentaries within a single hour. Therefore, the background simulated a printed news magazine like Time. (The dark border around Harrys head resulted from the primitive blue-screen Chromakey technique of the time.) And to symbolize the passing of those 60 minutes, they added a ticking stopwatch. The larger hand circled the dial once in a minute, the smaller hand once in 60. I knew about stopwatches. As a kid, I had one in my box of toys. Later, as a manager of our high school track team, I used one of the schools stopwatches to help time races. Once I even pretended to start a 220-yard dash by firing a pistol; the photo below was posed for the yearbook. In a real race, at the finish line there would have been as many as eight stopwatches operated by volunteer timers (some with a watch in each hand). Some tracks had a little portable staircase to nowhere. They placed it next to the finish line, so all the stopwatch operators and judges could gather there and have a perfect viewpoint angle.
Announcers often talked over the introductory portion of a record, back-timing their comments to conclude just before the vocalist started to sing. Ken Levine posted this week, 8) As a former disc jockey, I still talk-up records in my car. Right up to the vocal. Im a master at this. Its maybe my greatest skill ... which is unfortunate since its also utterly useless. KHJ Boss Radio is not coming back anytime soon. Someone named Yekimi commented, Holy crap! I thought I was the only one that did [that. I only] get embarrassed when at a traffic light with my car windows down and someone pulls up alongside and looks at me like I'm a serial killer. To accomplish this trick, DJs need to know the songs rather well. I didnt. So I used a stopwatch.
During the 1970s, digital stopwatches began to appear. Theyre smaller and easier to read, typically to a hundredth of a second. (But can you push the button that precisely?) Also, you dont have to wind them, and you can more easily measure multiple events. The old ticking analog stopwatches are obsolete nowadays, except on 60 Minutes.
OCTOBER 7, 2024 THE BIG PICTURE The Pittsburgh newspaper once editorialized, The Post-Gazette is not about to recommend a Yes or No vote on tomorrow's ballot questions. ...What we do endorse is an informed approach to the question, in which people do the math on how the new rates would affect the family pocketbook and then vote accordingly. My reaction, however, was this: Good citizens should not cast their ballots selfishly. We shouldn't always base our decisions on what's best for our particular family. We ought to consider also what's best for the commonwealth in general. I recently read in the Richwood Gazette that an Ohio woman strongly objects to a county project to clean out a logjam on Mill Creek. Though it might benefit the overall public, it would not benefit her property. The proposed improvements are not necessary for me as a land owner. On a larger scale, should our elected representatives enact whatever's preferred by the partisans in their half of the divided electorate? Or should they enact what they know is best for the people as a whole?
OCTOBER 5, 2024 BE PREPARED Four months ago in Doonesbury ... five months before the heated Presidential election that's now only one month away ... Garry Trudeau imagined a talk-radio host checking out a rumor. We're back and continuing our conversation with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. Mrs. Criswell, I understand FEMA is now pre-positioning temporary shelters in the nation's red states. What's going on? Well, part of FEMA's mission is to prepare for and mitigate against man-made disasters. In the event that Trump loses the election, we need to be ready to set up reality re-entry camps. FEMA camps? We're concerned that millions of MAGA survivors will be wandering the country unmoored, confused, and unable to make sense of post-cult life. Oh. We'll be offering deprogramming services, slowly re-exposing them to actual facts. I see. But we'll be doing so as humanely as possible. These folks have been through a lot. So what happens to the camps if Trump wins? They'll be used for immigrants. Don't get me started.
OCTOBER 2, 2024 HIT THE BRICKS, LOSERS Well, the Pirates have packed up and left Pittsburgh, because another regular season of baseball has ended. It's time for me to illustrate the Diamond Brick Road of wins and losses traveled in 2024 by our local team, the one with the second-lowest payroll in the majors. No surprise; the black line depicts the Pirates' sixth straight losing season. Despite starting the year with five straight wins and later staying in the gold (above .500) for a couple of weeks in July-August, they ended with a 76-86 record, the same as last year. Pittsburgh hasn't been in the postseason playoffs since 2015. Some fans are in despair. Mark Vidonic, my former colleague on the local broadcast crew, posted on Facebook: The further removed I am from it being my occupation, now going on 15 years, the harder it's getting for me, as also a lifelong fan, to pretend things don't need to change from ownership on down. I'm just at the lowest point of tolerance I've ever been for this. However, 2024 attendance at the ballpark was 1,720,361. That's the largest in seven years! Pirate fans keep buying the product, wrote columnist Gene Collier, but unfortunately the product is hope, not baseball, and that's a sin. Other comments include:
You see, ownership's goal isn't to win games, let alone championships; it's to make a profit. Of course, things could be worse. I can't resist displaying a more extreme example of a franchise that doesn't need wins to survive, so far at least: this year's Chicago White Sox. Their Diamond Brick Road is shown by the red line. It includes three separate losing streaks of at least a dozen consecutive games, making them the first team since 1900 with this dubious accomplishment. One 21-game streak dropped their record from 27-67 to 27-88 and put them on pace for 124 losses. During the season, the Sox allowed 813 runs while scoring only 507. Winning only a quarter of their games, their final record was 41-121. That's the most losses in a season during Major League Baseball's modern era.
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