SINGULAR PROVES THE UNIVERSAL -- TRY IT -- YOU'LL SEE

I actually took some time to watch a video that I received in my E-mail box.  I am not a person who watches things on the Internet.  There are so many videos and audios that are recorded and sent around that I don't really have the time to spend watching and listening to things when I can read something in 60 seconds that takes 7 minutes for someone to say or show.  So I am a reader, not a watcher/listener.  But this time, I had five minutes and the title was catchy.  "Three things I learned when I survived a crash landing."  Five minutes to hear what this person had to say seemed to be a reasonable investment of intellectual time.  Actually, the disappointing thing about the time invested is that there was nothing new in the five minute speech.  I, and you, have heard the three things before and have read them numerous times on other PowerPoint shows that make the rounds of the world every day.  There is, however one point that did cause me to relate to real experiences that I have had at various times in my life.  Because there was commonality in the experiences with a variety of people, I came to see the light about the truth of the axiom that is the title of this post.  The middle point of the speaker this time was simply, "I learned not to waste time harboring negative emotional energy in response to events that affect me."  My mind was immediately pinging, dinging and ponging about like a major high scoring hit on a pinball machine.  There was the Bible professor who had spend time in a German concentration camp, had escaped and was caught right at the border of Germany and Switzerland because the man who was escaping with him let out a French Exclamation when he was asked his name.  Sorry guys, back to the gulag with you.  Then there is the friend of mine who lost his family through his own fault because he could not control his drinking habit.  He knows it's his fault.  He knows that it is a disaster.  Through honesty and spirituality, he has regained a part of the relationship that he had with the ex-wife and children.  Finally, there is the young lady I know who was lost in the wild for a week or more and was near the last moments of her life when one of the search dogs came close to a tree near her to relieve himself.  She sensed the presence and was able to move and the dog responded and she was found.  All three of these people were the coolets, calmest, most collected beings that I have known.  I did not know the second two as deeply as the first.  But the ex-prisoner was my first experience in the company of someone who had survived a situation which appears to most of us to be larger and stronger than life itself.  In the classroom, he was a marvel of clarity and of patience.  On the tennis court, he was nigh on to unbeatable because he would commit an error, never miss a beat and come back and kill three shots in a row.  While he was learning English [He was French, by the way] he never got nonplussed about himself or any other extraneous influences along the way.  He would come back the next day, ready to attack the problems of the day before with a sense of determination and calm that I, personally, could never achieve.
People who survive something that normally claims human beings and destroys them learn instantaneously that survival is the fruit of positive focus and bears the same fruit after the incident.  One time, one of us asked the ex-prisoner what he did about the friend who had erroneously committed the "fatal" language error.  All he said was, "I spent the time going back to the gulag consoling him."

All of this came flooding back to me when the survivor of the crash landing on the Hudson River enumerated his three lessons.  All three were in fact universal in nature, though particular to him.  I had lived one of those vicariously through my friendship with three other human beings who had had similar experiences.  There is a whole lot of truth to Philosophy after all.

YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WRITE ABOUT THIS ON YOUR BLOG ARE YOU?

Oh, boy!  What a great conversation that ignited.  It lasted about 5 words..."Nah, wouldn't think of it."  So here I am, writing about the art of hiding a picture inside of a picture without saying that there is a picture inside the picture.  There you are,  knowing that there is something inside of me today that you are not going to be able to read here, at least not in black and white, and wondering how you're going to find it between the lines.  Actually, you should have better luck with the stereogram above than with the between the lines truth contained herein.
Confidentiality is not something that I easily break, especially when I am told by the Voice from the Kitchen, "thou shalt not."  Confidentiality can be a dynamic learning device.  Listen to the truth that you are keeping to yourself. It is whispering new facets of itself to you as time goes by.  After a while you know that if you had divulged this truth, you would have lost some of its depth and you would be the poorer for it.  I invite you to look at some of the things that you haven't told anyone for one reason or another.  Some of the things we keep confidential are really not essentially secret, but because we keep them to ourselves, we feel better about ourselves.  Some are essentially confidential.  These can be among the greatest treasures we own.  Think of the doctors, lawyers, accountants, priests, mothers and fathers who harbor precious truths about people and/or things.  Over time, the guarded truth blossoms and makes the soul and the heart appreciate life more deeply.  Is it because we know and appreciate that it comes from a person such as we?  Is it because we suddenly realize how much we have grown because of the protection that we gave it?  I know that in some cases, confidential truths that I have guarded have served me in moments of helping other people to see tough realities in a softer light.  Not by divulging them, but by putting the lessons learned from them into the light of someone else's soul.
That is my thought for the day.  This is NOT was I was told not to write.  It is a reflection on how I feel about obeying the entreaty to not write about something.  I feel good about it now.  I know I'll feel better about it sometime in the future.  I may even write about it :-)

BTW, my son has landed a little job.  He is now going to be able to support his table tennis habit.  Thank you for your prayers.

BABY SITTERS, WE'VE KNOWN A FEW

Don't ask me why, but I thought of this today.  The baby sitters we had as we grew up.  I'm going to need some help with this, so when you get this and it triggers your queevates, click the comment button and join in.
Joan Drew
Shirley Dame
Joan Sharon
Joan's brother [help me on this one, I forget his name]
Jackie McLaughlin
Dorothy Czech, Jackie's friend
Uncle Donald Dion
Uncle Normand Dion
These are the ones that I remembered today.  I also had some quick, few words/characterizations/descriptions of each of them run through my mind. For those of you who are not personally familiar with my childhood, this part of the story really doesn't mean much to you...
Most caring/best teacher
Most loyal
She's OK
Prize-winning beautiful
Most fun
Strictest/best cook
Best singer


Or does it?  How could a young child come up with these categories of people and remember them 60+ years later?  Isn't that what you're wondering?  You must be reading this shaking your head and wondering what kind of childhood we had if we went around putting people into categories.  Of course we did.  That's what growing children do.  Especially when it comes to baby sitters.  They are important people.  Children spend a lot of time with them.  Baby sitters are the ones who teach children the art of negotiation.  Baby sitters know that the children know what instructions the parents gave the sitter.  They also know that the children are going to try to get the sitter to bend the rules.  Some sitters know that this is the time when life lessons enter the room.  This is the time for politics 101.  This is the time for the art of compromise and barter.  This is the time for honesty, truth and mutual respect for a "deal."  All I know about baby sitters is what I lived with the ones whom my parents trusted with us.  They were all very honest and caring people.  The one who got an OK from me was not around for a very long time.  I, of course, do not know why, but the fact is that she did not have a long run.  Maybe EFR and MJT Dion knew something that I didn't and still don't.  But for the time she was with us, she was fine.  Not Mary Poppins, but fine.  That makes me think...No, we never did have a "Mary Poppins."
My favorite was the one who had the patience to teach me to write my name, to read English better and to do simple arithmetic.  She never sent me to bed. She would say something like, "You've done better tonight than the last time. When you think about things before you go to sleep, you'll be able to do them better next week."  I loved her so much and trusted her so deeply that I would go to bed right away to test her theory.  I would do it all week. It worked.  I loved it.  And ya wanna know what?  I did that all my life and still do that same thing to this day.  I had to struggle with many new languages in my life.  I can't begin to count the sleepless hours I have logged forcing myself to get better at the language that was challenging me at the time.  When people tell me that I have a "facility" for languages, it really pulls my chain.  What I have is a facility to drive myself insane while looking at the ceiling and forcing my brain to think of something in a language that it doesn't even know yet.  That's a "facility?"  It's all that sweet, beautiful, loving, baby sitter's fault.  If she's still alive, she deserves it because the world needs her.  I hope she reads this because she is one of the key people in my life.  I kid you not.
I don't want to prolong this, but I will just say one last thing.  This all took place in the day and age before Baby Sitting training had been invented.  Maybe I should have placed this thought first, not last.

WW II -- PART II --

I want to thank my brother for writing his little story about the way the news of the end of WW II hit him.  I have recounted my experience  of that day more than once, and perhaps even once here, on the blog.  I'll look it up before I sign off.  Here is my brother's response to the post on this blog from yesterday.  Let me warn you, some of this is written in a foreign language, so just be patient with here for a moment.

The most vivid memories of the war for me were the airplanes.  I loved them too and until I hurt my eye, my dream was to be a fighter pilot on an Aircraft Carrier.  
As for the food, my most vivid memory is mixing the food coloring into the oleo.  Yuck!  No butter!  AND I do remember the end of the war.  We were playing in the driveway at the Poiriers [diagonally across the street from our house] when Mrs. Poirier ran out of the house and told Chiah and Dounad to hurry into the house so they could pray.  I got so scared.  I ran home crying.  A few minutes later the guys from Smith St.,  Dickey, Gary, the Baileys, Kenny Stiles, Georgie Hahn, Bobby Bah [Bach] and Ron Laporte came marching over Hartford St. banging pots and pans and singing and yelling.  Mom wanted me to join them, but I just cried the louder.  I was such a baby!


That day I was out fishing with EFR Dion.  We had left early in the morning.  He wanted some pickerel and he opined that I could get some pan fish for the giggles.  So off we went to his favorite pickerel hole.  As I remember it, both of us got skunked, so we were sad sacks for most of the way back home.  But then as we went through towns we noticed that there were quite a few impromptu celebrations of the kind that Denis just mentioned.  So we turned the radio on and got the news about the surrender of the Japanese.  When we finally got to the house, things had begun to be a little quieter and my dear brother was glad to see us.


My big question to my father came about four or five days later when I said, "Well, now that the war is over, we won't need newspapers any more, will we?"  He just smiled and said, "Oh, I'm sure that they'll find something else to write about.  Don't worry."  I'm rather glad that they did find something else.  One of my favorites came to us some ten years later, fellow by the name of Charlie Brown.


Tomorrow, Baby Sitters.  I got the thought today, but I let this "WW II -- Part II" take the space while it was fresh.

I REMEMBER WHEN --- WORLD WAR II --

CLICK HERE FOR THE INTERESTING STORY

Many times I wonder where I get the thoughts that I do.  They are so random and they catch me so much by surprise.  Today, for instance.  We were driving back from our Easter Holy Day.  After about 45 minutes or so of exchanging Theological chit-chat, we both fell silent and stayed with our own thoughts.  When we passed by the Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California, a grey plane was flying around, perhaps serving as a training flight for someone who needed the hours.  For some odd reason my mind immediately transported me back to the early 1940's and I started remembering all the neat things I used to think about airplanes.  I had favorite ones based on the qualities that I thought they had.  Fighter planes were my favorite.  Among them the P-47 Thunderbolt was the best, in my mind.  My favorite big bomber was the B-29, the biggest of the big, back then.  My favorite among the speedsters was the P-51 Mustang.  My favorite enemy plane was, of course, the J... Zero.  We don't say the word any more, but I can assure you that there was a lot of respect in the minds and hearts of those who admired the machine and the people who flew it.  It is the respect and the admiration that is always granted, in american culture anyway, to a valiant opponent.  After all, there is no glory in overcoming without having to strive to the highest limit.  The Zero  brought that admiration out of us, even the children of us who couldn't really explain the psychology of what we were feeling.  We had balsa wood and paper flying scale models of enemy planes on the market.  I built the Zero twice.  I never built the scale models of the German fighters.  I built P-47's, Grumman Hellcats and Corsairs and Zeros.  Those were my favorites.
On top of all that, I thought about some of the interesting facts of life during the war.  I thought of the strange feeling of unease that I would feel during the mandatory "air raid drills" at night when we had to shut off all the lights and not even light a candle.  I sometimes wonder if it was the mournful wail of the siren that kicked off those feelings that I had.  I remembered the difficulty that my parents had to procure meat for the table.  I often wonder how my father must have felt to have sufficient money to spend, and not have anywhere to spend it because of the rationing.  Some of my most intense thoughts are about the team work of the population during the war.  During those times we did not throw anything away.  Not paper, not tin cans, nothing.  We saved everything and when the trucks came by, we would give them what we had crushed and bundled of clothing, paper and tin cans.  Nobody trashed anything during that time.  If we had the same spirit if unity these days, we could save millions of dollars, we would love one another more and I think our country would be more prosperous.  I just get nervous about those thoughts because I wonder if would take another Pearl Harbor to make it happen.
Now that I am older and I see what is happening in Japan, I relive what it must have been in 1945.  I was only 8 years old, but in my heart and soul I now know something of what it could have been.  I also often think about the fact that I went to school in Italy a mere 16 or 17 years after the end of hostilities in Europe.  Italy was still in the process of recovering.  It was for me a small window through which I could discern the recovery of Japan, made all the more challenging because of the massive nuclear releases that had brought the war to an end.  I terminated my musings by shaking my head and wondering why human beings never learn to control themselves.   That is one answer that I am sure I will never be able to answer.  Even though I don't get the answer, you still are not allowed to cry at my funeral.

HAM N EGGS ON EASTER OR JAUNDICE [EFR DION]

HAM STEAK, EGGS AND POTATOES

So we go from Jerusalem and the Galilee to a college town in Massachusetts where on Easter Sunday morning there was the obligatory ham steak and eggs breakfast.  Everyone had to have it because according to the chef, none other than EFR Dion, if you did not eat ham and eggs on Easter morning, you would develop jaundice.  Now, I am here to tell you that jaundice or no jaundice, no one was turning down this princely meal.  No one.  Every Easter Sunday morning there was a houseful and everybody had the same thing to eat.  It had not been cooked before hand.  You came in, hugged, shook hands, made your smart @&# remarks, let the host pour you a drink of his special Easter potion, sat down or stood around until you got a plate of the victuals du jour and took your medicine against a case of jaundice.  This ritual was de rigueur at our house and was one that my brother and I actually liked.  It was always fun.  I remember one Easter Sunday when we two were assigned the 11:00 AM Mass at the Immaculate Conception church in Holyoke.  We knew that this would mean that we would miss a great part of the "doin's" at the house.  Needless to say, we were both more than a smidgen unhappy.  I don't know why, but we were worried that there would be nothing left for us by the time we got back home. It was a rough time.  I think it was our cousin who came to pick us up after the Mass, or an uncle, my memory is not serving me very well with the details.  Be that as it may,  I do remember that we were greeted with open arms when we entered the house.  All the guests who were still there congratulated us on doing our duty as assigned.  They also pointed out the fact that there was still plenty of food for us to enjoy and provide us a shield against jaundice.  It was also apparent to us that they all had drunk a bit of EFR Dion's Easter potion and that they were all flying a little bit over the horizon from normal.
My brother and I were too young for the potion and the tradition trailed off before we aged enough to find out what it tasted like.  I seem to remember from what I heard in bits and pieces of conversation that it was very sweet, to coincide with the morning hour, and very "sneaky."  I don't know if this makes sense, but it seems like it contained Muscatel, Vermouth, Brandy and Bitters.  If anyone out there has some memory of the ingredients, please let me know.  It may very well be that the Mix-Meister was tight-lipped about the recipe, thereby leaving no legacy for his progeny to enjoy.
That was Easter the way it was when we were younger.  I don't know what happened to the tradition, as in, why it stopped.  One thing is for sure, it provided some mighty fine memories.
No, I did not forget to talk about the Easter Bunny, etc.  The who?

HAPPY EASTER

ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING TOMBS LIKE THIS

I don't want to be disrespectful, but would you blame someone for wanting to get away from the traffic noise?  Of course not.  Surely, Jesus wasn't laid to rest by the side of the paved road that you see here.   Besides, this particular tomb is in the Galilee.  That's close to 100 miles north of Jerusalem, so some  rich person must have occupied this one.  The best article I have discovered about "Rolling Stone Tombs" is available to you by clicking here.

It is clear that this style tomb was never very common.  Mainly because it could only be acquired and/or built by the wealthier people of the time.  The picture below will give you a perspective of the size and possible weight of the stone.  There are three ladies sitting in front of the main entrance to the tomb. You can tell that the round stone is rather massive.

TWO SMALL FILIPINO LADIES AND ONE LARGER COLUMBIAN

From this picture it is easy to see why the ladies who were going to attend to the care of the body of Jesus were so preoccupied about how to move the stone away from the opening.  

After having spent long periods of time in front of the opening of the Sacred Tomb where Jesus was committed, I thought that I had been moved to the apex of my emotional, spiritual and intellectual reactions.  That tomb with which I was very familiar has been radically changed because of the baroque architecture surrounding it in the church of the Holy Sepulcher.  It looks like this.

HOLY SEPULCHER ENTRANCE

I was mistaken.  When I saw the bare stone tomb in Galilee, I came to the realization that this was the real thing.  I came then to the knowledge of Faith that Jesus had begun his earthly life in a cave that His created Mother Earth offered Him and that she once again provided Him with the shelter he needed as He was preparing to return to His Father's side.

I hereupon leave you with my prayers and wishes for a happy and holy Easter.  I also remind you that now that you know that I am carrying all these things in my heart, it is impossible for you to cry at my funeral.

CANCER

I promised you this yesterday.  Here it is.
Even at my age, new thoughts invade my being.  I go along living my life thinking that I've thought it all, that I've lived it all and there is just so much that I know already that there is not much more room in my coconut for anything else.  Yesterday was not really one of those moments, nevertheless, a reality I never expected encroached upon my spiritual presence in Jerusalem, just 90 minutes before going to the Stations of the Cross at 2:30 PM.  I had dropped the Voice from the Kitchen off at an appointment and was turning the car around to head back home.  With her out of the car, I turned on the radio, pointed in the direction of my favorite NPR station, KPBS, broadcasting from the State University of San Diego (SDSU, for short).  Terry Gross, an NPR interviewer with excellent credentials was interviewing the author of a Pulitzer Prize award winning book "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer."  The author is Siddhartha Mukherjee, oncologist and professor at the Columbia University Medical School.  If you are interested, you can listen to the entire 32 minutes and 40 some odd seconds interview by clicking here.  I only heard about 8 to 10 minutes of the interlocutory, but the part that got me was the answer to the question, It seems then that cancer must be a part of our very beings.  Is that true?  Here's the good doctor's response: 
"If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes," he says. "And the arrival of that moment really sent a chill down the spine of cancer biologists. Because here we were hoping that cancer would turn out to be some kind of exogenous event — a virus or something that could then be removed from our environment and our bodies and we could be rid of it — but [it turns out] that cancer genes are sitting inside of each and every one of our chromosomes, waiting to be corrupted or activated."  

Now, if that is a thought that doesn't change your way of looking at life, it makes me wonder if there will ever be another one quite so powerful as this one.  "...cancer genes are sitting inside each and every one of our chromosomes..."   That explains why non-smokers get throat and lung cancer;  also why some heavy smokers live to be 100.  It is also why both breast-feeding mothers and non-breast-feeding mothers get breast cancer, and the list goes on.  It changes our mind to know that the smoke from burning leaves is not the cancer bearer, but could be (accent on could) the carrier of the trigger that could get you to develop cancer but not me...from the same smoke from the same fire.  Cancer, then, happens when cells within us fall out of balance with the rest of their chromosomal environment and send that specific part of our being into what often turns out to be fatal dysfunction.

There are many human anomalies that activate themselves from within us.  Cancer, however, is the one that we, as a society, fear the most.  I remember when an uncle was diagnosed with the malady, he would only say that he had contracted the Big "C".  

The doctor explained then what the challenge for the medical profession really is with regards the control, not the eradication, mind you, of this "Emperor of All Maladies."  In fact he brings out the fact that there are more people alive in this day and age with "remitted cancer" than ever before.  Yes, we are making progress.  The key to making more progress is to look inside of ourselves, more than outside.  

This was a life experience for me.  Maybe it would not be for you.   I had to talk about it anyway.

Good Friday -- As in Good Bye

It is Good Friday.  I spend most of my mental picture day in Jerusalem.  You can find a lot of my spirituality about this in a much more developed blog entitled, "No Crying at my Funeral."
Today we were back at the church near our home in San Diego, Holy Family.  Once again we were in a crowd of people who represent many different corners of the planet.  ["Corners" on a round ball?]  I was sitting  there during the veneration of the Cross and watching all these people stream by and I couldn't help thinking, "How did Jesus get to all these people from a place no larger than New Jersey?  I tell you, it is impressive.  Just off the top of my head, I identified Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Brasil, San Salvador, Portugal, Italy, France, Spain, Japan, Philippines (Of course!),  Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam (Of course), Ethiopia, Somalia, Congo, Cuba and that most foreign of all Latin "corners" of the Northern Hemisphere, Puerto Rico!  Everyone of one mind and one "Body."  Everyone.  It is quite a spiritual experience to witness the Unity of the Church unfold before your very eyes.  It was a great afternoon.
The other day someone asked me why we say "Good" Friday.  In other languages we say "Holy" Friday, but in English we have the word "good."
It is a left-over from older English where Good and God were pretty much on equal footing for pronunciation, I guess.  We have "good bye" for "God be with you."  So we have Good Friday for "God Friday" which makes it a very holy day indeed.


Tomorrow we talk about cancer.  It's not what you think it will be.

HOLY MASS FOR EVERYBODY ALL AT ONCE

Now brace yourselves.  This is going to be one of those PG-17 kinds of things.  I'm going to say things the way they were and I am going to take some poetic liberties.  OK, ok, some non-poetic liberties which in the good old days would fall under the heading, "bad prose."  Yes, I went to church this evening.  Catholic Church, actually, which is where I always go.  By choice.  Oh yes, by choice.  That too is another story.  So let me take you through my thought processes of the evening.  
On the left you see a scanned copy of the pamphlet that the people of the parish designed to help the faithful get through a Mass in which there would be 5 different languages used.  Four of them are named on the top portion of the the cover page.  The 5th is the Latin hymn, "Pange Lingua Gloriosi".  Now as I walked into the church which was packed to the rafters, by the way, I could not help but notice that if there were a dozen, maybe a baker's dozen, but not more, of us pointy nosed, round-eyed Caucasians, it would be something to write home about.  So, I'm writing home.  Here's the way it was when I was growing up.  When we went to Mass, we knew what we were going to get.  None of this multi-cultural stuff.  No, no, no!  We had many churches that hard-working, blue collar, blood sweat and tears immigrants put up on their own, for their own.  So, in every church, at every Mass there were always two languages for everybody, Wops, Pollocks, Harps and Frogs all got their language and Latin.  That was it.  I, personally, never gave it a thought.  As far as I know, no one else ever did either.  That's the way the world was.  In fact we used to hear it just about two or three times a month from the religion teachers, "Who loses his mother tongue loses the Faith."  I'm sure that the other kids from the other language groups got the same thing.  Never questioned it.  So, I still have my mother tongue, so maybe that's why I still believe.  Really?  I would go out on a limb and say that I don't think so.  If anything, I think that now that I know the Hail Mary and the Our Father in five or six languages it probably wouldn't be a reason to lose my Faith.  Right?  So, anyhow, tonight I go to Mass with the Voice from the Kitchen and I can hear MJT Dion saying through the walls of three rooms, "Hurry up, you kids, the Mass at the Immaculate Conception starts in 15 minutes."  Sheeesh!, we children want to say.  St. Patrick's is just 3/4 of a mile down the street, why don't we go there?  It's because it's the "Irish" Church and we don't go there.  Correction, SHE don't go there.  We heathens, EFR Dion and I go there every Sunday to the 5:30 AM Mass.  He was more Catholic than the Pope and I was happy to go early so that I could have more time for other things.  Then, my brother and I would also go to the Immaculate Conception for the High Mass at 11:00 AM.  Good thing I was young and sharp then.  If it were now, I would have put my Faith somewhere between the two churches and never been able to find it again.  
So, tonight, we have Mass in English, Vietnamese, Spanish and Tagalog.  The hymn for the procession to the Repository was in Latin.  I have to say, I was impressed.  I was a little troubled about letting my Faith wander in that real foreign Viet Nam environment.  Fortunately, we weren't there for too long and it came back.  The people who got their feet washed were of all colors too.  I sat there and wondered about the changes in my life over the last 65 years.  Of all the thoughts that I ever have, NONE has ever been a yearning to revisit the "Good Old Days."  I thank God for that because it makes it easier to live a happy life with a blessing of that nature.    I wonder what i'm going to think of tomorrow.

PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE IT

This thought was provoked by something that I saw today.  It was something that I had not seen for some time.  It used to be more common than it seems to be now.   During the few moments after the event was finished, I wondered if it became more uncommon in my life because of the change of domicile.  I was wondering if it would be more common in the Northeast than it is here in Southern California.  "IT" is a man smoking a pipe.  I saw one this afternoon walking on the sidewalk.  Oh, believe it, we still do have sidewalks in Southern California.  They don't get used as much here as they do in other parts of the world.  That's because Californians usually shy away from driving their cars on them.  So, sure, we have sidewalks with people walking on them.  We also have roads where cars are usually zipping about and where the occasional pedestrian tries to usurp the space.  That's always an interesting confrontation.
So, here's this man with a pipe in his mouth.  Pipe people are somewhat like cigar people.  As long as they have something in their mouth, they're happy.  They'll chomp and lick and suck and cough and spit and wipe it all off on their sleeve.  (This is a link to something related in case you're wondering.)  Smoking is almost secondary to them.  Cigarette smokers are the puffers and coughers.  They are the heavy duty addicts to nicotine.  (Click here to hear the song.)  I smoked one or two cigarettes in my whole life.  I hated them.  I did smoke a little bit of pipe, but that didn't do anything for me either, so I never even got halfway through a small can of Prince Albert.  I really got serious  smoking a pipe though when I discovered what really goes well in a pipe.  I smoked for a couple years then.  For good or for bad, the Voice from the Kitchen prevailed upon me to set aside that little vice in exchange for the virtue of a continuous and felicitous matrimonial relationship.  I am here to tell you, however, that there is no better place to stash yer weeeed than in a short stemmed, big bowl, corncob pipe.  A course, ya don't just stash it, ya light it too 'n jess let it flow through you while it caresses yer brain and kneads yer heart so'se ya get ta lovin' everyone an' don't never wanna come back ta where ya think ya have ta be.  Heeee.  Well, I got back to where I had to be.  Anyway, Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol is a lot harder to remember than good old ethyl alcohol.  Now that's real easy.   It almost killed me, though.  So, you can't win.  Stick with the Voice from the Kitchen and the whispers of your guardian angel, and when you want something, just say, "Our Father..." and you'll live happier and longer than you ever would the other way.
Yep, I thought of all of that just because I saw a man walking on the sidewalk with a pipe in his mouth.  What will I think of next? 
  

This is gonna be short, I think.

NOT MY FAVORITE SHOT OF GETHSEMANE

I started to do this about an hour ago when the needle on the clock was still west of 12.  Kiss that intention goodbye.  Actually I have been in a theological exchange with someone and it gets very invigorating at some point when both sides are half right and don't want to admit that they are, at the very same time, half wrong.  You all know the feeling.  You know that you just crossed the right/wrong line but you'll be damned if you'll admit it, right?  So, the same thing happens when you talk about God too.  And who can admit being wrong when the conversation is about HIM?  [By the way, check out the first sentence.  Anybody seen a clock with needles lately?  Hands maybe?  Not even?  I AM getting old.]
This "365..." business has been going on now for exactly 145 days, 18 hours and no minutes and I have a secret to tell you.  I am never at a loss as to what to write.  In fact, in these 145 [nearly 146] days, I have forgotten more thoughts than I have ever forgotten in my entire life, to date.  This is ridiculous.  At all and sundry hours of the day I get a thought.  I twirl it around.  I test it out.  I say a few words about it out loud.  So I tell myself that this is going to be the soupe du jour. By the time I get here, three others have encroached on the space and I can't remember even a single one.
Tonight I was going to say a word or two about Holy Week.  Last Sunday I was going to say a word or two about the tombs of the righteous opening up at the hour of the Death, but I got that on hold until Friday.  Now, watch me forget it!  I put that picture up because I don't like what people do.  They actually ruined the Mount of Olives with all these buildings.  Actually, there have been a lot of things ruined, but the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane are a loss.  The one place that I'm glad that they have ruined is Hinnom.  It is beautiful grass and such.  Nice touch to try to make us forget the child sacrifices that old Hinnom used to perform there.  I have a nice shot of that with some school teachers and their students frolicking in the sunshine.  Every year I miss the procession of Palm Sunday.  Maybe some day I'll get over that too.
Maybe for Easter I'll pull out the picture that I have of one of the rare remaining tombs with a round stone like the one that Joseph of Arimathea let Jesus use for a couple days.  They are really cool.  Lots of room, three entries and stuff.  Actually, the rolling stone tombs, when you see one, will make you think that Jesus was born in a cave and he was laid to rest in a cave, kinda.
So, tomorrow (Today, actually) I'm staring at about 12 or 13 hours of work, so I am now going to sneak away and come back tomorrow.  Deal?  Deal!

JOB SEARCHES -- I'VE HAD A FEW

MINE HAD TWIN HEADLIGHTS, NOT JUST ONE

"What Color Is Your Rainbow?" Remember that book? I do. In fact I saw it on the rack just today. It made me think of the first time I had to look for a job. I didn't have a rainbow. I had a bicycle and a need for money. I was 17 and I had just dropped out of school. I decided that I was going to go to work rather than to follow everyone's advice. Now you have to understand something: I had had jobs before this. I had dug ditches when I was about 12. I had delivered papers a little bit, not too much. I worked on the tobacco farms of New England. I had a summer job working for a construction company. That was the one and only job that I ever got by getting a reference from EFR Dion. He never said anything, but he must have regretted it. He never did it again. So, anyhow I didn't know the color of my parachute. That was nowhere near being a concept in those days to begin with. Parachutes were white silk. Period.   So, I'd go to Mass in the morning, go home, have breakfast, put on some decent clothes, get on my bicycle and go to the city across the river where the jobs were and start knocking on doors.  Despite having had jobs, I had never had to go BEG for one.  You know how hard that is for a 17 year old stud?  I did it.  There were some funny things that happened along the way.  The one that was the least funny [but in many ways the funniest] was when a huge truck ran over my bicycle.  I had placed my trusty steed in a safe place, close to the building.  I went in and talked to the manager of the paper mill.  All he said was, "Can you work nights?"  I said "yes."  He said, "How old are you?" I told the truth, "17."  "Sorry kid," says he, "ya gotta be 18 ta work here."  OK.  I turn around and leave only to come face to face with a burly, but very contrite truck driver.  Not far to his left is a very crumpled up J.C. Higgins, Sears Roebuck brand bike.  Man, what a pretzel job that truck did on my wheels!  The man was rather nice to me though.  He said, "not only ya don't got a job, ya can't get nowhere no more."  So I just kind of smiled and he consoled me by saying that he was sure that the company would replace my bike.  I gave him my name,my address and telephone number and left the remains of my only viable transportation where they lay knowing that someone would throw them away.  I am glad to report that it took only a few days before I received $50.00 in the mail.  I bought a brand new bike and still had some change.  Not bad, eh?
Now it was only about 1:00 PM, and there were a lot more doors to knock over, so because I was now on foot, I started looking for work in the direction of home.  It was a smart move in one way, but it didn't get me any "yer hired" acclaim in the more than one hour that I canvassed the area.  As the days passed, I did get good at introducing myself.  I decided that I would use the good humor approach.  I would size up the first person I saw and try something new on each one.  Stuff like, "Great place you got here!  Ya got a swimming pool?"  That one really bombed, so I scratched it.  The one that really worked was, "I can tell that you are looking for a second baseman."  One guy actually said, "Nice try, but we're looking for a mountainous catcher."  But the one that really worked was, "Good morning.  I'm looking for work.  I know I can help you."   As I said that a good looking secretary came out of the office and she recognized me.  "Oh, hi!" she said.  "I'll bet you're looking for Harry."  Oh heavens!  I've won something big here.  I only know one Harry and he's the manager of our amateur baseball team.  Sure enough, here comes Ol' Harry and in 15 minutes I got a job.  I'm gonna be rich. Harry looks at me all serious and demands, "When kin ya start?"  Now I've learned not to tell the truth all the time.  Like that one time before, remember?  So I chirp, "Now."  Harry says, "Nice try.  I put ya ta work in dem duds an' yer father will have my neck.  Go home 'n be here at 6:45 tomorra mornin'."  

Here it has been two weeks of constant rejection and in 15 minutes my life got  turned around.  All the way home [about 2 miles] I kept thinking, I'm so glad it's not a paper mill or a weaving mill.  It was a printing shop, a fairly big one, a division of the Springfield Republican newspaper.  Holyoke Magazine Press it was called.  I got a ton of stories about that part of my life.  All of them "G" rated too.  
Fast forward more than 50 years.  I can still find a job when I need one.  I walk into any place and if I like what I see I say, "Hey, you look like you could use my help."  Most of the time the answer is, "No kidding, but I can't afford it for now."  I have some tricks that work and I have some that don't work.  Lately, I've been offered jobs without having to ask.  That's nice.  Of course, lately I've also been told to get lost without having to ask.  But that, too, is a story for another time.

I LO-O-OVE YOUR OUTFIT! ... and what about MY FACE?

This is an interesting thought.  This stuff happens a lot with us humans.  Some of you may remember what I wrote about the time when I had a fine beard.  I took it off after a short time because I did not like the fact that my beard got first billing ahead of me.  The other night, The Voice from the Kitchen and I attended a rather serious social event.  So, naturally, we got ourselves rather dolled up and plunged into the big, bad, broad world of special social behavior.  She was dressed in a stunning suit of royal purple, a picture of which you are seeing adjacent to this writing.  The skirt has a decoration around the lower part that is faux gold, but stunning nonetheless.  Believe me, after about 30 minutes of getting Ooohs and Aaahs of varying decibels of volume and varying lengths of Oooooooooohs and Aaaaaaaahs, she turned to me and said, in a safe for privacy language, "I think I like the compliments, but what about my face?"  (Remember I wrote about that too?) Now, I tell you the truth, I commiserated with her because I had been there a time or two.  After a short time of that I decided she needed a lift, so I gallantly chirped, "You've got a beautiful face."  To which she replied, "You're only saying that to make me feel good."  You're all elected to remind me never to commiserate with her again.  I've been telling her that for 35 years and she still acts like she doesn't believe me.  Notice the word, "acts"?  I will also tell you another secret, she really is humble.  Seriously.

Voice from the Kitchen, front & center

Actually, she had a chance to get her comeuppance and she took full advantage of the opportunity.  Toward the end of the evening she performed a hula in a group made up of volunteers practiced for the occasion.  I have decided to let you see the wonderful face that I have had to endure for the last 35 years...like it or not!  Now, you have to admit that it isn't a very bad face after all.
This is one of the consequences of what Eve did to us in the Garden of Eden.  When the human race started out, when we talked to one another, the only compliments we could either give or retain were about US, not about our fancy clothes, our nifty hairdo or a dozen other things.  The only thing to talk about was us and of course, some of the low-hanging fruit from a certain tree.  Once the fruit thing got resolved, then we got into a variety of modes, styles and fashions, starting with basic fig leaves all the way up to daintily woven weeping willow fronds, I guess.  After that I suppose, the women started to plug flowers into the array and the first exploitative action on the planet was the ex-foliation of the flora that hadn't even been given a scientific name yet.  Do you know why?  Easy.  Latin had not been invented and died yet.
OK.  Enough foolishness for a while.  I leave you with the final thought, a piece of advice:  When you talk to people, remember that they are people, not royal purple decorations.

A STRAIGHT 6? I THOUGHT A STRAIGHT WAS FIVE IN A ROW

THIS WINS MORE THAN -->>

Confused are you?  It must be the language problem I seem to develop now and then.  It seems as though the word straight should be rather "straight" forward, right?  Heeee !

This whole thing started when I discovered my young neighbor working on a 1964 Ford Falcon that he has bought so that he can have something to do on weekends.  So I went over to his driveway and engaged him in a conversation about his "new" toy.  Since the hood was open, I peeped into the engine compartment and remembered just how much empty space it actually has.  Wow, there's nothing there except this small, six cylinder in-line engine.

1964 STRAIGHT 6 & NOTHING ELSE!

Now, I knew that, but when I voiced my sense of appreciation for the memory that I was having about just how small some of the older engines were, the young man who was working at something inside the passenger compartment of the car said, "Yeah, it's a straight 6."  Now, I am not a car "buff" or anything like that, but I do know that  there were no mass production V6 engines in 1964.  And, by 1964 the flat head 6's were no longer being produced.  Even a bozo like I am knows that".  The last flat head engine I remember seeing was the straight, flat-head 12 in an old Packard owned by the father of a friend of mine from down the street.  I had to be about 10 or 12 years old.  I didn't say all this to my young neighbor.  All I said was that the V6 had not yet been perfected and had not been introduced to the public yet.  I said that I thought that General Motors had introduced the V6 sometime around '67 or '68.  So,anyway, I asked him if I could take a picture for the Internet and he quickly acquiesced.  So here you have it.
The other things I have to say are  these:  The young neighbor hasn't yet turned 30, so he thinks that he is touching a pre-historic automotive dinosaur.  Little did he realized that he was talking to a pre-historic human specimen about all this stuff.  I refrained from pointing this put to him.
Finally, about 15 minutes before, I had just finished a conversation with my barely 30 year old son about the super-annuated technology that the internal combustion engine represents in a world that should be able to do better.  My son was pointing out to me that  the internal combustion engine is surrounded by technological advances that should make us shake our heads in deep wonderment about why the human brain has not moved on from the time since Mr. Renault harnessed the power of the internal combustion engine for transportation purposes.  It seems to my son that the technology that permits a surgeon to perform heart surgery on him from Germany provides a hint as to the possibility of the demise of the internal combustion engine.
So there you have it.  An old man like I am rubbing elbows with a couple of thinking young people.  It was rather pleasant, I must admit.  I mean, I've seen the introduction of spare parts for human beings.  These young people don't have the pleasure of marveling about that bit of progress.  They take it for granted.   I wonder what is down the road for them to marvel over.  The demise of the internal combustion engine?

THE GOOD OLD DAYS, IN TEARS THEN, LAUGHTER NOW

You know what this face represents?  This is your blogger's attitude on September 9, 1942.  The first day I reported to the Immaculate Conception School in Holyoke, Massachusetts.  It was the Wednesday after Labor Day, the traditional first day of school back then.  I was not a happy camper.  I was torn apart, as a matter of fact.  We lived on the outskirts of a college town [South Hadley] and I was to go to the parochial school on the northern edge of the Capital of the Paper making world, Holyoke.  Since I was going to travel from edge to edge, one edge touching the other, the distance was perhaps 1.2 miles from point to point.  I was just about 5.5 years old, but I had many things going on inside me and I didn't like the feeling.   One. I disliked Holyoke with an intensity that my mother could never fathom.  She LOVED Holyoke.  When she moved from Holyoke to South Hadley because she and my father had bought a house there [1 whole mile away from where they were paying rent] she cried every day for weeks because she wasn't "home" any more.  I was glad to be where there was green grass, live trees, fireflies, birds and a cellar where I could hide.  Two. I knew that I was going to have to take the bus from South Hadley to Holyoke.  My Lord!  what an ordeal that was going to be.  It had been a month now that my mother, MJT Dion, had been introducing me to the mystery of that adventure.  The bus stop where I was to board was directly across the street from our home.  No problem.  She taught me where to cross the street, how to look both ways and how to know that the bus that stopped was indeed the one that I had to get into.  She even took me through the exact routine twice before D-day.  We went to the school, visited the Sister Superior's office, left there and practiced walking to my grandmother's house where I would go for dinner [midday meal.  Lunch, for you Californians].  Then we walked back to the school and continued to the bus stop, a mere 45 yards or so away from the school.  Three.  I was frightened to death that I would not be able to read well enough.  I could read little simple stuff in French and English, but I still couldn't really READ.  Four.  I was still plenty doubtful about being able to stay away from home and then get back.  I knew the baby sitter girls who would come every Saturday night, but I wondered if I would ever get to know the nuns in the school.  Frankly, I never even gave a thought to getting to know the other children of my age who would be there like I would be.
Anyway how...Comes September 9 and I am little Lord Fauntleroy, dressed up in clothes  that I despise.  Corduroy Knickerbocker pants, suspenders, knee socks and a nice little white shirt.  Oil and water!  These days I assure you, I would have whipped out my cell phone and called the cops.  Mom and I go out to catch the bus and everything goes just as planned.  We get to the school and Grandfather is there waiting for us.  We, all three, go to the classroom and meet the sister who teaches the kindergarten children.   All goes well until I am alone with 25 children and one woman all dressed in black with no legs, only hands and a face.  A smiling face, but that was it.  She was nice, but she was busy taking care of one inconsolable little girl. D.B. by name.  Yep, I still remember.  I remember keeping my cool for the entire morning but making up my mind that I would never come back here.  EVER.  Time for midday break.  My grandfather meets me at the classroom door and we walk to his house so that we can eat.  I am so happy to see my grandmother and to sit at the table alone with the two of them.  It was like heaven.  My relationship with my grandfather grew a lot that day.  But that's a story for another day.  Comes time to return to hell.  I start down the stairs with grandfather, kicking and crying and refusing to go anywhere.  He, the big tough guy whose very own children feared, couldn't get me farther down the street than about 100 yards.  He turns around, takes me back to their place and says to grandmother, "He doesn't want to go."  She, the sweet, placid, never-gets-flustered old lady says to him, "You stay here."  She says to me, no smile, fire in her eyes and silk on her tongue, with ice in her heart, "Give me your hand."  I gave her my hand, we walked back to school in sullen silence, she let me into the classroom, no hug, no kiss, just "goodbye."

YOUR BLOGGER AT 2 YRS.

In the back of the room, D.B. was still crying [she cried for about a month], Sister Yvonne Marie took care of D.B. and all the rest of us bewildered children under 6 years old.  Me?  I wasn't bewildered any more.  I now knew who was the boss of me.  I have never, ever since experienced a personal victory so devastatingly swift and completely overwhelming as I did that day.   By the following Monday I was on my own and on my way to manhood.  Thanks to my sweet, holy Grandmother.  This happened nearly 70 years ago.  I remember it like it was this morning.  One of the things I want to ask my Grandfather on the other side is, "What did you and Mémère talk about when she got back home?"

THE GOOD(?) OLD(?) DAYS

The roof got weak over the Winter

I know that some of you are not old enough to appreciate this "Thought."  "But I digress!"
I was driving through town today with all four windows down.  It was quite a feeling.  I even succumbed to the temptation to rest my left elbow on the "sill" and put my hand up under the roof.  (See illustration)  It was then that I remembered hearing a cute little comment over the radio one day in the Spring of 19....???  The disc jockey said that he could tell that we'd had a rough Winter because all of a sudden he was starting to see so many drivers having to hold up the roof that was weakened by the savage cold and snow.  You see, that is a humorous comment to us oldies because we remember that the one way we could keep the inside temperature reasonable was to open the windows.  If cars had air conditioners then, we sure as heck didn't have one...and no one else that we knew had one.  As I progressed down the road I got to thinking about why so many people talk about the GOOD OLD DAYS.  The first reason that came to my mind was that it is from our youth that we mine the events that make up our humorous stories of today.  Think about it.  How many times did you go to bed trembling in fear that your parents would come to find out that you had sassed the kindergarten teacher?  I know that there are some of you out there who used to pick up cigarette butts from the gutter for your first few puffs in life.  What if your mother ever found out?  What if your older brother or sister ever "squealed?  How many of you remember how Camay hand soap tastes?  [I do] How many of you cut someone's clothes line on cabbage night and worried about getting caught for a month?  How many of you spread laundry detergent all over someone's lawn the following cabbage night and invited another month of high blood pressure?  How many of you had to sell the spare tire to buy gas and then sweat it out until you could buy it back without getting caught?  These were the GOOD old days?  How many of you had to ride a bicycle five miles [1 way] to the bakery to buy day old bread because you could get three loaves for $0.25?  How many of you had to peal boiled tomatoes for nearly a full day to prepared them to be preserved for the Winter?  ...Peaches and pears too.  Hey, now that was fun!  It was all the more fun since harvest season was when there was no more baseball season left to help us escape.
Finally, these were my last too thoughts as I was "bombing" around town:
Gas was $0.19 per gallon.
When he died in 1961, EFR Dion, the "rich one of the family" was making $150.00 per week as the superintendent of a machine shop, plus a lot more things that only he could do.  That's the kingly sum of $7,800.00 per year.  I saw his final check.
These are the kinds of things that you'll think about when you get to be my age.  The way I'm going, my final check will be -$100,000.00!
No wonder he rebelled when the daily paper went to $0.25 per week [6 days]

SO THIS IS MORENO VALLEY!

This is a piece that I wrote in a blog that I maintain by the name of Crusty Kurmujjin.  I had not settled in to Moreno Valley yet since I was finishing up a major work project in San Francisco.  This was an opportunity that I took to visit the Voice from the Kitchen who had just begun working in Moreno Valley in July.  This is the story of what happened before my very modest eyes on the day of First Communion at St. Christopher's Parish.  Not a single FACT is the product of my imagination.
Ah, what a sight!  [1] There I was standing in the doorway, holding the heavy door open for your convenience as you helped your beautiful daughter cross the sidewalk and gain entry to the vestibule. She is so tall and so classic in her presentation of herself. She was clad in white satin, a perfect sculpture, an enrapturing goddess framed in the Gothic church door with a 1,000 watt smile, appropriate for her day.

Ah, what a sight!  [2] You too were quite a sight. Ebony hair waving around about your shoulders as if it had been conditioned for a television commercial. Your shiny, deep brown eyes, high cheek bones and luscious sensually puffed out lips all highlighting a stunning light chestnut complexion. The proximity of your extraordinarily attractive skin moving lithely around the off-setting pure white of your daughter's pre-teen presence was stunningly artistic.

Ah, what a sight!  [3]  Saving the best for last, I have to say that I was really swayed by the top half of your left breast which was decorated with a rather brazen tattoo. It is a mgnificent breast, a fitting companion for the one on the right. Glowing, gently bobbing, animating the tattoo so that it danced on the edge of the cloth that was either trying to hide it or succeeding very well in enhancing the presentation. It was all the more enjoyable because you were not paying the slightest bit of attention to me, only to your daughter trying to get through the door without snagging her magnificent gown. It was one of the more enjoyable 45 or 50 seconds of my life, and right in church too! This whole thing was climaxed by your eyes meeting mine and our lips communicating happiness and satisfaction by mutually complementing smiles. You then completed your entry, and I, my exit. But I'll never forget it.

I guess I'll never know whether to be disappointed or not that this all happened in church. I still haven't decided whether or not I should feel guilty for the prurient pleasure that I experienced for about one minute or whether I should cast the pall of guilt over to you for daring to appear in church on the day of your daughter's first communion with your sexual assets so audaciously exposed. I suppose I should thank God for allowing me the concupiscent pleasure at the sight of one of His more magnificent successes. I often wonder if you set out on a mission to broadcast God's gifts of glorious beauty in two rather complementary examples, one pre-pubescent and the other, ripe and succulent, sweet to the bone.
Conclusion: I've decided to enjoy the glory of God's creation as He exposed it to me that day in His church. I've decided that He sent you to me and to the others who derived similar pleasure from your well shaped and tastefully decorated anatomy. My experience tells me that after first communion the next time you will be at the door of the church, your feet will precede your breasts. By then, I will have been told by the guardian at the pearly gates whether I have sinned or not in the visual enjoyment of your body. Therefore, I wish you well, and I beg of you, when you go to church the next time, please cover your assets.

SOCIAL BUTTERFLY I AM. HERE'S WHY

I am not a big lover of social events.  Most of the time I attend out of whatever sense of "social obligation" I can dredge up.  Most of the time this is fueled by expectations of tasty snacks that I can't generally count on at home.  What makes me this way is the fact that I can't control either the quality nor the quantity of the crowd.  Whenever I get ready to go to social events I know that there are going to be people there that I don't particularly spend any time seeking out under normal circumstances.  There may even be some that I may even spend some energy to avoid in my day to day life.  This is the human condition, so I am sure that I am not the only human with an attitude of this nature.  Now, when it comes to social affairs, I do have a system that I use.  Yes, it does work.  I do not stake out a territory in a corner or next to a column.  I do not make some person I like, suffer in my company all night long.  I make the whole party area my territory.  I keep moving.  It is a neat trick.  I get to eat and drink all I want.  I also get to see everyone I want to see and I see everyone I would rather not see.  I bring the "battle" to those who would rather not see me.  Hey, if I have to make a go of this thing, so do they, right?  So I make 'em do it.  Not only do I see them, I actually make social contact and make myself nice to them so that they have to be civil to me for a few seconds, even if it kills them.  

See, it is good to be social.  I get a chance to level the playing field.  When I am at these kinds of things I am a "crowd worker" and a "food grazer" hardly taking any time at all to sit and eat.  The kind of thing I really dislike is the "sit down dinner plan."  I always seem to draw the sort straw, so to speak, and get the village idiot sitting at my right.  So I prefer the opportunity to "hover, like a butterfly, from flower to flower, sipping and snacking and moving on, spreading joy and discontent evenly about the room."  It's a great way to go.  Once I have made about one round, I generally come full circle to the host(ess) to whom I can then bid my fond "adieu" and be on my way, happy that I fulfilled my "social obligation" just like EFR Dion told me I had to do.  You know the admonition by heart: "To live with people, you have to be people."

So I do.  I make some people happy and some sour.  Some make me happy and some make me sour.  Sometimes it's not mutual...now that makes "being people" really interesting.  

Take it easy folks.  Don't get uptight.  Your chances of being at the same party as I are pretty slim.  One thing you could do is to hope that the only time you'll have to fulfill your social obligation to me is when you walk by my coffin.  All I expect you to say, or think, whatever the case may be, is "It's about time."

BEAU MERLE! IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

MERLE AMÉRICAIN

If you have a little bit of French Canadian vocabulary, the picture of the red-breasted bird is what you are thinking of -- maybe.  Then again, if you were brought up in a Frrench Canadian houselhold with a mother who was always looking for a new way to address creative expletives to her children, then you might have an idea what Beau Merle means.  If you have forgotten your French Canadian dialect as it was spoken in Massachusetts and other famous (infamous?) regions of New England and you're trying to apply the translated-to-English meaning of "Beau

Merle" [Pretty Robin] then you are nowhere near the true meaning of the expression.  It actually means, "Dopy," "Lost," something like a dunce who did something inexplicably and unexpectedly ignorant.  Like when we sometimes talk to ourselves and call ourself stupid or something like that.  Now, what do you suppose made me think of that?  Get ready for this.  We happened to be in Palm Springs the other evening and as we were wending our way to our destination, one of the streets was named "Merle."  I figured then and there that it couldn't be our French Canadian Patois [argot] that was being honored here.  It has to be Merle Haggard, or some such personage.  I must say that when you have a free-ranging imagination like mine, anything is fair game.  So, like a shot of lightning, there I was back in my old childhood frame of mind.  Then you know what I did?  When I got home,  I went to Google to check out the meaning of the expression that I had heard and used so often while growing up.  Nothing.  So I tried the pictures section.  That's where I found out that there is a breed of dog that in French is a Merle.  There is even one that has what seems to be blue fur.  Bow ain't that something!  There was one bird there that is so deeply blue that it appears black.   In case you are wondering,and perhaps you aren't, but the French and the French Canadian for Robin is in fact Merle Americain, so it is there, only it has to have the adjective Americain with it to be proper.
So, you can see, culture can be a tricky thing.  In our American English we have rats, pigs, asses and snakes to name a few, along with bird-brains, of course.  Robins?  Nope.  Not that I can think of anyway.  So, enjoy yourselves with the wildlife expressions that we used to snicker at ourselves and see if I missed any.

HEY, YOU WANT ME TO SHARPEN YOUR PENCIL?

"Do you ever find yourself thinking at what time you're going to know for sure that you'll not accomplish anything more today?" (Unknown, sent to me in email about two weeks ago.)  Then today I ran into this quote from the great French existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre:
Trois heures, c'est toujours trop tard ou trop tôt pour tout ce qu'on veut faire. Un drôle de moment dans l'après-midi.  [Three o'clock, it's always too late or two soon for everything that we want to do.  It's a funny time in the afternoon.]
It's a very interesting phenomenon, this moment in any given day when we "hit the wall," as the saying goes.  At different times and under different circumstances it can be unexpected.  In some cases though, it can be very predictable, and in some cases avoided.  I remember that Summer when I was working my way through seminary.  The employer had a big backlog that summer and told me that I was to work the "graveyard" shift (11:00 PM to 7:00 AM) from the last week of June through the 21st of August. I was elated to hear the news and thought that it would be perfect because I was playing baseball in an evening league. (6:00 PM start time; 7 innings)  It was great and I took to it like a fish to water.  BUT, I did discover that I had a problem.  No matter what I seemed to do, I would fall into a quasi stupor at around 2:00 AM every day.  The feeling would last until about 4:00 AM when I would be wide awake again and really giving it hell, as we used to say.  I was embarrassed by my "weakness" and I told my colleague what was happening.  All he said was, "Keep your trap shut.  I know that you are producing more than anybody we've had on nights.  That's all you have to know."  So I kept my trap shut and that was the summer that I made $1,000.00 for about 8 weeks of work...Yep, lots of O.T.! It was 1955 or so.
That, I came to know is a phenomenon that comes from the nature of the circadian cycle.  That is, the accommodation that our being makes with the rotation of the earth.  But what about the other thing that I mentioned at the top?  That psychological certainty that from this point on, I'm on vacation.  It happens to all of us, from the CEO to the janitor.  It seems that it attacked Jean-Paul Sartre at three PM., every day.  Not me.  For me it varies.  Sometimes, I have to admit, it grabs me at 7:00 AM and never goes away, all day.  Those are rough days.  Worse now than ever because I work alone and at home and I have a quota and a deadline.  Soooo...  I have to tell you that many times I get hot and invigorated at 4:00 PM.  So I get down to it and "kick ass" until 12 or 1 o'clock in the morning.  What a life!  Sometimes when that happens, I get four hours of sleep and bounce back up and take up where I left off and really get a whole cargo ship of work done in three "days".  
So, no matter how smart ol' Jean-Paul was, and no matter that he wrote a ton of books and deep ones too, he still confessed to being human...just as human as the rest of us.  
I was going to tell you about something else today, but decided that it was too deep and too dark for my mood.  It was about something that I got from Sartre, and something that I believe in very deeply, but this did not seem to be the moment.  Maybe some other time.  
BTW, the Guy upstairs is taking his time turning up the heat in Southern California this year.  It got to be all of 65 here today.  There are icicles on the palm fronds, for crying out loud!