WATCH ME

WATCH AND LEARN
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This a core behavior that I have.  From the time I was a small child until now.  Some of the early things I remember, but many, I do not because I was so young. I don't know where I got it and I don't know, to this day, what I got from it.
What made me think of this?  I caught myself doing what I do best, again.  The Voice from the Kitchen asked me, "Why are you standing there watching me stir the pot?"
The answer to that is, "Because I have always done this."  Since the earliest days of my childhood, I have been a watcher.  Some would even bring themselves to say, "gawker."  It doesn't matter what someone is doing and it doesn't matter whether I know what is being done or not.  All I know is that if you are doing something in my vicinity, I will watch you.
I grew up watching people.  My mother, her mother, my father, my mother's father, my uncles and my aunts and anybody who was doing anything any time I was awake and I could see it being done.
I watched my mother in the kitchen.  There was always something going on there.  There was potato peeling, vegetable cutting and sorting, babies baths being given, diapers being changed and a variety of other things.  How could I miss out on all that action?  This was good stuff.  Let me tell you something, I learned a lot while being this inveterate watcher.  I learned to stay out of the way.  I learned how to make people think that they were teaching me something.  Of course, it was not that complicated in my smooth mind.  In the growing-up process, all I knew for sure was that I could watch but I had to stay out of the way. 
When I say that I would watch anything, I mean it.  I would watch my father as he calculated the quotes that he was going to present to the potential customers of the machine shop where he worked.  I knew what a blueprint was when I was six years old.  As I grew up I saw that there were numbers that were decorated with a string of preceding zeroes.  I saw slide rules and compasses, micrometers and a whole host of things that my younger, non gawking siblings missed.
I watched my one handed grandfather turn over the sod for a very large Victory Garden.  When I grew older, I helped, but he always did the lion's share.  The one thing that I did very well in the garden was to pluck the tomatoes and eat one on the way to the baseball field.  If there were no tomatoes, there was always rhubarb, or carrots or radishes, or corn,etc.
I watched that self-same grandfather do some of the most amazing carpentry work that I had seen then and have seen since.  When my grandfather was doing carpentry,even EFR Dion would join me in the peanut gallery.  We knew better to keep our distance until the artist gave us the sign.  We knew better than to let him think that we doubted his ability to one-hand his way through life...even artistic life.  
When I went to work, my tendency to stand and watch worked against me a lot, of course.  But it also helped.  I could stand and watch silently without distracting the professionally able people.  It came in handy when I volunteered for the third shift.  Then I could practice what I had seen the well-practiced operators do.  
So, hey, you want to keep me silent and out of your way, just do something.  I'll gladly oblige and give you an audience.  I'm that way.  I can stand there all day and never tell you how to do something.  I just absorb what you're doing into my own space.  I can sit in the passenger's seat for thousands of miles and never once tell you, the driver, what to do.  
I told this to the Voice from the Kitchen as she was cooking some dessert stuff tonight.  She suggested that I tell it to our sons.  They are not watchers.  They are escapers.  They know that I am a watcher.  They also know that I don't get in the way.  They like that.  
You know what?  I wish I could watch them doing something every single day.  I really do.

MY MIRROR -- SELF PORTRAIT -- IS THAT PA DION?

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Believe it or not, I was saving this one for # 500.  Since I have committed to total honesty here, like Alceste [Google him], I admit that I am doing this at # 495 because  I am suffering from a serious case of writer's block tonight.  So I will pretend that this the # 500.  
I occasionally read what it is that I have written in the past. It is always a revelation that  I could have said something in that style.  It is rather strange to discover that there is a great difference between a mirror and a paragraph.  I am accustomed to the ugly face in the mirror.  I am not familiar with the attractive turn of phrase that I see underneath the by-line of an article such as this.  In my case, I even have things to read that I produced in high school.  Boy, they were really plain-Jane stuff that I really should throw into the fire;  but I can't.  It is still quite interesting, especially because of its simplicity.
The most intriguing body of writing that I have is the collection of French essays, poetry and bulletin board articles that I wrote while in High school.  Now those really throw me.  They are better than anything that I ever wrote in English.  I still can't figure out why I was not making more than a "B" for the effort.  I look at the writing that I do these days in French and I have to admit that it strikes me as hay-seed buffoonery.  Sadly, that is the level of my French these days.  You should be glad that you don't have to put up with it.  
So, friends, if you want to look into the mirror for more than just shaving or curling your hair, be ready for some surprises.  Some will be comforting, some will be dis-comforting.   All will be eye-opening discoveries.  Enjoy them all.  You will become better people for the experience.  I know.

$I FEEL LIKE A MILLION$

Believe it or not, I really do.  It's just that there is not much pep in a million bucks these days.  It's got to the point that now I don't buy tickets for the California Lotto game if it doesn't exceed at least twelve million.  It's not worth $1.00 if all I'm going to win is $3,000,000.00 [cash value, before taxes]  The 26 year payout per month is ridiculously low.

Take away the taxes and I'm left with about $1,800,000.00.  Pay all the mortgages and other miscellaneous obligations, personal and social [kids mortgages, student loans, replacement auto, house retrofit to prepare for sale].  By the time it's all over I'm lucky if I have one half a million.  Since the Voice from the Kitchen will outlive me by 15 years, I have nothing left for the games I want to play.  So, there I am relegated to the hammock in the shade of the "Old Apple Tree."  We do have a crab apple tree in San Diego.  "Real" apples do not thrive in San Diego. So, as you can see it is not a healthy state to feel like a million these days.

But that's not all.  It's not just me.  This is a line that I heard when I was about 17 years old.  It was from some Hollywood star on a Saturday night radio quiz show.  I don't remember the details, but I do remember the host saying, "Wow, you look like a million."  The comeback was, "I new I should have gone to the doctor's office this morning."  This had to be around 1954 or so.  You can see that the erosion of the value of money has been around for a long, long time. 

Talking about that, I remember the conversations that went around the state of Massachusetts when the news came out that the Red Sox were going to pay Ted Williams $125,000.00 for one year's "work." One of the nasty comments was something like, "Who do they think they are, The New York Yankees?"  It's incredible. They act like money grows on trees.  What about the rest of us?  If money isn't worth that much any more, we must all be in the poor house by now.  We just don't know it yet.  True enough, that was rather bad.  But it was not new.  The reference to the Yankees was that about a year or so before, Joe Dimaggio had been given a $100,000.00 contract.  So naturally, the Boston crowd was jealous and Ted Williams was their guy.  EFR Dion and I thought that Williams was a lazy lout who wasn't worth $1.25 never mind a $125,000.00.  

However, we were behind the power curve. There was a guy in the National League who had beaten them all to the well.  He had signed a $100,000.00 per year contract in January of 1947, two short years after the War!  Best of all, he was playing for a team that never came close to the world series.  This at a time when all they had to do was to beat seven other teams over 154 games per year. Plus, this was a time when they never played in the rain; a time when they played at least three home Sunday Doubleheaders every season.  A time when more games were played in the light of day than in the manufactured light of night.  And, they still couldn't win.  This big money went to the famous, one and only Hammerin' Hank Greenberg, first baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  I'm not kidding.

I do not personally remember that.  I only remember Joe Dimaggio and Ted Williams.  I found out about Hank while in the process of verifying my facts for this "Thought."  

There is a lot to think about here and a lot to laugh about too.  I guess.  So I leave you with the question about whether or not you should bother to buy a lottery ticket, or to brag about feeling like a million.  Take your pick.

FUTURE, PRESENT, PAST -- HOW MUCH? SAYS HE!

Look at what I got from a very deep thinking relative.  Here I was talking about "when" and he comes at me with this: "So, what is there more of?  Future, Past, or Present.  Everything that is Future will eventually become Present and everything that is past was, at one time, Present.  Are they finite or infinite.  We could get together with the Dion brothers, Ray, Al, Ed, Norm and Don and discuss this for all eternity, which is, of course, infinite!  OMG!"

I actually sat down and thought about this.  How much?  I liked the above suggestion because I know that the Dion brothers would like nothing more than to be able to discuss a philosophical topic for all eternity.  I think that's why they all died so young.  They wanted all eternity to hash things out.  

So, all day long I tried to work it out and here is the result.

I figure that in this life we have different quantities of different things, except for the present.  The perceptible "present" we really do not have.  In a philosophical way, we do have the future, but only as potential reality that has not yet been concretized in the mill of present to past.  Once time has passed through that process, it is real and we own it.  We name it "past."

However the measure of how much of anything we have, either in potential reality or in memorized reality also changes on a daily basis because these two realities are changing at every minute.  Until we have passed the midpoint of our life, we have more future than past.  Then, we have more past than future.  UNTIL, we finally take possession of the eternal present, in which there is no future and no past, just...infinity.

Then, we Dions are going to sit around, drinking what ever it is that you drink in eternity, and talk it all out forever.  Oh, will we ever be happy.  You all have NO idea.  We might even get around to discussing this little question, if we can ever get past the one that they've already been working on for about 60 human years,whatever it may be.  I could almost bet that it is about the eternal question, never to be settled, which is:  Fly fishing is the extreme test of the true human.  Casting tin spoons into the water from a boat is for those who don't really appreciate the art and the science of sport fishing.  I am just absolutely sure that EFR Dion hasn't sat down during this whole time defending the art form and the scientific challenge of fishing for pickerel by casting for them from an Old Town canoe.

I just know it.

Tomorrow:  Who was the first baseball player to get a $100,000.00 per year contract?  You get a bonus point if you know the year.

THE VIEW FROM THE FRONT -- OR THE REAR?

I have often been in conversations when the relative value of the past and the future was discussed.  These conversations sometimes went beyond the description usually ascribed to conversations.  A time or two I remember that they degenerated into what could politely be called discussions. Now that I am sitting here all by myself and coolly and calmly dissertating [:-)=[--<| with myself, I have to admit that I have some degree of ambivalence about this question.  I know how to talk about it through the crack of intellectual exposé.  I get into trouble when I try to process the intermingling meaning of the future, present, past trifecta.  Intellectually, I know that the future is totally unknown, mostly.  But wait!  Look up and see the future in the picture glaring back at you from the screen.  This phenomenon takes place every time we are aboard a moving vehicle.  We get to know a piece of the future before it even exists.  Isn't that mysteriously interesting?  Imagine, we have a way on knowing a piece of the future.  We don't even have to be in a vehicle.  It happens when we move, not matter how.  Hey, I discovered that all by myself and I'm not even a scientist.  Of course, we all know that the past is the reality that lingers on.  It never seems to go away.  I do have an interesting question about it though.  Does it get created in the future or in the present?  The reason why I ask that is because the present is what doesn't seem to exist at all.  I know it does, but...  What I try to fathom is how anything can ever get done in the present since it only lasts for a micro-second...a nano-second?  a pico-second?  is there anything smaller?   In that reality how can anything get done?  Even a memory?  So is it in the foreseeable future that everything gets done?  Does it get engraved in our past even before we actually get to it?  Like, I know what I'm going to write next, so it must already be a part of my past even though I haven't even done it yet.  Isn't that rather weird?
Maybe that's why there are so many traditionalists lurking about.  They seem to have an attraction to the reality that does not go away.  They cling to the treasure chest of realities that will never go away.  Oh, the money has been spent; the babies have grown up; my face is wrinkled; my hair is grey; my Cadillac has turned into a Corolla; I carry them all with me and never let go.  
That's only the beginning.  I still have speech patterns that I developed as I zipped through the present and the future.  I still have infinitives, participles, adjectives, adverbs, plus-perfects, subordinate clauses, object of the preposition, antecedents that determine the number and gender of the pronoun that replaces them.  These are all things that seem to have disappeared in the current creation of more past.  I even have subordinate and independent clauses and phrases and the diagrams to prove it.  Not only that, I can write it all down in cursive too!  I know when to place "i" before "e" and the exceptions to the rule.  Not only do I know about carburetors, but, as you can see, I can still spell them too.  
BUT, I still prefer the present/future dynamic.  That is the place where I learn new things so that I can confect a more interesting past.  Of course there will come a time when the past that I constructed will be broken up into smaller pieces and they will become decorations for others who were a part of my present/future escapades.  I don't know what use they will serve for them, but whatever it is, they should remember that it is my gift to them and for that, they should not even dare to think of crying at my funeral. 

GOD'S EMBRACE

HORSESHOE BEND IN MY GALLERIES
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There are two thoughts that are rattling around in my brain today.  They are like siblings.  They're related and wrestling at the same time.  They are caused by two stimuli that are also related, but rarely seen together in the same place or at closely coinciding times.  Now, I don't want to sound like I'm related to Socrates are anything like that, but this actually happened to me yesterday.  Maybe it has happened to you too, at sometime in your life.
The first event was a conversation about how surprising it is when someone tells you how important you are in that person's life.  Now, you all have had that happen to you, I'm sure.  No, not by your spouse.  By someone with whom you are friendly and fairly close, but, it seems, not that close.  Then you hear the expression of gratitude and deep influential relationship and it's like a revelation of a different dimension at work in the world.
I walk away from that kind of encounter saying to myself, "Even if I die, I'll still be alive in that soul."
Yesterday, I got a call in the evening from a complete stranger with whom I spoke on the telephone for forty-five minutes. He is the photographer who captured the image at the top of the page.  When I first saw it, I was immediately struck with a leap of faith and exclaimed, "It's God's embrace of His creation."  I was moved to that emotion because of the conversation with the artist. The interchange started out on a business level and slowly evolved to a personal one.  We are so similar in some ways and so disparate in others.  But then again, isn't that what makes a couple, rather than a pair?  We both have openings in our lives large enough to accommodate the other.  The interesting part of it is that we are both convinced that not only can we be mutually supportive, but mutually dynamic in moving one another to the goals we set for ourselves.  In the initial conversation we swapped inspirations and both went away from the encounter richer for the moment.  Is it one of those seminal moments that we will remember years from now and be able to whisper an awe-filled, respectful "thank you" to one another?  Who knows?
We'll see.  
Both of the above human energies are among the reasons why I don't want anyone crying at my funeral.  When you see the image at the top of the page again, put yourself in God's embrace and enjoy it.  It's my prayer for us all that we will enjoy that embrace for all eternity.

MEMORIES THAT BRING A SMILE TO YOUR NOSE

My musings about lilies and roses attracted this comment from a reader who remembers the natural flowers of his youth, as they were found around the farm.  He awakened in me similar memories, so I am moved to bring our short conversation to you and to add some memories of my own regarding such sweet realities.  

First, let's listen to Patrick.

Paul,

One of the very first things I noticed when I moved to CA from MA was the lack of the sweet and wonderful smell of roses.  The front of our home had roses bigger then a softball but when I put my nose up to it to smell it I was devasted to find there was not an inkling of that wonderful smell of a rose.

LADY SLIPPER

Then I went around the house to smell the other beautiful flowers but they too were odorless.  Then I remembered one of my very favorite flowers and how wonderful they smelled.  Of course it is now extinct but the memory lives on.  I mention here that great flower called "lady slipper."  We had lots of them in the woods around my dad's farm in South Hadley.  It has not happened to me in a long time but every now and then I get a whiff of that Lady Slipper flower and I just smile with joy. 

CROCUS

This made me think of a flower that is one of the marvels of cold climate regions.  It is the very first flower to appear by the edge of brooks and creeks even if all the crusty snow and ice are still present.  It is sweetly and richly endowed with an aroma that is impossible to forget.  I remember that when I was younger, in my teens mostly, when I was in boarding school in New Hampshire, this was my favorite flower.  It was then that I came to hear the poem that Edward Dion, a two-time valedictorian with an emphasis in English, and brother of EFR Dion, had written about this flower, the Crocus.  I know that it was a sonnet, but I never was able to find the entire work for my nostalgia file.  Be that as it may, I was never able to forget [nor was I willing to let it go]  the opening lines:

"Hail to thee oh Blossom fair!

God's sign to man

That hope is nurtured in despair."

I suppose that these wondrous creatures still decorate the early Springtime hems of the meandering brooks and creeks.  I also suppose that because of their daunting environment, the engineers haven't been able to take their gift to the planet away from us.

LILY OF THE VALLEY

Patrick's trip down memory lane sent me on a trip too.  MJT Dion had a favorite wild flower of her own.  It is called Lily of the Valley and it is also richly and sweetly aromatic.  It too lives and thrives in places that most engineers don't bother to visit.  Lily of the Valley too, are a wetland phenomenon.  They do not crave great gobs of sunlight, preferring instead shady, wet kinds of places, like places where you would also find ferns and skunk cabbage and creatures like that.  I have tried on at least two occasions to make Lily of the Valley adorn my surroundings in southern California.  Nothing doing.  it's too bad too.  One sprig, like you see here, is enough to keep the whole house smiling with perfume from this generous  midget.  Maybe I'll try one more time.  I think I have a place in my yard in San Diego that wasn't available the first two times I tried.  I'll smuggle some back into the state next November to see what happens.  I'll let you know.

LILAC

I can't let this trip down memory lane go free without giving some space to MJT Dion's absolute, indisputable favorite flower, the Lilac.  Come to think of it, EFR Dion was head over heels for this redolent flower as well.  In fact, I really think that he named his first female child with a famous popular song in mind, "Jeanine, I dream of you in Lilac time."  That's only a suspicion.  In front of people he always said that it was out of love and respect for his favorite cousin, Jeanne.  No matter what the story might be, the incontrovertible fact is that we always had a Lilac bush in our yard.  Our mother was as protective of that bush as a tiger mama is of her cubs.  

This is another one of the plants that many of us would like to have in our environment in Southern California, but it is well nigh impossible to make it thrive, at least in the sea-level regions.  I have heard that it is possible to find it in the upper elevations of Southern California.  My trips to these places are very rare.  After all, I did not come here to spend any time in 30 degree weather.  I do admit that when we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for about six years, we did discover a thriving Lilac in a yard on our walking route.  Yeah, it was a real one...aroma and all.  Belle, before she got to be famous as the Voice from the Kitchen, fell in love with it too.  Then, we moved back to sea level, lilac-less Southern California.  

I hope that those of you with memories of these things have had your fill of nostalgia with this.  It is that time of year too.  Oh well, enjoy the pictures and, if you live in Southern California, tell the stories to your children.

WHY STOP TO SMELL THE ROSES? THE LILIES? FOGGETTABBOUDIT

SaphireRose925

This is where I got this.
The caption is the artist's name.
There is a reason why I chose a paper sculpture of roses.  The idea came to me several years ago, but the thought really slammed into me today when I noticed something strange in church this morning.  It was not totally new, but this is the day that was made for me to come to my senses and notice for sure that something was wrong with the world.
It was in San Diego.  It was in the small church that is only about 100 yards away from our residence there.  Since Easter is but a mere two weeks behind us, the lilies are still there in their glory.  Not all their glory, mind you, just part of it.  They still look good.  All 36 or 40 of them.  But what is missing is that there is a total absence of the other part of their glory.  The aroma that should be filling the small church is nowhere to be felt.  This was also true Easter Sunday morning.  That is definitely an insult to God.  I wonder if He has been getting accustomed to this stuff.  I've noticed for years now that roses don't smell like roses any more.  In fact, they don't smell at all.  We humans have come to the point where we have engineered everything into neutral.  We have found a way to make everything in nature come out as asexual as mules.  We are neuterizing the world. [Pardon the fabricated word.]  It is really a big loss. We don't even have the way to make people happy by giving them the poinsettias that have outlived their time as Christmas decorations.  They are all so over engineered that it is practically impossible to make them survive for very long once the season is finished.  If you have ever made the mistake if taking one of them home when you were given permission by the pastor early in January, you know what I mean.  It is not that your green thumb has deserted you.  It is that your engineering skills are not up to par.  Now I know why we always have great looking Easter Lilies at Easter, no matter whether Easter is on March 27 or April 21.  You can be sure that the lilies will be there in their visual splendor, absent the redolence, of course.  I would venture a small wager that the lilies for next year have already been calculated.  I don't know about you, but I am thinking that this is another one of those, "Laughing on the outside, crying on the inside" realities?  
We can now engineer plants so that they can render more fuel for our internal combustion engines and less food for our animals.  Does ethanol focused corn have silk coming out of the ear?  Actually, if we don't need sexed corn, it sure doesn't need its whiskers, now does it.
Do you stop and wonder what is next?  We already have de-sexed humans.  We now classify them by gender.  What's next, mule type offspring?  That is the ultimate population control, engineered "humans."
Well, I've come a long way from odorless lilies and roses.  I will now leave you to your own devices.  If you are blessed with real, hot blooded children who were engineered by God Himself, look around and be happy.  They may be the last ones you see for a while.

THE PETER PRINCIPLE -- HIERARCHIOLOGY -- DILBERTOLOGY --

This is fun!  Synonyms for "Ineptocracy"

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I guess I hit a nerve.  It's a sign of the world we live in. I even got sent to a historical German quote.  Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1767 wrote “To become more than a sergeant? I don't consider it. I am a good sergeant; I might easily make a bad captain, and certainly an even worse general. People have had this experience.”

This thought really awakened the readership.  So many reminded me that this is the contemporary way of talking about the "Peter Principle" which dates back from the 1969 humorous book "The Peter Principle" by Dr. Laurence J.Peter and Raymond Hull.  For those of you who may have been born in the latter part of the 20th century, I quote the Peter Principle for you: "Employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence."  What is left unsaid here is what I said last night, Employees get there because an incompetent superior promoted them.  

I read "The Peter Principle" more than once while I was an active member of the Ecclesial Confraternity, otherwise known as the Hierarchy.  You can read what my thoughts were/are about that particular organization by clicking on the link above.  It just so happens that I got my brain food for my convictions from Dr. Peter as well.  He introduced the corollary of the "salutary science of Hierarchiology.  The mantra is, "The hierarchy must be preserved."

The principles and corollaries of these definitions all point to the same fundamental phenomenon: "All the truly high quality, valuable, productive work is performed and brought to its culminating value by the people who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

These, in turn, practice the antithetical management strategy of "managing upward."  Last night I mentioned the practice of the Inept who manage the incompetent in order to make them [the Inept] continue to look good.  Tonight, I turn it around and say that in "The Peter Principle" one of the corollaries of the principle is that the Competent manage the incompetent into thinking  that it is the Incompetent who are responsible for the success of the organization.  That assures the security and the freedom of the Competent while keeping the incompetent happy and proud of their success.

I will conclude this pseudo-intellectual discussion by stating the the "very competent" [super competent] is always in jeopardy.  This is the individual whose competence threatens the rest of the hierarchy through the practice of above average aptitude in more than one discipline.  I have personally seen "very competent" performers be fired for peccadilloes or eased out, even if it takes a "golden parachute," in order to protect and preserve the hierarchy. 

Dr. Peter made us laugh, but that didn't mean that we "didn't have a yen to cry" as we digested the truths contained in his book. 
P.S. Dilbertology states that: "Management was never competent at all." That's a different story, but the lead cartoon fit so well, that I used it anyway.

LAUGHING ON THE OUTSIDE; CRYING ON THE INSIDE

CLOWNING AROUND

This is a thought I've often had and I have the sneaking suspicion that I have mentioned it before, but I can't be sure.  Truth to tell,I get it from two sources.  One is the French Canadian saying: "Ce n'est pas parce qu'on rit qu'on a pas l'envie de pleurer."  It says a lot and goes deeper into the soul than the title of the song quoted in the title of this blog. I think that the first time I heard this was at a wake that I was attending with my mother and father.  The deceased was a very good friend of the family on my mother's side.  I also had come to know the deceased through her many visits to my grandmother.  She would often be there when I went to the apartment for lunch from school.  Of course we got to be friends, and of course she always waited for me to leave before saying anything nice about me in front of me.  When she died, my mother told me, "If you want to come to the wake, we will take you.  This lady really liked you.  She was so happy that you were comfortable around old people."  I remember feeling good about that, but then I remembered that I had lost a super source of great stories about what it meant growing up in Quebec in the 19th century.
This was, as you can now appreciate, a VERY French-Canadian wake.  Cigars, a sip of something now and then, and here and there.  Loud talk and lots of laughter.  I didn't have the desire to laugh.  But everyone, well, almost everyone, seemed to be having a good time.  I decided to go right to the top.  My Grandfather, Joseph.  I knew he would give me a straight answer.  So I asked, straight from the shoulder, "Why are they laughing?  I expected a religious, catechism answer.  Instead I got the proverb, "Just because we're laughing, doesn't mean that we don't have the yen to cry."
Well, number one, I could never imagine Grandfather Joseph having the yen to cry.  Not him.  Number two, I came to understand the meaning of that proverb over the years, I think.  Know what?  I am still working on it too.
Two quick examples.
I have an Irish friend.  Priest.  Smart.  Very smart.  I've learned a lot from this guy.  He knows it too.  He likes me because I am not afraid to admit that I have learned from him and still do.  He likes me too.  But I talk back.  Not sass, just straight talk.  Inevitably, when I talk back, or state something that he doesn't like, comes the ripping, cutting insult.  I always react by laughing.  That does it, then the invective gets downright rich.  More laughter.  That doesn't mean that I don't have the yen to cry.  We're still friends.  It's one of those love/hate relationships between a Franco-American and an Irish guy.  Neither one of us will cry at the other's funeral, whichever comes first.  [Should I have said "goes" first?]


It's cultural too.  I have lived in some countries where great embarrassment brings out an uncomfortable laugh.  It's the only escape.  I learned to beware of the "tremendous sense of deprecating humor that these people have."  It didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't seeing a sense of humor.  In many cases, I was seeing an escape from tears. I once saw a poor family lose their beast of burden to a heart attack.  They sat on the still warm carcass, shaking their heads and occasionally laughing at their plight.  I knew that what they really wanted was to cry.  Human respect didn't allow for it.


Human beings are a very complex organism.  Also, very interesting. How else could so many of them write so many things about them without repeating the same thing over and over again?  You have an answer to that one, I wanna hear it. x(;-)-[--<

THE INEPT "WORD GEEK" IS BACK IN TOWN

http://paladinplanet.blogspot.com/2012/02/ineptocracy.html

No, I am not here to talk politics, I'm here to laugh at them.  I got a big kick out of the email that sent me the news about this "new" word.  I thought it was new, so I laughed as I was reading the definition.  Then,as I got about halfway through it, I knew that I was reading something that had a lot of possibilities, if not necessarily a ages-old name.  As it turns out it describes a lot of organizations. Many non-profits, like the government, like the schools, like the churches and maybe a few more that you readers may be able to fish out of your very own grey matter.
In many ineptocracies the leaders are not elected.  Oh no, that would be too dangerous,say the inept executives who are about to promote one of their sycophantic inepts to a higher position so that he will not cause them any more trouble by being more inept than they.  You see, in a true ineptocracy, the leaders need to keep the more inept (incompetent?) around so that their high level ineptitude can get perceived as brilliance.  Look around.  You'll see that I am not making this up.  It's even more complicated than that.  The higher carriers of ineptitude need to have the lesser inepts (no, I'm confused now... that double negative just changed the meaning of my thought.)  Let's do that again.  OK?  The higher level of inepts have to keep the more inepts than they around so they, the inept executives, can be convinced that they are competent enough to make themselves look brilliant against the background of the army of inepts that they lead.  That's what makes it impossible to send an incompetent away.  The leaders need them to make themselves look competent.
My favorite move is the one I mentioned above.  Promote the most incompetent subordinate to give him/her a chance to prove him/herself.  After all, the individual has now proven his/her ineptitude for the last seven years.  We know that there must be something there for the good of the organization.  It's just that no one has seen it yet.  We should stop complaining about the proven ineptitude and do something positive for the individual.  Show that we appreciate the non-results and give the super star incompetent a chance to do great things for the world.
We have a similar situation in the government.  The ineptitude is enshrined in the electorate.  You don't believe it?  If you're so smart, I dare you to go out and have a five minute intelligent conversation with any "man on the street."  You can try it with a woman, it won't matter.  Ineptitude is an equal opportunity quality.
This ubiquitous characteristic of human behavior is also an ecumenical quality.  It is a Christian and a non-Christian trait.  It is present in non-profit organizations and is rampant in for-profit ones too.  Corporations are not exempt and of course, governments and their related operations are the very organizations which caused the coining of the term in the first place.
By the way,you might want to abandon your pipe dream of moving to another country where competence and aptitude reign.  HA!
Good luck.  There is no such thing.  So, I leave you with these philosophical musings.  Maybe sometime we can muse and opine a bit about the sister behavior, "Onthetakitocracy."  You can't move away from that one either.  
If you want to have some fun with this subject, click on the link at the top.  The blogger there did a good job with this thought.

INTERNET CORPORATE COOPERATION? REALLY

http://www.isotranslations.com

Across the last few months you have read a lot about Internet skulduggery and flagrant dishonesty with intent to fleece the innocent and harm the not-so-innocent.  It seemed that around every corner and behind every solicitation for "help" there was a trap. It seemed to be well nigh impossible to find a straightforward, honest, hard working community of professionals who were actually working together toward a common goal without trying to exploit one another and others with whom they came in contact.  it seemed as though there was nothing that the Internet presented that existed for the welfare of the world at large.  I kept looking.  I was bound and determined to uncover a telecommuting opportunity that was honest, professional and within the bounds of my physical and mental abilities.
Along the way I subscribed to about ten or fifteen online job search services.  Some of them were no better than the online brigands that I had learned to dodge along the way.  I even blogged about some of the experiences I had.  Once I learned a few things and I started to talk back to the con artists, they slowly but surely dropped off and now I don't get harassed any more.  Of course I have stopped the online job search services since I have found www.ISOTranslations.com
I did get the reference to this company through one of the online job services.  I wish I could remember the name of it.  "ISO" [for short], has taught me that it is possible to not only have a telecommuting job but develop working relationships at the same time.  This is something that I never expected.  I am the quintessential grouch about the "friend" on Facebook.com fallacy.  We're not friends, I don't even know you.  Get lost.  That's my attitude.
Now, at "ISO" people who are friendly, intelligent, polite and respectful all at once.  They are busy in the office, no doubt, but they are also patient. They are good at communicating what they want, what they need and in reverse, good at making sure that the people in the "field" are provided with the necessary information to do good work.  The learning curve is there, of course.  Learning how to deal with a company who operates on a schedule nine hours ahead of where I work is a challenge over and above that of getting accustomed to the work process itself.  I have begun to awaken at about 2:30 AM in order to keep myself ready for the possibility of snagging work as it comes zinging over the airwaves.  In the meantime, I do other things, but I am here for the main purpose of being the first in line for the work that I can get.  This morning, for instance, I got up a little early and when my magic box lit up, there was the "deadline manager" online with a cheery, "Hello, Paul" staring me in the eye.  Turns out she had a problem and I was involved because I had been the proof reader on the project in question.  I'm glad to report that we were able to repair it.
So, as you can tell by the name of the company, we do translations.  What you can't tell by the name of the company is that it pays the people who do the translations, proof reading and managing.  Yes, it actually pays.  On time too.  Real money.  Not huge money, but money and according to a schedule that anybody and everybody can see.  For a person like yours truly who had about 5 months of working through the moral morass of shadowy slinkers that is a big, huge relief.
Finally, do not kid yourself, it is WORK.  It is not a come-on scam.  It is deadline oriented and you do have to get used to it.  One of the things that I never imagined I would have to learn is how to relate human to human to the sources of pixelated messages.  That's a new one on me.  I'm getting better at it.  I have even caught myself spending a few moments chatting with some of translators and proof readers with whom I am joined in the accomplishing of translation projects.  So I'm learning.  That's an interesting experience at my age.

LOST ART OF LETTER WRITING -- REALLY?

An "Oldie but Goodie"

Two days ago I was prompted by circumstances to sit down and actually write a letter, er, E-mail to my son.  It felt just like it did 60 years ago when I would write a letter just about every week.  They were the usual letters that a teen ager at boarding school would write to his mother and father.  Over the letter writing years of my life, I suppose that I probably dashed off about 1,000 letters to various people for any number of reasons and from several places.  I suppose that if ever anyone ever fell into the stash of these things, they could get a very good snapshot of my life.  Going through them would be a "kick" I am sure.  Such a "kick" that I hope no one has any of them piled up somewhere.  If there is, I have a sneeky suspicion that I could find it...But I won't intrude into my personal life of 60 years ago!
Last night, as I lay abed thinking of the nice letter that I had written to my elder son, I got to thinking about one of the mysteries of life that came to light when I was in school.  We would consider certain historical moments in the light of a letter that so and so had written to another historical so and so.  It was amazing to me that these letters, some of which were rather personal, were still in existence.  For me, letters were so personal that when I got them, I read them, tore them up and trashed them.  I hoped that the recipients of my letters to them did the same.  I surely never expected that 200 years after I'd been sweating pushing daisies that someone would be enjoying the frivolities that I had written to dear mother on the second Sunday in May of the year 19forgotten.  I asked EFR Dion about that one time and he was straight with me.  He said that public figures wrote "letters" for the record and the recipients knew it, so did not trash them...even if they seemed to be love letters.  Even if they were love letters, they were meant to be public.  That was a revelation.  I had not yet written a love letter, so I could not imagine anyone writing a public love letter.  But, I know that some of them did.  Not I, though.
Then, across the years some letters that had come into our family from one person or the other on the occasion of a very important event surfaced some 40 or 50 years after the author's demise.  The one on top of the page, much the worse for its age, is of that nature.  There is another one also that was written to my mother, MJT Dion from EFR Dion's brother when the latter was stationed in England for some R&R in the springtime of 1943, I guess.  It was all about the fresh lilacs that were in full bloom at that time of the year.  Very nice three page letter.  But don't hold your breath, that kind of writing is mighty rare these days, I suspect.
So, look whose talking.  I write a love letter almost every single day.  During certain times of the month, two a day.  They'll never go away. I write them specifically for my sons and for those who just might be curious enough to find out what a crazy old grouch of the early 21st century would write about.  Not that this is art.  But whatever it might be called, at least it is something that I can leave the children.  I'm doing my best to die in debt, so this is it.  It's not worth anything, so that they won't be tempted to take it away from you.  That's the plan.  Neat, huh?
That's why they won't cry at my funeral.  That's the plan too.

DO YOU SURF OR BROWSE?

I am not sure, but I think that this qualifies for my first, pure, twenty-first century thought.  It is a question of language, true, but also a question of perception.  Hang in there now and let's try to work through this together.  You all know that I am somewhat of a language geek.  


Starting from there, listen to my quandary here.
Why do we surf Television channels and browse internet sites?  As I wrote this, I got a mental lightning bolt reminding me that I do not remember what we called impulsive radio dialers in the days before television.  I won't camp on that question because, after all, that is a 2oth century behavioral aberration that doesn't affect us at this point.
You have to admit that language is a strange thing.  I don't have any desire at all to indulge in a George Carlin-esque discussion here starting with the "Driveway vs. Parkway" conumdrum.  No, this is a bone fide thought that attracted my attention today.  I think I may have an opinion about why there is a difference.  Of course, my opinion might be somewhat more philosophical than what the reality places before us.
It is possible to surf television channels because the image of the source is more easily experienced and judged than that of the transmitted reality on the Internet.  It is more of a surface experience than that of the Internet stimulus.  Therefore, it is a quicker and much more reflexive response than that caused by the Internet.
The Internet image requires more time to digest and to judge than the image of the television set.  The internet generally requires more reading and comprehension than the television.  So, stock has to be taken of the presentation before the mouse clicker decides to move on to something else.  The Internet then, requires a longer mental scan than the television transmission.
That's the one side of the story.
There is also the consideration of the intention of the user.  The television viewer is seeking release, relaxation, escape.  The Internet user is seeking engagement, challenge and presence.  The two attitudes are diametrically opposed, and therefore require two different words as their identifiers.  
So there, I rest my case.
Wow!  I'll bet that there isn't a single humorous line in the whole thing.  Besides, I sure hope that my Summa cum Laude Harvard Graduate nephew is not looking over my shoulder on this one.
No doubt you had to struggle through this.  Good for you that it's only 403 words.

CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE [MITT ROMNEY]]

Whaaat?  No, can't be. One thing that it can be is that this thought of mine does not qualify for political punditry.  I got this thought because all the times that this sentence has been quoted, the semi-truth of it always comes crashing home to me and I wonder if it does the same to other humans.  It is abundantly clear to anyone whose been through a decent high school that corporations, privately held companies, social groups and so many other types of human communities, including counties, towns, cities and states possess legal standing as juridical persons.  It is true that they are not natural born human beings = people.  But they are persons, with a definite identity.  Their identity comes to them from the law, both common law and more specific law. Corporations in particular are legal persons who are, as so many other legal persons, made up of an agglomeration of human beings = people.
Because these entities are persons who have an identity, they have moral obligations to people and other legal persons and they have the right to be respected by the human beings whom they employ, those to whom they sell their products or services and the governing bodies of the locations that are the most affected by their presence, real and physical as well as  influential.  Because these entities are persons, they have the right to be protected by the authorities from damage that could be inflicted upon them by those who would like to see them be killed, so to speak.  
This is the balance that humans have to seek in this world.  Human beings are community beings.  Human beings are social animals.  
corporations are extensions of the communitarian nature of the humans who constitute them.  That is why there is a natural necessity that both, the natural born human and the legally constituted person made up of humans get along together in moral harmony.
I chose the picture at the top of the page precisely because I am convinced that it clarifies my thought on this topic.  It is a collection of well arrayed electrons that form a sort of person whose shape is akin to that of a natural human.  That strikes us from the first moment we sense the image.  We get similar sensations from the experience of changing domicile.  From the start, we either like or dislike the "array" of the new community.  When we change employment, we experience the same sensations.  It is because the new legal person's morality either pleases us or it doesn't.  You all know that I am not making this up.  You've lived it.  You can look it up in any philosophy book.  
I just had to let you know that the stuff you hear and read is not always 99/100's % pure truth.  Not even here.  Because I know that, and because I am comfortable with that, you will not dare to cry at my funeral.  You know why?  It's because although I will no longer be "people" I will continue to be a person, forever.  Anything wrong with that?  Heaven's no!

PLASTIC -- CHEAP STUFF -- DREAM ON

I opine that there are not too many of you who can remember the transfer of life from the metal and wood age to the plastic age.  Now I can remember certain things coming into my life that caused some discomfort among the older people. I even remember the very first plastic thing that encroached upon the comfort of our home.  Just as anything and everything else around here, it has a story.
We were young.  I was about 6 or 7.  My brother was about 5 or 6.  The first girl was maybe 4 or so.  We had glazed ceramic plates (no bakelite, yet), glazed ceramic cups, just like we do now.  We had oil base paint, linoleum floors with the occasional scatter rug.  Wall-to-wall carpeting was something that rich people had.  We had screened-in porches, a washing machine in the cellar, next to the slop sink.  Clothes were sun dried on a clothes line.  (That's a line I forgot.)  We had a victory garden, a woodburning furnace which, when times got a little bit better, we were able to stoke with coal.  The automobile we had was a Hudson, 1940 Special.  4 doors and 4 tons of metal, real metal, and real rubber.  We ate food that was in season.  We preserved food when it was being harvested so that we could have some things over the Winter. Our drinking glasses, were, of course, glasses.  Made of real glass.  Of course, with the children and all, broken glass was one of the great commodities that was never in short supply around the house. Every time a glass was broken by a child, MJT Dion remembered to inform EFR Dion of the mishap as he arrived from work.  She never forgot.  He never failed to direct a half hearted scolding to the "offender."  Most often, the offender was my younger brother, but he survived.  I did too.
Thursday nights were shopping nights because that's when the stoors in the uptown, High Street area were open until 9:00 PM.  We were sent to bed and the baby sitter would wait for Mother and Father to return.
Imagine our surprise when one Friday morning we awakened and were served our milk in a plastic "glass."  I remember being miffed.  I think the others were too, but I can't talk for them.  The worst part of it were the hellish colors.  Some kind of green, a yellow, a blue and a Gawddawful purple and a garish red.  Man, were they ever ugly.  EFR Dion announced that if he ever saw anyone below the age of 21 using a glass that it would be like the death penalty.  He even ranted about the never ending story of breaking expensive, highly beautiful glasses.  His closing remark was something like, "I've had it.  Now when you want to break a glass, work at it.  I dare you."  That was it.  We had plastic "glasses" for years.
One thing we had that didn't change until I got older and never had to live through the trauma was the introduction of plastic propellers for balsa wood flying models.  Our models were all wood, from nose to tail...except for the rubber band motor, of course.  I spent 5 minutes on Google looking for a picture of a balsa wood model airplane propeller, all to no avail.  So, that's it.  An arrogrant strut down memory lane.  All over the introduction of plastic.
I'm not going to write about this at any length, but I saw the adults around me try to cope with synthetic rubber tires, automatic transmissions, corfam shoes, rayon and nylon stockings instead silk and cotton and some other stuff that was on the table by the time I got old enough to really care.  I wonder what they would say about the four door sedan of our time that weighs all of 1,800 pounds.
Take it easy.  I know I missed a day.  I also know that you don't want to hear the story.  I also know that I was not ill, neither physically nor mentally.  If it turns into a story, then I'll tell it.  

LINE? THERE ARE MORE?

The other day I write this thing about "Deadlines."  All the way through I was thinking about how many funny things I could say about lines.  I refrained.  I have ben suffering from the after effects of the constraint that this self abuse put on my being.  The loss of freedom that I imposed upon myself has been somewhat more than I can stand.  So today, you're going to get the results of the mess that my grey matter has become because of the idiotic decision I made to discipline myself.  So, without once looking at a dictionary, encyclopoedia, geometry text, trigonometry text, physics book, and gosh almighty, not even "Bing" nor even "Google" I am launching a contest against myself to see how many "lines" I can think of in ten minutes.  If there are any spelling errors, live with it.  I don't operate well under the pressure of a deadline...the clock must be started because I just named one.
Now that I have just lost 30 seconds, I'm really getting nervous...Ready, get set, GO....
Fishing
Straight
Graph
Foul
Fair
Curved
Broken
40 yard, ect...
Goal
By
Back
Guy
Line of s...
Gas
Electric
Telephone
Double
Center
Business
Imaginary
Vertical
Parallel
Slanted
Line of sight
Line of type
Grid
Starting
Finish
Tree
Flight
Front
Clothes
Oh Lord, I just got a blank.  I'm trying tp rescue myself by distraction caused by writing as line to you, yeah, dropping you a line, see, it worked.
Dropped
Safety
Oh, no, only one more minute...yikes, 30 seconds...Am I done?  I'm afraid that I'm going to be the victim of the Beatles song about "Yesterday"=== I am.  I lost.  Oh no.
"Turn back, oh turn back,
Time in thy flight,
I need to return
and make this right."
As Charlie Brown would say, "Rats!"

"F" is for FLUNK
All else is bunk
The real good thing
That you can bring
To your addled mind
Is that you can't find
On the planet entire 
"F- with A+ to conspire.


34 in 600 seconds.  1 for every 17.6 seconds.  I guess I better find other work.
Now you try it with a word that you think shows up a lot in life.

DEADLINE

cinderella's deadlineby ~StephSpensley

BLOOD PRESSURE 250/125.
Why did I choose this picture for a thought on "deadline?"
It is because there are at least three situations that cause blood pressure to rise because of deadlines.  The first one is self-imposed deadlines.  The second is the deadline that is imposed from outside but whose outcome rests entirely in MY control. Finally there is the one that is either self-imposed or comes from the outside, but is only indirectly under my control.  This is the real witch.
Most of the pictorial representations I found were of the nature of dealines that are under the control of the operator.  These are stressful, especially of they have to be met to satisfy a superior or a customer.  Like the printer who promises the finished product by 10:00 AM tomorrow.  The printer now has to perform.  Except if he happens to be working in the town where I presently live.  Nevertheless, under normal circumstances the promise will be kept, even if the owner of the promise has to work deep into the night to assure delivery.
The most stressful deadline situation is the one in which the order to meet the deadline is given to a manager who has to depend on other employees to deliver the end product by the deadline.  This is enough to drive some people off the edge.  The manager has to trust those who are physically doing the work while all the manager can do is sweat and swear, or swear and sweat, depending on the depth of religious convictions.  I don't know why I am writing about this at my age.  Don't we all grow up under the sword of the deadline?  Kindergarten to doctoral thesis is nothing but a string of deadline after deadline. BUT, the control remains in the hands of the one to whom the deadline has been given.  SO, the question arises, "Is this supposed to train me to be able to relax when the deadline that I own is at the mercy of those who work for me?"  The answer is "NO."  
It is up to me to learn how to do that all by myself. I know a couple people who actually turned down promotions to supervisory positions because they did not have the desire to teach themselves the skills needed to guide others to meeting deadlines for them.  By the same token, I thrive on managing people, but that is not to say that my blood pressure stays at 120/60.  Ohhh, noooo!  I do tell you openly, that I do not swear when I am under pressure.  I only swear when I am relaxed and at ease. The good thing about that is, that I am so rarely relaxed and at ease that I swear very little.
Besides, in my present situation, I am always under the gun of dealines.  But meeting them is always under my direct control.  The other day I stayed awake 26 hours straight making sure that the company for whom I work delivered a product on time.  We did it.  goooood feeeeling!!!  So, in my life I have learned how to do both things.  I can do it myself or I can motivate others to do it for the sake of the common good.  
I end by saying that it is always easier to endure the harship that you impose upon yourself than to suffer through the one that you didn't choose...Worse yet, the one that blind-sides you unexpectedly.  Fortunately most deadlines are of the type that you can see coming.  May all of your deadlines be of the foreseeable, of your own choosing and under your direct control for the rest of your natural life.  
Good luck with that one!

JUDGE NOT LEST YOU BE JUDGED [MATT. 7; 1ss]

I have to begin this by saying that all my life I have been told to make choices.  I have been told to learn how to make good choices.  I was going to say "judicious" choices, but that would get me ahead of myself.  One of my first pieces of advice came from my mother.  I had been in school for a very short time.  I was not yet seven years old.  It was the first time that she advised me, "When you choose friends, always choose someone better that you."  Now isn't that a license to judge people?  I think it is.  In my life I have gone from there to the bottom line to not suffer fools lightly.  To do that, you have to judge.  It is impossible to get through life without judging. In fact, it is impossible to get through life without being judged.  At least that's what it feels like.  That is the rub.  We keep being scolded into not judging people on the one hand, and then we get scolded for bringing a negative judgement down upon ourselves for some silly reason.  
Through the years, here's what I have come to learn.  If you evaluate the factual output of another person's human behavior, in my book that is acceptable, nay, necessary judging.  [Read the Bible reference well and you'll see what I mean..."good measure, packed down...] It is a fact that there are, in fact, inept, incompetent and unscrupulous people on this planet.  Most of us have no problem with these individuals as long as they stay within the boundaries of what skills they do possess and do not hinder our efforts toward perfection.  Throughout my life, I have never had a problem telling people that they had to move on to another line of work, or another environment where they could get better results from their life activity.  It is important that everyone do what falls within the limits of the skill set that has been given, received and developed.  That's it.  
That goes for me too, by the way.  I have been told a few times in my life that I had to move on because I was a fish in a bird's nest.  Every time it happened, I knew that the person telling me the truth was in fact, hitting the truth nail on the head.  In fact, I am still on very good terms with them all.  For one thing, they are happy that I am no longer a thorn in their side, so we can still be friends.  The last time I was told the truth about my performance, I agreed with the man and even gave him some tips on how to deal with the fallout from my poor performance.
I am convinced, and ever will be, that there is no better predictor of future behavior that the behavior of the past.  Like they say in politics,
"The past is prologue."  There is nothing morally wrong with this type of evaluation.  We run into trouble when we overstep our bounds and start to impute motives for behavior, rather than to evaluate the factual output as detached from the motive (intent).  So, my life effort is to go on judging, evaluating, choosing what and how to do things, for myself first.  The person who is honest with self is never surprised at the judgement/evaluation of others who comment about the factual output of behavior.  Then when the man tells you that you have to move on because you are more of a liability than an asset, you should not be surprised.  You should have moved on by using your own initiative before being told.
I could go on and on about this, but the essential part of my thought has been placed on the table.  If you want to hear the rest, you have to promise not to cry at my funeral.