Funeral in the time of COVID.

The obit said it would be a Mass, but it actually wasn't. I wonder if the family or the pastor decided against an actual Mass, knowing how popular the deceased was and how they would have to turn away mourners if the ceremony was to be held in the church, in compliance with state edicts on how many people may be inside a church, as Chinese Death Virus ravages the nation.

I'm not sure I can honor myself by calling the deceased a friend. I certainly admired him, and saw him many times. I was never part of his close circle, though. And he now has the singular distinction of being the only person I knew personally to die from COVID -- at least so far. The last time I saw him, in January, he seemed healthy enough, for an older guy with preexisting conditions, but the next I heard he was in the ICU, and he died on Ash Wednesday. 

So the funeral ceremony was held outdoors, in fog, beneath heavy skies. The hearse pulled up; the casket wheeled under a small tent near the cemetery grounds. But even this was all for show; the deceased was going to be cremated at a later date; the casket would be put back in the hearse and taken away. 

The ceremony began. A laptop was set up so some mourners could see the livestream. There was a reading, a brief homily, a eulogy, and a blessing, and it was all over in half an hour. The family made an announcement that there would be a reception... later, at some unknown date, when the Chinese Death Virus was no longer ruining everything in the world. 

So congratulations to the Chinese Communist Party, for taking yet another head through its malfeasance and wickedness. And God bless the family, the wife, the kids, the grandkids, who are deprived of a beloved man, and have to give him such a diminished farewell. 

And God, please restore our nation to sanity before it's too late. Unless it already is. 

Know your Cuomos.

Puff nutty.

Something unusual popped up in the store this week, and since it wasn't some bug-eyed fish or cleaning product, I decided to eat it. Fortunately it was, indeed, food. 

You handsome folks out there in blogland are probably well aware of my weakness for snacks, as well as my weakness for peanut butter. And yet the two weaknesses have never really been combined in such a way as this. Bamba Peanut Puffs is the product, and you may be wondering, as I did:

1) What the heck is a peanut puff?

2) Why is there a weird baby on the bag?

3) What's this Osem outfit who made it?

4) What's it doing in my supermarket? 

5) Is it any good?

So here's the answers -- a peanut puff turns out to be a puffed treat like Cheez Doodles, only instead of Cheez, it tastes like peanut butter. This is a mind-blowing combo. It's like biting into a salmon burger when you're expecting a hamburger. At first you go What the hey! And then you go Mmm. Unless you hate salmon. Or in this case, peanuts. The texture simply is not something I associate with PB, but that doesn't mean it's bad. 

As for the weird baby, it appears to be the mascot of the company Osem for the peanut puff products, and his name is Bamba Baby. These would be inappropriate snacks for an infant, but perhaps okay for kids older than six months. Foreign mascots always seem a little off to me, like they're created by people who don't understand them but think they're necessary. (Then again, Izzy was no prize, either.)

Osem is one of Israel's largest food outfits, but is owned by those Swiss folks at Nestlé. So I figure paranoiacs could call delicious snacks a plot by either the Swiss or the Israelis to conquer America. Because the peanut puffs are pretty good.

As for why it's in my supermarket, we have a large population of ultra-orthodox Jews in the neighboring village, and while they have their own village shops, they also come to the supermarkets on the goyem side of the tracks from time to time. So it's worthwhile for the store to stock up on kosher goods and snacks which those customers would be familiar. It also seems like Nestlé is trying to be more of a force in the U.S. snack market, after having sold its American candy business to Ferrero. 

Anyway, peanut puffs are good, weird baby notwithstanding, and I'd buy them again, but they're not so good that they could conquer America. In an alternate world, however, I can imagine the Swiss inventing ice cream and using that to break our will. 

I'm not saying they would, but it would be a fight, that's for sure.

The dog that did bark.

I was awakened at quarter to three by barking. It was my wife. 

Wait, I don't mean my wife was barking. I mean that there was a dog barking, and it was keeping my wife from sleeping. So, as any married man will tell you, when you have a problem, you have a problem; and when your wife has a problem, you have a problem.  

Outside a little dog had been barking for a couple of hours. Once my wife woke and heard it, she couldn't get back to sleep. It would bark for a while, maybe five minutes, stop, then start with a few tentative barks, and then a crescendo for a long period. Then silence -- and the process would begin again. I slept through that, but not through her. 

Let's face it -- my wife is sweet on the dogs. And, with her heart still in bandages from the loss of Nipper a couple of weeks ago, all she could think was that there was a suffering dog out there whose owner was too sleepy to let it in. 

Miscellaneous dog in peril, imagined by the Mrs.

So, Fred to the rescue. Let's face it -- I'm sweet on my wife. 

From outside I tried to determine where the dog was, and could tell immediately it was not the little pest up the block. It was actually from a house up the hill, the row whose backyards face our street, the street that can't be reached by road except by the side road. So I started walking. Herein the text exchange with my wife:

Me: It's not the pest. Up the hill
by the apartments.

She: Can the police go check? The poor
thing must be freezing.

Me: I will have a look

She: No, don't go up there!

Me: Why not? Could be on the street

She: No! It's probably in their yard!

Me: Then I will have an address for the popo

She: Honey, I really don't want you up
there in the middle of the night.

Me: The badlands of suburbia

She: You're trying to give me a heart attack
aren't you?

Me: You need sleep and you won't get it
if this poor pup is suffering

She: D'oh! No fair!

Me: brb

<a brief interval later>

She: Where are you?

Me: At the cul de sac. It's one of these houses
but I can't tell which. #37 looks like

She: Call police? You can't ring doorbells
in the middle of the night.

Me: On the way back

She: Okay. I can breathe.

Me: It is not very cold so the dog isn't in danger

She: It's 37 degrees and the dog's been
out for hours now. That's not safe.

Me: Okay. 2000 steps on Fitbit already!

She: Show off!

<I got back to our porch and called the police -- not via the 911 line but by the station's direct number.>

Me: Okay, they're sending somebody

She: Thank you so much love. You
saved its life.

Me: Or the owner having a heart attack
who's out cold.

She: Could be that too!

Me: Could be dead....drunk

So that was my brave expedition in the cold night air. I wasn't too worried walking around, even if a single male with a flashlight could look suspicious. Yeah, I'm white, okay? But I'm also middle-aged. I look askance at young men of any description walking along alone; most men who choose a life of crime are dead or in prison at my age. My wife was afraid someone would call the police on me, but that just would have saved me the trouble. "Glad you're here, officer! Check out house #37!"

Before I got back upstairs the barking had stopped, and didn't restart. Fortunately it is a quiet town at night and the police can take the time to respond to nuisance calls like mine. And with any luck, things will be quieter up the hill in the evenings going forward. 

Fred's Book Club: Prophet Margin.

Welcome back, my friends, to the Hump Day feature that never ends! Yes, it's the Humpback Writers, our feature with the stupid name that runs on Wednesday. We try to get a wide variety of books here in the book club, sometimes seasonal, and this one is pegged to the start of baseball's spring training games on Sunday. 

Prophet of the Sandlots: Journeys with a Major League Scout is a book every fan of baseball ought to read, especially one interested in the history of the leagues and how they recruit players. Author Mark Winegardner traveled with Tony Lucadello, an elderly scout for the Cubs and the Phillies, who signed up 49 major leaguers in his career, including Mike Schmidt and Fergie Jenkins. Well, he signed hundreds of players, but 49 made it to the Show. This book is the story of Lucadello and Winegardner's scouting trips through the Midwest in 1988.

Lucadello was 75 when they made that trek, and even in 1988 was a dinosaur in the world of baseball. He drove around the country, visiting, revisiting, and re-revisiting prospects from the time they were kids until they were old enough to sign. Initially he could sign up any player he thought had potential. But that changed in 1965.

Tony claimed he'd never said a swear word, but if he ever slipped, he must have used the same inflection as when he says "draft." Before 1965, when major league baseball instituted the draft, if Tony found a player he liked, he could offer him a contract on the spot.... Since 1965, though, the only way Tony can sign a player he likes is by convincing the Phillies to draft that player. 

Tony's method, seen many times in the book, was the cultivation of relationships, expecting that when the time came for the boy to sign, he'd sign with the man who had been so encouraging as he grew up. 

"Tony is different," said [Phillies scouting director Jack] Pastore, who's known the old scout almost twenty-five years. "He's like a gardener; he cultivates his players. He takes an interest in them at a younger age, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. And he keeps in touch, maybe by sending a Christmas card, and he really gets close to the player and the family, probably closer than most scouts today. You know, most scouts would just say, 'Well, the kid's going to get drafted. What's my chance of getting him?' They can find twenty reasons why not to, but Tony takes the one positive reason and he does it the other way. If we draft one of Tony's players, the negotiations are a lot smoother, the probability of signing that player is a lot better, because the families appreciate that personal touch." 

But he didn't just leave young prospects with a handshake; Tony Lucadello also left a plan for the boy and his people to develop his abilities. One method was the wall, his baseball-themed answer to all the basketball hoops in Midwest driveways, which encouraged throwing and fielding skills:

Tony watched Jason throw about fifty balls off the wall. Tony has a scout pose: hands thrust deep into overcoat pockets, hat brim tilting forward, head nodding, face impassive. That blank poker face is a master scout's stock-in-trade, developed over the years to prevent lesser scouts from learning what ball players Tony likes and then going after them. Tony has had so many prospects stolen out from under him that he has not only perfected the poker face but also scouted in secret, concealed in his car or behind telephone poles or on rooftops or even -- at the age of sixty-eight -- from the top of a loblolly pine.

Another method Tony recommended to youngsters involved plastic golf balls, having someone throw them for the prospect to hit. The tiny ball developed the eye; and it could be practiced indoors, as the author discovered, pitching to a prospect at Wright State University. 

Lucadello could be a little underhanded himself, faking tears with onion juice in one well-told incident to use emotion to get a prospect signed. But the fact that other people (including a prospect) that Winegardner spoke to in the book had heard the story from Tony shows that the old scout was willing to tell that one on himself. 

The is a terrific profile of an American original, the kind of hardworking scout one always expects to see on the back roads of the nation but won't find anymore. It's a great book, with wonderful baseball stories and an interesting look at the lives of young baseball dreamers. 

Lucadello did not find a way into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but his personal papers were donated to the hall's library, which shows a modicum of the respect he'd garnered in his long career. 

A grand outing.

I was making a right turn on red, onto a busy one-lane road, when my car shuddered and died. The only thing on was the Check Engine light. I thought, Well, that's non-ideal. 

My first concern was that I was dead on the road with traffic coming my way. So, putting aside concerns of trouble and expenditure, I hurriedly restarted the car (ten years old this spring) and, after much disagreement between it and me, it did choke and rumble back to life. On we went, me hoping for momentum. There are no traffic lights between me and my mechanic from that point, which was good, because I thought that if I had to come to a stop I might not be able to come to a start again. But that was irrelevant, because I had to go home first, because I'd just come from the supermarket and there were a hatchload of perishables behind me. 

Look back on it, I suppose the wise move would have been to go to the mechanic, call my wife and ask her to meet me there, transfer the groceries to her car, and then I wouldn't have to worry about them. But I went home instead, hoping I could start the car again after it was unloaded and not have to call AAA for a tow. Did I mention that it was snowing? 

I did not. It was snowing.

After I unloaded at home, I called the mechanic, who was able to take the car immediately. Prayers answered, car started, I was able to drive to the garage. 

That check engine light unnerves me. It is so freaking broad. Oil light means oil is an issue; battery light is equally obvious. But the check engine light could mean anything from a loose gas cap to the engine being half out of the chassis and scraping along the pavement. I immediately dedicated $1,000 from my mental bank account as I drove to the garage.

Everything starts at a grand, at least around here. Water heater? Furnace? Dental work? A/C? Roof? Slice a grand off your savings for starters and then we'll get into the real money. 

Or so I was figuring. 

As it turned out, it was a very small issue -- my heart sank when I heard the word "crankshaft," but it was actually the crankshaft sensor. The great news was that was about a $50 part. The less great news was, the hours of labor to get to and replace the thing added up to $400+.

So, I guess the good news is, it was less than half the grand I had already deducted in my mind, so I was $500 ahead of the game. The bad news is I was still down almost $500. Somehow I still didn't feel like a winner. 

I guess the real good news is that no one happened along in the snowstorm at high speed and rear-ended my car while I was stalled. That would have been unpleasant. Even if I didn't get hurt, my groceries might have been squashed. And who wants squashed groceries?

Monday Odds & Ends.

Feeling a little scattered, so I loaded it all into the blog shotgun and am firing it on this page. Yes, it's the old Random Thoughts fallback today....

🐕🏃

Since we lost Junior Varsity Dog Nipper, my Fitbit thinks I died. Or maybe went into a coma. I have not hit 10,000 steps in almost two weeks. Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz simply doesn't need or care about the kind of exercise that Nipper demanded. Fazzy is content to plow through the snow in the yard, and boy do we still have a lot of snow. More coming today. My main exercise is plowing through the snow to pick up after him or make sure he doesn't get to the street without a leash. Two feet of snow makes for a tough slog. And Fitbit gives me no credit for extra effort.

🐳📚

I've got a great idea for a novel -- it'll be the biggest thing since Scarlett, the 1991 Alexandra Ripley sequel to Gone with the Wind.  

Think of it! The injured Ishmael, the lone survivor, is reunited with Queequeg, who turns out to have survived the destruction of the Pequod as well, by floating to Nantucket in a barrel. The two band together, determined to avenge their sunken pals and bring Moby-Dick to justice. The only person who believes in them is Phyllis McSnord, the Boston socialite who found Ishmael and nursed him back to health. Her heart yearns for him -- but is his too full of vengeance to love? It's a revenge novel, a buddy novel, a romance novel, and a sailing novel all in one! 

Of course, there are some issues. I've never sailed on anything but a cruise ship, a ferry, and a catamaran. I've never even been in a rowboat. So the research might be a little daunting. Plus, I'd probably have to read the original Melville novel, and if I could get through college with an English degree and avoid that chore, I'm certainly not inclined to take it on now. All right, never mind.

🧰🍽

So I fixed the dishwasher. (He said casually, as if a minor accomplishment, hardly worth mention.) This actually occurred a week ago, although the problem went back to my last column of miscellanea in September. To fix the broken flap on the part of the dispenser that stores the Jet Dry, I had to buy a new dispenser, take out a dozen screws to access the interior of the door, gennnnntly unplug the wires leading to the old dispenser, force the part out without breaking anything, put in the new one, plug those wires (seriously, they are so fragile) into the new unit, reassemble the door, and pray that the new dispenser would work and that the hollow door wouldn't fill with water when I ran the thing. So I have avoided mentioning this until the dishwasher had been run enough times to confirm that it is working and I did not break it. Ha! 

📕😨

Been working on very PC novel, targeted at the youth. When I say it's very politically correct, I mean it. The author has used mathematical precision to bring in all preferred groups (ethnic, sexual, people who use weird pronouns), and the characters smack down each other for the slightest hint of un-PC or white supremacist behavior. Anything that happened before their tender little lives is racist garbage. 

Do kids really live this way? Life as a perpetual chase to be PCier than thou? What a drag, man. And this is supposed to be light reading, not a serious drama. If you hear about college-age folks feeling stressed these days, look at the sheer panic they live in, terrified of getting caught out by someone being bitchy, tagging them with labels of uncleanliness, online where all the world can see. Forget the pandemic; this is what's scaring the youth to death. 

For the record, my preferred pronouns are Youse, Dem, Dese, and Doze. 

🍠🌮

The problem with chips is that once you start eating chips you can't stop eating chips. Corn, potato, vegetable, tortilla, silicon, poker, doesn't matter. It's the first chip that gets you. The only way to win is to not play the game.

Soul Fred.

I don't know if you've heard of Jen Fulwiler -- but she's heard of you. Nah, just kidding. She's a writer and comedienne in Texas, mother of six children, a convert from atheism to the Catholic church, and host of a podcast called This Is Jen. She does have a terrific sense of humor, as I think every mom ought to have, especially if they've got a brood like hers to chase around. Early in the lockdowns she put out a schedule for her family:

She had me at Feral Time.

Although she despises the term "momedy" for mom comics, her main natural audience is mothers -- not just Catholic or Christian moms but moms who are obsessed with social media as she is. Thus, her husband, as a manly man from Texas, was unable to understand why she would bother to create a Web site that would give you a word of the year. 

The Word of the Year generator was intended to give you a random word that would be a mantra for the near future -- maybe spark something inside the user to meditate on. Like: 

Back in December I was listening to her podcast when I heard her and her husband talking about it. I figured, Okay, I'll try it, see what pops up. The word I got was Soul.

I must confess that did make me think. I felt like I'd been running on fumes throughout 2020; in fact, could not remember the last time I had felt a sense of purpose beyond "Don't let the house cave in" and "Don't let the dogs have feral hour." I hated to admit it, but Jen's Jen-erator (ha!) made me realize that I needed to think of ways to care for my soul. This is not the kind of thing most guys I know think about, but it's a real issue. We spend all our time being responsible, but if we're getting empty inside, something is going to give.

So thanks, Jen, for getting me to think about something worth thinking about. I hope I can make some progress on this for 2021. Not looking good so far, but it's only February.

And I take back all the mean things I was thinking about your self-help book, Your Blue Flame. This seemed to me to be the kind of pep-talky "Believe in yourself and your dreams" that made me lash out at poor ol' Jeff Lynne a few years ago. I feared it might be an ace away from that diabolical Prosperity Christianity. Now I suspect it may be useful, not shallow, and I congratulate you on your own success. 

Insanity Day.

You know I like to keep an eye on special holidays and observances, the more insane the better. February 20th is here to oblige. 

According to the site Holidays Calendar, today is Hoodie Hoo Day. I suppose it's not on your Far Side Page-A-Day calendar, your iPhone calendar, the free wall calendar from the church (sponsored by the funeral home), or the Cute Kitties calendar your daughter put up. Here's the deets:

Hoodie Hoo Day is a day that is celebrated every year on February 20th. It is a day designed to help people overcome the winter-time blues and to prepare them for the coming of Spring. Although this holiday might seem like a joke holiday, it is an actual holiday that was created and copyrighted by Thomas Roy, a guy that has created over 80 different holidays, many of them quite unusual, such as Bathtub Party Day and Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day.

The main custom of this odd holiday is to go out on February 20th at noon, raise your hands over your head and yell, “Hoodie Hoo!!” for all the world to hear. Other ways that Thomas Roy suggests celebrating the holidays include wearing crazy or odd hats, ordering spring seeds for your garden and go out to a local flea market and buy a piece of used furniture.

So you have your instructions: Go outside, maybe with a weird hat, and yell "HOODIE HOO!" at the top of your lungs.

Of course, if you are reading this in the southern hemisphere, it is summertime and not appropriate behavior. You should wait until August 20th and do your own Down Under Hoodie Hoo. 

But this was not the insane holiday I wanted to post about. Today is also World Day of Social Justice: 

The United Nations' (UN) World Day of Social Justice is annually observed on February 20 to encourage people to look at how social justice affects poverty eradication. It also focuses on the goal of achieving full employment and support for social integration.

Uh-huh. And how do we observe this?

Many organizations, including the UN and the International Labour Office, make statements on the importance of social justice for people. Many organizations also present plans for greater social justice by tackling poverty, social and economic exclusion and unemployment. Trade unions and campaign groups are invited to call on their members and supporters to mark the day. The Russian General Confederation of Trade Unions declared that the common slogan would be "Social Justice and Decent Life for All!".

I wouldn't trust the Russian General Confederations of Trade Unions to give me correct change for a quarter. 

Schools, colleges and universities may prepare special activities for the day or plan a week of events around a theme related to poverty, social and economic exclusion or unemployment. Different media, including radio and television stations, newspapers and Internet sites, may give attention to the issues around the World Day of Social Justice.

So big statements will be made, bureaucrats will fly around acting Serious, and nothing will be done. Nothing can be done. And we know why, but no one wants to discuss it.

Social justice is a wicked term of art; "social" is about the most misused word in the world and "justice" always and invariably implies punishment. Basically it means punishing people with stuff and forcing them to give up stuff for those with no stuff. The rest is just enforced groupthink, where everyone has to smile on everyone else, unless they are national strongmen, terrorists, rich people, or crime bosses, in which case they are exempt. 

The thing is, we know what would really lead to an easing of poverty, which would ease so many other problems -- property rights, the rule of law, and removing fetters from capitalism. But the world is loaded with thug states, nepotism, corruption, tribalism, mob justice, and the rule of men rather than laws, and lately the United States looks like no great shining example of how to do things right. Getting something truly like "social justice" from this mess is like turning out a barrel of nails and expecting them to all land point-down. 

If the United Nations and the International Labour Office think they can straighten it out, they can be my guest -- but leave me and my money alone. 

So yeah, compared to the World Day of Social Justice, a silly holiday to lift one's winter blues seems like a model of sanity. Hoodie Hoo, y'all! 

Random vocalization guy.

The other day I was the only human being awake in the house and I was rinsing dishes to put in the dishwasher. Suddenly I spat out, "So when were you going to tell me about that, BRIAN?"*

Now, this might seem like an odd thing to do, especially since there was no one by that name around, nor even a mouse that we might have named Brian. I had been thinking about my active jobs, specifically a book I'd started editing the day before. Late in the day I'd shot an e-mail off to Brian, the editor, who responded lackadaisically with an answer and tacked on: "Hold off; the author is making more changes to the book."

This is job is piece work, meaning I'm not getting paid for time, just a flat fee. I'd already gone through the front matter and the first chapter. Now I was going to have to go through those again, with no extra money, because the author might have made changes to those sections. And clearly Brian hadn't thought to alert me until I sent him an unrelated question. 

The point is, a random onlooker could be excused in thinking I have some kind of disorder, because I do this stuff all the time. I'll be looking for the cumin in the spice cabinet and suddenly blurt, "Skynet knew the Terminator was going to twentieth-century America -- why did it give him an Austrian accent?" That's because the conversation in my head has just reached an inflection point, and I felt obliged to voice my end out loud. Is this normal?

In some cases I can get away with it, thanks to modern technology. If it's a gorgeous day and I'm driving alone with the windows open and I'm at a light and yell "Clemens should have been thrown out of the game!" and the person in the car next to me notices, he or she could suppose I'm having a conversation (albeit an angry one) with someone on the cell phone, maybe through the dashboard Bluetooth hookup. If I still had the shaggy hair I sported in college, someone could think I was on the phone wearing earbuds when I mumble "That was a ridiculous lie about the vaccines" while walking along, but I haven't got the hair for that style anymore. 

Maybe I'm just alone too much. I can't remember which comedian said it some years ago, but he or she suggested that crazy people should be made to walk in pairs so that they would look like they were having a conversation with each other rather than the voices in their heads. 

Of course, I can walk our big pup Tralfaz, and people could think I was talking to him. That might seem more sane. Unless they're wondering why I'm asking him what the hell he was thinking when he called Rhoda Werner* a gorilla butt in third grade, in which case I think it would be probably seem less sane. 

Now I'm at the point where I'm wondering whether it's worse to look crazy or to be crazy and struggle not to look crazy. Yike! 

😵😜😖

*Names changed to protect myself.

War is... HeLLO!!

 

Fred's Book Club: Oh So Bad.

Greetings, book lovers, and welcome to the Humpback Writers, our Wednesday (Hump Day) book feature -- this week, the Ash Wednesday book feature. No actual humps have yet been detected, but that doesn't mean our authors are all beauty pageant contestants, let me tell you.

Since it is Ash Wednesday, I considered profiling a book of great theological wisdom, humility, penance, and historical importance, like The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. But I decided to go the other way.

Sinner is a sort of book of confession by Lino Rulli, host of The Catholic Guy Show on SiriusXM radio's Catholic Channel. When I say it's a book of confession, I mean like Confessions by St. Augustine, except nothing at all like that. Well, maybe a little. It's just that Lino is nothing at all like that. Maybe he's akin to St. Augustine as he tries to live a Christian life, but like all of us he doesn't quite pass the Augustine bar. In fact, he rarely passes any bars. (Rimshot.) 

From the introduction, Lino discusses his intentions:

Having me write a book about the Catholic faith is like having a really bad actor write a book about the craft of acting. (Speaking of which, why hasn't Pauly Shore written a book about acting yet?)

The only way I could wrap my head around writing this book was if I called it Sinner, because that sums me up.

And I knew I had come up with the right name when not one person disagreed with it. If I called it The Catholic Guy's Path to Sainthood or Holy Lino's Guide to God, there would have been protests in the street and the burning of my image in effigy.

But everyone seemed to agree on one thing: I'm a sinner. 

Lino's youth, as the only child of one and a half devout Catholics, was not particularly ordinary. One day while praying in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at St. Peter's Basilica on a family trip to Rome, his father (the half-devout one) felt God was telling him to leave his career as a parole officer to become... an organ grinder. Of course, every organ grinder needs a monkey:

My dad sat me down to explain. "Lino, we can't get a monkey. First off, we can barely take care of the two cats in the house. Second, there's no room for a monkey around here. And third, we can't afford it. The insurance is too expensive. He could bite someone, they'd sue us, and we'd be stuck." 

This all sounded like common sense. And I couldn't help but wonder if there were any other father-son conversations taking place on the planet at that moment about why the family couldn't get a monkey.

"OK, Pops," I said, thinking he just needed to get this information off his chest. As I got up to go, he stopped me.

"Since we can't get a real monkey..." There was a pause. Maybe he wanted me to figure it out on my own. Maybe his conscience was getting the better of him.

"I need you to dress up like a monkey and ask for money."

He got up and left the room, but walked back in with one more thought.

"Oh, and don't bite anyone or we'll get sued."

And with that, I became a monkey boy.

Lest you think he's making it up, there is a picture in the book of Monkey Lino, Pops, and the organ.

So we are entertained by stories of his eccentric Midwestern youth, his quest for a Mrs. Lino, and his tortuous career path. But you may be wondering if Lino ever gets around to the Catholicism stuff. And he does, quite a bit. He is a big fan of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, known colloquially as Confession, and he has some advice on the topic:

Welcome to the least reverent guide to confession you'll ever read.

After you've committed to the idea of going to confession, you've got to figure out which lucky priest will hear your sins. If you find a parish that has confession by appointment only, move on to the next parish. A parish of three thousand people that offers confession on Saturday from 4:00 to 4:05 might not be where you want to pour out your soul, either. Find yourself a parish that offers confession frequently. Daily is preferable.

Advent or penance services are a great opportunity, but make sure it actually involves going to confession. Don't be fooled by those "communal penance" services that involve thinking about sins but not saying them out loud. That's not confession, that's reminiscing.  

Around the time this book came out, I was driving to Westchester for work every day. My wife got me a subscription to Sirius, which is how I discovered The Catholic Guy Show. Eventually I had to start going into the city by bus, so I dropped the service, but I still sometimes catch the podcast version of the show, especially if I know I'll be in the car more than usual. It's entertaining. Since Lino wrote Sinner, he did find a wife and moved back to his native Minneapolis (he had been doing the show from Manhattan), so he's got a whole different set of things to complain about now than he used to. 

If you're Catholic, you'll probably find the book funny. Amusing for anyone, really. 

For a Catholic guy who hosts a show called The Catholic Guy Show, Lino Rulli is not much of a booster for the religion. He spends half his time knocking dull Catholic radio hosts, overzealous Catholics, and others who might be considered part of his fan base. 

But Lino's boss and friend Cardinal Dolan has seldom had to swat him for sinful radio, so he must be doing something good -- sinner though he is.

The fidget menace.

I don't want to seem like I'm on a death kick this week, even though it is the start of Lent tomorrow -- dust thou art and dust thou shalt become, you know. Which is why I don't dust. It could be a pal. Or someone great, like Solomon. Maybe Nebuchadnezzar! 

Never mind. The point is, we have been facing a terrible menace in this country for too long, and it's about time someone stood up and said it. I mean, of course, the fidget spinner.

I had no idea that fidget spinners could be deadly. Good thing the fad has dissipated somewhat since its high point in 2017. 

Sure, they look harmless enough. And who doesn't like to fidget? The fidget spinner supposedly relieves stress, helps with ADHD and even PTSD, is healthier than smoking or even nail-biting, and may aid with weight loss, and is only a little more annoying than tapping your feet or clicking a pen against your teeth. It's probably less annoying than cracking your knuckles, which for some bystanders is like nails on a blackboard x 2. 

But Google recently spat a story up at me that linked to this study from the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, a study that found danger within those silly little trinkets.  

The fidget spinner is a relatively new popular toy commonly sold without warning labels regarding potential hazards including those related to button batteries.

The 2018 study profiles two cases of children swallowing the button batteries from fidget spinners. According to the National Capital Poison Center, we've had 65 fatalities from these batteries. So the real issue is those little batteries we find in all kinds of devices, from tiny flashlights to hearing aids. 

I suppose fidget spinners that contain batteries are no worse than other objects, except that people don't tend to see fidget spinners as something with which young children shouldn't play. 

Harmless? Hmm.

Recommendations for these tend to be for ages seven and up, regardless how juvenile they look.  

I think it's unlikely that they could be dangerous to an adult. You might be in more danger from cracking your knuckles -- not because it harms the joints, but because someone might freak out and attack you. 

Be careful out there. Everyone's on edge. Maybe we should do more doodling.

One good dog.

We led him out of the car and in through the back entrance. We were directed to a room with curtains and a blanket on the floor. We sat in the chairs while he lay on the blanket, and for once didn’t try to chew or play with it. When the vet came in, our boy smiled and wagged his tail. All the while his breathing was labored, so very hard for him, as it had been for days. We discussed various options, and then the vet and a young tech held him and gave him a sedative while we petted him and tried to stay in control. The vet and his helper left as he sank into sleep, but then he started to go into convulsions—I think the sedative made his labored breathing impossible to perform, but his cancer-ridden body was still fighting to draw in air. My wife ran for help; the vet and the tech came in immediately, shaved a spot on his leg, swabbed it, and injected what seemed like a huge amount of blue liquid, the color of Barbicide, into the spot, a massive overdose to stop his beautiful little heart. As he breathed his last, my wife sobbed and promised she would be good so that she would see him again someday on the other side. And then Nipper was gone.

They’re very good at hiding it, you know. Nipper was. He was too busy having fun and enjoying life. Whatever he was suffering, he was going to ignore it. And if the pack knew they might leave him behind. But we didn’t. We were with him to the last second.

The breathing was the thing, and it had crept up over a month, and it’s not like we didn’t notice it. It seems funny now, but weeks earlier my wife had Nipper in to see the vet because of a lump that we feared was cancer, but turned out to be a harmless lipoma. She asked about his breathing, but the stethoscope said there was nothing wrong in the lungs. What we did not know was the lymph nodes in his abdomen were pressing on the lungs already. Later he’d start spurning food more often than normal, but his well known reputation as the Spurner meant we thought little of it. Everything else was normal. A week ago Saturday he dashed out from a snow-laden backyard, past me on the driveway, to see a guy and his Lab on the street, Tralfaz chasing after him, me chasing both of them. Totally normal for him. He'd smelled the guy and the dog coming before I'd caught sight of them. He wanted to make friends.

It seemed to explode on the Tuesday after the Super Bowl. Suddenly he was unable to sleep; he’d lie there with his chest working like a billows trying to fan a spark in a snowstorm. Cancer crossed my mind, but lung cancer, and that usually has a lot more symptoms in dogs. And then I noticed a big lump while petting his chest. That was a lymph node.

Wednesday the vet used the word lymphoma, and took a biopsy. He said there was a chance it could be a mere infection. But he didn’t really think so. We wouldn’t get the results for three business days. In fact, we still haven't. But Wednesday night was horrible. I stayed downstairs on the sofa with the guys, and Nipper finally collapsed from exhaustion. The only thing he wanted to do that night was rest in a pile of snow, where he felt a little better. Everywhere he was in pain, and yelped when touched—which I never heard him do, not even as a puppy. He had not eaten in days. He licked his chops for chicken or cheese but wouldn't touch them. He was suffering.

Friend Mongo had told me when we were considering a golden that “You can’t go wrong with a golden.” He was right; goldens are perfect dogs, with one damn exception—they are among the breeds that have a high incidence of lymphoma.

Thursday I was sitting on the kitchen floor. (I had already written Friday's entry for this blog, scheduled its post.) While waiting for the vet’s office to tell us when to come in, I started to feel faint. He came over and licked my hand. Then I started bawling. Don’t lick me! I’m arranging to kill you. 

I don't want to sound superstitious, but when I was getting out the Christmas ornaments last December, the only one that broke was the glass golden retriever one I'd bought my wife. And now we're all broken.

Two kinds.

I've often agreed with the statement that there are morning people and night people, and I've added that they tend to marry each other. Certainly that's the case at the House of the Keys. I'm the lark, she's the owl. And I've gone on to say that this is probably the only case where evolutionary psychology could make a point, that it's useful for larks and owls to marry because it means someone is always watching out for the saber-toothed tiger attack.

Another way to divide people -- which is what the Internet is all about -- is into food reactions to crises. Some people can't eat anything at all when there's a terrible crisis looming in the family. Others can't get enough calories. Both are reasonable reactions to a dangerous situation. Don't eat, move! Or: Eat fast for energy! And again, I think these kinds of people marry each other. Not sure if larks tend to be the eaters, but that fits us. Up early! Breakfast! Most important meal! When someone dies or is very sick or something, my wife can go for days on coffee and a single granola bar.

Of course, there may be other types, like people who ignore disasters, but they don't work into my analysis. 

"This is fine."

When the looming disaster strikes, though, I lose my appetite and she slowly starts to regain hers. 

I'll be working these observations into my biblical analysis, "Running on a Flat Bread: Fleeing Egypt on an Empty Stomach," to be run in the Journal of Unhelpful Historical Studies. 

All this is leading up to an announcement: I must take a short break from the blog, just over the weekend, to deal with a serious issue that has popped up. You can tell it's serious because I'm eating like a pig and my wife has had one granola bar. 

I'll fill you in on the details then, but we're just praying for the best possible outcome at this point. Wish us luck, as we wish for you always. See you Monday.

Kind of like me!

Lost in the Jungles of Asia... Raised by Nuts...
One Mighty Young Man Became....

MARZIPAN
KING OF THE ALMONDS

COMING OUT OF HIS SHELL
SUMMER 2021

Fred's Book Club: The Great Man Speaks.

Good day, fine folks, and welcome back to the Humpback Writers, the book feature that falls on Wednesdays, known in some disreputable corners as Hump Day. The writers don't actually have humps, or at least we have not found any, and we've looked. And the subject of today's book was way too tall to have had any bend to the spine -- otherwise his legs might not have been long enough to reach the ground. His birthday is this Friday, February 12.

Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America is a remarkable account of Lincoln's most famous speech, given at the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery at the Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. This book is the first Pulitzer Prize winner I've profiled, because an awful lot of books that win that prestigious prize are lousy, but not this one. Wills's account is a compelling and scholarly lesson in history and oration. It may seem that a speech of 272 words, like the famous address, would hardly remake an afternoon let alone a nation, but Wills makes his case with enormous detail and intriguing historical research.

The book's not long -- 189 pages with another 115 pages of backmatter in my edition -- but it packs a lot in. Wills's comparison of the Gettysburg Address to the orations of Pericles are startling, or were to me. You may admire Lincoln all day without guessing how steeped this autodidact of a president was in classical forms:

The compactness is not merely a matter of length. There is a suppression of particulars in the idealizing art of Lincoln, as in the Greek orations. This restraint produces the aesthetic paradox that makes these works oddly moving despite their impersonal air. The Greek orator does not refer to himself except as answering the city's ordinance. Most often, he uses the plural "we" (hemeis) of all the citizenry -- as Lincoln does. Nor are the Greek dead referred to by name (except in one late example). The fallen are usually just "these (men)" (hoide) -- as Lincoln speaks of "what they did here" or of "these dead." The Epitaphios, as Loraux puts it, is "an oration that ignores individuals." Restraint deepens passion by refusing to give it easy vent.

As Wills points out, Lincoln's address doesn't mention slavery, or even Gettysburg by name. There's no mention of the Confederacy or a reference to the enemy combatants.    

Part of the perfection of Lincoln's prose is his use of reversals, which sets a pattern of birth-death-rebirth. 

The survivors at Gettysburg draw life from death, as their forefathers had sown life in the earth of this continent. The survivors take "increased devotion," even though the fallen men gave "the last full measure of devotion." The increase is not only over what the survivors felt before; it is something that goes beyond the ultimate of what the fallen gave. 

It's a beautiful examination of Lincoln's text, which in subsequent chapters Wills shows in context of the "culture of death" throughout the West at the time. Later he makes his case that this address, more than any other Lincoln speech, sets the tone for a new federal-centered vision of the nation rather than the states-centered vision that led to this war. Here I suspect the liberal Wills oversells -- not that the Civil War did not lead to greater federal prominence, but that the address was of a piece with Lincoln's entire career, and can't carry the whole weight on its own.

For me, one of the best things about the book was its serious examination of a lot of myths about the speech. Lincoln did not wing it; he did not write it on the back of an envelope, or on the train from Washington. Lincoln worked hard on his remarks, and may have consulted Secretary of State William Seward on them the night before the ceremony. Seward had helped him with the First Inaugural. 

Further, the audience didn't get furious because Lincoln's speech was so short. Lincoln was not supposed to be the principal speaker of the day -- former secretary of state Edward Everett, president of Harvard, considered one of the finest speakers of the time, had that honor, and he spoke for more than two hours. I'd have been grateful if the next speaker was brief after that.

I was amazed to discover that Abraham Lincoln did not have a rich, earthy, sonorous voice like that of Almighty God, or at least Raymond Massey, as his height and mournful face would suggest. Actually:

Everett's voice was sweet and expertly moderated; Lincoln's was high to the point of shrillness, and his Kentucky accent offended some Eastern sensibilities. But Lincoln derived an advantage from his high tenor voice -- carrying power. If there is an agreement on any one aspect of Lincoln's delivery, at Gettysburg and elsewhere, it is his audibility. 

We'll end here with the Gettysburg Address itself, and let you read it through in honor of our great president's birthday this week. And as you do, remember that this is the man that is not considered good enough for the sneering jackals who run San Francisco's public schools.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow-- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

A cock-and-bull story.

 

Opinion vs. appreciation.

I've learned many things from my wife over the years. Things like how to attend Mass, how to make a meatloaf (and not refer to it to friends as "baked meat"), how to write a thank-you card, and how to make a bed so it doesn't look like I'm actually still sleeping in it. Among these things is something she learned from a college professor, namely the difference between opinion and appreciation in criticism.

Opinion is a personal preference of a work, but appreciation is an assessment of the level of art or craftsmanship in a work. Examples abound, because in reality we use and often confuse these when we make a judgment. I can appreciate the immense thought and labor and knowledge Tolstoy used in War and Peace and still in my opinion regard it as so boring as to account as a WMD. (In fairness to Tolstoy, I have never read the novel, but this is what I hear.) I can admire the work that created a Persian rug, and still think it's so ugly that I'd rather have food poisoning than hang it on my wall. I can say Gone with the Wind is breathtaking as a film (appreciation) but still find it soggy and dreary (opinion). One judge on Chopped dislikes raw onion, and will criticize a chef for using it, even though it can be used artfully and is enjoyed by many. 

My wife uses the example of Ralphie in the bunny suit in A Christmas Story. Appreciation: Aunt Clara puts a lot of effort into these things. Opinion: He looks like a deranged Easter Bunny.

It may seem that appreciation is a more technical assessment, and it is -- one must use one's faculties to review something not only in light of effort and art, but also how someone who is more of a fan of the type would consider it. It's not fair to throw Hammett's The Glass Key or Chandler's The Little Sister or Carr's The Hollow Man into the trash heap because one doesn't like mysteries. If one is to review such a thing fairly, one must approach it with the eyes of someone who likes the genre and judge it on those merits. 

Bearing that in mind, I could not be a proper critic of soccer, or hip-hop, or goat cheese, because I can't stand any of them. I am willing to consider they have merits to their fans, but I'm blind to them.

I have other such blind spots.

And yet, we know that never stops our friendly Internet reviewers, who often conflate opinion and appreciation. Calling Gone with the Wind "racist sh**" doesn't say anything about the craft behind the film. Personally, I thought the movie M*A*S*H was dull and not very funny, but I thought it was well made. I thought the film They Might Be Giants looked cheap and clumsy, but I loved it. I always try to consider both opinion and appreciation, although if you've read my reviews on this blog you can surely point to entries where I hop on the opinion train and ride it full-throttle to the end of the line.

Not that opinions have no place in reviews. They're actually quite useful. If I know you and I like the same kind of books, I'll give your opinion a lot of weight in deciding if I will read one that you recommend. If I know a reviewer hates science fiction, I have to assume that affects his thoughts on a Greg Bear novel.

I told my wife that there was one other factor in looking at artistic endeavors. There's opinion, there's appreciation, and there's dough. Meaning, if I'm a publisher and I know a writer is awful and his book is not worth the toilet paper it could have been used to make, but he is popular and will sell a lot of hardcovers, my opinion and appreciation go out the window. Print the bastard! If I know an actor is an idiot who hasn't got the talent to convince a child that ice cream is good, but he opens movies because the ladies love him, sign him to a multi-picture deal! Dough is always the ace in the hole. Dough overcomes opinion and appreciation. 

Enjoy your disease!

Good morning, sports fans! And welcome to Super Bowl Sunday! Time to hunker down with beer and chips and pizza and nachos and your buddies and enjoy what the sponsors who didn't pay for naming rights call The Big Game. 

But wait, what's this? Why, could it be... Yes, it's those twin towers of terror, Chinese Death Virus and Medical Spokesmen to take a dump on the fifty-yard line of your day!  

Medscape's cheerful report, "Superspreader Sunday: The Super Bowl with COVID Variants Afoot," would like you to know a few things:

After almost every major holiday in 2020 — Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years — the United States had an increase in COVID-19 cases.

This Sunday, Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida — a venue that normally seats 65,890 fans and can expand to 75,000 — will be filled to about one-third capacity. The National Football League has announced the sale of 14,500 tickets; in addition, approximately 7500 vaccinated healthcare workers will attend as guests....

"I'm not so much worried about the 22,000 fans in attendance, some of whom will be vaccinated healthcare workers," Cedric Dark, MD, from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told Medscape Medical News. "I'm more concerned about the indoor parties happening all over the country."

And away we go!

Well, a lot of people have been getting vaccinated, so that should help.

And just because some of the attendees at the Super Bowl are vaccinated, it doesn't mean they are not infected, he pointed out. "They can still pass the virus on to others."

The variants are of grave concern. "Even though we are beginning to vaccinate, the virus is continually mutating. And the more it mutates, the more it may become vaccine resistant," Salemi explained.

How about mask compliance? It's in the 90-100% range, I'm told.

So far, the American population has shown a lack of enthusiasm toward changing behavior to protect others from getting sick, and that won't likely change for game day. "I have been given the vaccine, but I still wear masks and social distance. I don't want to risk infecting other people."

People who are not normally careful about taking COVID-19 precautions likely won't be more cautious just because it's Super Bowl day. "And some others may be even more relaxed for this event," Salemi said.

Individual behaviors are the fuel that keep the pandemic burning. "If we want this to end sooner rather than later, we have to put in the work," said Dark. He added that he hopes any Super Bowl parties will include only the people in that household's bubble. And if not, "they should be outdoors and people should wear masks."

Sure, an outdoor party! It's going to be 28 degrees here at game time. So we'll put up a tent with some electric heaters, and -- whoops! Now outdoors is indoors!

And there you have it! You selfish jerks, with your "lack of enthusiasm toward changing behavior to protect others from getting sick," all suck. You can't do anything right, so you're going to eat nachos with your drunk-ass pals and kill Grandma. 

Over and over we get the message pounded into us: Stay home, avoid others, isolate, everything you're doing is useless, and COVID is now coming up with more variants so THIS IS NEVER GOING TO END. Let's have a look at this one sentence again:

The variants are of grave concern. "Even though we are beginning to vaccinate, the virus is continually mutating. And the more it mutates, the more it may become vaccine resistant," Salemi explained.

If this is true, there's simply no way to beat the bug. We can never have 100% compliance, and 100% will be necessary. We cannot endure lockdowns forever, neither economically nor emotionally. The vaccine was our only hope, but no, sorry, going to be useless in the long run. What do they expect us to do, really?

I don't think these chattering health types quite come to understand that a lot of us would rather take our chances with the virus than with them. A virus, even an evil coronavirus initially manufactured by the evil Chinese Communists, is going to run out of steam eventually, but the do-gooders who hate us will never run out of power. Their self-regard is like a perpetual motion machine. 

I do not want to catch COVID-19. I know it's no joke; I have two acquaintances in the ICU with it right now, a third isolating with it at home, and I've lost touch with a fourth who already has COPD. I'm not in a high-risk group, but even if it didn't kill me, it would be a massive inconvenience. If my wife and I get it, who's going to take care of the dogs? Yesterday the canine idiots ran out in the street on me. If I can't handle them on full strength, no way can I deal with them while fighting a horrible flu. Plus, I have deadlines on Monday and Tuesday and another project after that. If I don't work I don't get paid, and if I miss deadlines I'll lose clients.

All the same, I'd rather get sick and never hear from our public health ninnies again if it were possible. Just a reminder, these jerks who want to ruin the Super Bowl for you (if the NFL and its players haven't done that already) were the ones who had no problem at all with the riots and looting over the summer. Until some disciplinary action is taken against the thousand-plus morons who said they were A-OK with masses of asses tearing up our cities last year, I see no reason why we should take any of them seriously.

Enjoy the game. Be as careful as you feel you need to be. Tell these spokesdopes to go play with their rectal thermometers. As for me, the NFL and its players ruined football, so I'll be avoiding everything as much as I can. 

End the recycling madness.

I keep going on about this, not because it's a waste of tax money -- God knows there are plenty and more wasteful projects -- but because it is a Big Lie and we're all complicit in it. Recycling garbage is a waste and should be stopped immediately. 

Why am I on this soapbox once again? After all, my investigative reporting revealed that not one single house in the neighborhood was compliant with the government mandated recycling program, and clearly the supply is contaminated. Well, last week I lurched out of the house on recycling day with my paper, glass, and plastic trash just as the truck came down the block. I stood there as the gentleman with the truck threw my stuff inside, then mashed it down, as such trucks do. And I'm telling you, that truck was just as disgusting as any truck in the fleet. Not only was there no difference between this "recycling" truck and a garbage truck, but it's the same truck. The business that contracts with our town for waste removal isn't even pretending to recycle anything anymore; why should we?

It started small in New York, with a five-cent deposit on soda bottles in the early 80's. This annoyed a lot of people, but others were glad that it got a bunch of broken glass off the street. By the end of the decade we were sorting things into bags for pickup. The Solid Waste Management Act of 1988 required municipalities to recycle various post-consumer materials. And now, because there's no market for the crap, it's all going into landfills. But the state loves it, because every deposit bottle that isn't redeemed is a nickel that goes into the state coffers. Then the "reclaimed" materials goes in the garbage.

Lies, damned lies, and recycling.

And we have to pretend to recycle, and they pretend to do it, and this is a Big Lie that we all conform to. Honestly, has there every been as big a lie in this country, with complicity on every level from the top of the government to the merest citizen? Recycling is an expensive and stupid failure, its fake observation enforced by power of law, and no one at any level of government will admit it and demand we stop it. 

For environmentalists, it's all about wishful thinking, control, and money. The wishful thinking is of a piece with the idea that windmills and solar panels can give us all the energy we need with no drawbacks. The control is getting a supine public into the habit of paying tributes to keep Gaia from destroying us, maybe in the hope that one day there will be a market for this contaminated crap. And money speaks for itself. So real solutions go into the landfill along with the precious bottles and cans and waste paper.

Here in the Hudson Valley, the town of New Windsor contracted in 2017 for a waste-to-energy plant with BioHighTech Global, a plant that would take something we hate (garbage) and turn it into something we love (energy). Two years later the town board got its panties in a twist and said it would impact the environment poorly, so BioHighTech pulled out of the agreement. Good job, town board; now 150,000 tons of garbage a year goes in the landfill, and your energy costs remain sky high. 

Another such project by Taylor Biomass is in the works in Montgomery, a project that has been planned for well over a decade, but it will probably have the cord yanked if Montgomery falls into the hands of Nervous Nellies who genuflect at the altar of environmentalism as well. Or if the environmentalists go after it again with lawfare. 

But they need to remember that getting rid of the project doesn't get rid of the garbage, nor does it make recycling effective. 

Dogs in the snow.

Three cartoons:

Why, yes, they are based on personal experience. How did you guess?

Time's up?

I was alerted by Mr. Philbin to this story -- it's from 2019, citing a story from 2018, and it's from Mr. P, but it's still interesting.

Schools Are Beginning To Take Down Analogue Clocks 

Because Kids Can’t Read Them Anymore

...Should we be at all surprised to learn that kids today are having trouble reading analog clocks? Unless their parents have these types of clocks hanging on the walls of their homes, why would the children ever need to use them to tell time? So even if someone teaches them how to read an analog clock, the children might quickly forget again if they never get any real practice.

This has become so much of an issue that a lot of teachers in the UK have taken down analog clocks in classrooms and replaced them with digital clocks. They are afraid that students would otherwise waste too much time wondering what time it is and stress themselves trying to figure out how much longer they have before they need to turn in their exams.

The source of the story is questionable -- something called APost -- but it links to The Telegraph, so I assume there's some basis for the piece. The 'Graph story is behind a paywall, alas. 

Is it true that kids can't read a regular analog clock these days? I guess it's possible that no one ever taught them. Still, I remember my mother teaching me the basics -- the Little Hand is on the Hours, the Big Hand is on the Minutes -- before I even started school. How hard is it to remember that?

Of course, the piece about children freaking out about the time during exams has the ring of truth -- not because the kids do panic, but because teachers might think the little perishers would, and our whole goal in life is not to educate and challenge the next generation but to coddle them like fresh eggs.

A follow-up piece in USA Today, however, quotes Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education, who says telling time the old-fangled way is still valuable: 

"The skills that you need to read an analog clock are skills that kids when they’re young begin to learn," she said, citing concepts such as counting by fives and fractions.

Good for you, Carol Burris! Her answer is similar to the old answer to "Why do we have to learn algebra?" which has always been something like "Learning algebra helps to develop your critical thinking skills. That includes problem solving, logic, patterns, and reasoning." (Quote from Wonderopolis.) So being able to understand the face of a clock is not only easy and interesting but useful. Look at some of the things schools are expected to teach kids these days -- music, drama, cheerleading, sex ed, environmentalism, hating America -- are any of these necessary to produce citizens capable of conducting themselves in the world? No, but our teachers think they're important. Well, I think being able to read an analog clock is, too. In advanced classes they'll learn to read the ones without the numbers. 

Roman numerals are graduate-level stuff, though.

It's nice to know that in an era where schools and libraries are dumping world classics, and teaching woke history and even woke mathematics, that there's still support in the United States for something that isn't dumbed down. So there's hope that when the little brainwashed know-nothings emerge to hang us all in an American cultural revolution, they'll be able to determine the time for the public hangings in both digital and analog. 

In the UK, the oldsters will be able to send messages to one another with a clock cipher and escape.