Memory full.

No matter how advanced computers get, we still find ways to fill them up with so much running crap that they wind up lagging and lollygagging. Then we have to get new computers that can run that crap properly, until we fill them up again. 

Unfortunately this is not an option with my brain, which resists all upgrades. 

During the stressful period in which I am slogging, I have found my dreams to be unreasonably detailed. Not clever or smart, but loaded with data. I might be traveling down a quiet road and find myself without warning in a rural neighborhood; the neighborhood is fully populated with people and their dogs, and I'm invited to have a look at someone's vast library (of course I can read none of the titles but the books are in all kinds of colors and conditions). Or I am trying to ride the subway along with enough people to make up the cast of Ghandi, and every grotty detail is visible but not the stations or where we're going. 

All this leaves me as tired when I wake up as when I went to sleep. I'm running new software on my old hardware, you see, and something has to slow down somewhere. 

Why do we go through all these mental gymnastics anyway, when all we want is rest? These days most scientists from which I've heard think that the purpose of dreaming has to do with learning and memory, a way of sorting out the data. It's possible, but my dreams seldom deal with anything in my life at present. I dream about commuting more that you'd think possible, and I haven't had to do that in years. Still, who really knows? 

Compounding the riddle of dreaming is that we smarty-pants humans are not the only ones who do it. We know for certain that dogs dream, always running with li'l paws or boofing out barks in their sleep. It's really cute. Less cute is that, according to a piece in the Smithsonian, lots of animals are dreaming: 

Young jumping spiders dangle by a thread through the night, in a box, in a lab. Every so often, their legs curl and their spinnerets twitch—and the retinas of their eyes, visible through their translucent exoskeletons, shift back and forth.

“What these spiders are doing seems to be resembling—very closely—REM sleep,” says Daniela Rößler, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany. 

I feel worse for knowing that spiders dream. ABOUT WHAT? 

The article does note that we still don't know dreaming is about, whether we're man, dog, bug, or eucalyptus plant. (NB: Nothing about dreaming vegetables in that article.) It's mysterious, and it wears me out.  

I'm with the late great Mitch Hedberg on this topic: 

Dreaming is work, you know - there I am in a comfortable bed, the next thing you know I have to build a go-kart with my ex-landlord. I want a dream of me watching myself sleep.

Right on, sleepy brother. 

A small light.

The smallest window in the house is in the laundry room, which faces the side and does not provide much visibility for anything. However, I still stick a light-up angel there every year, because you can see it from the street as you come down the hill. The front windows are accounted for; the east side of the house has no windows at all. On the west side is just the one tiny window, and it has an angel in it. 

One of the oddest memories of Christmas I have is sitting in the backseat of the family's car on the way home. It was a few days after the holiday itself, and we'd been to see family friends -- and stayed out late, much later than we normally did, hours after midnight. I remember it was cold, maybe cold enough for Mom to recommend the blanket that we kept in the back of the car, which was made of rubberized plastic and had frozen and was not much help.

It seemed like the whole town, the whole city was asleep as we pulled away. Houses were dark; if anyone still had Christmas lights up, they had unplugged them. It was all just black, bleak, cold winter to look forward to now. 

I recall seeing one light, though, in the window of a large house before we got to the main road. I used to think it was a Santa Claus face, outlined in green lights, but as time goes on I am not certain. What I do know is how it made me feel -- some joy, some peace, but mostly longing for that one holiday light in that one small window of that dark house in that whole dark town. I have forgotten what it looked like, but I have never forgotten its effect on me. 

Christmas was not over, it said; in fact, in a crucial way, Christmas is never over. Sometimes the smallest things have the largest greatest strength; no amount of darkness can dim the smallest light. The tiny miracle of Christmas opens the door to all the others, and it is Christmas every day. 

So I wish you a very happy, peaceful Christmas, today and all of your days. Thank you for reading, and best of all things to you. 

Stunad time.

You know you're getting older when you think of something you have to do and you know you will forget to do it and then it comes up and you forget to do it even though you knew that was exactly what you were going to do. 

Makes me wonder sometimes if I got one of those Abby Normal brains. 

But then I'll come up with a memory of something so far back that I can't believe I pulled it not just out of left field, but out of left field in a ballpark of a foreign country where they don't even know what baseball is. Some core memory, often of a person or place or product, that I wouldn't have recalled on a bet, but that some trigger has set off a memory cascade and there it is. Like one of those guys who remain awake during brain surgery, and when the surgeon pokes him in a particular spot, he remembers the girl with the red sunglasses who tried to get him to take the brown acid fifty-six years ago. He hasn't thought of her since then and is amazed that that datum is still floating around in the attic.

And that's what a lot of people in the hinterland of years will say, that the reason they are forgetful is not senility, but that there's so only so much capacity in the old hard drive and they've been socking data away for decades like the Library of Congress. If it's useless information, well, welcome to the club. A ten-year-old still has lots of data storage available but is using it for character profiles from Dora the Explorer and episode details from Paw Patrol. By now she'd like to offload that for more room, but sorry, kid. No cloud storage available for the brain. 

Another age-related issue I think is misunderstood is falls. Falls are a danger to everyone, but especially old people, and yet they seem to enjoy them, as they fall almost as much as toddlers. But really, why? Poor vision? Muscle loss? No, I think the main reasons are pain and data storage failure. Pain, because even though you've been down those steps a thousand times, that new pain in the hip/knee/foot/back causes an involuntary hitch in the giddyap that ruins your rhythm, and down you go*. Data storage failure, because (and I'm not joking about this) even though you've been down those steps a thousand times, at a crucial second in the journey the brain will toss up Cal Ripken's batting average in his final season** and you will literally forget how many steps you've walked. Your brain will think five but you've done six, so you hit that ground like you're going down another step and blam! Flat. 

Our best bet is to do things more (ugh) mindfully, a word I hate as much as yummy, belly, or inflammation.*** But Mom always did say to stop daydreaming and pay attention. Back then it was so I'd do better in school. Now it's so I don't stumble into the road and die.  

🧠🧠🧠

* I remember a ballplayer with a chronic back injury that ruined his career. He was still strong and otherwise healthy, but the pain would ruin his mechanics. With the strongest will in the world, it is still hard to do something you know will hurt, and when it's something like hitting a baseball -- the most difficult feat in sports -- that little difference makes all the difference.

** .239

***Everything wrong with you is caused by chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is because of your bad living. Broken leg? It's because you eat too much bacon, lardass. 

Music City.

Not too long ago I applied for a job in the greater Nashville area. I know you think of me as a dazzling cosmopolitan New Yorker, and indeed for most of my life I was loyal to New York, and would have preferred to stay in the Empire State, despite the lousy winters and swampy summers and awful crowds and a government run by socialist morons (but I repeat myself) for whom I would never vote. Alas, New York has surpassed stupid and proceeded to brain-dead, so like most of us who are not brain-dead, we want to escape. 

But where to settle? Well, I had a line on a good job in Tennessee. I figured it had to be an improvement. My initial application was greeted warmly, and I had an online call to move the process on.

What was my fatal mistake, the flaw that led to the latest in my long string of failures? Ah, me. It may have been an error to demonstrate my enthusiasm for a possible move with this:

This is a souvenir plate I bought when I visited the great city of Nashville with my family years ago. It's one of three tourist-trap items I purchased on that trip. Another was a Music City coffee mug, long busted. 

We had a great time on that trip, even though most of us were not fans of country music. We did the touristy stuff -- show at the Opry and a look through the amazing Opryland Hotel, and yes, I was almost within touching distance of Elvis's gold 1960 Cadillac. I was completely sincere when I told the interviewer that we enjoyed the town. 

But this plate? Well, I didn't mention that I bought it as a gag gift for my then-girlfriend (now wife) who had asked me to buy her the cheesiest, hokiest, tackiest country-type souvenir I could find. She thought I'd exceeded the request. When we got married I got the plate back, and it hangs proudly on the wall of the cellar in what I laughingly call my workshop. 

The interviewer may have sensed that the plate, while a memory of a great trip, was not a sincere purchase made for the quality of the item.

I meant no harm by showing this off. I have cheesy souvenirs of New York City, and I lived and worked there most of my life. But I wouldn't be surprised if the plate sank my employment chances. I can find a way to sabotage pretty much anything in some new and unexpected manner. Everyone has a special gift, I guess, and that seems to be mine. 

Still, I suppose it could have gone even worse -- if I'd shown him my third souvenir, the bolo tie:

Made lovingly with the fine Nashville craftsmanship one finds in... Taiwan. 

Rice: It's what's for everything.

Rice pudding is itself one the most versatile dishes in the world. It goes back something like 8,000 years. It can be sweet, it can be savory. It can be pure, it can have a multitude of add-ons. It can be boiled, baked, even fried. It can be made with milk and maybe eggs or in weird vegan ways. It can be served hot, cold, room temperature. Scooped or sliced. You can compose it from leftover rice. You can have it for or with any meal. And it can come in a can. 

I was curious to see this product in the teeny little UK section of our grocery store, the place you find Bounty chocolate bars and PG Tips tea. Ambrosia rice pudding has been made in Devon, England, since 1917. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with British culture knows that Devonshire (now just Devon to its friends) is famous for its high-quality cream, often served clotted. But I have to admit what attracted my attention to this rice pudding is that it comes in a can. 

We have plenty of premade rice pudding in the United States, but it comes in plastic cups. However, when I was a tiny tot, one of the first to-go foods I remember eating was rice pudding out of a can. I have been unable to confirm the brand. The Hunt's Snack Pack pudding came in a can, but I'm not sure if that was the one. It could have been a regional brand. 

I was very young, but I certainly was born with a sweet tooth. Given the choice I would have picked a chocolate or vanilla pudding, but being the youngest I probably got stuck with rice, and fell in love right away. It's always been a favorite dessert of mine, although enjoyed very infrequently -- you might be surprised how many people dislike the stuff.

Seeing canned rice pudding brought back those memories of wee Fred and his can o' rice, so I thought I'd try this Ambrosia and see what I thought. I figured they've been at it since World War I, they must know something. 

First off, it does have that yellow glow associated with the very top of the cream. The label says it's 72% milk, and that sounds about right to me. 

It's as smooth and, well, creamy as anything you've ever eaten, The rice is perfectly cooked. It's delightful. Interesting, there's hardly any sugar in it and no seasoning. But it would be easy to add in anything you like -- raisins, cinnamon, cranberries, nuts, granola, lots more sugar, bacon, salami (whatever floats your boat) -- and you'd have a well-made rice pudding, customized. I tried some as is, and with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar, and it was a treat either way. I didn't try to heat it up -- instructions are on the label -- but maybe next time. 

So you see, canned pudding is still good. When they start outlawing plastics in America, I guess we will be able to continue to get convenient desserts. And since we now have pancakes in a cup, surely the long-awaited vision of pizza in a cup can't be far behind. 

Memories of fruit.

It's the season for the most amazing produce, and I grabbed a bunch of it at the store last week. Fruitwise, I hit that department but good. Watermelon, berries, mangoes, and other stuff went into the cart without a second thought, joining the celery, corn, bell pepper, and onion already present. 

It made me a little reflective yesterday, actually. I was cutting this and peeling that and chopping the other thing, and it brought back memories of produce past. Without further ado, here's some Froot of My Yoot.

Plums -- My dad was crazy for plums. When they were in season, my mom could not buy too many. He'd fool with the thing for a bit, nibbling and breaking the skin, then twirl it around and get the good stuff, then suck that pit dry. Nary a drop got on his shirt. Somehow he did it without dislodging his dental bridge. He was a maestro with the stone fruit. 

Blueberries -- I have always loved blueberries, but the best I have ever had or probably ever will have were wild blueberries in Scandinavia. I'm not bragging; our trip there when I was a child was 90% family business, not because mater and pater thought it would be broadening. But it was amazing, and the woods seemed to be full of wild blueberries, a powerful sweet flavor. We were sent to gather some with our distant cousins and had quite a treat. If I ever go back, I am going in the summertime and leaving everyone and running into the woods with a basket until I find some. 

Mangoes -- We were not mango people. They weren't as widely available in my childhood as they are now, but I do recall Mom buying one to try it. I was put off by the flavor, as it was not one of the Four Fruit Flavor Groups with which I was familiar, those being Omnipresent (apples, bananas, grapes), Summer (plums, peaches, nectarines), Floridian (oranges, grapefruit), and Candy (Jolly Rancher, Kool-Aid, Jell-O). Mom liked the mango flavor, but didn't like cutting it because the mango made a hell of a mess, and the only things she'd tolerate that made a hell of a mess were her kids, and those just barely. Later I came to love mangoes. I've probably peeled and cut more than a hundred of them since, and every one has been a barely avoided ER run for stitches. I'm sure there are people who make a living peeling and cutting mangoes, and I'd like to see their technique.

Strawberries -- For some reason, Dad decided one year to plant a patch of strawberries on the lawn. He was a fan, and strawberries were pricey at the time. Well, the collie next door, a pinched-brain little ditz, peed on them, and decided at that moment that there was no place else in the world upon which she'd rather pee. We didn't live in a duplex, note -- to get to our yard this dog had to escape her own yard, run down a path, down a flight of steps, leap a short fence, and run all the way across the lawn to the spot to pee on it. This dog was putting in the work. I've always treasured a good strawberry since, because we sure as hell didn't get any that year. 

Blackberries -- We actually had some wild blackberries growing in a wooded area outside our property, and while they were not as memorable as the blueberries I've described above, they were pretty darn good and the price was right. The only problem was that we had to be exceptionally alert to when they were ready to pick, because the blue jays loved them even more than we did and would strip the plants in no time.  

Watermelon -- Always a summer treat. Also, more of a project than a fruit. As regards the messiness factor, see mangoes, above. We didn't have a lot of barbecues at my house, but when we did, the presence of watermelon was as certain as marshmallows to roast over the charcoal embers. I don't have a lot childhood memories that other kids have -- catchin' tadpoles, playin' ball at the park, climbin' trees, goin' to summer camp -- but those times I remember very fondly. And I still like watermelon. A few years ago when the Mrs. and I were on a trip to Southern California to visit friends and family, in the arid in-state areas, we stayed at a hotel that kept a cooler full of water with watermelon in it out in the lobby. It was the most refreshing water I've ever had, and in the desert, this northern boy needed it. 

Honorable mention: Nectarines and Tangerines -- When I was a kid I always thought the nectarine had to be a tangerine-like fruit because of the name, and to this day I have to remind myself it's really halfway between a peach and a plum. The confusion comes, as with so many things, from the French. The -ine suffix means like or related to or made of; the nectarine is "like nectar" and the tangerine is "from Tangier" in Morocco. Thanks, French! 

How about you? Got any fond food memories to share?

Have you seen my glasses?

I have been unable to find my glasses for weeks, and it's annoying.

Fortunately it isn't worse than that. I'm mildly nearsighted, so I usually need them only for driving at night and in large areas like churches or supermarkets -- and for the latter use, the return of the mask mandates mean they fog up indoors anyway. 

Unfortunately, last week I had to drive at night in a pounding rain in an unfamiliar route because an accident blocked a street and sent me around a long detour. My wife was following in her car (long dog-related story) and I had to apologize for making us make two U-turns because I missed the signs until it was too late. 

So I'd like my glasses back. I have, however, searched everywhere with no luck. This seems to be like the last time I lost my glasses, when it appears I threw them away by accident. St. Anthony cannot help you when your lost item is in the landfill. Ditto the valet key for my car, so I am down to one car key. Also assorted books and tools and things.

My wife got tired of hearing me krex & moan about it, so she got me a Tile set for Christmas. 

The idea behind the Tile is simple, but the execution is complex. You attach one to something you lose a lot and sync it with your phone. You can use the Tile app to set off an alarm on the little Tile to find your item. Ah, but what if you left your wallet, say, in the library or in the house of ill repute? The wallet-size Tile card can show you where it is on a map. Apparently the system works not just through satellites but also through the Tile apps on phones belonging to random people passing by as well -- I'm not sure what to make of that, or even if I've summed it up properly. It sounds like using Tile drafts you into the Tile Army. But it does seem like your missing item has a much better chance of being found.

Not my glasses, though. These Tiles are too big to put on a pair of glasses. Even the little dot, which can stick to anything. I stuck it on the back of my phone, and then realized that if the phone is lost I can't locate the dot anyway. I thought I could use the Tile site online to activate the dot, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that. Perhaps if my wife had the Tile app she could find the dot on my phone. She does not have the Tile because she doesn't lose things. 

I guess I could have put the dot in my glasses case, but I didn't lose that. 

I do appreciate the Tile, and I have misplaced my wallet and keys enough for it to be a very handy thing, especially as I march forth into decrepitude. My eye doctor swears I'll go farsighted eventually, but maybe my vision will just even out. If that's the case, I won't need to attach a Tile to my glasses, and can get on with just losing my keys as usual. 

Where my head is. At.

Actually, this is pretty much the way I am all the time. Is it business? Busyness? Bidenness? Am I just so full of trivia that I can't make room for new data? I'm voting for the last option, as you can see.  

Write on, brother.

Everybody writes sometimes, even if they only write lists or notes. The question is, how do you write? Do you use pen and pad, or do you dash of memos and things on tablets, smartphones, and computers?

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Okay, you're not doing it wrong, but one of the immutable rules of writing a blog is that you have to tell people that whatever they're doing, they're doing it wrong. ("10 Reasons Why You Eat Peas Wrong -- #8 Will Blow Your Mind!")

The reason I bring it up is an interesting study out of Japan about writing, published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. UPI reports:

Writing on paper, instead of on a tablet or smart phone, boosted the brain activity of a group of Japanese university students when they tried to recall information they'd learned an hour earlier....

"Actually, paper is more advanced and useful compared to electronic documents because paper contains more one-of-a-kind information for stronger memory recall," study co-author Kuniyoshi L. Sakai, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Tokyo, said in a press release.

In addition to aiding memory formation and recall, writing on paper is also more efficient. During the study, volunteers using paper completed their learning task 25 percent faster than the university students using tablets and smart phones....

"Digital tools have uniform scrolling up and down and standardized arrangement of text and picture size, like on a webpage," Sakai said.

"But if you remember a physical textbook printed on paper, you can close your eyes and visualize the photo one-third of the way down on the left-side page, as well as the notes you added in the bottom margin," Sakai said.

This makes sense to me -- there's a lot more tactile information registered in writing by hand, including the tool and pad used and where and when they're used. Seems to me that would indeed make a lot of unintended cues useful for retaining and retrieving the information.

I find that I prefer to make notes in longhand, but for lengthy writing I'll just use the computer. My wife, on the other hand, likes to write out first drafts in longhand on a legal pad, which helps her organize her thoughts, especially with complex jobs. So when I read the report on this study, I told her she was right about yet another thing in this life. 

The study itself was only limited to testing brain function and memory with memorizable tasks, not on the quality of the writing. It used "three groups of participants who read dialogues on personal schedules and wrote down the scheduled appointments on a calendar using a paper notebook (Note), an electronic tablet (Tablet), or a smartphone (Phone)". So this was not a test of whether one wrote better short stories or poems on paper or electronic device. 

It does appear that students are missing out, thanks to all the electronic devices available. Students have to deal with notes and memorization more than the average worker. 

I've been using a keyboard to write fiction since I was old enough to use a keyboard, but I have always started to work out plot outlines by pad. If you'd asked me why, I probably wouldn't have had an answer before. Now I think it may be that I sensed the pad made for a better means of juggling information on complex plots. In the kind of things I like to write, there's lots of bits of information that come up in one place and matter later, and to keep it all afloat I have to remember them as I go. Once the outline is set, I can write everything in a Word document, because now I don't have to remember everything.

How about you? Are you a pad person, an electronics person, or do you just trust your amazing eidetic memory to keep your data in your head?

Out of the clear, blue sky.

I'm glad my mother didn't live to see September 11, 2001. She would have suffered unbearably from anxiety. It might have killed her in a slower and more cruel way than the heart failure that took her a couple of years earlier.

I have a friend who was an EMT down there. He talks about going to Iraq later with the army, looking for a pound of flesh, killing an enemy, getting hurt by a suicide bomber, but he doesn't talk about September 11.

Another friend was a fireman uptown. He likes sharing bawdy stories about his days with the department, on trips to Vegas and other shenanigans, and will talk about his past job, finding dead children and pets in apartments gutted by fire sparked by crack pipes or stupidity. But he's never talked about September 11.

All I did that day was walk down from midtown to as close to the Financial District as the police would let me go, which at that point was Houston Street, so I could finally find my wife and get her out of Manhattan. We had no idea how we would do it, but we did it.

I think that's all I have to say about it, except -- all those Americans who promised they would never, ever forget? The 343 firemen and FD EMTs, the 23 officers of the NYPD, the 37 PATH and New Jersey police officers, and the nine others who ran in while everyone else was running out, and paid the ultimate price? America said it would never, ever forget.

It took less than 20 years.

Begone!

How fast would all the Christmas stuff be gone if it weren't for New Year's following hot on its heels?

It seems to be a pretty American approach to holidays. It makes sense, really, for most of them. There's a day off (usually Monday) and it's back to work, on toward the next break in the routine.

And it's true too for Easter, a more important yet less culturally celebrated holiday. People seldom travel very far to be with family on Easter; you go to see local relatives, maybe, but no one stays over, and it's back to work Monday. In the church calendar Easter lasts eight days, and Eastertide for fifty, but in the American cultural calendar, just one.

We see it with Halloween, a non-holiday holiday that has a lot of cultural appeal, and yet on November 1 all those pumpkins and witches look like a mild hangover. What was that all about?

Christmas would be little more than these except for a few cultural shifts that put a heft on to that holiday that none of the others have:

1) Tradition of gifts. The stronger the gift-giving tradition is tied to a holiday, the stronger the advertising blitz will be ahead of the holiday. That also extends to other shopping, as for candy or festive food. I'd rank them from top down as: Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, and everything else. New Year's Eve is too jumbled with Christmas to separate; the booze ads can be for both.

2) Using up vacation time. Its spot at the end of the year makes Christmas perfect for people whose vacation policy is use-it-or-lose-it.

3) Popularity of religious and secular songs. No other holiday can compare musically. Classically speaking, Easter probably has the finest music, but not the most popular, and that goes for Christmas hymns as well as carols and songs and even parodies.

4) Sentiment of family gathering around, celebrated in story and song. Only Thanksgiving shares the celebration of getting the family together this way, and it doesn't have nearly as many stories and songs about it, and hardly any Hallmark movies.

5) The strong desire for a break. Up in the northern hemisphere, winter has begun, the days are short, the end of year accounting is due, and everyone wants a break from the routine. Spring and the beginning of summer may be the only rivals for the urge to get away from the everyday, but they have more to do with the positive change of seasons than burnout.

Christmas is tops on all five. And yet, on December 26, America starts to shovel things away, like we're a little ashamed of ourselves. Lights go off. People go back to their lives in slow, uneven stages. The supermarket stops playing Christmas music, even New Year's or snow-themed stuff, and goes back to Human League and Barenaked Ladies. New Year's merchandise appears in the seasonal shelf, but it's always trying too hard, like Christmas's copycat kid brother. "I'm fun, too!"

And on January 2, even though we're only at Nine Ladies Dancing, the decorations start to fall like autumn leaves in a gust.

I feel the same way, believe me, even though I know Christmas is supposed to be the start of the celebration, not the end. I leave the decorations up through Epiphany, but my heart is flagging. I want to get on with things. I'm grateful that the season doesn't go all the way to Candlemas anymore.

And yet, when it is all over, and the decorations are gone, and in this place we're left with two to three months more of blank winter, it's sometimes hard to look at the space while feeling the hole from things of comfort and joy.

I just love this stuff.

Oh, well. On to New Year's, on to 2020, on to Epiphany, on to the rest of the winter, come what may. God bless us, everyone.

Fred's Book Club: Ms. Plow.

Welcome to another edition of the Humpback Writers, the book feature that has "hump" in its name for neither medical nor prurient reasons, but only because it appears on Wednesday. And keep your minds out of the gutter, boys, because today we have a kids' picture book, the first book I ever read... OR DID I?

Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton was first published in 1943 and has never been out of print. Burton was an illustrator as well as a writer, and I love her drawings on this and other stories. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is probably her most famous book, but she had others like this one and Maybelle the Cable Car, Calico the Wonder Horse, and The Little House, which was adapted as a cartoon by Disney, the first cartoon about urban sprawl I know of.

I always remembered, and not without some pride, that Katy and the Big Snow was the very first book I read all by myself, without help.

OR DID I?

Now, to tell this story, I guess I need to say SPOILER ALERT! If you don't want to hear about what happens to Katy when the humongous blizzard socks in Geoppolis, then close the screen! Don't keep reading!

Okay, here's the deal.

I borrowed the book either from our nearest city library or from the library at school; I'm not sure but it was probably the local library, which was very small. I don't recall the elementary school library lending books, and I don't know that they would have to kids just learning to read, but the teacher may have lent them out. I remember standing in the hall of the house in which I grew up, trying to read the story aloud. It was very dramatic, you know, full of Burton's stylish and colorful art. The story was about Katy, a bulldozer in the summer and a snowplow in the winter, who was turfed out because of her age and replaced by new snowplows. Then the town gets whaled on by snow, and all the new plows break down, and Katy emerges from the garage to show she's still the strongest and toughest plow there is. Katy's heroic feat in the face of disparagement was inspiring to me, and I remembered it for decades.

Except that was not the story.

When I got the book as an adult, I was stunned to find out that the story had changed. Katy was stuck in the garage when the snow started, but only because the snow was not deep enough -- something I understand now but wouldn't have as a child. Plows usually don't clear snow until it's at least a couple of inches deep. So only when the snow gets really deep do they send out Katy, who frees the streets for emergency services and saves the town, as the Highway Department knew she would. No drama.

Whuh?!?!?

One of two things happened: Either they changed the story in later editions to make it less combative, more friendly, or I just thought I was reading the book and made up my own story by ripping off a plot from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and all the other misfit-saves-the-day stories that were so popular for children. (By the time I was reading, the Biblical prophecy that "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone" was so well-ingrained that, if I'd been a builder, I would have probably started my projects with the least-appropriate stones I could find.)

So I don't really think that they changed the story of Katy, although if anyone knows otherwise, please pass along the information. I give myself marks for writing my own story, as a means of covering up the fact that I actually could not read, or not much. I may have stolen some plot points, but that made me perfectly suitable to write for television.

But now I wonder what the first book I actually did read on my own was.

Katy beats the ever-lovin' crap out of the snow, no prob

Anyway, hats off to Katy, who of course does save the day in the book. The book's lesson of quiet determination in the face of adversity is even better than the one I made up. Plus, it's got a great town map.

And I'll tell you one last thing -- to this day, whenever we have a blizzard, I think of this book, and how the snow got up to the second story windows and nothing in town could move.

Nothing, that is, except Katy! Chug! Chug! Chug!

Stamp Fred.

I'm not some stuck-up Hollywood type like Steve Martin, who famously requested a funeral like ol' King Tut at his passing. No, I'll be satisfied if the United States Post Office issues a Fred Key stamp in honor of my long career in writing and editing the English language and, uh, complaining about things on this blog.

Now, before any of you get any funny ideas about me wanting a stamp because I want the whole world to lick my backside, remember that the stamps are self-adhesive now. Maybe I just want to stick around!

Ha-ha!

Never mind.

What brought this on was seeing some Batman stamps recently, stamps I had not noticed but the USPS issued in 2014. Hey, Batman is great and all, but he is a fictional character. I think I have that all over him. I may suck by comparison in so many ways, but hey, at least I'm real.

In fact, the government may wish to go the extra mile with this project and make the Fred Commemorative Coin. This idea is one I also endorse. And hey, maybe it's time to give the dollar coin a shot again.

So, I added some hair on the obverse. Sue me.

The question is, since a coin, unlike a stamp, has a back, what should be on it? Not my rear end; that's silly. Funny, but silly. My childhood home? A portrait of me holding the flag? A pile of old computers that I've burned through? An angry mob with pitchforks? You know, I kind of like that last one.

I'll be glad to take suggestions. What would go on the reverse of the Fred Key coin? Make sure to let me know, and then write to the United States Treasury Department to get them on the job. I'm not going to last forever, you know, and the way I feel today, I think they'd better get started! Oy, my achin' back!

Apple memory.

Contrary to popular belief, I do eat things that have no sugar in them. Although I confess you would not know this from the entries in this blog. What can I say, sugar is interesting.

One of things about stuff with sugar is how much we craved it as children. It makes sugary treats a great cause for nostalgia, especially when candies that lay hidden in memory all year make a sudden return at Halloween. Mary Janes! Oh, wow! Look out, bridgework, here it comes!

Another such autumnal treat is the humble candy apple. But it's gotten very hard to find.

Caramel apples are all over. You can get plenty of Kraft caramels at the grocery store and melt them down; you just need to find tongue depressors. There are even outfits that mail-deliver caramel and chocolate apples so laden with nuts and snacks and crap that you figure they might forget the apple and no one would notice. But those hard, red candy apples, perfect McIntoshes with a sweet, brittle candy shell, are difficult to find these days. In fact, my wife and I tried a couple of pre-made "candy apples" that were all wrong -- they had a somewhat similar flavor, but the coating was gooey, with the consistency of a caramel wrap. The candy part of the candy apple actually has a subtle flavor, and if the texture is wrong it ruins the effect.

Fortunately, Concord Foods is still in the game, with the Candy Apple Kit.

Unfortunately, none of my local stores bother with it anymore, although they will carry Concord's Caramel Apple Kit and other seasonal delights like Apple Crisp and Banana Bread Mix. I had to order this online.

I have a candy thermometer and I don't know why. Must have tried making some Christmas confection years ago. The fact that I don't remember what tells you how well it went over. But it's good that I have it, because you have to cook the flavoring in the kit with sugar and water to 150°C (302°F) to get it to that hard crack stage. This takes longer than you think it will, if, like me, you don't do this kind of thing much. Then you take your nice clean apples with the provided sticks and dip them. Do not just roll them around in the syrup. That would be silly and probably dangerous. And then, ta-da!

They were just right -- that delightful fake red candy sheen over the perfect apple. One bite -- and it takes a few tries to breach the wall of candy glass -- and you get that mix of candy and apple that's crunchy and bright. My wife recalls the candy apple as having a more cinnamony flavor than these, though, which would be fixed easily by adding a little cinnamon to the candy cauldron. For me, it was a successful schlep down memory lane.

My teeth may object, but the candy apple was a favorite of my childhood, and I was happy to have a chance to remember how good they are. Most of what you eat is the apple, anyway, so I'm glad I waited for fall to get the peak McIntoshes. However, for those concerned about the sugar, I calculate that each apple is covered by almost four tablespoons of sugar! And that doesn't include the apple's own natural sugars. So, to paraphrase the modern less-fun Cookie Monster, a candy apple is a sometime food. (Poor neutered Cookie Monster.)

I don't know if a candy apple is part of your childhood memories of the Halloween season, but it was of mine, and I was glad to get another bite at the apple, so to speak.  Now I have to give away eight candy apples....

Offloading memory.

You may have see this cartoon making the rounds:

Maybe we should include the human brain among the aggrieved parties.

I have been racking my own dollar-store brain to remember what provider or computer outfit did the cell phone commercial some years ago in which a bunch of old guys in a bar are arguing sports trivia, and then a nerdish youth corrects them using information off his mobile phone. He astonishes the yahoos by pulling in the answers from the atmosphere. If you remember any details about it, please let me know. All I remember is that the young fellow had a face that looked like it could use a fist.

Considering today's topic, it's funny that I have not been able to find the commercial using the search engines. The problem is that all the search terms I come up with lead me to current ads and other more popular (or promoted) content. But I remember that ad, because it struck a chord. We all know that human memory plays tricks, and that the Internet contains every bit of sports trivia known to man.

When that commercial first aired, the magic of the Internet had been in play for a while, and we knew we could use it to answer all things -- but not while getting hammered at the bar. You had to use your computer to access the Internet. Sometimes buffering was involved. Prior to the information age, the bad memory of drunks was required to bring forth data -- or, for the well-prepared innkeeper, the Guinness Book of Records.

That worthy book, which became popular far beyond its humble origins (the managing director of the eponymous brewery's argument over what game bird in Europe was the fastest), was a staple in bars and homes for decades. For sports fans who liked to argue there were books like The Baseball Encyclopedia. Now, especially when Internet access is as far away as your shirt pocket, we tend to leave our memory up to the World Wide Web. Memorization is, in other words, for squares. And maybe for good reason.

"If I could remember everything I ever read," a friend once said (while drinking), "I'd be God." Exaggeration aside, I knew what he meant. It is frustrating to realize how much we forget of what we read. The joy of encountering a remembered book anew is nice, but not worth the loss of all the information that falls out of our heads when we are doing other things. I'm reading a book about the Battle of the Bulge now, one that is well researched and so contains lots of German names, and town and other place names, and I forget who and what everything is. A Generalfeldmarschall might disappear for twenty pages, and by the time he reemerges I've forgotten which one he is. I'd rather have some memory of him than have to look him up.

For so many things, memory is optional -- Dr. Internet will see you now. But even for those of us suffering from CRS, reliance on devices to inform our memories doesn't seem like a good idea. Does memory improve with training, as Harry Lorayne says? If so, we are in trouble. We're using memory less, thanks to the very devices accused of shortening our attention spans. Maybe we are getting dumber!

It doesn't help that when we do look things up, we tend to go straight to Wikipedia, which is not exactly gospel truth.

Anyway, the kid in the commercial reeling off sports trivia at the bar and annoying his elders would get his comeuppance later when he discovered another thing the smartphone was good for: drunk texting. Good luck talking to your girlfriend in the morning, bub.

Look out, kids!

It's funny -- as we get closer to the start of a new school year, the topic has come up more and more in my circle about the memories we adults have about the end of summer break and the return to classrooms, books, and teacher's dirty looks. What's funny is, most everyone I spoke with, from all walks of life, remembers being excited for the first day of school. Mileage varied considerably for how long the excitement lasted beyond that first day.

A few weeks ago, duty called on me to be in the halls of a public school a few towns over (long story), and I have to say, they always kinda look the same. Weird sloping halls, moisture on every surface as if the building itself is sweating it out, and predominance of Municipal Beige (I believe that is a Glidden color). 

The best part of getting ready for the start of school was the stocking up of supplies. This was probably true for every year of my schooling until college, when "supplies" could include "textbooks that cost more than my first car." Then, not so fun.

I would fall under crushing boredom as August waned, and that could make September look more welcoming -- as did the triple H of August in the city. These days I struggle to remember what it was like being bored. If I ever have nothing to do now, I take a nap. Yay, naps! Back then, naps were for babies. Boo, naps!

My memories of the actual first day of the school year are pretty scant. I remember a few of them, some curious, some happy, some terrifying. I probably remember the first day of kindergarten the most, in that scary school with the tremendous fifth-graders who, I secretly believed, wanted nothing more than to beat kindergartners into paste for laughs. Man, I coulda used a drink that first day, amirite?

New schools were always a problem. Either I knew some kids from the last school and we were all in for a rude awakening (entering middle school was like running with glee and sliding into a long cheese grater) or I knew no one and was thus an outcast.

College was better because everyone was trying to be an adult and no frosh knew anyone else anyway. But the pressure to not screw up was very strong.

I remember a lot of teachers fondly, and a few school events, but I seldom think about school much anymore. I know I learned a lot, and even the things I've forgotten at least gave my brain some sharpening in the formative years (anyone for quadratic equations?). But I don't remember the annual return to school as well as I would have expected to.

How about you? Any years that stand out?

Porched earth policy.

So, to continue the saga from yesterday -- an all-day saga, if you will -- I had to paint the porch again because it looked like crap after one winter, and since I didn't paint it last year, it looked like crappity crap after two winters. I refused to paint white again, at least for the floorboards, and the Mrs. agreed. All colors can show dirt and wear, but nothing compares to white.

Picking a color took most of the spring, but that was okay since it was too rainy to paint then anyway. The question was, should the porch floor match the shutters and roof? Or would it be too matchy-matchy? Ultimately we decided to take a chance on matchy-matchy, because the house already has two bold and one mild color, and a fourth non-white color would make it start to look all crazy-quilt, which anyone can tell you is more risky than matchy-matchy.

The other big decision was to use a textured paint, which was new to me. Our porch is ridiculously slippery in the winter; I've fallen down the stairs at least once, and I live in fear of UPS men with attorneys delivering to us in the winter. This textured paint has some sand-like stuff in it gives you a little grip. If it prevents one concussion, one back injury, it's well worth the extra expense.

They used to call it sand paint. I remember my dad using it. It was very popular for ceilings in the fifties and sixties, and was still in many homes when I was a kid. Now they call them popcorn ceilings, but I first heard the term in this decade.

For kids, these ceilings ceased being popular as soon as we let go of our non-Mylar helium balloons, because that sucker was popping instantly. Sand paint did not feel like beach sand; it felt like broken glass. You wouldn't want it on your walls.

Anyway, I remember Dad using sand paint and it being quite difficult. What made it harder for him was the cleanup; Dad never used today's disposable brushes, paint rollers, or drop cloths. In fact, I am dead certain that he had the same drop cloths in use from before I was born until they sold the house after I graduated college.

So, yes, sand paint was difficult, and textured paint is not as bad (less sand), but still more difficult than regular paint, and I didn't prepare adequately.

We prepped the space all right; I even let my wife use the power washer and play Ghostbuster. Seriously, she probably saved me an hour. But the textured paint ate up all that time and more.

It's extremely thick, as you might imagine, and painting the trim around the deck was like icing a driveway with a rubber spatula. My one saving grace was that our porch is not that big.

To determine if I could afford this house, I'd have to factor in the money
to have flunkies on hand to paint the doggone porch.

Usually I can do the boards with a roller on a stick. The textured paint can warns you right on the lid to use a roller cover with a 1/2-inch nap. I thought I had one but I did not, so I thought -- this 3/8-inch cover is close enough, right? That's just an eighth of an inch off!

Har.

The roller got sunk in this goo and wouldn't move. Trying to roll it out was like try to butter new Wonder Bread with cold butter. I wound up doing most of the planks by hand, with which my back and legs took great issue by Sunday morning. I work in a chair most of the time; I have muscles that have been dormant since the Space Shuttle program ended. They registered their displeasure.

But despite that, on Sunday morning, I dragged my sorry behind to Home Depot and got the right roller covers, some more disposable brushes, and some more disposable roller pans. I was aiming to burn whatever I used after this job, because nothing would ever come clean.

And the job did get done, but for a touch-up on the white bits, which I'll do today. It came off looking pretty good. You don't get that nice, smooth finish with a textured paint, but I'll trade that for safety. From the street it looks great. Not too matchy-matchy.

The one thing I didn't mention in all this is that the dogs only leave the house by the porch. They both are scared of the cellar steps, and the back steps are very steep. I had to time the painting around their usual evacuation periods, because no way can I carry 100+ pound dogs down the other stairs. I should have started training them on those back stairs after the last debacle, when the porch got repaired. Anyway, no dogs exploded and my back is relatively intact.

And the porch looks good. Will it really be safer underfoot in the winter? Will it really still look good come spring? Watch this space in the months ahead for more kvetching, moaning, krexing, and general complaining to find out!

Magic words.

When I was a baby, I had no manners at all. Rude, demanding, loud, unless I was asleep. Good thing I was cute. Good thing all babies are cute.

As I grew older my mom tried to teach me manners, but it's a hard concept for little kids to grasp.

One day in class I saw some art -- a poster or something -- of a Persian magician on a magic carpet. In my memory (always suspect, I grant you) he looked a lot like Fariik the Magician from Hanna-Barbera's Arabian Knights.

He was floating along under a sign that said "The Magic Words," and other carpets floating nearby had words written on them: "Please," "Thank You," "You're Welcome," "May I," and the like. 

Then it finally clicked: Words have power. 

When I used these words, suddenly the adults in my life were happier, more willing to fulfill my requests. It was magic.

From that day to this I have tried to be polite. My mother probably didn't know what had happened to her kid.

I mention all this because it's the third Sunday in Lent. I've heard from some folks recently who consider themselves "spiritual" rather than "religious." I'm willing to accept that an amorphous spirituality is better than nothing. However, I feel sad that they feel spirituality and religion are different. If my religion is divided from spirituality, then I'm doing my religion wrong. 

And that gets to the mumbo-jumbo. Catholics have always gotten the sneer for the blah blah blah of the Mass, the endless words, the Latin (not so much that anymore), the rote prayers, the smells & bells, and so on, mainly from Protestants who seem to think that words used in the Mass are unimportant. I can understand that. After all, Jesus warns us in Matthew (6:7) "do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words." We believe that's not what's going on in the Mass, though, especially during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Every word is important, is for our benefit. 

I may not feel that way if I'm impatient to get to brunch. That's my failing.

Were I to hear the Mass in Latin or any other foreign language, I am sure it would sound like gobbledygook to me. But language is language; to use the Cartesian definition, Man is "the animal that talks." (And sometimes "the animal that won't shut up.") Language inspires us to love, as in sweet nothings, love letters, words of love. Or the opposite, as in fightin' words. Words can be meaningless, but only if babbled meaninglessly, or spat out Lorem ipsum style by a machine. Words are important. And thus are the words in the Mass, and thus is the Mass. At least that's my take.

As for the smells & bells -- who doesn't like incense and church bells? Smellin' great, soundin' great. No problem there.

Aspirin soda.

Coca-Cola has come out with very odd new flavor of cola -- orange vanilla. It can be found in the regular soda and Coke Zero Sugar lines. 

I've reviewed some of Coke's flavoriffic expeditions into the unknown before, and have yet to find anything that seems like a New Coke-style problem that could rattle the company. Let me say up front that this attempt at the Coke Creamsicle also does not rise to that kind of trouble. However, I have to tell you it is pretty weird.

Why? Because on the first taste of Coke Zero Sugar Orange Vanilla I said "St. Joseph Aspirin." My wife tried some and said the same thing.

You kids today with your Reye syndrome probably have never tried St. Joseph Aspirin, but I guess we were the last generation that did. Reye syndrome, which can strike youngsters who have viral infections if they take aspirin, is quite rare but very dangerous, which is why the phrase "children's aspirin" is now pretty much an oxymoron. But before 1986 it was not. Aspirin was commonly given to children as it was to adults, and for the same reason -- it is an excellent medication, a fever buster, an anti-inflammatory, a painkiller, really a miracle drug whose deadly downside was not known for a long time. 

One of the problems with aspirin, though, is that it tastes terrible, and the genius of Plough, the company that bought the flailing St. Joseph brand in 1920, was to make a chewable aspirin that children would like. The orange flavor, introduced in 1947, was a success. Between St. Joseph Aspirin and cherry Sucrets, I didn't mind getting sick that much at all when I was a kid. Which is part of the terrible problem the brand had over the years -- kids wanting to eat aspirin like candy. Before Reye syndrome was known and aspirin was regarded as unsafe for children, "candy" aspirin was killing children who got hold of the stuff. (For the grim details, check out this article in Penn Today.)

Anyway, St. Joseph orange chewable aspirin is still around, having been reintroduced in 1993 as a low-dose aspirin for heart patients whose doctors recommend one 81 mg aspirin daily to prevent blood clots -- or, as our friend Stiiv mentioned recently, the kind to take before looking at hawt pics of Lynda Carter. In other words, the same Baby Boomers who took St. Joseph Aspirin in childhood now take it again. 

I am not a heart patient, at least not yet, and I had to wonder if my memory was accurate. Does St. Joseph chewable aspirin taste like Coke Orange Vanilla? 

I got a bottle of the aspirin at the supermarket and prepared to go mano-a-mano, taste bud to taste bud, to find out. Which I then did.

And the answer is... I'm not sure. 

I think they changed the flavor of the St. Joseph Aspirin, to tell you the truth; it seems to have gotten a bit more of a candyish boost, making its taste closer to the orange Tic Tac. So in a way the new Coke flavor tastes more like the medicine of my childhood than the modern adult version of that same medicine. But I admit it's been a long time, and memory is notoriously unreliable. 

Ultimately I think the flavor is a failure, as the orange and vanilla don't work as well with the cola as I would like. Orange + vanilla = good, vanilla + cola = good, orange + cola = bleah. No one ever mixed Coke with Tang, and I suspect no one ever asked for Diet Coke with a twist of orange. It's strange, but not good strange or even bad strange, just meh strange. Unusual for strange = just okay.

But for the blast of nostalgia, recapturing a flavor that may not quite exist anywhere anymore, I am grateful for the Coca-Cola company's effort. 

Of eggs and loot.

I was thinking about Halloween in my childhood, having listened the other day to Larry Miller's podcast, specifically the episode "How to Egg Like a Pro." On it he shares some great Halloween memories of his childhood in Long Island. It includes the funniest egging story I've ever heard.

I never egged anything, but I did throw an apple at a bus once. I certainly remember riding home from school on a city bus and it getting thwacked with eggs a-plenty. You didn't open the window on a city bus on Halloween in those days, no matter what time it was or how pleasant the weather. City buses were egg magnets. Maybe they still are.

We never did any tricks, not really. Perhaps once, but it was incidental. That Halloween when we were much too old for trick-or-treating, I and some of my fellow knuckleheads made impromptu costumes, grabbed a large election sign off someone's lawn, and went all over the area; we would ring the bell and kneel behind the sign as if we were trying to pretend to be little. Some people thought it was funny, anyway, and we got some candy. No one got mad at us for electioneering. Late in the night one of the guys smashed a family's pumpkin, just grabbed it and hurled it into the air as we walked down the street. That was the extent of our hooliganism.

My best memories are from when I was younger, and all about the roving thuggery of candy acquisition. Eyeing other packs of kids in their finery, wondering which houses had good stuff, which ones were busts, which ones were giving out money... rain or cold, whatever weather, we went for it. I think one year we had a map of the neighborhood so we wouldn't miss a house by mistake. We were supposed to be home before sunset, so efficiency was key
-- tick-tock, people, let's move!

👻👹👺👿👾💀👸🐵

various disguises

I can't remember ever pulling a real trick on anyone. No eggs or TP or any of the usual things. I was pretty good-natured about Halloween. In fact, I've been so happy to get a full-size brand-name candy bar that I'd have left a present. "Hey, that kid in the robot costume left us a skid of Charmin."

Every year we wound up with a big sack of candy. We would gorge that night, but Mom would portion out the rest for weeks thereafter. I couldn't really tell you how much was in the haul, but it seemed like a vast amount. I wonder how much it was. 

I'm grateful to all the families in the neighborhood who took the time and trouble to buy and hand out the stuff. I'm grateful to my folks for being good about it. I guess I'm glad my father never encouraged me to do the stunts he did when he was a city kid at Halloween -- he was vague about it, but kids were 100% punks where he grew up.

It wasn't always perfect, but it was always fun, and I don't remember anyone ever getting into fights. Nuh-uh! You might bust your Ben Cooper or Collegeville mask!