George Carlin

When George Carlin died recently, our world lost not just a comedian, but a man of considerable intelligence who educated his audiences nearly as much as he entertained them. I remember the first time I heard Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weather man when Carlin, fresh shaven and wearing a suit, appeared on a national television variety program, so popular in that era.

The Vietnam War and the sharp shift in the zeitgeist carried him off in another direction - bearded and wearing nothing but black, and he remained outside the frame making his shrewd observations about himself and us for over five decades. His monologue on the seven words which could not be said on television got him into considerable hot water, but it turned out to be an important contribution to our appreciation of the essence of free speech.

His specials on HBO were extremely funny, even as he ripped at our sensibilities with the sharpness of his observations. I cringed sometimes, but I laughed a lot, and underneath his bravado and anger, one could sense a man of considerable sensitivity and even kindness.

In homage to his long and brilliant career, I have decided to follow in his footsteps and refer to George W. Bush as "Governor Bush," the last position to which the Current Occupant was legally elected.

Feel free (literally and figuratively) to join me.

A Bad Attack of Gas

We were filling up our diesel rental car in a small town in Scotland a couple of weeks ago.  The price was £1.31 per liter....say about $2.60 a quart over here.  When I paid the bill and started up the car, She Who Would Command inquired whether I had filled the car up.

"No," I said, "we've got about three quarters of a tank," and before the next question hit my lap I added, "when the tab hit 60 pounds [$120+ dollars), I decided that was enough and shut that puppy down."

As it stands, for all our moaning about the price of automobile fuel, we're still paying about forty per cent of what our friends in Great Britain are.  The conclusion is inevitable...we just need to shut our pie holes about fuel costs (to quote the unbeloved Donald Rumsfeld, "It is what it is") and concentrate on driving both less and more efficiently.

Our UPS driver said that his wife drives by five WalMarts on her way home and, shortly after her return, gets in the car and goes back to one of them.  "That's gonna change," he concluded.

I read somewhere that SUVs (the aircraft carriers of the highway) and large pick-up trucks are getting more difficult to trade in...sounds like the same sort of negative equity problem with which our housing market has been wrestling of late.

But most of the vehicles whipping by me on the freeway are - guess what - SUVs and pick-up trucks.  Conclusion:  Intelligence may be normally distributed in the population, but - statisticians to the contrary, stupidity may not.

OK, so I've been driving a hybrid for the last three and a half-years.  DO YOU THINK I LIKE PAYING FORTY BUCKS EVERY TIME I FILL IT UP?

Well, under the current circumsances, yes I do......

Spring Approacheth, Part II

After the last snow a week ago, most of us went from ordinarily cranky to really bitchy.  On the assumption, that the white stuff would melt quickly, I didn't even think about starting up the snow blower, and as last week wore on, the snow did disappear, and our hopes for Spring renewed.

However, the cold and wind continued, so we were left to look out the window for Spring.  On our small lake, the geese walked on the ice and looked uncomfortable as they searched for open water.  Ditto for the ducks. Juncos appeared in the junipers, and  when we stuck our noses out the door, we could hear cardinals, robins, gulls, and the occasional red-wing blackbird.

Sunday began brightly without a cloud in the sky....not much traffic on the way to church, but on the way home after a stop for lunch, the roads were chock-a-block with traffic - no doubt others searching actively for Spring.  The sky continued to be cloudless, and so we stopped to pick up Islay The Scotty at the house and headed for a ramble on country roads to the north.  

It was the clarity of the light that made hope real.  Rounded clumps of snow-ice lay at the side of many roads - they would be gone by this morning, and the snow on the north sides of homes and trees and such looked very "thin."

We returned home not having seen the thin fingers of Spring creeping across the landscape, but in the next three days, oh, what possibilities will fill our hearts.

Spring Approacheth

The hold of winter is beginning to release, with one, maybe two snowy blasts yet to come.  We know that these final attempts of Father Winter to hold us in thrall will be short-lived, because all around us the spidery fingers of Spring are increasingly visible.

In late February it was the bird songs which suddenly proliferated, then the angle of the sun began to change, and with the arrival of so-called "daylight savings" morning began later but the afternoons  began to linger almost to dinner time - another hopeful sign.

We are still trying to explain to ourselves why this winter has been so trying.  Snow falls were not too burdensome, although ice underneath remained a constant threat (something to do with my, I expect).  We had some very cold spells which, when combined with wind, made being outdoors a legitimate threat, and that combined with gray day after gray day, was dispiriting.

Yet...and yet, the signs of Spring began to multiply:  Canada geese honking away   low in the afternoon sky, the snow receding between the house and the lake, and the day before yesterday, three snowy egrets flying right down the shore to the part of the lake where they nest.

There is an aerator on the other side of the lake which makes it possible for aquatic birds to remain optimistic no matter what else might be going on around them, but it is the egrets which lifted our hearts and minds...until the next palpable symbol of Spring is knitted into our seasonal pattern.

Paul Scofield

The news of the death of the English actor Paul Scofield came at breakfast.  He was one of the"next"  generation of great actors which arrived immediately after  Laurence Olivier,  John Gielgud, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Emlyn Williams, and Alec Guinness among others.

His performance in the film "A Man For All Seasons," was riveting, but I have a clearer memory of a "Volpone,"directed by Peter Hall at the Royal National Theatre in 1972,  with Scofield in the title role, Ben Kingsley as Mosca, and John Gielgud as Sir Politic.

Gielgud "dried" during the performance, and either the prompt thrown or received was delayed -  we caught our collective breath, then things were righted, and off we went.

Scofield's performance might have overwhelmed everything on stage, but it did not.  The greatness of his performance was that it was not grandiose, scenery chewing, showy - you get the drift.  But you could not take your eyes off him (a characteristic which Ian McKellen carries on).

After the play, my American friend and I sat for some moments in silence, trying to process all that we had seen that evening.  Eventually I turned to her and said, "This is one of those nights when one understands the link between theatre and religion, as it was in ancient times."  She nodded, and we left in that companionable silence which allowed what we had seen to settle in memory.

Where it remains to this day.  Those who saw him on the screen or in a theatre will continue to find him very hard to forget, and that is a sufficient legacy.

Caucuses in Minnesota

We don't have a primary in Minnesota in presidential years; we have caucuses - we gather in schools and such to vote, to argue various proposals, to select delegates to party conventions, and so on.

Until last night, I had never been to one of these things, having heard tales about arguments going on until all hours of the night. This year, I learned that I could cast a vote for President and leave the building and the wrangling to others. Sounded good to me.

After dinner I set off for one of our high schools and found the parking lot filling up at a rapid rate. I found the right room, registered, and voted. Because I was tired, I decided to let democracy go forward without me and headed for the car and home.

When I got to the main road, I was startled, no, make that amazed, to see that the line of cars waiting to turn down the road to the school I had just left was about a mile long. Really!

I tuned in to the local public radio news station, and the hosts were marveling at the fact that in another Twin Cities suburb, people were tired of waiting in line, so they were abandoning their cars in the road and walking to the caucus site.

Turns out, four times as many of us went to the caucuses than have in the past. No matter what your political perspective, it's heartening to know that at times, we can make a difference. With the prologue approaching its end, we need to maintain vigilant attention to the conventions and campaign to come.

So, with apologies to Neal Postman, we need to clean and oil our crap detectors - they're going to get a lot of use between now and November.

Finding The Center

Women seem to have a unique capacity to find the middle of an aisle, a doorway, the space in front of an escalator, while men seem to focus on finding the path from point a to point b.

I first noticed this years ago in supermarkets. A cart is left in the aisle so that the, dare we call her, pusher can browse. In smaller buildings with narrow aisles, I have found that whether one wishes to pass on the left or right, it is not possible to do so. In larger markets with wider aisles, the pusher adopts the "strolling browse" technique: Standing to one side of the cart, the pusher moves to the side to contemplate the cans, boxes, or bags. This effectively blocks more than half of the aisle, and passing is impossible.

More recently, I have observed at parties that females tend to stand in the middle of a doorway, and as more acquaintances arrive, the doorway is now not much more than a human door.

Similarly, at the bottom of escalators, small groups of females will stand two strides in front of the escalators departure point while they discuss which part of the store they will assault next.

As I have thought about it, I have come to believe that men are logistical - always creating a plan to get from point to point as efficiently as possible. This may account for the lousy driving habits we males do tend to have.

Women, on the other hand, seem to place the interpersonal element higher on the scale of essential values. So rather than think about blocking the path to the bar, they focus on seeing Martha who hasn't been out much lately, greeting Phyllis who's been in New York seeing the grandkids, and hugging Jennifer who just tossed her spouse over the wall.

Now you may think I am just another male chauvinist, so let me leave you with this parting thought. Just watch the average woman when it comes time to pay for something - put the purse down on the counter, open the purse, open the smaller purse, pull out the check book, open it to the register page, ask what the date is, and what's the amount again, fill in the info, write the damn check, close the checkbook, put it in the small purse, put the small purse in the large purse, close the purse, and put it back on the shoulder.

Geez, George Balanchine couldn't choreograph a ballet any better than that performance. Unless he was standing behind our examplar in line.

I rest my case. Brickbats are available at any convenience store.