Distraction, distractions

If it's not the weather here in Minnesota, it's the stock market and the economic mess through which we must navigate each day.  Or it's television, Netflix, hulu, facebook, twitter, youtube.

We all think we might be happier involving ourselves in stuff which we can't control or doesn't really matter.  But what's really distracting is the cell phone, or as K calls it "that thing always in your hand."  Last night en route to an event, I passed several cars (and no, I wasn't speeding), and every driver had a cellphone glued to his or her ear - except me (surprise, surprise).

Research suggests that cellphones are right up there with children, animated conversation, hand-held games.  Hell's bells, I did a radio piece two decades ago about driving to work one morning, one morning mind you, and watching fellow drivers eating breakfast, putting on make-up, and one reading the front page of the sports section which was resting on his steering wheel.  As I remember it, I couldn't be too critical because I was opening and reading my mail as I progressed down the freeway.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we should all agree to concentrate on managing that several thousand pound mass of metal and quality plastic we  pushing along at high speeds and not treating it  like a semi-guided missile.  Doing so might help us just a little as we try to focus in other parts of our lives.

 

A New Kind of Remote Control

So, it's fewer than two weeks to the next election, and one thing is very clear to me:  We need a remote control for the tv which, upon sensing a political ad, finds another channel in your realm of interests.  

OK, you might spend several distracted weeks watching bits and bobs of all sorts of things, but one very positive outcome would be that you wouldn't become convinced that every person running for office was some sort of shady character, funded by special interests, and committed to destroying (fill in the blank).

Seems like a good idea all round.

This Year's Economic Cataclysm

Once again, we've darned near outsmarted ourselves where our investments are concerned, but we live in such nice new houses, with atria galore to be heated and cooled, and drive sophisticated late model vehicles, and travel to such interesting places, mainly with other people's money on our credit cards.

Well, all that supposet codswallop I had to listen to as a kid about "the Great Depression" is vibrating in my noggin again after all these years.

My parents were lucky; my father's family started a successful grocery business about 120 years ago, and even during the Depression people had to eat. But Mom and Dad had lots of pot-luck suppers, played endless evenings of bridge, went to the occasional movie, and managed to get through the hard times without too much damage. I wore "darn socks" during the war, having no clue about what "darning" really was.

Have you notice that nobody's using the term Depression these days? Well if we're not economically depressed, we sure are emotionally. At church yesterday we heard that the people served a free hot meal - no questions asked - had doubled in the last six months. Every index of bad is up, and every index of good seems to be down.

So we need to look to ourselves, cut back on our borrowed style of living, reduce our debt, eat simpler, spend less, and look out for those whose concerns make ours seem modest.

The wise Pogo, whom I quote often, said "We have met the enemy, and he is us." True enough, but I prefer to believe that if we were stupid enough to get into this mess, with a little elbow grease and commitment to the greater good, we might have enough intelligence to get ourselves out of it.

Well...until the next era of stupid.

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, 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 hereafter 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.