A Tale of Surprises

She left the office late one night, a good feeling of a job well done. On the way to the parking lot on a fairly dark path she had the distinct feeling she was being followed. She walked faster and the follower kept pace. She gathered the courage to look back, and in her own words: “ I was being followed, and it was my butt!!!”. She did have a notable butt (now much reduced by diet and exercise) and we all had a good laugh over her story. So today I was burning some dead branches, doing the manly thing of poking and rearranging the fire when a puff of smoke got in my eyes and I turned and walked away from the fire. The strange thing was that the smoke followed me, was sort of drafting along with me as I walked. Then another puff of dense smoke right in the eyes. I turned and saw…….no smoke from the fire at all!! Crap!!! My hat was on fire!!!!
I put it out and saved the hat and me from burns, but whoa! that was close. Might have lost what little hair I have left.
Image: Water Butt at http://www.hellenicgarden.co.uk/waterbuttoak-premium.html

Did you know Madieye Diallo?

Humans are capable of the most despicable and degraded behavior imaginable. Hate some ethnic group? Hate some religions? Hate some lifestyles? Hate some genetic disorders? Hate anybody for anything? Well, welcome to the human race. Hate away pal, hate away. You are in hated company. But beyond hatred is irrational and dangerous behavior it causes. The beautiful young man pictured died and was buried. Two hours later a mob dug up his body, spit on it and dumped if front of his parent’s house. Why? He was gay. That’s all. Just gay. What kind of depraved sick people would do something like that you ask? You don’t have to look very far to find them. Reflect back to Pogo and you will find the answer. This is nothing new in the world. In the late 1700’s gay men were stoned to death in London, and lesbians were hung.
An old friend of mine used to say “there are reasons, and then there are real reasons”. I think the real reason for homophobia is the fear of difference. I think that is why most hatred manifests. Someone is different and must be feared and eliminated.
Tolerance is a virtue preached by most or all religions in some ways. Mankind is not biologically a tolerant animal. The core drive and value of survival makes us suspicious of anyone that is different from us. So we hate, and by hating survive. But at what price? Who wants to be hated because they are different? My Mexican friends? My Jewish friends? My gay friends? My black friends? My short friends? My fat friends? My French friends? My, well, you get the point. Everybody is probably hated by someone for something.
See? A human imperative.
So don’t be surprised by the disgusting results of hatred. Rail against it when you can and stop it if you can. Vote it out and pass laws against it and stamp it down. But don’t expect it to go away. Do the right thing and try not to hate anybody for anything. Not easy is it?


Image: http://www.commercialappeal.com/photos/2010/apr/10/163251/

Siempre que te pregunto…

Those few words started something. A grad school buddy sang a few songs in Spanish and with these words began a quest to learn to play and sing “Quizas, Quizas, Quizas” How do you get to Carnegie Hall goes the old joke. And the answer (drum roll) - practice, practice, practice. So I practiced. And got somewhat better, but never as good as Kirsten. There were lots of Cuban chicks in Miami in those days and I figured if I could sing/say a few songs, low and sexy, I could maybe get to know one of them. Didn’t work. Never even had the chance to try. I dated Manuel’s sister, part of the first real wave of Cubans hitting the shores of Biscayne Bay, a few times, but she wanted to learn English. So I tried Russian. Learned a few songs in Russian but never found a Russian chick to try them on. So I tried English. That worked like a charm. Still married to her. See? Never give up, and always tell yourself “Quizas, Quizas, Quizas.”

( Spanish) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd-uz6_WRtc
(Russian) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw5L0IdKjps

Image: www.youtube.com/user/enr7que

Grandad Search in 1921 (or so)

In around 1920, Hal Search, my father, entered the Milwaukee School of Engineering and promptly joined the band. The third from the left, back row, with his sax. I found the photo last week by chance and decided to write something. By the time I came around and became sentient he had gotten rid of the sax and occasionally played at playing the piano (my mother's) and singing songs like "The Delaware-Lackawan" (1) and "Abdul Abulbul Amir". (2)
He was able to put away quite a bit of gin (martinis of course) and the more gin the louder and funnier the songs got. He and his sister had a poem they would recite on some occasions where lubrication was available about hunting a "stiped pole cat" (I hunt de cat, I hunt de rat, I hunt de striped polecat. )( couldn't find this one with Google's help). Very funny though. Anyone want to try to find it? They used a sort of Cajun accent. Not very politically correct I guess. But after all it was the times when that wasn't around much yet. He and my mother would join in with "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (3) just for fun, too. Anyway, I thought about him when I saw the band photo and though maybe the boys would enjoy a bit of silliness. Check the links and enjoy.

1.http://www.harrywarren.org/songs/0584.htm
2. http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/abdul.html
3, http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/2640/?letter=C&spage=26

Little angels

Have you ever seen such angelic young men? Did you notice the tiny smiles, like they know something nobody else knows? They did. They knew that the priest was a boozer that always filled the chalice just before the end of communion and, of course, drained it because consecrated wine could only be finished by a man standing in apostolic succession. He was a good old guy, though. My brother was an acolyte and I was in the choir. We got to stick out our tongues at each other up on the stage when nobody was looking, and us guys in the choir got to make snide comments about the hats that showed up at the rail on Easter Sunday. We loved going to church in those days. Smells and bells. High Episcopal. I could never figure out the bit in the Apostle’s Creed about believing in the “holy catholic Church”, though. My mother was a lapsed Catholic and very much against anything Catholic. I asked a few times and got the “you will understand this when you are older. Just say it for now.” line. There was always a candle hanging from a chain way above the stage. My mother told me that the candle was the Holy Spirit, and I took that to mean the Holy Ghost (never really got that either), and from then on I was very careful around the Ghost.
But, times change and so did Tom and I. Both lapsed into a kind of non-church mode, then into agnosticism.
I still love to go into churches and feel the spirit of history. Agnostic or not, there is something about an old cathedral or 12th century village church, complete with burials in the floors and walls or an ancient graveyard that gives me a great sense of peace and comfort. Temples too.

Image: Search brothers.

Abandoned: Plymouth and Baby.

The Abandoned Plymouth:
When I last spoke I had just embarrassed a future King of Reptiles after a trip to the ‘glades. On that same trip two very interesting events occurred. One really spooky and one amazing. Amazing first. About a half mile down one of the ditch roads we found an abandoned early 50’s Plymouth sedan. Rusted body, dented fenders, some broken glass and flat tires. The road was impassable to cars when we walked it so who knows when the sedan got dumped there. Now you need to understand something about Fred. He was a major intellect and could logically and with quiet assertiveness talk about almost everything. He was, however, despite owning a VW van, not very mechanically inclined.
I raised the hood of the car and noticed that the battery was still there. We talked for a minute about movies where some abandoned car or plane or boat gets going and gets the good guys out of trouble. I told them I would take a crack at starting the thing. Fred and the others laughed and said un-printable (here) things about my ancestry. I pulled off a few incidental wires, bared the ends, jumped the coil and the solenoid (on that car it is on the firewall) and choked it. It cranked and started with a gush of blue-black smoke and a loud noise, reminiscent of a rusted out or missing muffler. After a few manly “rum rum rum’s” I pulled off the coil wire and took a bow. Applause.

The Abandoned Baby:
That’s when we heard the baby crying. Totally unnerved all of us. A wailing cry of a baby in real trouble. We looked around and tried to find the kid, but although we could hear it perfectly and close by, we couldn’t find it. Then somebody shouted “Here it is. You won’t believe this!!!” We all went to see the baby. No baby in sight. But, a smallish leopard frog caught by a smallish water snake. The frog was caught by one hind leg and swallowed to the crotch. The other leg blocked the snake and it couldn’t be swallowed further. The frog was crying like a baby. Boy were we relieved. I have never heard or heard of another frog making sounds like that since. Just plain spooky. To my shame, I can’t remember if we let the frog go. We should have probably, but I just don’t know. Sign of the times I guess.
Image: : http://www.ctcautoranch.com/Cars/Car%20Sub-Pages/Cars%20Mopar.html

The Tale of the Dreaded Orange Krait.

The indigo snake (Drymarchon corais) hunt, or, why do you find an orange krait (Bungaris aurantiacus taeniatus) in the everglades? Good question to pose to the future Conservator of Reptiles for a major zoo.
Fred had to collect some snakes for the zoology lab and I had time to kill so we went together in his old VW van. (Recall the Ani incident). We got down past Homestead and on the left side of US 1 was a vast area of hammocks and a web of old drainage ditches. These ditches were dug in the 20s as part of a development scheme, and were never completed (economy collapsed). Each ditch had a road next to it (the contents of the ditch) and these roads were overgrown with vegetation, including an invasive called Australian pine (Casuarina equisetifolia). Great habitat for various snake species. The hammocks were easy to reach from these roads and were also great habitat for snakes. They were also home to the native vanilla orchid (Vanilla barbellata) and I wanted one of those. We rounded out the group with 2 other grad students, names forgotten long ago.
We parked and walked half a mile or so on one of the roads, picking up a few water snakes along the way. Then we headed out into the wet marsh to get to the nearest hammock. There we spotted a BIG BLACK snake and jumped on it. What a prize. The four of us all held it and it must have been 8 feet long or longer. A prize Indigo by any measure. Instead of keeping it, though, we fondled it for awhile and then released it. The right thing to do and made us all feel like real conservationists.
On the way out we passed a pile of crap dumped by one of the many orange grove owners in Homestead that included several broke crates.
When we got back to campus, we were telling the soon-to-be-curator about the trip and I casually mentioned that we also saw an “orange crate” and he went ballistic. “Must have escaped from the Serpentarium! Let’s go back now and catch it!” I said “Great. Let’s go. There were also some grapefruit crates and one lime crate as well.” Got him!! Embarrassed by and before mere grad students. This is the SOB that fed my corn snake to a king snake by “accident” the week before. Ha. The best part? I made up the snake and name. There is no “orange krait”. Even better.

Image: http://www.snakeeducation.com/Snake%20Photos%20for%20all.htm

Those we love to hate

These words are often used to demean or otherwise attack someone: “He is probably a card-carrying member of the ACLU.” And that is bad? Conservatives often rail about the constitution and how liberals are undermining the very principles our founders enshrined in it. Principles such as freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion (interestingly, no sane person wanting to be a politician or judge would ever admit to being an atheist, clearly a protected right under the constitution). The American Civil Liberties Union takes on causes that are clearly constitutional issues that affect the rights of all citizens. The cases often involve the bottom feeders of society or issues that are repugnant to most of us, but the constitutional issues are always for all of us. The next time you see the ACLU representing someone you find disgusting, or defending a practice you find repulsive, remember that the issue is not the person or practice, but the constitutional rights involved.
I wrote an essay about the Supreme Court overturning a law that limited the rights of people involved in the “crush” trade and in dog fighting. The law was a bad law. Overbroad. It is being replaced as you read this by a new law that is narrower and targets the offending trades. By overturning the existing law, the Court protected the rights of hunters, fishermen and many others to make, own and watch videos about these things. That’s right. These were illegal under the old law, although not challenged. Now we will have a law that does what the original was supposed to do.
This was a free speech issue, and the Court got it right. Put another way, here is what law professor Jeffery Rosen said on the Diane Rhem show this week: “The First Amendment is always for people we hate.”
Quotation: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2010/04/22/126199842/why-did-npr-join-a-suit-to-overturn-the-law-banning-animal-cruelty-images-?sc=nl&cc=omb--20100423
Image: 43.photobucket.com/.../0_24_aclu_081105_1.jpg

GOOD NEWS!!!!!

There must be some good news, she said. Well, there is. This is the most gorgeous spring in a long time. A riot of blooming things: trees, shrubs, bulbs, perennials and the orchids are in bloom or in spike. The weather is near perfect. The world is at peace. Well, so there may be a few issues unresolved but on balance this is a glorious spring. We are looking forward to three graduations: TU, TCC and ISU. Graduation is always a good news time for us academic types. It means closure and you get to see the joy of families as their kids complete one dream and start on another. Then there is the trip to Las Vegas followed by a visit to Portugal (grilled sardines and Vinho Verde here we come), then tear out the bathroom. Then a new term and a bunch of new students (woody) and a bunch of new faculty (sal) and the fun starts all over again.
Let’s not overlook the economy either. Yes, the rebound is slow, but it is there. Signs of recovery everywhere (if you are still unemployed this may be a hard sell). Inflation is practically nonexistent, our industries are slowly but surely increasing output, and we are buying again. General Motors paid 8 billion back to the feds 5 years early for god’s sake. If that isn’t good news I don’t know what is.
Good news? Piles of it. Make your own list and enjoy the summer.
Credit: Thanks Sal
Image: www.masternewmedia.org/news/images/playschool

Remembering the Future

A while ago I wrote an essay about something and mentioned “remembering the future” somewhere. As ‘Woody 7.0” gets close thoughts of a truncated future begin to impinge on consciousness. If you listen to news at all, you will remember hearing phrases that end obituaries: Dead at 83; dead at 76; dead at 91 etc. Well, guess what? The time between 7.0 and 8.3 is only 13 years. Remember how long it seemed to take to get to your 13th birthday? Not bloody long. We are talking 13 summers folks. 13 Decembers, 13 Easters. 13 Chanukahs.
Time is running out. Well, it always was running out, wasn’t it? But it didn’t seem like it when you were 22. There is a neat way to stretch the future a little: Remember it. How exactly do you do that? Fairly easy actually. All you have to do is conjure a scenario of the future, say a trip to Portugal, fill in the details from any source available, and then remember it. After all, when you remember a trip that you have already taken, all you really have are brain images to rely on, right? Well, when you remember the future you have already experienced in your mind, all you really have are brain images. So what’s the difference? Not much.
In this increasingly virtual world, a lot of what we “experience” will be virtual, won’t it? One day I was wandering around in the “Eiffel Tower” in Las Vegas and heard a young woman actually say “Honey, now that we have seen the Eiffel Tower we don’t have to go to Paris”, and she was serious. That is just one step away from imaging the Tower and then remembering the image. You won’t have to go to Paris either. You think this is a load of old cods wallop? Some day when “Virtual Tourism” is a reality, and “You can travel to the ancient pyramids of Egypt from your easy chair” remember you heard it from me first. Why wait? Maybe you can fire up your Wii and bowl your way around Europe.

Image: www.edupics.com/hour-glass-t13661.jpg