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Radio In-active.

There was a crash on I-40 last Monday, and it wasn’t just any crash. A semi-truck carrying radioactive waste caught fire and somehow the description of it as “low grade” just made it sound even scarier to me. My wife said, “It was just alpha radiation so that’s not so bad.” Sure, tell that to Marie Curie or the women who painted the luminous numbers on clocks. At least, as far as I’ve been able to find out, none of the radioactive material spilled out so that’s good. And for me the other bright side is I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that, because I was driving home from the office that afternoon, no one was going anywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it. Every street was backed up with cars creeping along at only a few inches at a time. And when I say every street I mean every single street. I’m familiar with all sorts of side streets—I take ‘em all the time, sometimes because there’s heavy traffic on the main street, sometimes just because I’m not in any great hurry and just out of curiosity I’ll turn down a side street I’ve often passed but never been down before. I like to take scenic routes, and side streets, by their very nature, eventually lead to main streets. I don’t always know where I am but I know where I’m going and so far have always managed to get there.

This was not a day I wanted to take the scenic route, though. I wanted to get home and all I knew was that apparently every single car in the world between 1995 and 2023 was on the streets of Nashville and no one was going anywhere. And my knowledge of side streets didn’t help me because, as I passed them, I could see every side street was just as jammed as the main road I was on—filled with people who’d probably taken a side street a few miles back and were now trying to get back on a main street.

I could have walked home faster, and was tempted to, except for most of the trip there was no place to pull over and park, and even if I did I’d still have to walk back and get the car eventually. So I stuck it out. I turned on the radio but there was no news about what was causing the traffic backup. I did find one station playing Queen’s “Radio Ga-Ga” which seemed amusingly appropriate. Most of the time, though, I sat in silence, focused on the traffic, watching the needle on the gas tank steadily creep downward with the yellow warning light on. It reminded me of how my father used to make me crazy driving around for seemingly days, even weeks, with the yellow “Low fuel” warning light behind the steering wheel blinking, then glowing. I watched the monitor go from “51 miles to empty” to “48 miles to empty” and I’d only moved three inches.

I had a lot of time to think. It took me more than three hours to go less than ten miles.

Public And Private.

I just took that picture of flowers attached to a lamppost a few days ago but it’s not the first time I’ve seen flowers in that same spot. It’s near where my dentist is so I’ve seen flowers there before. I have a previous picture I took a year ago although, at the time, the flowers were looking a little shabby. They were plastic but still the elements had taken their toll. Why were they there, though? And this time they’d been freshened with a new more elegant cord wrapped around the lamppost. Someone’s keeping them up but who? It makes me sad to think this is probably a memorial, that someone died in that spot, or nearby, and someone who cared for that person, who loved them, is putting these flowers there as a tribute, and a way of dealing with their own grief.

And I don’t want to know who that person is. They’ve never left any information, nothing that says what happened. I sometimes see homemade roadside markers where people have been killed in accidents, and many of them have names. This one doesn’t and I respect that the person who made this memorial wishes to remain anonymous.

It reminded me of the “Poe Toaster”, a mysterious figure who, every year on January 19th, would leave roses and a bottle of cognac at Edgar Allan Poe’s grave. The figure was first noticed in 1949, one hundred years after Poe’s death, and in 1999 a note left at the grave said the original person had passed away but that the tradition would continue.

The person, or persons, who took over, however, treated the tradition as a joke, making a Superbowl prediction in 2001 (which would be wrong) and a snide remark about the French in 2004 (Poe is more respected in France than the U.S., earning praise from none other than Charles Baudelaire, who’d also lead a turbulent and tragically short life). The Poe Toaster stopped appearing in 2010, which was a good thing. It was fitting–after all 2009 was the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth–but also the torch should never have been passed. The person(s) who took over didn’t take the responsibility seriously and never should have carried on.

The tradition was revived by the Maryland Historical Society which held “auditions” in 2015, and while I think it’s nice that it’s being carried on it started as something deeply personal, meaningful in ways we’ll never know—in ways I don’t really want to know. A memorial may be in a public place but the privacy should still be respected.

Here’s the earlier picture of flowers in the same spot:

Bird Brain.

Source: Wikipedia

There was a package on the porch so I stopped at the gate in our driveway and left the car door open while I ran and got the package then opened the gate and got back in the car. The whole operation took less than two minutes—maybe even less than a minute. I didn’t time myself since I wasn’t in any great hurry. I only ran to get the package because, well, I don’t really know why except habit. Also I didn’t want to leave the car idling any longer than necessary even though it was in park and not going anywhere. Back in the car I glanced in the rearview mirror. I also did this out of habit but it’s a lucky thing I did because that’s when I realized I was not alone in the car.

There was a Carolina wren perched on the backseat.

I like birds. I really do. But I only like them from a distance. Birds, any birds, up close make me nervous. I will happily admire your pet parakeet, parrot, or Cooper’s hawk as long as it stays in its cage. Don’t invite it to come out and perch on my shoulder or hand or I will freak out. I realize “birds” is a very broad category but the one thing they all have in common is they all have beaks and their beaks are very sharp and that makes me nervous. I was pretty young when I saw Hitchcock’s The Birds and it made a big impression on me, as did Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes*, but that’s another story.

I should also say that Carolina wrens are one of my favorite birds. They’re tiny little birds and I see them at my feeder all the time. They have long, pointy little beaks and because they’re too small to eat the safflower seed I put out they dig through it, flipping seeds everywhere, looking for little bugs and other tasty bits. I love watching them because we’ve got a solid pane of glass between us. But up close, with no protection, I was terrified that little wren in the backseat was going to stab me in the neck with its pointy beak and not only would I bleed to death but I’m driving a rental car and there’d be a major cleanup fee. It’s all I could do to not floor it while driving the approximately twenty feet from the gate to the back of the house where I park the car. But I managed to make it safely, then jumped out. The wren stayed where it was. Maybe it was slightly confused about who I was and why the car was moving. This might be one of those cases where people familiar with animals will say, “It was probably more afraid of you than you were of it” and I can honestly say NO IT WAS NOT. Once out of the car I immediately opened all the doors and ran away to go close the gate and let the wren decide if it wanted to leave or if I was going to have some documents drawn up so it could take over the ownership which someone else would have to get it to sign because there was no way I was getting near it again. After the gate was closed I carefully checked the car. The wren was gone. I could relax.

But checking the car for birds every time I get in is now added to my list of things I do only out of habit.

*Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes opens with the following message:  “In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock made a motion picture entitled The Birds, a film which depicted a savage attack upon human beings by flocks of the winged creatures. People laughed.  In the fall of 1975, 7 million black birds invaded the town of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, resisting the best efforts of mankind to dislodge them.  NO ONE IS LAUGHING NOW.”

Independent Study.

Source: Reddit

A friend shared this social media post of an essay and I thought it was hilarious. He didn’t tell me where it was from so I assumed it was recent, and because I was inspired to write about it I decided to go looking for the original source—specifically seeing if I could find Mr. Pereira. That’s when I found that (1) it’s almost three years old (February 10th, 2020, and don’t get me started on how far away that feels, was the 80th anniversary of Tom and Jerry) and (2) the whole thing was a joke. Alexis Pereira is a comedian and actor and somehow I missed that, at the time he posted it, the “essay” went viral and he got bombarded with responses, mostly from people who thought it was real. That’s got to be a blow to any performer’s ego to tell a joke and even other comedians take it seriously. And here I am three years later just rubbing salt in the wound. Granted I thought it might not be real but I wasn’t sure, at least partly because I really wanted it to be real. I want to believe there are still teachers who will take a printed copy of a student’s paper and write corrections all over it with a red pen. And who gives enough points for creativity and sheer moxie that a completely off-topic paper still gets by with a passing grade.

I had a high school English teacher like that, Coach Peters. Maybe not exactly like that—I don’t think he would have allowed something like this to pass even though he would have found it funny as hell. I didn’t really appreciate it at the time but he really challenged us to think about what we were reading. Up to that point most of my English classes had focused on “reading comprehension”—meaning we’d read something and then have to fill in the blanks or answer multiple choice questions about specific events. Maybe we’d have to identify the simile. When Coach Peters gave us a test on A Separate Peace the first question was, “Is the sunrise on the beach foreshadowing or symbolic of something else?”

I wasn’t prepared to offer an opinion and I had trouble adjusting to his teaching style until he read an essay that a student in another class had written. Coach Peters assigned the other class to write about “What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?” The student filled at least three single-spaced pages with the influence of numerous factors on the sale of tea, bringing in “What’s that got to do with the price of eggs in China?” and how chicken guano was used to fertilize tea fields, all of it made up, of course.

That’s when it really clicked for me what Coach Peters was really trying to do: he wasn’t interested in making us memorize and repeat facts. He wanted us to consider the implications of what we were reading and to use our imaginations. He was the best kind of teacher.

At least that’s what I think.

Take Me To Your Mascot.

School has been back in session for a few weeks now which means it’s time for a pop quiz! Match the following advertising mascots with little known trivia about their personal lives.

  1. Mr. Clean
  2. The Jolly Green Giant
  3. The Energizer Bunny
  4. Snap, Crackle, and Pop
  5. Chester Cheetah
  6. Captain Morgan
  7. The Pillsbury Doughboy
  8. The Michelin Man
  9. Mr. Peanut
  10. Ronald McDonald

 

A. Also owns a modest chain of car wash places with locations in Van Nuys, Pasadena, and Yorbalinda.

B. Worked with Ted Healy in vaudeville before moving to food marketing.

C. Lives in Nebraska, only travels by hovercraft.

D. Showed up at an audition for mascots after misreading the ad as a sale for “ascots”.

E. Has 20/20 vision but can only read Braille.

F. Did an episode of Undercover Boss wearing a vintage toupee and fake beard previously owned by Eisenhower.

G. An accomplished bass player, often touring with Herman’s Hermits

H. Also has a line of athleisure wear.

I. Went to college to study nuclear physics, was expelled after a bizarre incident involving a Geiger counter, a box of Brillo pads, and an electric eel.

J. Can’t eat gluten.

Scoring

1-2: You have no idea who most of these characters are. Congratulations–this is a winning score.

3-4: You were raised on a commune in upstate New York but have been acclimating to “normal” life. Good luck on your CPA exam.

5-6: One of your parents made you watch “Days Of Our Lives” with them each afternoon during the summer.

7-8: Both of your parents made you watch “Days Of Our Lives” with them each afternoon during the summer.

9-10: You are an advertising mascot.

 

Answer key:

1-F

2-D

3-G

4-B

5-E

6-C

7-J

8-A

9-H

10-I

Not Retiring.

Most of the time I don’t think about retirement because it’s still several years away for me, and hopefully I’ll have plenty of time to think about it when I get to it—more time than I have now, anyway. A few years ago a retired guy wanted me to work on a project with him which I agreed to do but when I didn’t have at least a couple of hours a day every day to spend on it he told me I wasn’t managing my time well. I replied that, unlike him, I already had forty hours a week committed to work and he said he didn’t have time to listen to excuses. So that was the end of that.

This weekend, though, I ran into a friend from work who retired in 2019—she really timed it perfectly. We’ve seen each other a few times since then, but not as much as we saw each other when she was still working. She was in a different building and I’d see her at least once every couple of weeks, usually because I was cutting through her building on my way to somewhere else. I asked her what she’d been doing and she started listing off volunteer projects, doing a little consulting, she’d formerly done some teaching and she had a couple of students who were visiting Nashville so she’d been cleaning her house and scraping ice off the sidewalk because they were going to come and see her–you can tell she’s not shy and not retiring–and after that she was planning to start getting her garden beds ready for the spring planting.

“So what have you been up to?” she asked.

Slightly slack-jawed I said, “Well, I got out of bed this morning and made some perfect oatmeal in the microwave, so, yeah, I’ve got that going for me.”

It wasn’t that bad, but it was still funny to me that it sounded like a full day of her retired life was more involved than some of my days working, which is great and made me think about how when I do finally get to retirement I hope I’ll find as many ways to fill up my time. Speaking of time and retirement, though, also reminded me of a joke by the late, great Dave Allen:

You wake to the clock, you go to work to the clock, you clock-in to the clock, you clock out to the clock, you come home to the clock, you eat to the clock, you drink to the clock, you go to bed to the clock, you get up to the clock, you go back to work to the clock.You do that for forty years of your life and you retire — what do they fucking give you? A clock!

Take It With A Grain Of Salt.

Some friends and I got into a discussion of tea drinking when an American scientist suggested adding a pinch of salt to tea, and ambassadors scrambled to issue a statement to calm our friends across the pond, saying, “The US embassy will continue to make tea in the proper way – by microwaving it.”

I said I was surprised George Orwell hadn’t been brought up since he wrote an essay outlining his very specific views on how tea should be prepared and served, and he even had a word to say about salt—after he tore into those who add sugar to their tea.

I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Now I’d never accuse old George of being tasteless but I’ve had tea with sugar and I still get a distinct tea flavor. Most of the time, though, I don’t add sugar to my tea because I like to nibble on something sweet, and I just realized I could set off a whole new international incident over what’s truly a “biscuit”, and if you should put gravy on it. And my opinion is that if you like sugar in your tea go for it. If you like milk, cream, lemon, whatever—put it in there. Add salt and pepper if that’s your jam—or even jam. Or drink something other than tea. I know “Do whatever you like” is a strong statement but I’m sticking by it.

I also pulled out this collection of oolong tea bags from Taiwan with funny animal characters that someone gave me and decided to try each one.

First up was the monkey. Right away I realized the design is very clever—they allow the tea bag to sit at the top of your cup while steeping and then you just pull it out. Also if you’re serving tea to five people each one gets their own animal. According to the card it’s a Formosan Macaque. Would the tea taste like banana, or monkey? I was relieved it just tasted like tea.

Next was the Black-faced Spoonbill. Would it taste like a spoon? Or a bill? Or chicken? No, it tasted like tea.

The Panda made me think of the Kung Fu Panda movies, although those have a lot more and different animals and are set in China. I was still relieved the tea tasted like tea and not Jack Black.

Next was the Formosan Sika Deer and I really like how it was just chilling as it sat in hot water.

I saved the best for last—the Formosan Black Bear, voted the representative animal of Taiwan. It lets you know it’s only going down with a mighty roar and that you should be prepared. For tea.

 

Night Birds.

The barred owl was back last night, calling out under the almost full and brightly ringed moon. A couple of weeks ago I was taking the garbage out in the dark, because of course that’s the best possible time to carry an overstuffed twenty-pound plastic bag around the patio, down a set of steps, behind the car, and under the deck where there’s no light at all. I heard the barred owl’s distinctive call, “who cooks for you? who cooks for you?” from the southeast, where there’s still a pretty heavily wooded area between houses. I stopped to see if another one would answer. We sometimes also hear great horned owls and my wife can hoot back at them and get them to respond, once even convincing one to move closer. I can’t tell if the owl knew it was talking to a person and thought it was funny or whether it was fooled and ultimately disappointed when the owl it thought it was talking to vanished.

In classical mythology owls are a symbol of wisdom, associated with Athena, although I think corvids rank higher on the scale of bird intelligence. Other cultures see owls as bad omens, though—they fly silently in the darkness and swoop down on prey, and they have those large, rounded heads. As with all anthropomorphizing, though, I think it says more about us than it does the animals themselves. They’re just trying to get through the night, take down a few mice, and cough up the bones and fur, which is a pretty efficient way to eat. Imagine being able to swallow a chicken whole and have your stomach strip away all the good parts so you could hack up the feathers and bones in a compact mass about half an hour later. It would make dining out a lot more interesting.

I’m not sure what the fact that I’m thinking about this says about me.

I was happy it was a barred owl and not a barn owl, which I know are around here and are very distinctive, I’d even say handsome, even among owls, but they make a sound like someone being murdered. And then there are screech owls, which I have heard around here. Their call sounds like the laugh of an evil clown hiding in the trees waiting to eat children, although you have to respect the evil clowns for swallowing them whole then about half an hour later hacking up all the bones in a compact mass inside the backpack.

After the barred owl my favorite experience is the night I was home alone and I kept hearing a repeating bass sound, like someone playing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida just outside the window. Finally I went outside to investigate, because of course when I hear a weird noise the best thing to do is go and wander around in the dark to see what’s causing it. We have a big shagbark hickory tree right outside the den window, and silhouetted against the night sky I could see a great horned owl sitting there.

We stared at each other for several minutes, then I went back inside. It seemed like the wise thing to do.

Not So Speedy Delivery.

The street in front of our house has been like glass for the past several days, with the few cars that have chanced it going very, very slowly. We also had a tree fall in our front yard before it snowed, right in front of the porch, and I feel sorry for any delivery people. My wife got a package delivered and I could see the footprints of the delivery person who’d walked a straight line across the yard then had to make a detour around the fallen tree. That’s some real dedication when they could have stuffed it in the mailbox.

My neighbor also makes me feel guilty about delivery people—not just now but all the time. He’s retired and I guess he watches the updates so he knows exactly when they’re coming, and when they arrive he runs out to take the package then asks, “Hey, would you like a bottled water? Coke, Pepsi, regular, diet, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, 7UP, ginger ale, ginger beer, ginger snap, orange soda, grape soda, cherry soda, Cherry Coke, Crystal Pepsi, Fanta, Tab, Mountain Dew, root beer, lemonade, seltzer, iced tea, coffee, chocolate milk, Moxie, cream soda, juice, a banana, an apple, a kiwi, a bag of trail mix, a slice of cheesecake?”

Sometimes I think delivery people avoid our street because he’ll hold them up for half an hour.

Anyway I’ve had a package out for delivery for six years. Or six days. At this point it’s hard to tell, but every day I’ve gotten this notification that “Your package is out for delivery” and should arrive by 10PM. I’ve watched the blue line creep toward the “Delivered” dot, thinking, hey, they just might make it today. And every day at around nine o’clock at night I get a notification that it’s delayed and they’ll deliver it as soon as possible. It occurred to me yesterday that I could cancel the order and re-order it again when the streets are clear, but that seems like a cruel prank on the delivery driver who’s made the Sisyphean effort every day. What I really want is a delivery option that says, “Hey, I appreciate the effort, but this isn’t urgent—just wait until you can deliver it safely.”

Since that’s not available I have been watching how close the delivery person gets so maybe I can thank them personally, give them a bottle of water, and let them get away before my neighbor sees them.