For Want of a Nail...

I've been reading - okay, listening to - 1776, the novel about the year. It's a fascinating story about the early stages of the Revolutionary War and the critical battles and events that take place. One thing that strikes me is how thin was the margin by which the colonies succeeded in their attempt to break away from the Crown. There are so many times when, had a relatively small event taken place, an entire battle and, likely, the entire war would have been lost. And who knows what our world would be like had that happened? It seems that all wars have those little things which occur and on which the fate of something larger, perhaps the entire enterprise, hangs. That anyone is here at all is against the odds...

Reading is FUNdamental!

I was reading an article today, and it quoted Steve Jobs as saying something about not caring about Kindle (Amazon's new electronic book/reader) because "40 percent of the people in the US read one book or less each year." Or words to that effect. Then the article went on to quote some other study that said 27 percent of the people in the US do not read even one book per year, but that a like amount of people read 15 or more books per year (hmmmm... the law of conservation of reading?). But really, whatever the stat, it sounds like there is some really large number of people who don't read even one book each year. What a ghastly statistic! I think of the books I have read, am reading and (hopefully) will read, and I'm appalled that so many people won't get the enjoyment that I have from books. I don't think it has anything to do with class or snobbery, this is basic - reading, good, not reading, bad. I can't even imagine it, really. For as long as I can remember, I have read. I remember one of my early reading coups was reading all of the Tom Swift Jr. books available to date when I was little, maybe eight or so (and it was a lot - in the twenties, I think). And after that, so, so much - starting with science fiction, but branching out into everything. My life has been immeasurably enriched by reading, and to think that there are people who just... don't; it's sad. I know there are literacy problems for some, and language problems for others, but if we say 30 percent we're starting to talk about 100 million people for pete's sake! I've met people who have said in passing, "oh, I don't read books," but I've never really taken it to heart. How can one not read? My wife and I have so many books that we can't deal with them all. In fact, because I moved into her house, not vice versa, most of mine are still in boxes in the basement, sniff...
I don't even want to think about what this means in terms of an informed electorate *shudder* I think I'm going to have some more wine, read Guns, Germs and Steel and contemplate a world without the written word. Yikes.

The Burn

I downhill-skied for most of my life. I began when I was eleven, with wooden skies, cable bindings, "boots," and poles. Ski wear was jeans with longjohns underneath, a wool sweater and a jacket. A pair of goggles, gloves or mittens, and a hat rounded out the ensemble. Helmet? Puh-leeze. Skis changed - Metal! Fiberglass! Composite! Longer! Shorter! Parabolic! Clothes changed - Polypro! Ski Pants! Gore-tex! Goggles changed to the point that they sometimes actually didn't fog or ice up. And on I skied over the decades, on the ice, rocks and occasional powder of the northeast, on the deep, vast pillows of snow out west. And when it was time, I taught my three sons to downhill ski. Tiny little boots, and short little skis, and lots of clothing and helmets and goggles, all of it outgrown each year and handed down to a younger brother. And finally, as soon as he could formulate an argument, each of my sons said goodbye forever to skiing and began snowboarding.
So that is how it came to be that, three years ago, facing especially crummy conditions which left few of the difficult slopes open or worth skiing on, I decided to try snowboarding. I had taken one lesson several years before, and what I remembered most of that lesson was that one falls down a lot when learning to snowboard. True to my recollection, when I started out, I fell down. A lot. Hard. I fell on my back, my front, my knees, my arms, my head. It hurt. But I kept at it, watching others, trying to find the key that would let me move from pathetic novice to intermediate, a move that can happen literally in an instant in snowboarding. And it did. Something clicked, my body got it, and there I was.
Which is how, three years later, I am able to go with my sons and enjoy their company as we snowboard down whatever the mountain we're on can throw at us. And the burn comes in your thighs, after you have raced down a double black diamond without stopping, and your calves ache and your thighs are on fire and your breath is coming in gasps. It's great.

Things That Don't Work - Part I

Sometimes things break. Sometimes they slip through quality control. Sometimes it's just a fluke and a thing that should work doesn't. But then there are those things that have been designed to do something, and they just... don't. They simply don't work. This thought came to me recently as I was opening a box of cookies. It was like many thousands of boxes of stuff that I have opened over my life. Cookies, cereal, crackers, their boxes all have the same design - one side says "open other end," and the other side has one flap with a tab glued onto another flap with a punch-out slot with a tiny note that says "pull here." I always do. I always pull there. And it NEVER WORKS. The top cardboard flap just rips in two as the glue keeps the two pieces of cardboard together. And because the top piece never properly separates, the box never properly reseals. Now, I could see this happening sometimes, what with the automatic glue dispenser maybe dropping a bit too much glue onto the boxtop, or unusual humidity causing some kind of glue foul-up, or something. But honest-to-gosh, these things never work. Think about it - they have a one hundred percent failure rate! Who makes something like that? My mind ricochets all over the place as I contemplate it. I mean, someone actually invented this system and, more importantly, must have patented it. That means somebody made money on a system that fails so spectacularly that it never, ever, works. Second, surely no executive of the companies that sell their products in these packages has ever actually tried to open one. Or worse, maybe they have, and they thought they just got the one bad box. Or maybe they just don't give a crap and are laughing at all the poor saps trying to carefully open their boxes of Cap'n Crunch so they don't rip the top off. I don't know which possibility is the most annoying... And finally, what is one to do? Just rip the damn thing open? Try to make it work by carefully slitting the glue with a knife? Scream?

I hate it when things don't do what they're supposed to do.

I-Phooey

I don't own an i-pod, though all three of my sons and my stepdaughter do. And I confess that I might own one if I had several hundred dollars I could spend on that kind of luxury. Still, I get mightily honked off by Apple's DRM (digital rights management - the software that says "yes, you bought this, but it isn't really yours"). Of course they aren't the only ones, though the music industry, at least, seems to be changing, primarily because there are so many ways around DRM that they are realizing they just look too greedy.

I prefer Apple to Microsoft, the i-phone is gee-whiz cool, but DRM just sucks.

No Smoking

My father died of emphysema when he was, by today's standards, fairly young - just 70. He was a wreck for a number of years before he died, as his lungs failed and he suffered a series of strokes. Even when I was young, though, he was incapable of much physical exertion without needing a rest to catch his breath. He smoked from the time he was very young, probably ten or so, the New York City of the early nineteen hundreds having a considerably different perspective on child smoking than it - and the rest of our society - do today. He smoked Pall Malls, unfiltered, probably at least a pack a day. He smoked at home, in the car, on the train and at work. Only when he was told he wouldn't last much longer did he stop, cold, in his 60's, never to smoke again. Maybe it gave him a few more years, but many of them were pretty crummy for him.

On the other hand, my maternal grandfather also smoked from the time he was a little boy growing up in NYC, but this was the late 1800's. He smoked cigarettes, cigars, pipes and he did so until he died in his 90's, with few, if any, health problems that could be related to his habit. While at a physical late in his life, he asked his doctor if he should stop smoking. The doctor, a wise man, looked helplessly at him and said he didn't see why at this point.

I've never smoked cigarettes. I do smoke an occasional cigar or pipe. The fact that I don't inhale comforts me, but I know that all kinds of nasty things can still develop in my mouth, throat, tongue, etc. But I like something about the ritual of a cigar or a pipe. So I'll balance the risks and benefits. Our society has an unhealthy urge to live risk - free, but of course that wouldn't be living. I'm very cautious in what I do, but I do things that many people think are too risky - scuba, motorcycle, mountain biking. It isn't that I'm a daredevil, or looking for cheap thrills, but I enjoy doing these things, and the odds of injury are not high if one is careful. We all find the risk level we are comfortable with; some people look at me and say 'no way.' I look at others, like those who climb thousand foot cliffs with no rope and say 'no way.'

It was George Carlin who said that everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac.

Cloverfield

I'll admit, I'm intrigued by the Cloverfield ads and the trailer. I remember seeing the trailer at the Transformers movie, and thinking it was both annoying and fascinating. Now that it's almost here, I'm looking forward to it. Not without serious concerns, however (to the extent one can have serious concerns about a monster movie). Most significantly, I think if the camera bobbles all over the place for two hours I'm going to get a massive migraine. I can deal with the whole "found film" concept, but couldn't the film that was found have been shot with a steadicam? I never bothered to see Blair Witch for this reason, and even though the effects for this movie look much better, I'm still not sure I'll be able to deal with it. But today's whippersnappers will watch it unfazed, having been brought up on videos with no shot that lasts longer than half a second. Sigh.

Death and Taxes

The other day I received a tax bill that I had neither expected nor budgeted for, so now I must will into existence an additional $1500 by the end of March. And yesterday I found out that a former Scoutmaster of the troop my son belonged to died from skin cancer (so long, Tac; you were a good soul and a wonderful leader). So as I was jogging today, musing on the impermanence of all things physical, the phrase above came to mind, words linked together because of their similarity in that they represent things we fear or dislike, but cannot change. Yet they aren't the same at all. One is a man-made artifact of a civilization that has created a compact between people and the government they create. The other is - so far, and I will be really pissed off if it turns out that my generation is one of the last to have to deal with death other than from accident or assault because of advances in biology, nanotechnology, etc. - a barrier we as a species have been unable to surpass. The Ultimate Equalizer.

Still, there is a depressing similarity in that both feel like something I can't do anything about. Government has grown so large and impersonal that objections to taxes by an individual seem pointless, no matter how mind-bogglingly wasteful the programs they fund are (TSA, anyone?). And as for death, well, I can try to eat decently, and exercise, and take a few pills that may or may not do anything, but there could be some aneurysm tucked away in the folds of my brain ready to pop and if it does, well, that's that. Some tears (there had better be!) a little service, Domini, Domini, and move on. And of course, even if I do everything right, in fewer than sixty years, I'm toast.

I'm tired, and someone I liked died before he should have, and I owe taxes I haven't planned on. Still, I'm not dead yet, and I have a foxy wife and great children and I can still jog and play and read, so I'll get out of this funk and be positive. Because what's the alternative, be negative? Phooey.

subprime

Ugh. I've come to dislike that term over the past year. I had a subprime mortgage when I bought my house in 2004. In fact, it was the only way that I could afford to buy the house, what with maintenance and child support payments, a need to stay geographically near my sons in an upscale high-tax suburb, and a salary that was likely to decrease dramatically in a few years when a new political administration came in and I was shown the door from my politically connected job. I only needed the house for about six years; long enough to get my youngest out of high school. It was a screaming deal. I was paying less for my mortgage than I had been for the small apartment I had rented for the past year or so. The mortgage was packaged so that it would have one (very large) bump at the five year mark. I knew the terms, I knew what the bump would mean and what it would cost, I weighed my options and I signed.

The point here is not that I am a financial wizard (oh, puh-leeez!), but that I, like most who took those deals, knew what I was doing (ok, that sounds a little smug, but you get the idea). No one put a gun to my head, no one tricked me, no one lied to me. Now tell me again: why should the government - ANY government, federal or state - take money from you and give it to me in the event that I can't make my monthly payments?

The answer, class, is: they shouldn't. If I'm having trouble financially I should a) contact the financial institution to see if I can postpone or moderate the effects of an increase; b) contact friends, family, anyone who could help me financially (oh, the humiliation... but it's better to get a government handout?); c) get another job; d) sell the house you can't afford!!!

But I guess to many that sounds cruel or unfair. So our elected leaders go on and on about the subprime crisis and plan new ways to extend the reach of government into everything that we do. Bah.

here we go

Why - oh, why! - in God's name, with so many literate, engaging, interesting people out there emptying their brains onto their blogs, should i start one? Ego? Boredom? Something Else? (let's choose that one for now)

Am I a frustrated critic of our culture (golly, we sure need one more of those)? Who cares? I've had a glass of wine and I feel like saying something, so here we go: I absolutely despise the way the media cover politics (holy cow! he's soooo original! I must read more!). Honestly, aside from those poor souls who are actually addicted to the political process, who can stand the twenty-four hour reporting on caucuses, primaries, polls, etc., etc., etc. It's almost a year off! Stop it! Stopitstopitstopit!

There, I feel better.

I was reading about Jack Benny today, and I was sorry that my children haven't really had a chance to enjoy his gentle humor. I've introduced them to Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, Popeye (the original Fleischer cartoons) Hope and Crosby's Road movies, and many other figures their contemporaries know nothing about, but I can only do so much.

I guess that's it for now. Hmmmm, that wasn't so bad.