It's Not the Cough

I hadn't had bronchitis in nearly a decade. Life was pretty good, at long last, I thought. And then came this summer.

After my exhausting trip out west and back, I guess my resistance to viruses was somewhat lower than it had been before my travels.

So I'm enjoying the thrill of having acquired a very nasty deep cough, exacerbated by the high pollen count triggering post-nasal drip, which, in turn, triggers a constant tickle in the back of the throat, which means a steady shallow cough, and, well, let's just say that a couple more months like this, and my abs should be bikini-worthy. Well, not really, but they're definitely getting an exceptional workout.

Several of my friends have also been hit with this bug, and I'm wondering if they discovered the one thing which I'd almost forgotten, from all my many earlier bouts with respiratory hell: if you're not careful, you can run out of toilet paper.

I'm pretty sure most people, when they hear that a nasty cough is going around, don't even imagine this could be a problem. After all, it's a cough. Just a cough. You know, a little uncomfortable lung activity. Clear the throat, force a little air past those tightening bronchi, all in the upper torso, nothing else (unless, maybe there's the possibility that you, say, throw your back out, or bite your tongue, or some such). And, if you believe people involved in show business, then a nasty cough sounds and looks a lot like Anne Elk clearing her throat.



(I saw a cough medicine commercial where the "sufferer" sounded just like that. Honestly. Real, deep, clear-the-lungs coughs resemble this in the same way that cow pats resemble fly specks. Both are unpleasant, but there are several orders of magnitude between the one and the other. But if the advertiser is treating only this level, I can see how it might be successful. For me, over-the-counter drugs are pretty much useless.)

But there is so much more to it than just a cough. There is that moment when the body, in paroxysm, works to expunge everything. Everything. That little bit of pressure you were feeling from your bladder just a minute ago…no longer.

It's a little bit like being a kid getting ready for a long trip in the car. "Did everybody go to the bathroom?" Even if you didn't think you needed to, you still needed to, because you never knew when the next opportunity would arise, and you couldn't predict how many big bumps there were in the highway before you reached that next rest area. Moms teach you these things. So does experience.

When given a choice of teachers, go with Mom.

And, so, for the sake of my wardrobe – and my sanity, such as it is – I requested that we increase our supply of tissue rather dramatically, just in case.

Because, despite Ogden Nash's claim

It's not the cough that carries you ough,  

It's the coffin they carry you offin 

as bad as it is, the part of bronchitis most maddening, to me, isn't really the illness itself.

It's trips to the potty that drive you dotty.

Guilty pleasures

We all have them. One of my favorites actually contributes to my living cleanly, though. I like bubble baths. I like to fill the bathroom with lit candles, fill the tub with hot water topped with a great heap of foam, and lower myself into the bath for an hour or so.

It isn't because I like to luxuriate, though (pleasant though that may be). The candles are a mask, in case somebody comes along and sees the residual bubbles by the drain.

I like the bubbles. I sing the old jingle, "Mister Bubble in the tub'll/ Get you squeaky clean...." I splash about for a while. But mostly, I sculpt the foam around me. I'm particularly fond of turning myself into Santa Claus, and/or extend my mammaries an extra few cup sizes (and make them far perkier than they have been, of late). But I've made myself into a unicorn, built a spare cat at the edge of the bath, built handlebars and gone for imaginary bike rides, and made up countless other fantasies in foam.

I'm led to believe that this is immature, and therefore inappropriate for a woman of my advanced years (gad, but once one puts a half-century behind one, people make such assumptions about one's condition!).

What I would like to know is, am I the only one who likes the froth for the fun of it, or are there other supposed adults who, when they build a head of lather, do something other than simply hide beneath it?

Even the French are offended

The peasants seem to be in the early stages of an uprising.

The masses, little by little, seem to be rejecting the notion that the famous, fatuous and filthy rich are entitled to special treatment by mere dint of their having garnered their fifteen minutes before the public.

Not only are the peons attending "tea parties", but I've heard from reliable sources that the majority of those who post on Huffington Post are not falling into rows behind their Hollywood Elitist leaders as it comes to child-rapist justice-dodging filmmaker Roman Polanski, either. Members of the French government may have come out in support of him, but they're hearing a whole lot of angry, disgusted feedback from the general French populace. The masses seem to think that drugging and sodomizing a thirteen-year-old and then fleeing the country before justice can be served, then whining from his many palatial retreats about the hardships he has to suffer due to his flight from the law, are not the actions of a responsible adult citizen of this world, and supporting his actions because he's "a brilliant artist" is a bit, well, déclassé.

If they start figuring this out about a man with a camera and a nasty continued tendency to blame the victim, perhaps they'll start figuring this out about the rest of the corruptocrats and their enablers.

I think I might need to take up knitting.

Robbing mourners

For once, I'm not going political. I'm not ranting against taxes (although I still think the idea that taxing insurance companies is going to lower insurance costs is absurd, to say the least, and inheritance taxes are, inherently, a cruel joke upon grieving family members).

This morning, I'm actually concerned with a news article over the weekend from the Quad Cities, in which a 66-year-old woman and her 40-year-old son were arrested for burglary. They read obituaries, and broke into the homes of widows while the families were out attending husbands' funerals.

I know this is nothing new, because, more than thirty years ago, some folks who lived in our neighborhood had their house robbed while they were bidding their final farewells to father. The thieves were fast and quiet, and nobody even realized what was going on until the family returned home to find the place ransacked and their precious heirlooms gone.

Other families have suffered similarly, over the years.

It seems to me, a smart funeral home director would consider offering a service to customers, in which a bonded employee could sit on security at the home of the mourner, as a guarantee against just such a violation. That way, nobody from among family and friends would be obliged to miss saying goodbye. I'm sure a creative businessman (or woman) could figure out a way to work the cost for such a service into other areas, so as to make it appear to be a free courtesy to the bereaved, and thus provide even greater comfort.

Not that I'm worried about my own house, in the event of my passing. Whoever steals from me, it's his own darned fault what he gets. But, come on! Grieving families deserve a little extra thought.

I'm thinking of taking up coffee again

I quit drinking coffee more than a decade ago, when I discovered it caused muscle spasms in my jaw. But now, I'm seriously considering returning to the old habit. The reason? It just may ease some of my back problems.

Whee!


HT: JWF

Sodden and covered in slip...

I emerged from my cellar. My water heater (not, contrary to the common usage, a hot-water-heater, as I only heat the cold stuff to make it hot) decided to shut down some time Sunday evening, and I did not notice it until yesterday evening, when I had to scrub away the day.

There is no problem with the appliance, however. The trouble lies in the rains. My basement's raw clay floor seems to have reached saturation late in the evening of Sunday, from the heavy rains dumped upon us over the weekend, as they leaked through my cracked and battered bulkhead. And, even though the water heater is on a platform several inches above the clay, the water pooled high enough to cause the pilot and the gas to automatically shut off.

In theory, I could go down there and bail water out into the alley for a few hours, but I could see that nature is taking its course, and the water will be absorbed into the clay in a day or two. At that time, I will be able to lay in some rugs or mats or a few boards upon which to walk, so I don't slide around on the slick clay and fall in the remaining muddy mess... the way I did last evening.

And I had no hot water with which to wash the mess off me.


I feel so... pioneer-y.



Maybe I'll take a hot shower at Mom's, today.

Aaaaaahhh! whirlwind!!!

Okay, so not a weather phenomenon. It's just going back to being a busy busy time... end of summer and all that. I'm just grateful I don't have kids to get to school, these days. Instead, I've had time spent with meine kleine Schwester and her young'uns, actually enjoying each other's company (one of us must have miraculously matured over the years... and I'm pretty sure it ain't me, babe). While my sis was away for a day, their grandma and I took the kids to Brookfield Zoo near Chicago (three-plus hours on the highway each way, with a long day of looking at critters in between). We also had a little bit of a birthday party for one of the visitors, and a few other small events to fill the hours rather completely. It was spiffy.

But now they're gone, and I'm left with actual obligations... like, the Friends of the Library have agreed to march in the Prime Beef Festival parade. I'm not going to be able to sit on the sidelines and take pix. Hmmmph. I've made the banners all on my little old lonesome, and bought my outfit (if you get an outfit you can be a cowboy, too), and dug out my cane so I can survive the long time on my feet again. I've also volunteered to man the table at the fair, selling raffle tix for a bag o'boox I won't be able to enter to win... gosh darn it. I'll be working the table Thursday, Friday evenings and Saturday morning, followed by scoping out the cook-off in the afternoon, Saturday. All work and no play...

Plus, this coming Tuesday afternoon is the September meeting of the Warren County Doll Club. It'll be a big, busy day for the club, as we'll need to elect new officers, plan a trip, and plan our big November show and sale.

And those are just the official things. I also promised the Bat I would help her make the blackberry jam, the crabapple jelly, and stuff involving pickling, I think. I have a tree and two berry (goose) bushes to plant, and another set of canes (golden rasp) to divide and replant. I have a set of graphics to work up and a genuine deadline attached to them. I have two weeks' worth of laundry accumulated and no safe way to fake it when I run out of foundation garments. The car needs an oil change. The cats need to be taken in for their shots. And I think I may need to write a column again. Hmmmm.

To think I came to Monmouth to lead a quiet life!

Beezzy beezzy week

It's been a bit wild, here, of late. Aside from the excitement of finally getting to harvest several quarts per session of pie cherries from one little tree in my back yard every other dawn, I've also had honest-to-goodness things to do outside the house. For example, a week ago last Friday, because I'm an available and somewhat insane member of our local Friends of the Library (FotL), I volunteered as an adult supervisor for the first six hours of a lock-in for tweens at our county's public library. I'm not accustomed, these days, to being out of bed after 10 p.m. (not that I'm asleep at that hour -- the cats expect a few hours of attention, affection and grooming, first). But on Fridays and Saturdays, I usually have to wake up extra-early for things like, um, you know, um auctions, so I actually try to rest in advance of them. It doesn't always work, but then, there's that thing about a man's reach and his grasp (oh, don't be so sexist!)...

So, as I was saying. Lock-in. Young'uns. Reading them a ghost story and getting them started down the path to mental problems. Bwahahahaha! Then going home, just after midnight, leaving them in the capable hands of the head librarian and two other members of the FotL.

Then the auctions.

This past week we also had company come, so there was a mess o' preparation to be done. Add to that, the FotL had planned a Book and Bake Sale to run in conjunction with Monmouth's Pottery Swap Meet on the Public Square. I spent all week making fudge of all sorts (my personal fave is the peppermint, but the best-selling was the one with dried cherries – not from my trees–, cranberries, and blueberries in it) and a gigantic batch of banana muffins. Mom and I also ran up to the library repeatedly to drop off books, a cooler, bottled water, sody-pop, and a number of other supplies for the event, and then I spent Thursday's meeting time for FotL making signs, followed by more signs Friday afternoon. Saturday morning, bright and early (after picking a gallon of cherries again and delivering them to Mom's refrigerator), I went to help set up the whole shebang, and I sat and sold sweets and drinks until 2 p.m.

Somewhere around 1 in the afternoon, the Buchanan Center for the Arts began its formal reception for the entrants in the Amateur Art show, and announced prizewinners. About a half hour later, Mom came out and handed me an envelope. I won $10 for horrible mention, for one of my recent watercolor sketches! And I didn't have to give an acceptance speech (although I did have to give credit where it was due -- my painting instructor from Monmouth College came out to see me, and I admitted as I do now, without his course of instruction, I'd have never learned to use watercolors with any boldness. I was a wishy-washy kid, believe it or not).

So, anyway, I got a prize, sold some yummies, then went to a crowded house at my parents' place, here. I ate, I chatted, I went home and watched Rose Tyler's death on Doctor Who (the new-ish series airs from 11:05 until just before midnight, Saturdays, followed by earlier ones, this time once again introducing *ecchh* Peri).

The next morning, auction. It was a big one -- a friend who had passed away two years ago had collected some pretty spiffy old and antique firearms. The auction house had 63 of them for sale, yesterday, and the proceeds will more than make the down payment on the widow's rebuilding the family home. I was not surprised to see how large the crowd was, in the morning, but it did take me aback how many stayed on after the guns were sold, to bid on other tchotchkes and gewgaws. I bought some of our old friend's postcards of trains. I wished I'd had the money for more -- such as his photos of locomotives, rail cars, crossings and crossbucks, and so on, but we all have our limits, I guess. At least we have some things to remember him by.

After auction. Dinner at Elke's, with the crowd (extended family). It was lovely. After supper, it rained, and, since there was no lightning, thunder, or high wind, Elke's two kids and I went out to play in the downpour. No umbrellas. No problem, it was still only 80ºF outside, and we don't do air conditioning. Still, all that playing exhausted me. I was home and asleep before 10 p.m.

Best of all, this morning, there were still enough cherries on the tree I gathered another half gallon. And I didn't get bitten by a zillion skeeters and gnats, because I decided to off myself, first. heh.

Still, the activities are not yet over. Guests from foreign land are still in town, so Mom & I will be doing more cooking and cleaning. My phone -- the cheapest one available from the cellular service our family uses -- decided to quit, so we have to go replace it. Lucky for me, I have a very good friend whose husband gave me his exceedingly nice cast-off, so I upgrade while replacing, free of charge. Not so lucky, we have to take it to the experts to transfer the accounts. But nothing terribly frenetic is coming, to my knowledge, this week.

Lemme catch my breath. It's good to just sit in front of a computer and vegetate, for a while.

About my luggage...

With the announcement all over the news that American Airlines is going to start charging for each and every checked bag on flights, I started to wonder: when they lose my bags next time, will I get reimbursed merely for the $15 they charged me for getting it there, or will they do the honorable thing and give me enough to replace what they lost? Shouldn't some of that gas money for shipping a bag go into a real insurance policy, too? Or is that too much incentive for the to hire competent baggage handlers?


The decision to bill folks for extra weight is completely understandable and logical, with fuel prices increasing. Nevertheless, if you itemize costs, the company becomes directly accountable for the items. Just adding a general increase in ticket costs for everybody would, I imagine, have been safer for them in the long run.

At least it's no longer snowing

We're not having the best of days, around here, today. It's not the Worst. Day. Evah., mind you, but I can't call it a stunningly gorgeous spring day fit for a song.

For starters, about 9 a.m., Mom got a call from one of her cousins, informing her that her (long-estranged) half brother had died in his sleep, from complications from his diabetes, and from general wear-and-tear that his addictions had dumped upon him. My uncle was nearly sixteen years younger than Mom -- or, if you will, a little less than ten years my senior. The last time I saw him was at his wedding. That would have been sometime in the mid-1970s. In other words, losing him hasn't really been much of a loss for me or Mom (or the rest of us, here), but that's also what makes this day so much more difficult for Mom. She always feels a little guilty that she didn't get the chance to know her brother, especially during the years when he tried to get clean. But we're still not sure how to react.

She and Dad will drive up to the funeral in the suburbs of Chicago, tomorrow, and return home on Thursday. I'll stay here with the dog -- and not bring the cats over. Might be hard to sleep in a non-cattified bed, but it's probably best for all of us, considering that, about the time Mom picked up the phone, I was hit with my first wave of nausea -- there's some sort of stomach virus going around, and it very kindly stopped by to pay a call on me. I have a little fever and a lot of aches and sleep for 1.5 hours at a time, followed by 45 minutes of waking time to print out the programs I've been producing for the Monmouth Civic Orchestra concert (Saturday, 7 p.m. at Monmouth's First Lutheran Church).

Have had to cancel three appointments I was supposed to keep over the next two days. Hope the bug doesn't stay around long -- tomorrow's weather is supposed to get to just the way I like it: 72º F. and mostly sunny. Perfect for playing in the garden and planting apple trees. Don't want to miss what's likely to be the nicest day of the year, just because I'm making offerings to the porcelain god.

Bad package design alert

While preparing to clean up a cooking mess in my mother's kitchen the other day, I noticed a container on her counter. Said container held a roll of chemically-soaked sheets designed for cleaning glass, aptly named "Power-X Glass Wipes." (I think Mom bought them at our favorite boutique.) Somebody, however, seems to have done not so well with the design and layout of text on this canister:
I'm thinking a little judicious rearranging of the "Wipes" would save me from another fit of the giggles.

How to p*ss my father off

I have succeeded royally, this morning, and I'm not at all embarrassed by it.

Pop was preparing to go out and climb onto my garage roof (which, BTW, is corrugated fiberglass panels on a standard 45º slope) to rid it of the big-a$$ branch which lay atop it. After that, he was prepared to get up again and replace or repair the damaged panel.

My father was born in the early years of the depression. He still does not like to spend money when he thinks he can do things himself. The trouble is, even if he could do this job all by himself, he's supposed to be going on a vacation this Saturday, and if he does this kind of job this week, he's likely to have back and leg pains for the next three weeks, and won't enjoy the trip at all. And if he's not having fun, neither is Mom.

But the tree removal expert didn't think it would be wise for an amateur -- even one with a good engineering background -- to be up there messing around while there were large broken branches still dangling above the site. I concurred.

The trouble with all of this was, Pop was gathering his tools to go over this morning, to get started right away. While he was collecting himself and his gear, I did an end-run, calling both the insurance company and the tree removal pro, so that he was obliged to wait to do any work, at least until after the insurance assessor could come examine the damage. Since the storm hit a lot of houses, my place is low on the list of priorities... they probably won't get here until after the folks have packed and started their trip.

So Pop is fuming that it's going to cost too much.

I haven't told him to his face, but I'm figuring a couple thou for the tree guy, and maybe a few hundred for a contractor to replace the roof panel, will be a lot cheaper than hospitalization if even the slightest thing were to go wrong with Pop's plan.

I may be unethical in this, but I can be as gol-durned stubborn as my old man, when necessary.

And Mom seems to support me on this.


Never before have I been so satisfied with making Pop mad -- not even when I was fourteen years old.

Satisfied, yet still scared spitless.

Gratuitous postcard, dammit!

For the past few days I've been fighting a dammed sinus-allergy-triggered migraine. I'm fairly lucky -- I'm not totally incapacitated the way my sister-in-law and some of my friends are by the darned things, any more. I've learned to cope with the early onset, and sort of ridden out the worst of it by hiding in a cool, quiet, dark place.

Unfortunately, around my house, there is either cool or quiet. I don't have central air conditioning. I have only a small window AC unit, installed in my bathroom because it's the only window in the house which has easy access to electricity... and it's not the safest arrangement, at that. And it really only cools the bathroom and the passage, dammit! The bedroom stays somewhere in the just-above-comfortably-warm range.

So I hide at the folks' house, in their guest bedroom, where the AC unit is right there, and is relatively quiet. But then, there is the cat.

Maus was spayed only nine days ago. She has been a house guest a the folks' place since then. And, dammit, she likes to walk all over me, when I'm lying down.

Add to it, yesterday for about an hour and a half, the power went down, so, no coolth. Grumble grumble grumble. Whiiiiiiiinnnnne.

On the plus side, the temperature outside has dropped considerably, today. While it was in the upper 90's the day before yesterday, the front blew through and brought us a forecast high of 85º F, today. There's even a nice, gentle breeze. I can live with that... as soon as the throbbing around my skull stops.

Dammit! Where the heck is that bottle of C₉H₈O₄, anyway?

Summer hurts

My little window unit air conditioner serves moderately well to cool bathroom and bedroom, as long as I close off all the rest of the house (well, technically, it keeps those spaces a little drier than the outside air, and drops the temp by a couple of degrees). I've had it in storage since about this time last year, and, with the nice, mild July we just had, I was getting cocky enough to think it could stay there.

Not so much.

I looked at the forecast the other day and broke down. I thought I could get away with keeping the house closed up during the day and running the fan at night to draw cool air through. Unfortunately, the forecast indicates that, for the next week or so, the humidity is going to be high enough that the overnight temps will not dip below 75º F., and the days will rise into the mid-to-upper 90s, with a daily heat index consistently above 100º F.

That's just too damned hot, for me and for the kittehs.


Yesterday morning, I set up the window, and spent a half hour positioning the darned machine.... In the process, I dropped it once, and when picking it up off the ground outside the first-floor window, I gripped it wrong, somehow, and got fifteen tiny slices down my left-hand ring finger and middle finger. They are perfectly aligned little things, and resemble nothing so much in nature as paper cuts. Bunches of paper cuts. Tidy, orderly, stinging little paper cuts.

I don't really cry or swear at the big injuries. When I fell and mutilated my knees and ankle, a decade ago, I lay on the broken sidewalk and simply gave a plaintive "Will somebody please call nine-one-one?" During my year of recovery exercises, I called the physical therapist a sadistic so-and-so. I may have thought worse words, but that's all he got from me.

But fifteen little slices which barely bled and barely leave a mark today, and I said those words even my sailor grandfather didn't use (or, so I'm told by his surviving shipmates.)

I think the worst thing about getting little paper-cuttish things during the heat of summer is sweat. That salt gets into them and Miracle Max comes to mind... "While you're at it, why don't you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it?" ...fifteen times, all close together.

So, then I have stinging fingertips, an air conditioner grinding away as if it resents having been pulled out of early retirement, and a cat who thinks that, if the windows are closed, he needs to be on the other side of them.

Booger-head TiGrr slipped out the door last night as I was coming in. He's not supposed to be out, especially at night, when the raccoons roam the 'hood. When he came in later (around 02.00 hrs.), he reeked of some other male's spray. I think he and Ole Olafson got into a dispute. Since TiGrr has been repaired, all he can do to make his territory is to piddle, which he did on the rug, adding to the problem of living in an enclosed house with cats to which I am allergic.

I woke this morning with a whalloping sinus headache to which the antihistamines only lightly skimmed the surface.

I also discovered that the air conditioner drips. Inside the house. Thank the inventors of kitteh litter for packaging it in sturdy three-gallon square buckets. The plus side to this is, now I have a source for chlorine-free water for my houseplants...and the cats.

So summer heat isn't all bad news. I can make lemonade, as it were.

Isaiah Washington labeled "lightning rod"

TV critic David Elfman says critics are "grumbling."

They've got their Underoos in an uproar because Isaiah Washington has not been drummed out of the acting biz, but, instead, has been given a pivotal part in the upcoming action series resurrection of "Bionic Woman." It was even suggested that he ought to be forced to act in a gay kiss scene, in order to prove something (I'm not sure what, though).

Elfman seems to think that, because an actor says something stupid and insensitive, it's a rare enough occurrence that the actor should permanently lose his SAG card.

Ummm.

Didn't Washington get sent to some sort of brainwashing camp rehab program? Wasn't the point to "teach him sensitivity"? So, apparently, they're now of the belief that mind-wiping doesn't work, and therefore Washington -- and anybody else who hurts poor widdle gay feewings needs to remain a pariah for all eternity. He's never going to be as sensitive as they are!

To those "grumbling" critics I have one simple thing to say:

GROW THE HELL UP!

Just because somebody says something you don't agree with, just because you feel insulted by a word or a turn of phrase he uses does not give you the right to destroy his career and/or his life. If the guy can do his job, get over the hurt feelings and either let him do his job and learn to respect his work, or just hold your widdle baby grudge for the rest of your life and see who's really doing the damage in your life.

And, before anybody comes a rockin' my boat saying I have no clue what it's like to be picked on... I'm a crazy artist cat-lady who weighs twice what the doctors say I ought (if you heard it said of Michael Moore's dietary habits, I've heard it said of mine). I moved to a small town after I had started school, spoke with a strange accent (ooh -- outsider!). I could list a million more ways in which I know what it's like to have my feelings crushed by somebody, but why bother?

Everybody suffers from hurt feelings once in a while -- some more than others. It's the adults who get over themselves, who don't take it out on others, who consider the source and move on. Sometimes, it's called "forgiveness." More often, it's just shrugging off stupidity and getting on with the process of living.

Not that I think being a television critic in this day and age can be much of a life... still, you work with what you have, don't you?

"Terror suspects" not terrorists, just stupid

According to the Times Online (UK), the two men picked up on suspicion of terrorism for having ordered and received large quantities of petroleum-based fuel were not, after all, buying the gasoline for explosives. If I read this correctly, the "two Asian men" had been picking up the gas to run generators, so their electrical energy usage wouldn't raise flags with the authorities. They were using it to run a very large marijuana-growing operation.

It was a case of gas for grass, and no skin off anybody innocent's a$$. But I guess they did get to ride for free... all the way to the police station.

Boredom = death? I think not!

Instapundit led me to this site, mostly because of the irony of an ACLU caller saying the call would be "monitored for quality assurance." So much for the right to privileged conversation...

But, while that amused the heck out of me -- as well as out of many others -- a few commenters picked up on something which has been gnawing at the back of my brain for a while, now. Sam Dinkin, in his original post, said the following:

There were 360 million US one-way airplane trips taken last year. That's 360 million half hour delays for "increased" security. Let's express that as lifetimes lost--wasted--due to boredom: 250.

All over the place, I hear complaints about the suffering of boredom. I hear it from the kids on my block, from my friends on a Friday evening, from celebrities, and, of course, from those in the media whose livings are made by hyping the Next New Thing. Commenter James Nightshade responds:

Being bored is not actually the same as being dead.

With this, I concur. In fact, for many long years I heard my neighbor -- something of a surrogate grandmother -- say, "boredom is the sign of a small mind," or, the more (less?) generous "boredom is the sign of a limited imagination."

We are not allowed to be bored. Frustrated, yes. Irritated, yes. But never, never, never will my extended family be bored. When I was once left to live a little more than a year in a very rural setting, with not enough money to pay for telephone, cable television, or even a decent aerial antenna to pick up television and radio signals from the other side of the mountains, and had no access to easy transportation into town to visit the library or the movie theater, I cleaned and wrote and drew on old papers and even found some old bed sheets to cut up and hand-sew some clothes for myself. I wasn't very good at the sewing thing, but I learned.

And, for a while, I was unable to move around, due to some injuries. I sat in my bed and, in my mind, board-by-board, rebuilt and renovated my childhood home. Yeah, it was nuts, but it wasn't dull -- and I didn't get any splinters, blisters, or further trips to the emergency room.

I have, in waiting rooms, rewritten the endings to films and books I found less than satisfactory. I have pictured the landscape on distant planets. I have choreographed dance numbers with my fingers as the star performers. I have memorized all the names on I.D, tags of the people nearby and passing through. I have drawn quick portraits of people who are waiting with me. I have made lists of euphemisms I knew for the acts of making love, voiding, and a host of other basic animal activities, both pleasant and unpleasant (inspired by one Parrot Sketch, I suppose).

Now, granted, I'm nuts, and a lot of what goes on in my head is stuff I'd rather not listen to, so I keep my mind busy, primarily to shut out the noise. Still, the point is, just because you're standing around, waiting, doesn't mean you have to stare blankly at the wall beside you. You're equipped with a brain, so why not use it? If you're bored, it's not that somebody else is wasting your time... you're the one with the profligate ways.

Oh, Proofreader, Where Art Thou?

The local ABC affiliate is usually a little more on the ball than their short items' headline would indicate. As of an hour after their posting the original news items, the header still reads as follows:

Write a brief headline for this separate

I guess nobody actually reads all that the AP egests upon 'em, any more, after all. Just post it and move on, kids.

An older Dangerous Book

This month, the talk of the 'sphere, here, stateside, is the book, The Dangerous Book for Boys (which includes all manner of useful activities for kids of today, who otherwise are discouraged from behaving like the bold, industrious little b*stards that they so often are). I understand it offers plenty of projects and lore that many kids today would otherwise miss out on.

Well, in spending our day at the auction yesterday, Mom and I discovered an older, possibly equally coooool book, "Integrated Handwork for Elementary Schools." Don't laugh just because they've got a handful of copies, dirt cheap, listed at amazon. It's a neat old textbook for teachers, published in 1940 by Silver Burdett Company, authored by Loius V, Newkirk, Ph.D., of the Chicago Public Schools. And, when they say "handwork," they mean Handwork.

For example, the book includes the instructions on how to make a wooden rubber-band boat:

Boats. The construction of boats offers a valuable medium for manipulative expression, and can be correlated with transportation and science problems in the school. Page 202 shows two simple boats that can be made by primary-grade children and that are well suited to the interests and development of these children. The tools required are a crosscut saw, a sharp knife, a wood rasp, a brace and bit, and a small hammer.

The rubber-band boat, a flat-bottomed type, may be sawed from a flat piece of 1/2” or 7/8” softwood with a crosscut saw. The edges are then filed with a rasp and smoothed with sandpaper. The cabin is made from a block of wood. The funnels and portholes are made from 3/4” dowel rod. Brads spaced around the edge and strung with string or wire form a railing.

The boat is powered by rubber bands and driven by paddle wheels. A length of 3/8” dowel is slit at each end to receive flat paddles sawed from box wood. Two 1/8” holes are bored through the dowel at the points indicated on the drawing, to receive two rubber bands. Two 3/8” holes are drilled through the rear end of the boat and the dowel rod is inserted. A washer is slipped over each end and fastened with brads. The rubber bands are threaded through the dowel and hooked over the two open screw eyes located on the cabin as shown.

The boat may be decorated according to the children’s ideas and be painted with outdoor or deck paint, so as to be waterproof.

I'm sorry, but that's just way too spiffy a project. They'd never allow it in schoolrooms, these days, out of fear that some kid would feel excluded because he didn't live near an ocean so he couldn't understand the usefulness of a boat, or he didn't have a bathtub to float it in or some such nonsense.

This book also includes basic instructions on hammering and cutting metal, electroplating, making and operating marionettes, making cottage cheese (Mom won't let me try this -- something to do with her having had to smell this all the time when she was growing up on the farm), and building your own playhouse, complete with furniture. Not to mention machine knitting, basket and rug weaving, making your own cigar-box "banjo" and dowel-rod xylophone. And the requisite kite. Which toy my nephews bought, rather than try to construct on their own. Sigh.

One can only hope that children of the future will stumble across these kinds of books and ask why mummy and daddy never showed them how to do these things... and then promptly settle in to try them, themselves.

Context isn't everything -- but it is a lot

The other day I read a lovely, long long long piece in the Washington Post, which Ace at AoSHQ recommended (and so, I discovered later, did half the blogosphere), about renowned violinist Joshua Bell playing at the subway station near where my seester works... and about his having been heartily ignored by the cubicle drones.

The conclusion made was that American workers (or, perhaps he implied all us proles) wouldn't know art if it bit 'em on the a...nkle, were it not in its proper place, time, and frame. Context, it seems, is everything.

Except that it's not always that way. For starters, there is the basic fact of life that there are people going out of their way to bring fine art to mundane settings, as David Shribman points out (HT: Scott Johnson @ Power Line). Second, there are people willing to stop everything, even in the middle of the morning crush, to absorb the experience -- and others finding beauty in the oddest places (why else would Charles Sheeler have been so successful photographing and painting industrial scenes?).

Sometimes, we just sits and thinks, and sometimes we just sits. But we're not all oblivious to rainbows and windsong. I've seen farmers stop their tractors just to stare at the way the late afternoon sun shines through rough clouds onto a lone tree, or to smile over the voluptuous deep-brown corduroy hills of spring. I've known a trucker or two to pull off to the side of the road to take in a field of rudbeckia hirta, and they grin as they retell of the gold-black-and-green vistas. I, myself, have been late to jobs where I was expected to punch a timecard, purely because there was a person playing a flute at the end of a pedestrian underpass, and I had to stop next to the end of the urine-soaked tunnel to hear him finish his excessively whimsical take on Humoresque. It was art -- deliberately absurd art, but art nonetheless, and I could not pass it by unnoticed.

Context is not about time-and-place, about venue and frame. Sometimes, the real context lies in the person's willingness to take a moment's breath and see, hear, feel the beauty, even at the top of an escalator in a subway station.