Monthly Archives: June 2011

In our neighborhood, almost every house has a gas lantern out in front.  Most of these lanterns either have been converted to electricity or turned off: We were one of the last  houses with a working gas lantern. Or it did until about a month ago when it quit working. That’s not too bad for an appliance (I suppose that’s what you’d call it) that is 43 years old. Anyhow, I found out that it would cost about $300 to have it fixed  or to have it converted to electricity (I do not mess with gas or electricity).  I also found out that the darned thing burned $9.00 worth of gas a month as it sat there merrily chewing through cubic foot upon cubic foot of gas 24/7/365.

Then I stumbled on another alternative and that is solar. I could get a solar-powered lantern head that would go right on the existing pole and cost about $100. I have to say that I have thought solar-powered whatevers were very cool for a long time, from the solar-powered water heaters to arrays that power the entire house, but think that they are not quite ready for widespread use. This is my English major opinion about a complex scientific and technical issue, but I think the technology needs more time, just like a real electric car. (Prius owners, please do not throw batteries at me.) But a solar-powered lantern seemed different. The  one I got has 18 LED bulbs (and eight rechargeable AA batteries) and seemed promising.  Besides, an operating cost of $0.00 appealed to me.

Some people I talked to were not impressed with outdoor solar lights, finding them weak and not durable. I took off the gas lantern (some serious metal there), put the one I bought onto the pole in front of our house and waited while it charged for a couple of days. I thought about the guy who put a full solar electricity system on his house and was bragging about it to a neighbor who said, “What do you do when it rains?” (Use the batteries?)  I also thought about the International Space Station which has huge solar arrays, but then I remembered that it doesn’t rain in space. (Pretty good observation for an English major, I think.)

Since the lantern has a light sensor that turns it on at dusk, I had to wait for dark to fall to switch it on. Shazam! It threw a respectable light which perfectly filled in the dark space along the sidewalk that the porch light didn’t reach. The light was whiter than an incandescent, but it is better to light a single solar lantern than curse the darkness.  Whatever that means.

So, in a small way, I feel like I’ve gone solar. We’ll see how it works out. I have to add cleaning the solar panels on top of the lantern to my maintenance tasks. I’d like to hear about anyone else’s experience with solar power. There’s a lot of free sunlight out there waiting to be harvested, even if we don’t live in space.

I’m sure most everyone has heard of the idea of a bucket list, a list of things you want to do before you die, or “kick the bucket.” A phrase like this is bound to have uncertain origins, and this one certainly does.  One theory is that people who were being hanged, short of a gallows, were made to stand on a bucket which was then kicked out from under them. Another idea is that “bucket” is an old word for a wooden beam (it’s used this way in Shakespeare) from which pigs who were being slaughtered were hung.  When the animal struggled it was likely to kick the bucket (beam). Yet another explanation holds that when a person was dying in the Middle Ages a bucket of holy water was placed at their feet so visitors could sprinkle them with it.  In this process the bucket was almost certain to be kicked. And a final surmise is that it came from a children’s game in which the object was to kick the bucket (and fall down dead, apparently).

The phrase has been used for a recent movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and also for a sermon series at our church–spiritual qualities to develop before we die. I would say that most people have an idea, if not a list, of things they want to do and most of that involves travel. For example, I would like to visit Australia and New Zealand.  I believe Australia has the most venomous species of any continent so I would have to be careful. I would also like to meet Gordon Lightfoot and establish a foundation to encourage young people to major in English.  See?  It’s easy to come up with three or four or a dozen things you’d like to do in this life. I’m game for most anything, and I think a lot of people are.

But I am also working on an anti-bucket list, which is a tally of things I never want to do.  The list is presently short, possibly because I am open to most things (except watching The Sound of Music again (sorry everyone) or eating liver (yuck) so it was hard to come up with a very long anti-bucket list, so here it is in all its two-item glory:

1. Number one on my anti-bucket list (as indicated by the number one to the left) is to never go to Chuck E. Cheese. Now I like children and I like pizza but from what I’ve heard this place combines the two at eardrum shattering noise levels. And I’m told the pizza is not good.  Avoid.

2. The second item is to never go to Las Vegas.  I don’t care if Celine Dion is there, it’s not worth it.I don’t gamble (because I’m cheap) so there’s no attraction there.  I also understand that food is expensive and there is smoking everywhere. No, thanks. There are some obvious places never to go, like Afghanistan and Myanmar, but I’m holding this list to higher standards and not noting the obvious.

So there’s my anti-bucket list. I’ll keep trying to add to it.  I’d be interested in what’s on yours. Maybe I could use some of your ideas. Let me know in the “Comments” section.

The list would be long, so I won’t put down everything, but I have been thinking about some small ordinary things that I enjoy.

The alarm on my Nokia cell phone. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s a happy little tune that makes it a pleasure to wake up.  And for me that’s saying a lot!

Chuck Bell, the weatherman on WRC-TV (Channel 4).  Chuck’s relaxed, sincere manner and loopy humor make any forecast easier to take. He is so cool.

Our daughters’ conversations. Whether it’s live or on Facebook, they come up with some of the funniest and most insightful exchanges I’ve ever heard.  And I’m not just saying that to get a big expensive present for Father’s Day.

The almost continual conversation about ideas and people I have had with my wife Becky for nearly 39 years now. It’s the best.

The New Yorker magazine.  Great articles, great writing, and one of the few magazines that still runs cartoons.  Even if some of them don’t make any sense.

The Washington Post newspaper. Yes, I know it’s liberal but then so am I. Always full of ideas, insight and information. It has a surprising local touch for an international newspaper.

Crossword puzzles and jigsaw puzzles. Stimulation for the mind and soul.  I learn a new word every time I do a good crossword.

Choral groups.  I’m a member of three of them , and choral groups are great, whether we’re learning the music or listening to another group. Nothing like SATB harmony.  How sweet the sound!

Vintage acoustic guitars. They’re works of art, really. It’s amazing that something fifty years old sounds better than the day it was created. One of my happiest acquisitions was a 1964 Gibson B45-12n twelve-string.  They don’t make ’em like that any more.

Nationals baseball games on the radio. I find I prefer listening to them to watching them. It’s a warm comfortable feeling to follow the play-by-play, even when we lose. Even when the new guy uses baseball slang I’ve never heard. “Inside-out curve ball”–huh?

So, to quote someone else, these are a few of my favorite things.  I hope you can think of a few of your own. Happy Monday, everyone!

I think it’s interesting that there is sort of a curbside giveaway going on, at least in this area. I’ve talked to people who didn’t want the bother of transporting a sofa or a washing machine so they put it on the curb and, with or without a sign, the item disappears in short order. It’s a win-win: someone gets a free whatever and someone is rid of something they don’t want.

I had a contractor grade wheelbarrow that a mason left when he redid our front porch about ten years ago.  I reminded him and called him a number of times about the ‘barrow but he never came and picked it up.I eventually covered it and offered it to several people I know, but no one was interested. I didn’t need it–I have spent more than my share of time behind a wheelbarrow. A week or so ago I decided to clean up the back yard where the wheelbarrow lay in a corner, covered by plastic. I put the wheelbarrow by the curb with a sign that read, “Free–please take.”  I expected it would disappear quickly like the things left out by people I talked to.  It wasn’t new–the pan was caked with concrete and rusted through here and there–but the wheel and frame were in good shape.

It might have been that my sign folded over in the wind, but no one picked it up the first day. Or the second. I began to feel like an anti-Diogenes, the cynic philosopher who went searching with a lit lantern in the daytime trying to find an honest person. (Who said a minor in philosophy would never be useful?)  My problem was the people passing by were too honest. No one would take a wheelbarrow sitting by the curb. Not that we haven’t had things stolen. Someone took the bed liner out of my truck this past year.  The police said it could have been worse–thieves also were stealing catalytic converters. We have also had the fog lamp insert from Becky’s Avalon stolen and the license plate year sticker off the car. But it looked like no one wanted a wheelbarrow.

On the third day, I made sure the sign was secure and visible and put the wheelbarrow out. By mid-morning, it was gone.  The curbside market had worked.

It’s good to know that I can leave things out and they won’t be taken, although I’m not about to leave power tools lying around outside or park my 1964 Gibson B-45-12 by the curb just to see what will happen. I believe most people are honest, but I also believe in not creating tempting situations.

I don’t change much in my life.  We have lived in the same house since 1988, gone to the same church since 1970 and drive cars at least ten years old if not older. I taught at the same high school my entire career and otherwise don’t change much or easily. What we have is comfortable and familiar and that’s how I like it.

With computers and telephones and television service, there is always pressure to update to the latest (and generally more expensive) technology.  I probably should have gotten one of those digital conversion boxes and used an external antenna, but that would have involved a change from cable. When Verizon, our telephone company and DSL provider, offered fiber optic internet service they called Fios (indeed pushed it, calling me every other day to see if I wanted it. I told them I would let them know), I put it off until I was ready. I became ready when they offered it for the same price as DSL. The upgrade was done by a technician and the service has been great (I know this is not true for everyone). Then they started calling me about converting my cable service to Fios as well.  I told them I would let them know.

We have had Comcast cable for quite a while and I wasn’t ready to switch to their digital service, Xfinity. We don’t watch that much television, but I do admit an attraction to shows like Animal Police on the Animal Network (or whatever it’s called).  Then channels began disappearing, replaced by a screen saying that they were now digital and we had to upgrade to–guess what?– Xfinity. I finally gave in an ordered the self-install kit, expecting the worst.

The upgrade came in a big box containing four smaller boxes, one for each of our sets. I took them out and found there was one large converter and three smaller ones. I put the large one on the big set in the studio (naming it the Mother Ship) and the smaller converters on the smaller set.  The instructions didn’t say, but I supposed that the big converter used a wireless signal to broadcast to the smaller converters.  I set everything up and activated the service online. It all worked! Everything, that is, except the one set I forgot to turn on for the activation.  I called the number on the screen and was connected to one of those robotic voices that never work well, except this one did. “She” diagnosed the problem and after a series of strange electronic noises activated the inactive set. Pretty impressive.

The last step was to program the remote controls which used the procedure that anyone who has set up a universal remote is familiar with.  Punch some buttons, put in the code for that brand of television and see if the remote will turn off the set. Repeat with another code when it doesn’t.  Repeat some more. I managed to get all the remotes working except for the one in our bedroom on a set that must be about twenty years old.  I finally called the service line and got a real person.  When I described my problem, he asked how old the set was. When I told him, he said that was most likely the problem–the set was too old to recognize the code. I could use the old remote to turn it on and off and the new one to change channels and set the volume. I kept fiddling with the Xfinity remote until I accidentally found out that if I pressed the Return key and then Power, the set would turn on or off.

All in all, the changeover wasn’t bad, taking about two hours on a Saturday afternoon. Now we have about 200 channels we won’t watch.  Like I said, I don’t like change.

Becky and I were coming back from something last evening, and there beside the railroad tracks was a billboard sized sign for Geico Insurance showing my favorite ad character, the gekko. Nothing unusual in that, but the caption said something to the effect that Geico was in Gainesville. The sign is in Manassas and Gainesville is about seven miles away. It’s sort of disconcerting, as if we had been suddenly transported seven miles west.

There are all kinds of crazy signs if you watch for them.  Another favorite local sign of mine is the one at the exit to the local Costco parking lot, near the loading dock. It says, “Attention drivers–be sure the fork lift operator is out of your truck.”  You just know that at least one fork lift operator had an unplanned trip to Ohio at some point. As is the case with most of these signs, someone must have tried it.

We were in Atlanta a few years ago and visited the Georgia Aquarium. On the list of prohibited items posted at the front door was “fishing tackle.”  I asked a guard if people really tried to bring in fishing gear.  He said, “Oh, sir, they try to bring in everything.” I can see someone going home exclaiming, “Hey Betty Lou, I caught me a three-hundred pound grouper!”

It seems that most of the women I know, including those I am most closely related to, are engaged in a continuing round of jewelry parties.  The jewelry is quite nice and they seem to enjoy the parties. It seems that the economy is being kept afloat (such as it is) by people buying and selling jewelry.  Not a bad idea, that. Keeps everyone entertained and keeps the cash flowing.

I think that if someone wanted to make a lot of money they could have cordless power tool parties for the guys. I am not a very skilled handyperson, but I do enjoy a good cordless power tool.  And I have accumulated a lot of them.

Normally when I work on a project I pull out the tools I think I’ll need and then have to go back until I have dozens of tools to use. Each project is an opportunity to acquire more tools because, after all, you can’t do the job without the right tools.  When a group from our church rehabbed a townshouse, I had to buy a compound cut miter saw since we were putting in a lot of trim. I also got an air compressor and pneumatic hammer to nail the trim.  Good stuff.  Last summer when I replaced all our flat panel interior doors with six-panel versions, I had to have a power planer and a router to do the job.  The power planer was necessary because the new doors were about 1/4 inch too long and that’s a hard cut to make with a circular saw.  I am really terrible at chiseling out mortises, hence the router.  I did manage to take some of the end of my left index finger off with the planer…on the last cut of the last door.  The hand surgeon who treated me also gave me a little lecture about being older and having slower reaction times.  I think inattention have more to do with it than reaction times, but we old folk are troubled by both.

As I finished each of about the last four projects I piled the tools on my four foot by two foot workbench in the basement thinking I would organize them some day.  Eventually it got to the point I couldn’t find anything, so I started sorting one afternoon and put each type of tool into a box: woodworking tools, metalworking tools, cutting tools, glues, nails, screws, and so forth.  It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought, and now I can find things. The smaller pieces I still have to sort, but that will come.

I worked on several projects with my friend Jay Jones, a fine fellow who passed away a couple of years ago. I miss Jay and the stories he told.  He seemed to have a tool for every purpose and could find it.  He put all the tools he thought he would need for a particular job into a box and took that to the work site.  I was trying to use several toolboxes to carry mine, but I have since adopted Jay’s system. It works like a charm and I think of him every time I fill a box with tools.

Eavesdropping is possibly a backformation of eavesdrop, the portion of a house where rainwater will drip off. A person who surreptitiously stands at the windows to overhear is known as an eavesdropper. That makes a lot of sense, particularly in close-packed medieval cities where the houses were right on the streets. The French are more direct about the term, saying ecouter aux portes, or listen at the doors. Makes sense to me. That explanation is a lot better than the one for the expression “raining cats and dogs” which supposedly came from the habit of cats and dogs climbing up into the eaves of houses to sleep. When rain came the cat and dogs would jump out of the eaves and so it looked like it was raining cats and dogs as well as rain. I think this is a silly explanation since no self-respecting cat or dog would go to that much trouble to find a place to sleep.  Usually they look for some place that is warm, dry and easy to reach–qualities house eave are notably lacking.

It used to be a lot easier to eavesdrop in the days of party lines when three or four families shared a telephone line. Each household had a distinctive ring (ours was two shorts and a long) and all you had to do to listen in on a conversation was pick up the receiver.  Maybe this is where I got into the habit of eavesdropping. I can blame it on Ma Bell.

Sometimes, though, a good eavesdropping opportunity doesn’t pay off.  I was in a store the other day when I heard a rather agitated woman ask a clerk to speak to the manager.  Bingo!  I sidled up to them, pretending to look at some merchandise. I was all ears.  When the manager came up I expected a good listen, but all the woman wanted to do was ask something about the store’s inventory.  Apparently her default expression and manner was one of agitation.  So it didn’t work out that time, but sometimes it does, and it’s the best free entertainment around.

Early on, I loved listening to the radio. We’re not talking about FM or satellite or HD, but plain old static-filled AM radio. I wanted to be a radio announcer, although I never had the voice for it, but I thought maybe something would work out.  I built a crystal radio set from a kit and listened to it in preference to the table radio in the kitchen. The crystal set entailed stringing a rather long antenna from the house to the garage and also running a ground wire to make it work. But work it did and I had the thrill of listening on headphones with a radio I had built.  Eventually I got a table radio of my own and listened to that.  I preferred top 40 rock music and sang along with all the songs. In the summer I listened to the broadcasts of the Washington Senators baseball games, hearing the static from distant thunderstorms during the play-by-play.  They usually lost, but they were, after all, the home team.

When I went to college, I was thrilled to learn that the campus has its own 5-watt FM radio station, WESU-FM, the voice of Wesleyan University. We had to take a test for a license, and so many people were interested in broadcasting that the freshmen started out doing newscasts. We had a teletype machine we could rip wire service stories off and tape them together for our script.  I didn’t like this very much, but I persevered and I think shared a three-hour show with another guy. He played rock and I played folk music.  Sophomore year I was in Europe the first semester, but found on my return that the other guy had lost interest and I would have a three-hour show if I wanted it.  The only catch was it was on Saturday, but I usually stayed around on  weekends so that worked.  I did the “Come In, Stranger” Folk Music show the rest of sophomore year and the first semester of junior year. I called it that after the Ian and Sylvia cover of the Johnny Cash song. If I were doing it today I would call it, “Biscuit City.” I played strictly folk music, and while I was never sure anyone was listening, I had a good time.  Surprisingly, although I am a shy person, speaking to an unseen audience didn’t bother me at all.  A friend of mine told me that my show was the favorite of the professor who ran the biology rat lab Saturday afternoons.  Seems the rats did better at their tasks on a diet of roots music.  Could be.

I never did any more with radio, save a turn at sound effects when the Chorale did a 40’s radio show for a concert a while back.  That was fun and a real addition to my resume. A few years ago, some of the current students were cleaning up the studios at WESU-AM & FM and came across my third-class radio-telephone operator’s license. I have it here somewhere, proof that once upon a time I was on the radio.

Writing as it is taught these days encourages writers to think about (and write about) their writing history.  Mine is quite long–in fact, I had forgotten some of the early experiences with writing, mostly with newsletters.

I think I might have learned to read by reading the daily newspaper.  There was so much in the paper and it came every day!  I decided to do my own neighborhood newsletter and sell it for five cents a copy.  I forget what I called it and how I duplicated it is a big puzzle since copying machines were not that common in those days. The only duplication processes I was familiar with were the dittos at school and the mimeos at church.  Somehow I can’t see that a secretary at either place would have typed up my little newspaper. I do recall typing it on a big used Underwood typewriter we had.  It took me forever but finally I had my one-page newsletter and somehow made copies of it.  I then went door to door trying to sell it.  No one wanted to pay as much for a kid’s newsletter as they paid for a real daily newspaper, so I didn’t sell a single copy.  I wish I still had one, but it’s long gone.

A few years later the school established a newsletter and I wrote a few articles for that.  One was about how cool science was and the other I recall was about the importance of obeying the safety patrols. Yes, we were pretty much a mouthpiece for the administration, but it was something.

In high school I took journalism and then became copy editor for the W.T. Woodson High School Cavalcade. My buddies and I had the second (editorial) page to ourselves and generally made up all our copy, rather than do any actual reporting.  Our long-suffering sponsor, Dot Spencer, carefully reviewed each issue, pointing out the more egregious mistakes.  She let us make mistakes and we learned from them.

When I went to college, I did articles and reviews for the Wesleyan Argus and the American University Eagle.  I had known the editor of the Argus in high school, and I thought he would give me an easy pass on my articles.  Not so.  I of course kept a copy of what I submitted and compared it to what was published.  There was little resemblance, and after I got over feeling insulted for not having my great style recognized, I began to learn from what Paul did to my writings. At the Eagle I was edited less heavily, and published several reviews and articles. I even covered a speech by Harold Stassen, who ran for President every election.  I called him a “perennial pretender to the Presidency,” which I thought was a great and descriptive phrase. It was cut.

When I became an English teacher, I turned my attention to teaching writing.  This process was given a quantum boost by the Northern Virginia Writing Project out of George Mason University and headed by Don Gallehr, who recently retired and encouraged countless writers and teachers of writing. The intention of the project was to establish a community of writers who taught writing.  If you are a teacher of any kind, take the first class, English 695, and then do the summer institute.  It will change your life.  Details are available at http://www.nvwp.org.

When I retired, I mostly wrote emails to my brother and an occasional piece for church and the Manassas Chorale. I edited the church newsletter for a while, but my big break came when Susan Svihilik, executive editor of the News and Messenger, heard the eulogy I wrote for my mother’s funeral.  She asked if I would like to write a weekly column for the paper.  I would and I did, for three years and 148 columns and other pieces until Susan was summarily fired a few weeks ago for ridiculous reasons.  I stopped the column out of  a protest for how she was treated.  She is an incredible newspaperwoman and person who deserved better.  Anyhow, I immediately started this blog and enjoy writing it immensely.  I hope you do, too.