Everydave Life

October 16, 2023

O. Henry, More Than Just A Chocolate Bar

On my music blog (A Sound Day) I had several guest writers talk about songs that had a good philosophy for life in them. They came up with some great ideas, like a country tune, “Humble and Kind” whose title kind of says it all, or the Monty Python laugh-along “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.” Although performed in a rather ironic way in a comedy movie, the sentiment actually helps a lot if you put it in play routinely! I opted for Steve Winwood’s “While You See A Chance (Take It)”. When opportunity comes knocking, you’d better be ready to answer the door and hope that you didn’t leave the “do not disturb” sign on it last night! I’ve never been one to take many big gambles; psychologists probably would call me “risk aversive.” But I’ve taken a few big ones in my life, like moving thousands of miles away from home, and every now and then take much smaller ones. One came to mind last week. A simple one that didn’t change my life and only had three dollars on the table, but it was worthwhile. I read a book I knew nothing about.

There was a table of final clearout items at the local bookstore a few weeks back, and nothing seemed to be priced over $3. I ended up grabbing a music bio which was great and a book of the best short stories of O. Henry. I’d heard the name O.Henry before, and not just at the chocolate bar stand of the grocery checkouts. But I knew nothing about him. In fact I was surprised to find that he was American, and wrote mainly in the 20^th Century. If I had guessed prior, I might have thought he was more a contemporary of Shakespeare. So I glanced at the book, saw that it had dozens of short stories in it – always a good entry point to a new author; if the story stinks, you’ve only wasted time reading a few pages instead of several hundred – and figured, “why not?”

I got around to reading it in the last couple of weeks, and was somewhat impressed. Turns out this guy was famous and quite well-paid in the early 1900s and spent a lot of time not that far away from me, in Texas. He also was a New York denizen and wrote stories of the city from there. That in itself was rather unusual and cool; not that many writers go back and forth between tales of the Old West, cowboys, Indians, ranches and pretty senoritas from south of the border and then shift to ones of what were in the day, the most modern, cosmopolitan tales of romance and nightlife. Authors like John Grisham and Stephen King are very good and experts in their own genres (legal thrillers for John, horror for Stephen) but I find I am most interested in them when they turn a corner and write something different, like about growing up in the rural south for the former, or baseball or even the act of writing itself, for the latter.

It turned out I even knew one tale in it, “The Gift of the Magi”. From scanning his titles available, I’m probably not unique in that… it seems his most famous one. In it, a young couple are poor and find themselves without money to buy gifts for one another at Christmas. So, you guessed it, she goes out and gets her long, beautiful hair cut at a wig place to make money and he sells his gold pocketwatch, his proud inheritance. She buys him a platinum chain for the watch; he buys her an expensive hair brush and hair care kit. Seems like it might have been adapted into one of the less spooky Twilight Zones.

Anyhow, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed the ranch stories more than the city ones. I wouldn’t have expected that, as I never was much of a fan of Westerns in movie form. But his stories were populated by colorful characters and just seemed a little less predictable than the others. Both types contained quite a few entertaining, at times thought-provoking little stories. And most had a surprise twist ending. Turns out long before M. Night Shymalan made us jump in surprise when we realized why Bruce Willis could talk so well with the child who sees dead people, O.Henry had found that a secret of a memorable story was to hit the reader with an ending they didn’t see coming.

So, not a life-changing book for me, nor an event of huge consequence. But just one more little chance taken that worked out well. And a reminder once more for you just as much as me, as Mr. Winwood sang “while you see a chance, take it!”.

How about you? From a book you wouldn’t have usually picked up to a holiday in a brand new continent – have you taken any big risks that paid off? Or even tiny ones that stand out in your memory? Sometimes the biggest risk that pays off is just getting rid of that “do not disturb” sign!

September 28, 2023

40 Years On, What Have We Learned?

Someone on the portal formerly-known-as Twitter recently posted a question like “if someone had fallen asleep 40 years ago and woke up now, what would surprise them the most?”

An intriguing question, it generated hundreds of responses. Many were political – Joe Biden still being around (he actually made his political debut back in 1973), a buffoon like Donald Trump having become president, that sort of thing. Quite a few commented on how bad hit music is now… hmm, can’t argue with that. Surprisingly, no one I saw mentioned the fact that the Rolling Stones are still here and just put out a new album! People’s fascination with or addiction to celphones was frequently mentioned. How rude people were and how little they interacted with those around them also made a number of appearances on the list. Several noted how few places you can smoke these days, which to me is an improvement. Maybe the best one I saw was “probably the fact that they woke up in 2023!”. That would be a bit of a surprise, now that I think of it!

It got me thinking about how much life, and the world, has changed in that span, let alone my lifetime which goes back 16 odd years prior. The popular responses were valid.

People are ruder than they were back then, by and large. You see it on the roads with drivers behavior, you see it on the streets, in the schoolyards, in the stores. You hear it in their vernacular, you see it on their faces, you see it clearly on a bus or in a coffee shop when no one looks up from their phone or dare talk to anybody else. There are plenty of examples of it, and of course it’s extended now into politics, where the other side of the floor is increasingly seen as demons and mortal enemies rather than people who just have some different opinions than us.

People might be surprised to see how big cars are these days, if you count SUVs and pickups as “cars”, per se. They’d guess that the “Energy crisis” had been solved while they snoozed. They’d definitely notice that you don’t see public payphones on city streets anymore, and would quickly find out why. They might be equally surprised to see when they go into many stores these days, they have to check themselves out and bag the products on their way out.

But really, I think the hugest surprise would have to be the internet and how everything revolves around it these days. Forty years ago, home computers were big, clunky, slow and capable of little more than making a grocery list or playing Pong. The internet was the thing of science fiction. Now? Newspapers are increasingly rare because we can get up-to-the-minute news online. Many shopping malls are deserted and two-thirds empty space because we can order stuff cheaper and have more variety online. TV antennas are a rare sight and even Cable TV is on life-support because we can stream any show or movie online… and that means we don’t have to go to the theater anymore if we don’t feel like it. If you do find a mall still active, you won’t see a record shop in it because nine out of ten people don’t want to own physical copies of music anymore when they can pick and choose their tunes online. Feeling ill? There’s a reasonable chance you’ll see your doctor while staying in bed. House calls are passe, but we can interact with the good doc online.

Of course, there’s also the aspect that you now might not know your next door neighbor but you could have close friends on a different continent thanks to social media. Which is nice, but kids now don’t have to limit their worries about bullying to the maladjusted lug up the street but can be harassed anonymously from anywhere on the globe. And worse still, it wouldn’t take the person long upon awaking to learn what “cybercrime” is and how some nefarious kid in Russia (or Raleigh, for that matter) can empty their bank account or close down the hotel they registered at, mostly without detection.

Of course, it the sleepyhead were in Ontario, their biggest surprise might be that the Maple Leafs still haven’t won another Stanley Cup!

It’s hard to gauge it all or measure the impact the internet has had on so many aspects of life in the past 25 years, let alone 40. I love some of the things it’s done. I met my current sweetie online and ended up moving to a different land to be with her. I’ve also made some good friends in farfung places as Scotland and New Zealand that I’d never have come in contact with otherwise. And of course, I’m presenting this to you via that same internet, and every day I have dozens, sometimes hundreds of people reading a music column I write on it. That makes me feel quite good and has helped me gain appreciation for all sorts of different music I might never have found thanks to their input and commentary. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d had to try to type it up, photocopy it and mail them out. I love that there are more reference “books” online than there were at even my best-stocked public libraries of my youth, although finding them can be even trickier than going through stacks of shelves. Still, it’s nice when I’m wanting information at 10 o’clock at night and it’s rainy outside.

Yes, it’s changed everything and that person would be shocked at how different 2023 is compared to when they went to sleep. But the real question is would they think it’s a better world?

If the answer to that isn’t a clear-cut “Yes!”, then people, we’re not doing a great job as a species. Let’s do better before that next 40 year nap.

August 22, 2023

It Changed My World…And Bored Me A Little Doing So

Great… and yet bad at the same time? Maybe so, when it comes to one milestone book at least. Let me explain.

One of the most prolific readers I know is Keith, aka the “Nostalgic Italian.” He often posts little reviews of the books he reads (or listens to on audio while commuting) and not long ago he asked if people felt compelled to finish reading a book that they began reading even if it wasn’t really interesting them. I was of the opinion, no! Time’s too short and too valuable to just spend it reading a book you’re getting nothing from.

Of course, the issue there is how to gauge that. Many books I’ve ended up liking started a little slow, so the question becomes how far does one go before knowing it’s going to be a dud? For me, the answer seems to often be around 50 pages in. Less than that, if it’s not totally awful (and if it was, it’s unlikely I would have picked it up to begin with), may be too soon to really give you an accurate impression. Much more than that and I’m wasting time. Besides, once you hit about ¾ of the way, you’re probably then going to want to know the ending, even if it’s not a compelling story, right? This is on my mind because I just gave up on one book, for now at least, that was one that was very inspiring to me years ago. One which defined my generation and showed that it was OK to break the “rules” of serious writing. It’s alright to have illustrations with your fictional prose, OK to have random appendices and things of interest on the page along with the story. There’s no law that says your characters have to be larger than life nor that says the strict genre formats must be yours. Of course, as you may have guessed, I’m referring to Generation X, by Douglas Coupland.

Coupland didn’t actually first come up with the phrase “generation X” – for example, Billy Idol was in a band with that name a full decade before the book came out in 1991 – but he did popularize it and drop the identity on all of us born between the mid-’60s and early-’80s. (Since then we’ve turned over “youth” to the Millennials, who in turn have given way to Gen Z, those born too late to have any memory of 9/11). The book became a best-seller and seemingly a guidebook for “my” people.

I can’t remember when exactly I first read it, nor even if it was the first book by Coupland I went through. He quickly became a popular author and all of his releases in the ’90s at least were omni-present, not only in bookstores, but department stores, even record shops at time. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. is among his many fans. The covers were bright and eye-catching, the books at times in unusual sizes. All adding to the cool factor.

His books resonated with me. The characters seemed ordinary, like people I might know. Most of the stories were not “big” – there were no huge explosions, no superheroes battling costumed super-villains or trying to knock an asteroid headed for the earth off its trajectory, no tales of Mafioso or lives of the ultra-wealthy. royals. To many a traditional editor, it may have seemed they lacked plot. But there were often little doodles in the margin to illustrate his points and in the case of Generation X, a little pseudo-dictionary of new terminology to fit our age group. Of those, “McJob” probably became the most famous and widely-used : “ a low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.” I didn’t grow up with many people who didn’t have at least one of those in their young lives. It was nice to see a book with characters I could personally relate to, ones who weren’t super-wealthy, super-villains or even super-memorable from the outside.

It validated me as an aspiring writer. I felt I could write, and I had some stories to tell, but I was intimidated by the books and magazines about writing I came across. They all, to a point of predictability, rolled out the same “rules” one “had to” follow if one wanted any chance whatsoever of being published, let alone noticed. Your book had to have a clear choice of genre – Western, romance, murder mystery etc. Each one of those had their own rules, guidelines … how many words (usually about 60 000), length of the chapters, plot outline. If your a murder mystery person, don’t try to make your book funny. Do have your murdered victim someone no reader is going to care too deeply about, but make sure they’re not so despicable the readers won’t care to see the killer brought to justice. And it must be solved by some unlikely amateur sleuth, not a professional P.I., let alone the police. In a romance, an exotic setting was recommended, and the hero has to win the heroine twice…once, then lose her because of some conflict (usually to another not-quite-equal suitor) before finally prevailing. And so on. I’ve read some good books that follow those descriptions, but my problem was … I didn’t want to write any like that.

I wanted to write about people I felt like I knew or could relate to, people in basically ordinary lives but having interesting things happen in their own little way. I wanted some comedy, some drama, maybe some romance. Put it all in a blender. Coupland suggested to me that I could do so, but what’s more, there were others like me who might find value in such work. That was an important change in mindset for me. As a sidenote, I met Douglas once and was able to tell him that. He thanked me and said that meant a lot to him.

He’s gone on to write a slew of books since. I’ve read quite a few, and thoroughly enjoy most. Honestly, most I’ve come across outdo his first Some are fiction, like The Gum Thief, which takes place mostly within a Staples big box store. Or Eleanor Rigby … oh yes, another thing he likes to do is draw from pop culture and give it relevance to the characters (which isn’t very fictional when it comes to most people if you think about it.) Others are non, like Souvenir of Canada, parts 1 and 2, which are basically like pop culture dictionaries of Canadiana big on photos (like me, he’s from the Great White North). Some seem to blur the lines and mix the two… Polaroids from the Dead has sections describing what the L.A. neighborhood OJ Simpson lived in was like and a report from a Grateful Dead concert but also ten short stories of fiction. Try selling an old-school publisher on a book like that. But yet, he did and it works.

But back to Generation X. It was widely credited for giving our part of society its stereotyped behaviors – being “Slackers”, not caring much about our jobs, being vaguely dissatisfied with everything but not ambitious enough to rebel against the system and change things, jaded about relationships because of rampant divorces we saw as we grew up. Certainly some are, or at least were true of some of Generation X (the cohort) as shown in Generation X, the book. But as I slogged through this for the first time in many years, I found it more and more tedious. I frankly didn’t care about any of the three main characters, Dag, Claire and Andy, three slackers who’ve dropped out of mainstream society to live in a nearly abandoned neighborhood in the California desert, eking out a living working at a bar and spending most of their days drinking, eating junk food, staring at the sky and telling each other stories about space colonies where everyone works at a 7-11 and gets fired by it or people who crack at work or else Yuppies who are “Androids who never get jokes, and who have something scared and mean at the core of their existence like an underfed chihuahua, baring its tiny fangs and waiting to have its face kicked in or like a glass of milk sloshed on top with the violet filaments of a bug barbeque.” And yes, they talk like that in the book.

It’s been said of the TV show Friends, perhaps it was so popular for so long because it was about Gen X-ers, adored by Gen X-ers but also by other ages as well. They all had McJobs somewhere along the way, they were all a little jaded by things their parents had done or they’d experienced, and as one of them pointed out they were all prone to hang out at a coffee shop on a weekday at 11 in the morning. But they were all likable in their own way, and all had aspirations. They felt their lives had meaning and could get better. That’s something that can be cheered for.

So… a book that undoubtedly began at least a little change in the world of publishing regarding what can or cannot be done, inspired other young writers and was nearly profound in changing my way of thinking about my own capabilities. That’s an important book by my estimations. But, honestly, not one I particularly want to read anymore.

July 24, 2023

Don’t Get Burned…

One thing you can count on being extraordinarily hot is a Texas summer. Another thing you can guess may be extraordinarily hot (but sometimes fails to be) is fried fast food as it’s served. In both cases it seems like the proper response is to be prepared. But some people are foolish and some, perhaps crazy like a fox when it comes to it. Two little things from the past week.

It’s been hot, even by Texas standards this month. Where I am, we’ve had at least 16 days above 100F (38 Celcius) already and there’s little sign of any major changes coming our way. Of course, the average high is 95 or better until nearly the latter days of August, so it’s not too mind-bending. One thing that is that – and hand-burning – is how hot it gets inside parked cars during the day. That leads to the inevitable tragedies we hear of every year with children dying when left in a parked car in parking lots by “forgetful” parents.

Our car gets rather brutally hot, parked on a sunny street. It only takes one burnt thumb and forefinger to learn to either touch only the plastic part of the seatbelt when you get in, or to use something like a rolled up piece of clothing if you need to touch the metal clasp. Even the black steering wheel can cause an “ouchy” if you grip it too tightly until the air con kicks in, a few minutes after you take off. You get used to it and know how to deal with it. But it got me curious… just how hot is it? So, one day this week, I took our kitchen meat thermometer out and placed it on the dashboard about two hours before I needed to go out. As you can see from the picture above, the verdict is…

Nearly 160 degrees. Or about 70 Celcius for non-Americans. It actually rose above that the next time I did the same. About the same temperature you need chicken to be to declare it “cooked.” A good reminder why not being forgetful when it comes to children, or pets for that matter, inside cars in summer. And perhaps a possible new feature for upscale sedans – just put a metal griddle on the dashboard, and people can throw some bacon and an egg on it ten minutes before they want to leave and voila – brunch on the go!

People touching metal parts of a car interior this summer aren’t the only ones getting burned this summer though, it seems to me.

As you may have seen in the news last week, a McDonald’s in Florida was sued successfully for $800 000 by a mother who says her four-year old was dangerously burned and “scarred for life” when a hot Chicken McNugget fell on her leg as the mom passed the box of them to the child in the car.

The mother says her daughter, Olivia, sustained a second-degree burn on her thigh when the nugget fell on her. She also suggested that somehow the fried chicken bit got stuck between the leg and the seatbelt and couldn’t be dislodged. I for one would sure need to see some sort of visual demonstration of how an inch-wide chunk of meat can get stuck like that and not removable until it caused serious medical problems. McDonald’s, or at least the franchise owner, Upchurch Foods, had offered the family over $100 000, doubtless thinking that they’d probably spend close to that anyway, on lawyers if it went to court. But the burn-ee’s mother declined and somehow got the jury to side with her, giving her $400k for “pain and suffering” and an equal amount for “future pain”. They noted there was no prominent warning on the package saying contents were “dangerously hot” and, one might guess, urging people not to press hot chicken against one’s leg long enough to sustain a burn.

Now it seems to me that anyone who’s careless enough to pass supposedly boiling hot food to a small child in a car , expecting them to eat it carefully without supervision, someone who then couldn’t engineer flicking the piece out from where it was is not the type who’s likely going to change her behavior because there was “Warning : Hot” printed on the box or the take-out bag. And I’m not callous enough to not feel sorry for the kid, regardless of how bad that burn might really have been. But the restaurant manager notes they still see the family at their drive through and Olivia still orders McNuggets. Hardly seems like she was “scarred for life” by the event, does it? It seems like the one really getting burned in this case was the restauranteur.

What happened to personal responsibility? What happened to learning from mistakes? Did any of us grow up without at least once accidentally touching a hot stove or a plugged-in iron? Has anyone not popped something into their mouth straight out of a microwave and instantly needed to spit it out because their mouth was on fire? It happens. You learn from it and move on. Be more careful. Don’t touch a hot stove or iron. Wait for a bit before eating something with cheese that was being nuked for five minutes. Don’t serve small children dangerously hot food. We don’t sue the appliance maker or the food packager.

Ron White famously says “you can’t fix stupid.” But maybe he might ask “why would you want to if it pays so well?”

July 17, 2023

Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Canadians should feel flattered by their big neighbor to the south. That occurred to me when popping a bit of change from a purchase into my pocket a few days ago.

I noticed a very shiny, seemingly uncirculated quarter among the other coins, and looked more closely. My dad was a serious coin collector, and while I don’t share his passion for collecting every year’s edition of every coin nor in looking for occasional misprinted ones that sell for a lot amongst other collectors I do like looking at coins. I try to collect the sets of the different commemorative designs, like the American state quarters and parks ones. The coin that caught my eye was a 2018 quarter for Minnesota’s Voyageurs National Park, shown above.

The Voyageurs quarter had a picture of a loon on the front. Fair enough pick for that park; the Common Loon is the state bird of Minnesota. Loons, less you only know of the act-strange-on-the-street human form, are a large, black-and-white duck-like bird that lives on remote lakes and has a haunting call thought to be the “soundtrack of the wilderness” by many. What really struck me was it seemed like I’d seen that image before!

Not quite, but it sure looks a lot like a “loonie” – the Canadian dollar coin with a very similar looking loon swimming on a similar looking, pine-ringed lake. They came into being in 1987, when Canada decided to get rid of $1 bills and replace them with gold-colored coins which soon were nicknamed for the bird on the front.

Take a look at the Minnesota quarter, flipped over and next to the Canadian dollar.

In fact, the whole concept might have been borrowed from Canada. They began issuing special designs for coins back in 1967, the Centennial year, and began putting out a series of Provincial quarters in 1992, a different design for each province. The States began issuing State quarters in 1999. They’ve since expanded to do National Parks, famous women and on the dollar coins (not widely popular here yet) American presidents. Looks like Canada was onto something there.

It actually makes sense. Mints tend to lose money – cost of doing business, some would say – since it costs money to buy the metal and actually manufacture coins. The Canadian mint seemed to realize early on there were a fair number of collectors like my dad who scoured through every pocketful of change and went to shows to buy and sell old coins. Why not give them ones they’d want to collect and eliminate the middle man? An ordinary quarter with the typical Canadian moose design might go unnoticed; one with a special picture (like the Pink Ribbon ones to highlight breast cancer awareness) gets noticed more and if you put out a silver-plated one in nice little box and sell it at the post office, that 25 cent piece might get the mint back $10. Some years it’s been said the mint made money, making money if you will – turned a profit due to the sales of collectors editions.

Canada’s been known to borrow widely from American culture, from sound-alike rock bands to look-alike game shows on TV. It’s nice to feel like for once, it’s going the other way. Americans are taking the Canadian good idea and running with it. Or swimming with it in the case of the loon!

July 3, 2023

Where ‘Influential” And ‘Useful’ Diverge

A tale of two magazines.

Time recently put out a special issue branded “the 100 most influential companies.” It contained quite an array of companies, some of whom didn’t seem like they were really all that influential in the grand scheme of things (John Deere? Taco Bell?), some of which seemed incorrect honestly (including Major League Baseball – you probably know I am a big baseball fan and it’s really the only sport I follow closely, but c’mon … attendance keeps dropping, a 20-year long trend, TV ratings are down generally and there are problems with even getting games on the air in some cities due to a cable company’s bankruptcy. Hardly seems to be influencing basketball or football.) . Hoka ? A brand of “distinctive chunky” running shoes. Changing the world or even its industry? I wouldn’t have thought so. Crocs possibly, and yes they are on the list too. Others certainly are valid and annual members of the list. Say Apple, for example. And some are probably valid but leave me wondering “why”? Take Skims.

I hadn’t ever heard of Skims, but apparently it’s shapewear, rather like Spanx, from a company run by Kim Kardashian. Well, no arguing that Kim is influential. For starters she is the first woman who started out in a porno movie that somehow turned that not into shame and a shadow hanging over her career, as well as the scorn of most feminists, but into being some sort of feminist icon and role model. Have to hand it to her on that, it must have been a difficult bar to hurdle.

Mostly though, what struck me was that many of the companies are tied into AI. For instance Microsoft, lauded mainly for its “billion dollar investments in AI.” Or Metaphysics, a company which apparently came up with a “digital avatar of Elvis Presley” which was shown on America’s Got Talent. And of course Open AI, a company vaulted into headlines recently because of its Chat GPT product.

Certainly influential, of that there can be no doubt. But are they beneficial? Who’s asking that? Even the company’s CEO Sam Altman is suggesting the industry be regulated and Time note “little doubt AI will make many jobs obsolete.” Altman admits “you can’t trust a voice you hear over the phone anymore” because of his product’s ability to mimic voices and the magazine warn of his apps’ “disconcerting inability to separate truth from fiction” which hasn’t stopped people using it for things ranging from homework to financial planning.

It makes me ask the fundamental question “how is this good in any way for humanity?” Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

Meanwhile, I looked at the latest issue of nature publication Audobon. It had some winners from a photography contest it ran – impressive images all – but also two pages devoted to the dilemma they are seeing manifest itself, namely photos being submitted that look real but in fact are AI fakes. They even tried the software to try to duplicate some of the winners’ shots and came unnervingly close on several. And the programs are still in their relative infancy. Right now the editors employ a litany of tests, such as looking at the original digital file to see that the imbedded info seems accurate, talking to the photographers and having imaging experts go over shots pixel by pixel to make sure they seem real. But detecting the frauds is getting more difficult by the week.

In their context, it matters not only because you want to reward photographers who have skill, patience and have captured a memorable scene (not some nerd who puts info into a computer program and makes a make-believe picture) but because we need to trust what we see. In nature, much of what is known about rare wildlife is through photo documentation. See a mountain lion in a county which hadn’t recorded one for 60 years? A photo of it will let the naturalists know they are still around. The search for the elusive and exceedingly rare Ivory-billed Woodpecker and other types of nearly extinct wildlife? Eyewitness accounts aren’t considered good enough by many experts or the government (who decide on how to protect such animals and their habitat) and they generally want photos. What happens when any Tom, Dick or Harriet can conjure up realistic-looking photos in a few seconds on their I-pad?

Of course, the ramifications go miles beyond that and are more serious. What happens to society when we can literally no longer be sure what we are seeing in photos or videos, or hear in audio clips, is real and not someone’s fantasy creation?

It all seems like a Pandora’s box that shouldn’t have been opened, and I wish more of the 100 most innovative companies would actually work on innovating with things that will help humanity and the planet…. not threaten it more than it already is.

June 14, 2023

Heart Attack? No Laughing Matter? Colin Would Know

Regular readers here know that gratefulness is a quality I try to cultivate, and value highly. I once wrote a book about it! Among the top things I’m always thankful for are my lovely wife and her love for me, my reasonably good health and the first responders who keep us safe day in, day out. Recently, one of my friends had these good fortunes reminded him in a rather unpleasant manner. He had a “Sudden cardiac arrest” – a severe heart attack, to most of us. And he’s trying to put a positive on it all, and do some good in the doing which is why I’m going to give him a little plug today.

Colin (Cee Tee) Jackson is a formerly-healthy-as-a-horse Scotsman who loves sports, pets and music. Through the latter I came to know him (online), he is one of two interesting and rather humorous blokes who run the Once Upon a Time in the ’70s website, which looks back at the decade and in particular its music. Many of you might know I also run a daily music blog and in the last year, at times I’ve invited guest writers to weigh in on musical topics. Colin’s written some great pieces, from a Scottish point of view that at times is an interesting contrast to North American ones.

Anyhow, not long back I got a troubling e-mail from his buddy Paul (the co-runner at that website of his) saying Colin was going to be unable to write anything for awhile – he was in hospital after suffering a major event. Soon Colin himself managed to write, in his characteristically chipper nature that he’d wondered where his good luck had been – he’d never won a lottery, his favorite football team never won championships… but he’d found his lifetime’s alotment of luck all in one swoop with the heart attack. (Plus he noted, he’d won a tennis match that day so might end up undefeated this year!)

Life-threatening heart attacks don’t seem like good luck at all, but Colin was quite correct in his assessment. He’s noted that less than 10% of people who have that happen survive it. He did. Thus the luck. Lucky his wife was with him in the car as he began to drive and she noticed something was off with him. Lucky the car didn’t careen out of control with him suddenly immobilized at the wheel. (Easily could have been the Stephen King novel-in-the-making ‘ dead guy’s car runs at store at 100mph. Ramones play as he crushes shoppers…’) Lucky they were near a store. Luckier still, two on-duty police were sitting in that store parking lot, having a lunch break and noticed Colin’s wife’s frantic waving and yelling. They rushed over, began to give him CPR and ran for a defibrillator to shock his heart back to pumping. It worked, and he was rushed to a nearby hospital. The younger cop had only completed his CPR training days earlier. Here in the U.S., there are beyond question, some bad, aggressive poorly trained cops. But they are the minority. Most are very decent and do a thankless and difficult job trying to keep the peace. I salute them.

Nowadays, heart attacks may seem a little routine to many of us. No biggie, and quite easy to work with for medics, but he points out in the book he wrote, No Laughing Matter, that’s far from the case. He initially thought he might be prescribed a few pills and after a day or two rest be sent home. Instead it turned into a month-long ordeal in hospitals with surgery and other at times scary treatments required to finally get him on his feet again.

As I write, Colin is back home but still in some pain from injuries caused by the life-saving CPR and defib. He’s not able to drive not do his job, dog-walking for some time, but he realizes, in typical “glass half full” fashion that he’ll save on gas on the car and docs told him he still can enjoy a beer or two. (Knew there was something about the bud that I liked!) Light-hearted but he’s deadly serious in his understanding of how blessed he is and his whole-hearted compliments and thanks to the cops who saved him and all the medical staff who took good care of him in the hospital are heart-warming. As is his gratefulness for his wife’s dedication as well as their friends who kept driving her to see him in hospital.

I mentioned dog-walking, That’s another message in here. Colin used to be a banker, but he retired and now walks dogs around his neighborhood. That’s his gig. For a 64 year old, he seemed to be in great shape. He exercises daily. He didn’t have chest pains for days leading upto it. But still he was knocked down, dead until a kid cop smashed his ribs and got an electrical paddle onto his chest to ‘Lazarus’ him. A good reminder to us all that keeping in shape is well worth it, but sometimes your number is up… unless you’re very lucky and are surrounded by smart loved ones and capable first responders. A reminder to treat every day like it is special, because it is.

As I said, he wrote a book about it, and I recommend it. Not a Laughing Matter is an interesting read, not too time-consuming (he terms it a “Short read”) and is available as a download or in paperback. Best of all, he’s donating the proceeds to heart-related charities. If you want to check it out, by all means do so . And may your heart be healthy and happy today. And Colin, I say a prayer for you regularly and hope you are back up and able to let your tennis winning percentage dip to .500 before 2024! Cheers my friend.

June 2, 2023

Plumber’s Story Leaks & Will Crack You Up

Some people want to live forever. Some tell me a kid born today will live to 250 with the way science is advancing. I don’t necessarily believe that, nor do I necessarily want to live to 250… especially if my love and my friends didn’t do so. But one thing I would love to live that long for would be to see if the U.S. government ever released the real story about the Roswell UFO crash and the Kennedy assassination. Without ¾ of the pages being blacked out and redacted.

Which leads me to this one. The best new, albeit short, TV series I’ve come across in a few years. White House Plumbers. You like American history? White House Plumbers is for you. You like conspiracy theories? White House Plumbers is for you. You like to laugh until you fall off the chair? Well, you’re probably getting the picture. White House Plumbers is for you. No, sadly, HBO doesn’t have me on their payroll, but that six episode show is that good.

White House Plumbers is the B-side of the great ’70s movie All The President’s Men. It is the story of Watergate, told from the inside. While the ’70s award-winner told of how two hard-nosed reporters and their salty editor broke the news of Watergate to the world, this one tells of how the whole scandal unfolded…and went awry.

It tells the story of the motley crew of people that were rounded up (by who?) to break into the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, 1972 at the Watergate Hotel. Actually, an office building within the same building, but “to-may-to, to-maw-to”. A scheme that was led by ex-CIA, FBI “spooks” Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. With a handful of Cuban national volunteers pitching in. They tried to break into the Dem’s offices to plant bugs and steal files and help Richard Nixon win re-election as President. The incredible irony of it all was that this wasn’t 2000. It wasn’t Bush V Gore, the presidency coming down to a few re-counted ballots and court cases over “hanging chads”. This was a popular incumbent president, rolling an express train towards re-election. He could have literally hung a “Gone Fishin’” sign on the White House that summer and won. He won the ’72 election by the widest margin of any presidential election. Out of 50 states, only Massachusetts opted for his rival, George McGovern. Yet Nixon, or at least his high ranking minions, chose to try dirty tricks anyway to ensure the victory.

Which leads us to White House Plumbers. Liddy is a diehard, and … enthusiastic… supporter of the Right. A CIA guy who once arrested Walter Becker and Donald Fagen of Steely Dan on drug charges. A family man who loves guns, his family and if push comes to shove, says he’ll take a bullet to the head to protect his Republican prez. And Howard Hunt, an aging family man having money problems and battling his teenaged kids while trying to keep his wife – an ex-spy too – happy. They get enrolled and the story of the show is the story of how the two men try to usurp Democrats plans for the White House.

Hunt, played by an aging Woody Harrelson – not much to say “Cheers” to you with his present self or his role – is intelligent, and at times understandably more worried about his family than his role in the government. But his country clubs keep mentioning how many months behind he is in paying dues. But ex-Mr Jennifer Aniston, Justin Theroux steals the show as G.Gordon Liddy. It this portrayal doesn’t grab him an Emmy, there’s something seriously wrong with the awards. Liddy is an over-the-top, ridiculous but scary clown of a “spook” who comes up with the whole Watergate idea. He is however, royally pissed off that his other plans to help Nixon win, like hiring hookers and paying them in cocaine to seduce prominent Democrats or paying Hippies to wear McGovern shirts and pee on camera on the Congress floors, are ixnayed. He pulls a handgun on Hunt’s eight year old son who was playing Cowboys and Indians, warning “toy guns. A recipe for disaster” before calmly resuming his dinner at the Hunt’s dinner table. He listens to Hitler’s greatest motivational speeches to relax.

Things unravel when they try to break into the Democrat offices; their Cuban locksmith fails to bring his lock-picking tools, someone forgets to remove tape over a door lock which alerts a security guard that something’s amiss, a burglar has a letter from Howard Hunt on him when he’s caught breaking in. It’s all so ridiculous it would be farcical and dumb… if it weren’t real. All that really happened.

And of course, the pair tried to stay loyal even while it was clear White House bigwigs like John Dean were going to hang them out to dry. Before long though, the chain was running upstairs to Nixon’s top advisors and counsels and in time, led to the resignation of the president of the United States when it became clear he was at least aware of the whole folly if not directly involved.

Real events, as was (Spoiler Alert!) Howard Hunt’s wife dying just after she had told him she was leaving him. A plane she was on, talking to a TV reporter, crashed mysteriously coming in for a landing in Chicago. A flotilla of FBI agents arrived at the plane crash before city fire fighters and ambulances did. Again – this really happened. G-men were searching through the rubble before the nearest fire truck could drive there. The show is rife with innuendo that ties the whole event in to the killing of JFK a decade earlier. Did Mrs. Hunt know something about that killing? Her husband’s name had come up time and time again the media among people who didn’t believe Oswald did it, or at least did it on his own.

I’m Canadian. And I was born in the ’60s. Watergate to me was still shocking, and I remember the news talking about it day after day. I literally thought Richard Nixon had put on, like black-and-white striped costumes and a mask and broke into someone’s house. But it was big, and he resigned, and I thought clearly, “Wow! The president of the USA isn’t supposed to be a burglar!” He shouldn’t be. But back then when he was found to be a lying scoundrel who OK’d crimes, if not committed them himself, he did the decent thing and quit. Lately, the world hasn’t been so lucky. It seems to me, to quote Don Henley, that was “the End of the Innocence”. If we can’t trust the president, who the hell can we trust?

White House Plumbers. Truly a mind-blowing, interesting history piece that will leave you laughing all night… but perhaps crying later for what it represented in American history. Catch it if you can.

May 21, 2023

Gateway To A Healthier Environment?

Little things can make big differences. Like four-inch long birds. Or turning off bright lights at night at times. So, congratulations to the National Park Service for taking a small step to make things just a bit better for wildlife and the ecology by turning off the lights at the St. Louis Gateway Arch at night during May.

The Arch, of course, is the symbol of St. Louis, the “Gateway to the West”, a 630-foot tall (also 630-foot wide as it turns out) steel arch overlooking the Mississippi River, opened in 1965. It looks great and makes the city instantly recognizable on film during the day, but for years it was close to invisible at night. Logically, people had the idea of lighting it up at night to make it seen and make the skyline more impressive. By the late-’90s, it was generally illuminated nightly by 44 bright floodlights, usually bright white although pink in October (Breast Cancer month) and occasionally other tones to fit the day.

All of that is great…unless you’re a tired bird. As with many other tall, bright buildings, it unfortunately confuses and attracts migrating birds, which all too frequently collide with it, knocking them dead to the ground. It’s not entirely clear why, but it would seem that the bright lights confuse the flyers, or else they mistake them for bright stars since many seemingly navigate by following specific stars or constellations. NPR cite studies that suggest close to a billion birds a year die of that cause in the States, and that St. Louis is probably the fifth worst city for those collisions, after Chicago, Houston, Dallas and New York City. One organization that monitors the ground in a single square mile of Chicago every spring find 5000 or more dead birds that met their demise by running into the bright lights. The reason St. Louis, (as well as Chicago, Dallas and Houston) are such bird death magnets is that they lie right underneath the so-called Mississippi Flyway, the busiest of four major paths migrating birds follow between their winter homes in the South and the summer nesting grounds, often in Canada. Think of them as the natural interstates for feathered friends. The National Park Service suggest fully 40% of all North American ducks and geese follow it, and half of the migrating songbirds. Most of the tiny Blackburnian Warblers – smaller than a regular sparrow and weighing the same as two nickels – (seen below) follow that path of about 3500 or so miles between their summer homes in the boreal forests of Canada and the upper Midwest and their wintering grounds in Venezuela and the South American Andes. Like most songbirds, they migrate at night, and rest and feed as much as possible in the daylight hours.

blackburnian Such collisions not only seem tragic and unfair (it’s got to be incredibly tough for a bird the size of a mouse with wings to fly thousands of miles over two weeks or so without having to worry about a steel monolith that their ancestors never encountered standing in their way), it’s bad for the environment. Most of the songbirds affected are warblers, vireos, thrushes… small birds that eat a whole lot of bugs. Many eat close to their own body weight in flies, mosquitoes, wasps, caterpillars, plant-killing beetles and mites daily. You name the bug, there’s something that eats it , and when their populations decline, the nuisance bug numbers and their resultant problems increase wildly. Turning the lights off lets the vast majority of the long-distance travelers fly by, above the rooftop level unfazed.

Thus the Arch stands dark in May, when almost all the migrating songbirds are heading north, and a number of other office buildings in some of the cities mentioned as well as Toronto to the north voluntarily turn off any lights in unused parts of the building at night. Each dark empty office at midnight means just a few more brilliantly colored warblers arriving safely in forests and fields of the land, adding color to the landscape and removing a lot of much less desireable flying critters from them. And, it even saves some money for the building owners. A small thing, but a big difference.

May 8, 2023

If Only He Wasn’t So Proud And She Wasn’t So…Well, You Know

Recently I had an accomplishment that millions more before me have had. I finished reading Pride and Prejudice. Of course, it shouldn’t seem an accomplishment because I like to read, consider myself a writer and the book is a literary classic. But still, it was a little self-challenge met. You see, I’d begun reading it perhaps half a dozen years back and just flat out lost interest by about when we’d be getting to the first commercial if I had been instead watching a film version on TV.

Pride and Prejudice, should you not know (and no shade thrown if you don’t) was an early 19^th Century novel by Jane Austen, one of England’s most beloved authors to this day, over 200 years after she died. It’s considered a classic, it’s a part of the base curriculum in quite a few English or Literature courses around the world and has been adapted into several movie versions as well as loosely – very loosely – inspiring quite a few more like Bridget Jones Diary.

I read a number of literary classics during a little phase I went through perhaps twenty years back. Pop music fan I am, the idea came to me when listening to Kate Bush’s brilliant song “Wuthering Heights” and it occurred to me I had no real idea what the book was about. Yet, I reasoned, it must’ve been impressive to inspire young Kate like that. Turns out Miss Bush hadn’t read the book herself when she wrote her song, but I found that out later and in the meantime had read that 19^th Century novel (quite liked it) and a few others – Dracula, A Christmas Carol (which I of course knew by way of the movies made of it), Of Mice and Men. It just seemed like something a well-read adult should have done…and good trivia sure to be at least one $300 question answered should I ever make it onto Jeopardy!

Pride and Prejudice, and Austen’s other, well-received but not quite as successful few novels never made my list. But when I met my sweetie, I found it was one of her all-time favorite books and movies as well. So I figured, hey, I should try to read through it to understand it better. By then I’d already seen the glam Hollywood version with lovely Kiera Knightley playing the book’s heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, and the much longer BBC version with the cute but not known-like-Knightley Jennifer Ehle playing her and the dashing, then young Colin Firth playing the eventual object of her affection , Mr. Darcy. This was my sweetie’s preferred version; she felt it stuck closer to the book.

So, after a few more viewings of the movie and eventually getting a feel for the characters, I dug into the print version and about two weeks later, finished it up. I came away with a bit more appreciation for it and an idea of why it is so well-loved by so many.

So what is the appeal? First, and probably a big part of its enduring nature, it was a feminist manifesto…for the times it was written. While by today’s standards even Elizabeth might seem a little shallow, and her sisters far worse (her father was known to refer to the younger ones as “three of the silliest girls of all of England”), by early-1800s standards she was a real renegade. She was an equal for most men in the room when it came to intelligence and quick thinking and she was determinedly headstrong. She tried to change her dad’s thinking on some family decisions (quite unlike a proper young lady in pre-Victorian England) and had the audacity to turn down an offer of marriage from a respectable man whom she not only didn’t love but thought a bit of a buffoon – Mr. Collins. That drew the ire of her mother, whose chief concern was getting her girls married off. In that day and age, a girl of ordinary standing didn’t say “no” to an offer of marriage from someone who had a job and house. No wonder she appeals to modern women!

At the same time, Austen’s works, this one especially, were quite revolutionary in their treatment of how women were put upon. They were indeed quite truly Second Class Citizens in that day and age. Not only were they not expected to speak up about anything more substantial than dinner or dances, they weren’t allowed by law to inherit property. Hence the major plotline in Pride & Prejudice, the Bennet girls could all be turfed out of their home were they not to marry should their father die. He wasn’t allowed to leave the house and property to them, regardless of his wishes. Austen’s book was a not-so-subtle plea for the equal rights they obviously deserved.

It too was a statement about marriage. It was portrayed as important, life’s goal in fact, but also as something to be decided upon carefully. As mentioned, Elizabeth had the audacity to turn down one man she didn’t care for at all, seeing her own parents as an example of a poor choice. The book (more so than the films) makes it clear her father had grown to despise his wife and chose her originally only for her fleeting good looks. Elizabeth didn’t want to be caught up in a situation like that and demanded a man she could love and feel a mental equal…which she ended up finding in the “Proud” Mr. Darcy. She in turn had the audacity to ignore his family’s demands that she not marry him because they felt her to be below his station in life. This kind of thinking (“my courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me”) would have made a young woman a pariah back then but has become a sort of mantra for today’s women – “Obstinate headstrong girl” appears on many a t-shirt these days, and with good reason.

But perhaps the reason the book remains popular to this day is for two more big reasons – it’s a love story, albeit one that twists and surprises, and those are timeless. But as well, it is a reminder of a different time, a more leisurely one we’d like to think. Time seemed of little concern to Elizabeth or any of her family; they had times for walks, reading books, planning ahead for parties they’d attend. And Austen wrote in such a fashion too; she was in no hurry to get the story to its conclusion, adding rich details and insights into the characters’ minds aplenty. Reading it slowed me down a little; one couldn’t imagine an author today writing this story which clocks in over 300 pages as a book of that length. It could probably be summarized in 20 and should the modern writer attempt to pad it into more than 100, one could imagine editors screaming and throwing it at them. “Nobody has time to read all this!” Indeed, with today’s hectic schedules, overtime at work, and ever-at-hand phones making sure we check in on social media, reading through it does take a bit of commitment. But ultimately, I found one well worth making …much like making a successful marriage. Something Elizabeth would’ve approved of I’m sure.

That’s me, what about you? Are there any books you’ve been wanting to dig into but just can’t quite bring yourself to?