Tag Archives: Life Events

Having to do with life–mine, mostly–and what it might mean–to me, mostly.

Quite a Trip

I just got back from Charleston, SC.  It was a great long-weekend trip.  I went down to see my first son who will be opening a deli tomorrow.   The project looks like a winner, and I am so happy for my son. It is kind of a momentous time for him. Like his Dad, he has “explored his options” for quite a few years before actually kicking in and making some choices.   I’m completely behind him on this project on so many levels.

My little family and I had a great time on the trip.  Despite the 60-degree water, my younger son had a fine time swimming in the surf.   I don’t know how or why he does it, but he does, and he loves it.   I love watching him, too, so alive in that mother water that birthed us all–all life forms on earth, as far as we know, anyway.
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Trip to White Pines (with pics!)

Sometimes things just work out right. The other day I took my son to White Pines Nature Preserve south of Pittsboro, NC. This is one of the properties owned and preserved by the Triangle Land Conservancy, and according to their Web site, the White Pines Preserve is “located at the confluence of the Deep and Rocky rivers.” The preserve is unique in that it supports several stands of white pines and other plants that normally are found in the cooler mountain region of North Carolina.  Apparently, because of the rivers and a north-facing hillside, the area supports a cool microclimate, and because it is a little out of the way, people have left the area pretty much undisturbed.  The trails are well worn and easy to follow, so it seemed like a good day’s hike for the two of us.[googleMap name=”White Pines Nature Preserve” description=”A land holding of the Triangle Land Conservancy” width=”500″ height=”400″ directions_to=”false”]+35° 36′ 51.94″, -79° 9′ 28.48″[/googleMap]

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You say it’s your birthday…

Happy Birthday TO ya!Well, it’s my birthday, too, yeah.

Yep, if I haven’t made it to this august and sublime threshold yet, I am now well and truly, “old enough to know better.”  My Mom started telling me that when I was still pretty young.  I didn’t believe her then, and I’m not altogether inclined to believe this particular sentiment even now.

Anyway, here are the usual URLs I consult at such times:

NYTimes – On this Day
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20090326.html

BBC – On this Day
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/26/

Wikipedia – March 26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_26

I’m Sorry: 21st Century Style

The translation here, 21st century style, is, “I know I did something to inconvenience you, but I don’t really want to have an unpleasant exchange with you, and I certainly don’t want to change my behavior in any way, either, so I am saying this meaningless thing I learned in elementary school so you’ll go away and not say anything unpleasant to me to try to get me to actually take responsibility for my actions.”

Do I sound grumpy? Maybe I am.

But the translation is almost Hemingway-esque, in a way, isn’t it? I mean in terms of sentence structure.  Content and meaning be damned. Hemingway nor his characters would have said anything so insincere.  Imagine one of Papa’s characters making a false apology.  I mean, really.  They were more likely to leave a righteous apology unsaid than to make one insincerely.  But the compound sentences, Man! Look at the sentence structure!

But back to the issue, I am “apologized” to almost daily in this way.  I have occasion to run and ride my bike on a series of paved trails just miles from my house.  The trails are marked with a center stripe designed, I suppose, to keep everybody in line.  Still, I am constantly coming up behind pairs and groups of pedestrians and cyclists who have arranged themselves across the entire width of the trail, blocking it rather quite completely with their wide, wide, butts, their canine companions, their double-wide strollers, their colorful magnesium bicycles and associated festive costumery.  There is a plenitude of what-all out there, believe me. Continue reading

Pick it up there, how about it?

keep right!There is something that approximately one in five of you could do for the rest of us, something that seems quite easy, and why wouldn’t you want to do something easy that helped many other people?  It really would  entail no downside for you at all.  It’s simply a matter of keeping up with traffic, if you could please.  Or getting out of the way.  Thanks so much.

See, I began commuting on four-lane, non-Interstate highways recently.  These roads have traffic signals rather frequently along the way, and I find myself stopped behind lines of cars several times in my 20-mile trip to work.  The really surprising thing I have noticed is how many people continue to sit still when the light turns green.  Then, once they finally get going, they allow the cars in front of them to pull even farther away while they maintain a much slower speed, and yes, as you might have guessed, they usually occupy the left lane where they do not belong.

All these people would have to do is depress their gas pedals a fraction more, and they would be right there, a reasonable distance behind the car in front of them; instead, the car in front of them disappears in the distance while they cruise along right beside the car next to them in the right lane.  Meanwhile many cars are piling up behind them, and many of the drivers inside them are becoming quite annoyed. Continue reading

National Toilet Day? Not nearly grandiose enough!

[Edit:  Dang, I missed the 19th by eleven minutes!  Oh, well.]

Today is a memorable day in human history, we’re told. The World Toilet Organization has declared it National Toilet Day.  The WTO (not that one, this one) seems to want to pull a straight face as they do so, though.  They would remind us, rather gravely, of the filth in which we would live were it not for the “porcelain convenience” to which most of us in the western world have become accustomed.  Talk about serious; organizers delivered speeches Wednesday on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol.  The U.S. is even using a shuttle mission to deliver a new toilet to the international space station. The toilet is really making headlines (did I say that?).

The straight face might betray itself with a few wry creases as the organizers state that the WTO “has been striving to elevate the status of toilets to make  them status symbols and objects of desire.”

Or maybe they are not grinning behind this facade; maybe they are sincere.  Maybe these fellas just ain’t been around that much.  But object of desire?  I mean, I have seen some smooth curves on a nicely turned out commode in my time, but I never really had any desire for them, not the way I might harbor lust for, say, my girl Scarlett Johansson [2][3]. Continue reading

Jury Duty? Almost!

On Oct. 14, 2008, the Word of the Day from the Oxford English Dictionary was jury.  The OED is a little more thorough than many dictionaries in that their lexicographers not only define words, but also chart the use of those  words over time, providing copious verbatim quotations to that effect.  In this case, the story of the word jury begins in 1187 with a reference in Latin.  One might have thought the word would be somewhat older, but we apparently did not derive the entirety of our civic system from the ancients.

The OED defines the word thus:

A company of persons (orig. men) sworn to render a verdict or true answer upon some question or questions officially submitted to them; in modern times, in a court of justice, usually upon evidence delivered to them touching the issue; but in the earliest times usually upon facts or matters within their own knowledge, for which reason they were summoned from the neighborhood to which the question submitted to them related….

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Limits? Boundaries? Me?

pic of barbed wireBoundaries and limits. Limits and boundaries. Life is full of these. Why would anyone try to raise a child without a proper grounding in these necessities? We can guess at some of the possible reasons, but people try to do it all the time. Really. All the time.

Sometimes we needn’t guess why certain individuals try to accomplish this trick. Obviously, people exist for whom something went slightly awry in their childhoods, something that made limits and boundaries seem as negative things when they are, rather, quite positive things—when executed properly, that is. It definitely can happen.

My own life provides evidence for how these social constructs can get a bad name. My parents are, as they say, no longer with us, but let’s just say they were no model for how to teach the value and benefit of boundaries and limits. They were inconsistent; they were needlessly harsh from time to time, and often hypocritical, sometimes transgressing the reasonable limits society had placed upon them, and doing so within sight of the kids. To their credit, perhaps, they did so with a certain admirable élan at times, but still, the fact of the violation, in the face of the strictures they applied to the children at home—well, it just didn’t take a juvenile genius to see through it all and come to one’s own conclusions on the matter. One began to see that boundaries and limits could be a pretty fungible commodity, and that is not the most comfortable discovery for a child to make.

And then life went on and put me in a place where, in 25 years as a teacher and coach in various institutions of public instruction, I learned the value of limits and boundaries while dealing with some 3000 young people—other people’s kids, in fact—many of whom had never heard of such a thing as a boundary before and perhaps not even since.

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You Can Have All of Mine, Really

My newly revised faceOK, so I “came off my bike” this afternoon.

Yeah, you can believe me on this: This is not something you want. You can die from this. Even if you just get your bell rung, you still don’t want it.

So, how did this happen, you’re asking. Well, very, very quickly, in fact.  “It all happened so fast!” Heard that one before?  Here it is again, for your delectation. Take it for what you will.  But as to the facts at hand, I was returning from a routine bike ride, one I take every day or so, and as I have done countless times before, I turned into my peaceful little cul-de-sac. Apropos to the topic, the entrance to my street has been furnished with an unnecessary extra divot–somebody’s idea of a way to channel storm runoff alongside a piece of road that already sports a generous existing grade. This makes such a feature altogether superfluous (and in my case, at least a little dangerous). Anyway, when I hit this divot, carrying, perhaps, a bit of exuberant, excess speed, the rubber grip on the right handlebar slipped off, leaving me somewhat in the lurch.

Regardless, the aforementioned combination of mechanical and engineering failures put me in rather immediate contact with the unforgiving asphalt. I’d estimate that less than a second elapsed between hitting the bump and hitting the pavement. That’s not a lot of time to do any planning or prognostication, oh my bruvvers. That’s not even enough time to take a deep breath and get ready for all that you are about to suffer. It’s basically just a blur through which one traverses and tries to do the best one can under the somewhat impromptu circumstances.

A brief, subsequent, anatomical inventory provided a retrospective account of the events that transpired with, shall we say, a smattering of indeliberate haste. Said inventory was informative, however, providing insights into what may have transpired in that split instant, such as the following:

  • I had hit the pavement (did I mention it was unforgiving?) with the knuckles, and palms, of both hands, therefore leading me to assume that I must have bounced at least once.
  • I also, apparently, made contact with the big toe of my left foot. Good thing I was wearing sensible shoes. Good safety tip, that.
  • As to the evidence of contact on my right shoulder, there was a rather prominent tear in my T-shirt, and a corresponding raspberry spread gooily on said shoulder’s apex.
  • I won’t go into detail as to the state of the various knees and elbows; they have seen this territory before and were well prepared to revisit it. Let’s just say, however, that they had to cowboy up considerably to make the grade in this instance, forebearance-wise.


* Having been a victim of a little of the old ultraviolence, I am channeling Alex, from A Clockwork Orange.
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