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Likes and dislikes:
My first book was a book of short pieces. The nice thing about
a book of shorts is, for each person, there will be something
to like and something to disklike. This puts each person in the
old dilemma of having to decide to be happy or not. Just as in
real life, it becomes a personal choice. We can be happy or angry.
It has always been thus. Happiness and anger are not things which
happen, they are things we choose. Even in grief, we can choose
a direction to go when the grief has passed.
Enough Kids:
I had this neighbor once. I don't know how it came about but she
had nine children in a one bedroom house. They all seemed to love
her and followed her around everywhere she went. She looked very
sad. So far as I could tell, she had not one minute to herself.
She told me she had tried to give her kids to a zoo once but they
told her wild animals are tough enough. I was up about 4:00 AM
one morning and I saw her walk out and sit on the stoop to light
up a smoke. It looked like she would have a little time. She did!
It was a whole minute before a little toddler came out and sat
beside her. I think she cried.
The Amazing Stick Fiddle:
When I was a kid, I had an uncle I called Uncle Louie. Louie played
a fiddle for dances. He had the most amazing fiddle I ever saw.
The thing had wires hanging off of it which went to an amplifier.
There were parts of a violin but there was no acoustic box. This
fiddle was nothing more than a stick of wood with strings on it.
It turned out that he built it himself from an old fiddle. He
had made his own electronic pickup coils and he had some kind
of an amplifier. He got music out of that thing which make you
want to dance and sing.
My mouth was wide open the first time I saw it. I went home
and waxed butcher's strings and stretched them like fiddle strings.
They actually made sounds when I plucked them. I knew nothing
about acoustics and waveforms, but I started to see the relationship
between string length and what I called shrillness. That shrillness
was what I now know as pitch. There was a similar relationship,
though not so pronounced, between the string tension and shrillness.
The tighter I made the string the higher the pitch I produced,
until it passed the yield point and the string broke.
I suspect that Uncle Louie knew nothing of the mathematics of
music but he sure understood sound and he tuned me on to the world
of music forever.
Manners:
In my travels around the US, I have consistently found Southern
folks to be more polite than Northern folks. Of course there are
exceptions which do not affect the point. I have found also, that
the people from Michigan and Ohio are the worst cases of pushy,
bad mannered jerks. There are many fine people in Michigan and
Ohio. These tourists, of which there are many, are really not
representative of Michiganders or of Buckeyes anymore than a cud
chewing Bubba is representative of the Southern people. Regardless
of the locale of their domicile there is just no excuse for bad
manners. No one is in that much of a hurry.
The fact is, Southern people, in general, take the time to be polite and Northern people, in general, do not. It's an inexcusable behavior to pretend you don't have time to say thank you, to cut in a line, to push and grab, or to just act like a boorish Damned Yankee. Where am I from? I'm from Michigan and I'm proud of my home state but I'm embarrassed by Michigan tourists, in general.
Poor People:
If you want to hear what the poor people have to say, get a loaf
of bread, a jar of mayo and a pound of bologna. Make some sandwiches
and put them in separate sandwich bags. Take them to Detroit.
Crawl up under an overpass and hand a sandwich to the guy you
will find there. Don't expect him to thank you. He may say nothing
at all. He may say, screw you honky! Whatever he says, put it
in your notes. That's what a poor person has to say. You may discover
that the guy under the overpass is not much different than you.
I don't have the strength or the courage to do that. If you don't have the courage to do that, quit mush mouthing about the poor folks. Quit saying what we ought to do about the poor folks, cause you don't know any more than I do. Quit pretending you represent poor folks. You're nothing but a damned liar.
I suspect poor folks get hungry on days other than Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. If you going to feed them on the holidays, fine! Just don't call the media and have them make you look like some kind of great wonderful person. If you don't want to feed them on the other days, just keep your mouth shut. Or, better yet, give the resources to someone like Ma Wattles who will do it every day. I have no objection to you helping poor folks. Just do it quietly and stop being such a fraud.
Rouge River:
Tolkien created Mondor.
Where do you think he was looking, a place imagined or live?
You may look out on Mondor.
Just cross the Rouge River looking due West from Seventy Five.
Shuffle Along:
We were watching a tape of a TV show which Mrs Gaffer had recorded.
The tape came to an advertizing section and Mrs Gaffer told me
to fast forward. Forgetting I had the remote, I misunderstood
and said, "My goodness Mother. I haven't been able to do
that in 20 years. I just sort of shuffle along."
The Web:
What the academics had in mind when they first created the internet
was a tool of research, education, and communication. Now the
web has become one big ugly stupid giant arcade. It's not a problem
for most people using the web, because they are just big dumb
kids playing in an arcade. The big problem is, the researchers
have not changed their model of what they think the web is. Steve
Case knows. He uses phrases like, "It's your quarter. You
ought to be able to stay on ..........." The web is becoming
more and more difficult to use as a tool or research or education.
There is just too much irrelevant noise.
The great American Spirit:
More and more, it seems to me, people are saying, "they oughta."
A media person asks a person in the street about a current problem
or condition. The answer invariably starts with, "They oughta."
This implies that someone else should solve the problem or fix
things up. What ever happened to the inventive, problem solving
spirit which made America great? Wouldn't it be surprising and
wonderful to hear someone say something like, "I took my
shovel out in the street and pounded dried cow dung in the pot
holes", or "I think they are solving the wrong problem.
I'm going to start a company to build a child car seat which will
protect the kids from air bags."
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