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Peace is bad for Business.

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December 16, 2007 Rants

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"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else." T. Roosevelt America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. Abraham Lincoln Patriotism ... for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power. ... Patriotism is slavery. Leo Tolstoy, in his pamphlet Christianity and Patriotism

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1. You have heard me compare Marsha to the mighty ant, that some say can carry 80 times its own weight. While Googling to learn more about the carrying power of the ant, I found something that explains how insects walk on walls. It says: “Most of the evidence, though, suggested that insects rely on ‘wet adhesion’, hanging on with the help of a thin film of fluid on the bottom of the pad. Insects often leave tiny trails of oily footprints. Some clearly secrete a fluid onto the "soles" of their feet. And they tend to lose their footing when they have their feet cleaned or dried.” So, if you are tired of seeing insects running up and down the walls in your house, now you know what to do.

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2. Have you ever seen a Christmas ghost? Have you ever met anyone who has? While visiting an elderly neighbor in a nursing home not too far from here, I was sitting in a chair near the door when a couple of nurses out in the hall started talking about ghosts. When one of them said that psychic phenomena can explain many things, I really started to pay attention. You know, you wonder if people who see ghosts are capable of taking care of our old friends and neighbors. She said she'd run into this psychic phenomena on her first job out of nursing school. She said, "We had a ward of 12 elderly ladies. They were all very sweet, and after the tough old birds I'd worked with at school, the job looked like a snap. "Then, early one morning, one of them whispered to me, 'My husband was here last night.' Well, you know how they tell you at school that we should not humor elderly people when they hallucinate. I told her that her husband was not with us anymore. "But she just smiled at me, a real warm smile, and said, 'My husband was here last night.' "I told the head nurse about it and she said it was one of the most common things you hear in nursing homes. Some old people are always being visited by a parent or a loved one who hasn't drawn a breath for 20 or 30 years. "So I didn't think anything about it when the woman in the next bed started in with the same thing about a week later. And with two of them saying it, none of us was surprised when 'My husband was here last night' was the only thing we heard in the entire ward from breakfast until noon. Even two ladies who had never been married picked it up. "Appetites improved right down the line. The doctor said it wasn't unusual for people to eat more when they were in good spirits. And although he reminded us that we had an obligation to keep the patients in touch with reality, their imaginations had really done them a lot of good. Ladies who had been tired and had long been content to gaze at the ceiling for hours took a new interest in reading and knitting. Some began to write letters to friends and relatives. They visited with other patients and grew stronger from walking about and eating so well. The minister who visited the patients every day said we were witnessing a Christmas miracle and preached a special sermon on it the following Sunday. No one thought of it as being spooky at the time because everyone was so content and happy. The shock came on Christmas morning: I noticed that not one of the patients had finished her breakfast. When the other nurse in my ward mentioned that not one of them had said, 'My husband was here last night,' the hair stood right up on the back of my neck. "You talk about your psychic phenomena. No one on the entire hospital staff was ever able to explain it and I guess I asked all of them about it. "All except our old night watchman, that is. The batteries in his pacemaker had melted down on Christmas Eve and he'd spent the night over in intensive care."

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3. Everyone now knows that the whole thing started years ago when Dick Jones, overcome by the spirit of Christmas, tied a festoon of holly around the neck of a plastic pink flamingo that ornamented his front lawn. Dick’s wife, Alice, and several of his friends commented favorably on the seasonal decoration, which strengthened the likelihood that Jones would so enhance his art object the following year. His friend and next-door neighbor, Bob Smythe, complimented Dick’s creative genius. But Bob’s wife, Jane, was jealous. “Why can’t you ever think of anything nice like that”? she whispered in Bob’s ear. Bob knew that with a year to plan he could top Dick’s Christmas decoration. And he did. The following year, about three days before he figured Dick would wrap his flamingo with holly, Bob dressed the plastic duck family on his front lawn in little Santa Claus costumes. Everyone said that the plastic mama duck and the plastic baby ducks dressed in little red suits tufted with white fur were the cutest things they’d ever seen. Whenever Bob and Jane looked out the window at their Santa ducks, Jane would squeeze Bob’s arm and Bob would stick out his chest with the satisfied feeling that only comes from work well done. Although Dick Jones had to compliment his neighbor, he knew he’d been upstaged and that the cars that would creep by this season would be full of folks who had come over to see the Santa ducks and not his decorated flamingo. Dick and Alice discussed making a Santa costume for their bird but were clever enough to realize that it would look like they were just copying the Smythe ducks. In the end, Alice, who had been around more than just a little bit, bought two strings of Christmas lights and a couple of extension cords. She put a string of lights on a small tree that grew in the front yard, while Dick tastefully arranged fresh holly on their flamingo. He wasn’t about to give up a good thing just because of Bob Smythe’s Santa ducks. Then he crowned his work with a string of colored lights. Dick and Alice went into their home feeling very good about themselves indeed. They knew that Bob Smythe’s eyes would bug out when they turned on their Christmas lights that evening. A year later, Bob Smythe augmented his Santa ducks with two four-foot striped candles, which he erected on his doorstep. By then, however, Jones already had small candles with white bulbs in four of his front windows. The following season, Jones outlined his garage door with a string of blinking colored lights. The Smythes added a three-foot plastic Santa, which sat with a whip in its hand in a sleigh, now harnessed to the plastic duck Santas. Smythe achieved instant local notoriety when a picture of his entourage appeared in the paper. Our editor was unable to think of a caption to run under it. It was about that time that someone called my attention to the collective genius of Smythe and Jones. No holiday could pass without appropriate symbols appearing on their front lawns. I began to study them in hopes of learning something that would make my own place a bit more attractive. I noticed that Jones braces up a 12-foot wooden rabbit at Easter. Strobe lights are cleverly concealed in the creature’s huge basket of eggs. Smythe rolls out plaster pumpkins for Halloween. I enjoy his Halloween witch (with two glowing red lights for eyes) that flies back and forth on wires. Jones wrapped his entire house in eight-foot firecrackers for the Fourth of July. Both men built large barns out back that serve only as storage bins for their props. But I digress, for it is at Christmas that Smythe and Jones are at their unparalleled best. Besides the attractive decorations mentioned above, their homes are now outlined with blinking colored lights. Red and blue blinking lights flash from every window. A life-sized illuminated plastic Santa Claus stands in the middle of a crèche with several live sheep and wooden shepherds and wise men who bob about on wires. Eight ceramic life sized reindeer and a real sleigh loaded with brightly wrapped presents are braced on top of Smythe’s house. Stereo speakers, hidden somewhere within the bowels of a manger, blast the observer with Jingle Bell Rock. On top of Jones’ house is a sign that spells “Merry Xmas” in three-foot letters filled with blinking lights. Every year at this time a wide-lens photo of the whole business appears in the paper, and well it should. Otherwise, many of us might forget the real meaning of Christmas.

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4. When I told my old neighbor, Gramp Wiley, that I simply couldn’t afford to send out Christmas cards this year, he pounded the arm of his rocker and said, “Saving on Christmas messages is nothing new. Andy Wyeth has been doing it for years.” You might know that for years, every day in the summer Andy Wyeth loaded a couple of dogs in his car, drove up to Thomaston and then right down by my house on his way to Port Clyde where he worked in his father’s old studio. And he was driving a gold plated Stutz with musical horns. So I didn’t think he could be much of a scrimper and saver, and I said so. My neighbor leaned back in his rocker, closed his eyes, and spoke like The Ghost of Christmas Past. “Forty or fifty years ago Andy pounded at my back door and asked if I’d give him a hand. His car had sunk into a soft spot out in my field. You know how he’s still always driving around back roads and even places where there are no roads, hoping he’ll see some young woman sleeping in a blueberry field he can paint. “It was pouring rain and he was soaked to the skin, so I got him over against the stove and got some hot coffee into him. Andy decided he could get along without a car for a day, so I gave him a ride home. “The next day I pulled him out with my old truck. It was no bother, but Andy was grateful --- every Christmas since then he’s sent me a card.” I said, “That don’t sound like Andy’s trying to save.” Gramp said, “He’s trying to save. Anybody else with his amount of money would buy me a nice Hallmark card, but all I get from him are these big homemade things he paints himself.”

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5. There are business opportunities in Florida that one does not find in Maine. In Florida there are hundreds of thousands of trailers, called double wides, and there are hundreds of thousands of retired people living in them. Some of these retired people have money. Some do not. Some of these people are exceptionally clever and are in full control of their mental faculties. Some are not. But some of the people who are slipping still have money, and therein lies endless business opportunites for men who fix furnaces, heating systems and roofs. They call. They ask to be permitted to give your air conditioner or your roof a free inspection. Nowadays when they are on your roof they have a camera in hand. When they climb down they enter your home and show you ominous photographs. Although I haven’t done a study, I’d like to know how many times they can climb on a tin roof and not find something that needs repair. Of course, in Maine you know when your roof needs repair because the plaster falls off your ceiling.

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6. The young man who was selling his roof repair services put his ladder on the side of the double wide that is our winter home and climbed up on the roof. He then pointed at vague things on the edge, which might or might not have been faulty, looked at me and commented. He then moved to another place on the roof and pointed at something, and said something about that, too. This went on for five minutes or more, as I nodded eagerly. I’ve been married for years so I’m accustomed to smiling and nodding at appropriate intervals. Perhaps, however, it wasn’t a fair thing to do to that young man, because at least my wife knows that I don’t hear anything she says.

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7. You’re seen those reality shows where every week they banish someone from an island. These shows have caught on and are obviously popular. One show I really enjoy is The Greatest Loser, where people exercise and eat right and in three months they lose 100 pounds or so. I think that is a valuable program because it lets people see that if you exercise and watch your diet, you will lose weight. I am aware that there is a similar program for women who want to have the body they had when they were high school cheerleaders. Who wouldn’t like to have the body of a high school cheerleader? You can see that there is no limit to the possibilities with reality shows. It’s only a matter of time before you see a religious reality show that banishes someone every week from the church choir.

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8. You can’t really appreciate this unless you are a man who has lived alone for most of your adult life. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that there is nothing a single man appreciates more than something to eat. You will recall that I met my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, at a supper held by the singles’ club in the cellar of a church in Camden. The food at these singles’ club suppers are nothing more than a vehicle for entrapment. It is true that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. As a single man, I had no shame when it came to scrounging something to eat from my friends and neighbors. When I’d go to someone’s house, if they didn’t offer me something to eat, I would ask. Whenever I finished mowing someone’s field with my tractor, I’d go inside and beg food. I’m not talking about anything more than a glass of water and a peanut butter sandwich. This is fine dining to a single man and it is appreciated. This was brought to mind this morning when my brother said he gave his bachelor neighbor Mr. Sullivan a piece of Marsha’s cake. When he told Mr. Sullivan that the cake was made by a woman, Mr. Sullivan said he didn’t know whether to eat it or fall down and worship.

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9. I was a skinny kid. I could have posed for that cartoon where the bully kicks sand in the skinny kid’s face. It is my understanding that skinny is not the problem kids have nowadays. TV commentators tell us that kids are fat. It is my understanding that kids don’t get out in the woods and build tree houses and run around like we did. Of course, nobody even had a TV when I was a kid so, unless you took piano lessons or could read, there was nothing to do inside. We were lucky enough to have one room schools back then, so we could walk to school. Nowadays kids are bussed to and from school and when they get home they sit down and play video games. So, because we didn’t know enough to leave a good thing alone, we are now supposed to be alarmed because a lot of kids are fat. A lot of old people are just like their grandchildren because they sit around and pack on the pounds. This was forcefully called to my attention last week when Marsha and I were asked to be Joseph and Mary in the Christmas play. I was flattered until I discovered that the other candidates were considered too obese to play the part.

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10. You might have heard that there are places out there on the internet where people can meet people. A friend who knows, tells me that these places are the up and coming places where business will be done and that it is to everyone’s advantage to have as much business information on these meeting place web sites as possible. So I ventured forth, telling everything about myself and my business --- except my birth date and my social security number. You don’t want them to have that. This is an example of what came back. “Hey Robert Karl, How's it goin? I'm Kristy, I just moved to the St. George area and I wanna meet a nice guy around here :-). I moved here to Maine a couple of weeks ago for work and now that I'm here I have nobody to hang out with! I read your profile... You're cute and I liked what you had to say :-).I'm 24/F/single and I'm lookin for a guy who is a little bit older or more mature than me. You say you're 61 and you're cute so I guess you're qualified :-) My friend Jen from back home suggested I tried using myspace to meet people in my area. [I just signed up and my profile sux hehe.] I do have a blog/profile page at MyCloseups.com ... I have alot of photos and stuff up if you wanna see me. I left you a personal msg on my homepage and I took a new pic for you today. Come check me out when you have a chance, k? Lookin forward to seeyin ya, Kristy” One is not encouraged by the efficacy of these web sites when someone who claims to be 24 seeks the companionship of someone who claims to be 61. Even more condemning, she wrote a lot as one word. What do you think?

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11. My guru friend Dave sent me this story. He didn’t need to tell me that it is true, because anything as silly as this has to be true. Old Pete and Muffie had gotten themselves into a feud over the fishing turf around Bailey Island. Old Pete didn’t think Muffie should be setting traps in his cove. One day Old Pete hauled one of Muffie’s traps and put a dead skunk into it. Some days later Muffie came into the Bailey Island Store and said, “I just found a dead fox in one of my traps.” Old Pete said, “No, it was a skunk!”

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