tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74030803363835084462024-02-19T06:34:42.671-05:00Wicked AwesomologyI am a 40-something guy in Northern Maine biding my time until the mothership picks me up and takes me back to my home planet, where there is no reality TV, the temperature never drops below 65 degrees, and stupid people are summarily wrapped in bacon and dropped into a pit of hungry chihuahuas.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.comBlogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-60658066826477693742016-06-07T19:30:00.000-04:002016-06-07T19:51:32.195-04:00Book Review: Cascadia By H.W. "Buzz" Bernard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Cover image from Amazon.com. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EZE7JH8/ref=s9_simh_bw_p351_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-3&pf_rd_r=S8ZSVRJFPT23X7RP9ZG4&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1721361442&pf_rd_i=154606011" target="_blank">A link to this novel on their site is here.</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Cascadia</i> is the new thriller from author and Oregon native H.W. “Buzz” Bernard, a former weather officer with the U.S. Air Force for over 30 years, and a senior meteorologist at the Weather Channel for 13 years. Since publication of his debut novel <i>Eyewall</i> in 2011, Bernard has released a total of five thriller novels, with <i>Cascadia</i> being the latest, slated for release in July of 2016.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Bernard’s latest novel is based on the premise of a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami striking in the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The central character, Dr. Rob Elwood, is a successful geologist who has suddenly become haunted by very explicit and repetitive nightmares of a massive earthquake tsunami obliterating the coastline of the northwestern U.S. during the busy Independence Day Weekend. Despite being a scientist who relies on hard facts, Rob cannot help but feel that he has received some kind of supernatural premonition that a 500-year “big one” is going to strike. He struggles with the decision of whether to make this ‘prophecy’ he may have been given public in the hopes of saving innocent lives, though putting his career at risk on the one hand, or keeping his visions to himself and possibly allowing untold numbers of people to die needlessly if it indeed comes true on the other. In addition to his inner conflicts, Rob clashes with his family, his colleagues, and local officials about his decision.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Intertwined with Rob’s story are those of two other men: one a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran named Neahkahnie Johnny, who may have stumbled on the solution to a centuries-old puzzle which may finally turn his life around, and the other is Shack, a retired military pilot who has made a trip to Oregon to make right a wrong he committed long ago when he was a self-absorbed young flyboy. The potential for a massive earthquake and tsunami in the Cascadia Subduction Zone carries with it the potential to forever change the lives of Rob, Johnny, Shack, and everyone living in the Pacific Northwest. There are so many great parts to <i>Cascadia</i> that I would like to share, but at the risk of spoiling the plot, I will leave to the reader to check out the details.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Cascadia</i> is a great showcase for Buzz Bernard’s background in environmental science and his talent for writing thrillers. It is clear that he put a great deal of time and research into making <i>Cascadia</i> as scientifically accurate as possible. He expertly weaves scientific information into the story without detracting from the plot, and his characters are immediately relatable. Bernard’s descriptions of the terrain of the coastal Pacific Northwest virtually transport the reader there, and his action sequences are terrific. A series of scenes involving Rob in his small airplane is especially riveting, and kept me up reading much later than I had planned. His pacing of the story is excellent. There were no slow sections that made me want to skip forward at any point in the novel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 21px;">A few things held me back from giving </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 21px;">Cascadia</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; line-height: 21px;"> a full five stars. To be frank, I did find a few aspects of the story to be a bit ‘out there’ compared to the rest of the novel, particularly Rob’s willingness to take such huge professional risks based on nothing more than a series of dreams, and the appearance of a mysterious woman named Cassie at various points in the story. There were a few times when I found that that Bernard’s characters’ speaking patterns did not sound natural in places. For example, the occasional placement of mid-sentence dependent clauses came across to me sounding more like something a person would write, as opposed to something they would say. I also thought that Bernard had a tendency to occasionally wax a bit too eloquent in his physical descriptions. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">With memories of the massive December 26, 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean that claimed nearly a quarter million lives still relatively fresh, <i>Cascadia</i> is a novel that can really set the reader on edge, especially if they or someone they know lives near the ocean. In <i>Cascadia</i>, Buzz Bernard has successfully done what the author of a good thriller does: exploits the possible and makes the reader wonder ‘what if’. I love a good disaster novel, and this one did not disappoint. Fun, exhilarating and informative, <i>Cascadia</i> is well-worth your time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span class="s1">DISCLAIMER: </span><span class="s2">I received a complimentary advance copy of <i>Cascadia</i> in exchange for my honest, unbiased review. I am not connected with the Buzz Bernard, his representation, or his publisher Bell Bridge Books in any way, and I did not receive any monetary gain from this review.</span></span></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-52216689728753168512016-02-25T18:56:00.000-05:002016-02-25T19:00:14.352-05:00Lamoine State Park, Downeast Maine<div class="p1">
With winter starting to lose some of its punch and vacation season not too far over the horizon, it seems like a good time to post another review of one of Maine’s state parks. I visited eight of the state’s 12 state parks with campgrounds last year, a number of which were return visits to places I had visited before on several occasions. Lamoine State Park, located in Downeast Maine between Ellsworth and Mount Desert Island was one of them. Last year marked my fourth trip there. It has become one of the parks I have to visit at least once every year. </div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Shoreline activity at Lamoine State Park</span></i></div>
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Lamoine State Park is relatively small at 55 acres. It is located on the site of an old coaling station for naval ships, which is actually a lot more picturesque than it may sound. There is scant evidence of the old coaling station now aside from a few historical markers, since it closed in 1912. The University of Maine was responsible for the facility until 1949, when it was offered to the state of Maine. I was interested to learn that some of the concrete that comprised part of the old station was reportedly hauled across the bay to be used in construction of the municipal pier in the town of Bar Harbor, which is a world-famous tourist spot just a few miles away as the crow flies.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A view of Frenchmen's Bay from Lamoine State Park, with Mount Desert Island in the background.</span></i></div>
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The bay, Frenchmen’s Bay, looms large at Lamoine State Park. The park sits on the edge, with stunning views of Mount Desert Island and the area coastline. A number of fisherman moor their boats at Lamoine State Park, and the boat ramp is busy during the warm weather months with both commercial and recreational users. It is a very popular spot for ocean kayakers, since the bay is sheltered from the high wind and waves of the open ocean. There are picnic sites and open areas right along the edge of the bay, and lots of places to sit at the water’s edge and enjoy the view. The shoreline is very accessible, and many people take advantage of it to explore and take photos. I personally haven’t seen a lot of wildlife while exploring Lamoine State Park, aside from an elderly porcupine who waddled through my campsite one Saturday evening and proceeded to climb up a tree, completely oblivious to me. There are a great number of birds however, particularly sea birds. Eagles are native to the area, and it would not be surprising at all to see one there.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Old Man Porcupine, my 2014 camping buddy at Lamoine State Park</span></i></div>
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The campground itself is right on the water’s edge, and none of the park’s 62 campsites is more than a few minutes walk from the bay. Only about ten of them have direct water views however, and they are often reserved well in advance. As a matter of fact, Lamoine State Park is often close to fully booked during the peak camping months of June, July and August. It’s beautiful, affordable, and just a short drive from Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, so reserve your site early if you are planning to stay. May and September are the easiest months to get your choice of campsites on short notice, though there are really no bad campsites at Lamoine State Park. It just depends on what you prefer. The campground is wooded and many sites offer a good deal of privacy. There are some sites that are not separated, so several parties can camp together if they like, and two large-group camping sites are available as well. As with most Maine state park campgrounds, there is no electricity or water hookups on the campsites at Lamoine State Park. A bathroom and shower facility, always well-maintained I’ve found, is located in the center of the campground, though there are also outhouses located near some of the sites that are a bit further away from the center. The park offers a playground and volleyball court, as well as a large treehouse for children, a picnic area with numerous picnic tables, and a few walking trails. Bring warm clothing, since the breezes off the water can be quite chilly at night, especially early and late in the camping season, I’ve found. While there’s lots to do at Lamoine State Park, swimming is not one of those things. The bay is really too cold and rocky for swimming unless you are a penguin.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A sculpture on site at Lamoine State Park</span></i></div>
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Lamoine State Park, like all the Maine state parks I have visited, is run by a friendly and professional staff who are very friendly and always willing to help out or answer questions. The grounds are exceptionally well-kept and they do a great job of making sure all visitors have a safe and enjoyable stay.</div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">A remnant of the old coaling station at Lamoine State Park</span></i></div>
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One of the best things for a camper like me who is only into semi-roughing it is that the city of Ellsworth is only eight miles away. If I find I’ve forgotten to pack something or have a craving for a lobster roll, it’s just a short drive to civilization. Even though you can literally see Mount Desert Island from the park, you have to drive around an inlet and across the bridge to get there, which takes about a half hour. Mount Desert Island offered endless opportunities for visitors, not the least of which are Acadia National Park and the town of Bar Harbor. I frequently take day trips to the island when I am staying at Lamoine State Park.</div>
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If you want to know more about Lamoine State Park, there is <a href="http://www.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/doc/parksearch/index.pl?search_radio=1&state_park=16&historic_site=&public_reserved_land=&shared_use_trails=&town=&distance=&submit=Go+%BB" target="_blank">a link to their official web page</a>. It really is a beautiful spot that captures the essence of coastal Maine, and I highly recommend it for anyone making a trip Downeast.</div>
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<b><i>All photographs in this posting were taken by the author.</i></b></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-30502101655280672352016-01-20T19:42:00.000-05:002016-01-20T19:42:20.938-05:00David Bowie, Glenn Frey, and Me<div class="p1">
The past month has been a rough one for us music fans, with the deaths of some major musical figures. R & B singer Natalie Cole, hard rocker Lemmy Kilmeister, singer David Bowie and, most recently, Glenn Frey, founder of the legendary rock group the Eagles are the biggest names among those who have recently passed away, but there have also been a number of deaths among lesser known members of popular bands, studio musicians, producers and other industry notables. Music has been an integral part of my life since I was very young, so when artists who have been on my radar screen for a long time suddenly pass away, it is la kind of loss, like that of an old friend or acquaintance, depending on who it is. </div>
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I can’t honestly account for myself as a true fan of either Natalie Cole or Lemmy Kilmeister’s band Motorhead. While I respect their work, Cole’s soulful crooning and Kilmeister’s aggressive, grinding hard rock fell just beyond the furthest ends of my musical taste spectrum. Nevertheless, when I heard of their deaths, it felt like someone had snipped away pieces from a beautiful but increasingly tattered tapestry, one that has always been a part of my life and that I too often take for granted. I didn’t listen to Natalie Cole or Motorhead very often, but I liked the idea that they were out there making music that people enjoyed and was sadden to hear that they were now silenced. With the deaths of David Bowie and Glenn Frey however, it wasn’t just pieces of the tapestry snipped away. Some new large holes were added, alongside those created for me by the deaths of Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Freddy Mercury, Kurt Cobain, George Harrison, and Michael Jackson, among others. They had put forth great music that had been a tangible part of my life, and they were still active in their careers when they died. They weren’t done yet. There was still more to come from them that we will now never get to hear. I felt real loss.</div>
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There was a lot of coverage of the deaths of both David Bowie and Glenn Frey in the media, and an outpouring of reactions in social media. The men were alike in some ways and very different in others. Both of them came onto the music scene in the early 70s, both did some acting work in addition to music, and both gradually faded from regular public attention by the coming of the 21<span class="s1"><sup>st</sup></span> century. And at the end of their careers, both men were still actively making music. Yet Bowie was mostly considered an eclectic musical artist who had experienced occasional mainstream acceptance. His focus had always been on the <i>art</i> of music. Frey, on the other hand, was very much a straightforward rock musician and businessman, who only stepped out of the mainstream to explore new ground on rare occasions. The artistic side of music was not unimportant to Frey, but he was always very candid in admitting that it had to pay the bills too. Regardless of the driving forces behind each of them, the end products that each gave us, their music, was truly great. It was fascinating and touching following the reactions to both of their deaths, and it taught me some things about the part music plays in our lives.</div>
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Before the release of 1983’s <i>Let’s Dance</i> album, I wasn’t very familiar with David Bowie’s work at all. I’d seen some of his albums at the store, but out of context they didn’t make much of an impact on me. MTV hadn’t come to rural Maine yet at that point, and the only radio stations that played pop and/or rock in my conservative corner of the world kept their playlists firmly grounded in the most widely-acceptable hits. Other than the rare “Young Americans” or “Heroes”, David Bowie wasn’t on the radio much in northern Maine in the early 80s. That was about to change in 1983. <i>Let’s Dance</i> was Bowie’s headlong dive into the new wave pop that was dominating the international airwaves at that time, and the album was a gigantic commercial success, due in large part to new fans like me who now had access to Bowie on mainstream radio. </div>
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I remember hearing the title track to <i>Let’s Dance</i> for the first time late on a hot July night in 1983. It was the night before my family was to go away on our annual two-week summer vacation to the Maine coast, and I was as excited as I would have been the night before Christmas. Add to that the fact that it was a swelteringly hot night and it was a recipe for insomnia. Sometime after midnight, I gave up tossing and turning, and sat on my bedroom windowsill in hopes of getting some cool air. I plugged my earpiece into my little FM radio (so as not to disturb my blissfully sleeping brother with whom I shared a room) and tuned in the local rock station. The soundtrack of a small town Friday night’s squealing tires and chirping crickets played in one ear and the tinny sounds of rock and roll from a transistor radio in the other while I stared out at the moon over the houses of my neighborhood. Before long, the DJ came on and introduced a new song by British singer David Bowie. British acts were flooding the American music scene in 1983, and I was getting into a lot of it, so my interest was piqued. The song was “Let’s Dance”, and it really hooked me on the first play. Bowie’s vocals were mesmerizing, and the heavy drums and bluesy guitar solo captured my heart. “Let’s Dance” became one of my favorite songs of that summer, and I ended up buying the album not long after that. Over time, I came to appreciate the full scope of David Bowie’s career, but to this day, <i>Let’s Dance</i> is my favorite Bowie album, though it is also the one at which many of the biggest Bowie fans turn their noses up. Among many Bowie ‘purists’, <i>Let’s Dance</i> was just tolerable at best, and a sell-out at the very worst. To me, it was, and is, terrific. I was into his next two mid-80s albums too, <i>Tonight</i> and <i>Never Let Me Down </i>before Bowie’s new releases stopped gaining my attention.</div>
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Glenn Frey and the Eagles go back even further with me, literally to my earliest music memories. My parents always had the radio on around my house when I was young, so I was exposed to a lot of music, albeit mostly just the biggest hits that made it onto the local radio scene. The Eagles were very popular on the stations they listened to, likely because the band had a country-edge to them that gave them some crossover appeal, especially in my part of the state where country music was king. I knew all the words to “Hotel California” before I was ten years old, and songs like “Take It Easy”, “One of These Nights” and “Already Gone” feel like they are encoded in my DNA. The Eagles have always been there in the background of my life for as long as I could remember. Not only was the band popular in my home, but my closest peers liked them too. One of my favorite teenage memories is of riding around town with my buddies in my friend Jared’s battered red Volkswagen Beetle, all the windows down and the Eagles’ “Already Gone” blasting from the stereo. Over time, I literally wore out my vinyl copies of both Eagles greatest hits albums, as well as my cassettes of <i>Hotel California</i> and <i>Eagles Live</i>. I’ve never done that with any other records or cassettes, and I have owned a lot of them. </div>
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I was an avid follower of the solo careers of the Eagles members through the 80s after the band broke up, especially Glenn Frey and Don Henley, and have carried my love of all things Eagles well into adulthood. Needless to say, I was overjoyed when “Hell froze over” (as the band members had said it would have to) and the band reunited in the mid-1990s, and one of my regrets is that I never got to see them perform live. My tastes have shifted over time, and my favorite Eagles songs don’t tend to be the biggest hits anymore. I am more intrigued by the relatively-obscure album cuts that didn’t often get my attention in the past. My current favorites are “After The Thrill Is Gone”, a Frey/Henley duet from the <i>One Of These Nights</i> album and “Waiting in the Weeds” from 2007’s <i>Long Road Out Of Eden</i>. All those great songs, including those amazing and unmistakable Eagles harmonies that have been running through my head since I was a preschooler, would not have come to be without Glenn Frey.</div>
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My favorite part of the David Bowie catalogue, the <i>Let’s Dance/Tonight/Never Let Me Down</i> period of the mid-80s is one about which few others I’ve interacted with on the subject wax nostalgic. I got a lot of “Oh yeah, but what about the Ziggy Stardust era?” I don’t dislike his earlier or later work, it’s just that the mid-80s were an especially memorable time in my life: first girlfriend, first real job, getting my driver’s license. Music, then as now, was a major part of my life, and I am particularly fond of the songs that formed my own soundtrack to those times, which in turn gives a huge boost in my heart to that particular stretch of David Bowie’s career. I first go to know David Bowie in the mid-80s. That’s the David Bowie that means the most to me.</div>
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The Eagles, on the other hand, seem to be a band that people either love or hate. They gotten massive amounts of airplay over the years, and their songs may have worn thin with some people. They also developed a reputation for being arrogant, for being somewhat derivative at times, and for being too focused on profit, all of which has worked against them with some listeners. Jeff Bridges’ character “The Dude” famously gave voice to this in the 1998 film <i>The Big Lebowski</i> when he is stuck in a taxi while “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” is playing on the radio. “<span class="s1">I hate the f—in' Eagles man,” he said to the cab driver, just before he was thrown out of the car. </span><span class="s2">Personally, I would have thrown him out of the car too. I love the Eagles. Their music has always been there, either in the background or foreground of my life, ever since I can remember. The fact that people important to me like my parents and my high school buddies were also Eagles fans cemented their place for me. Of course they weren’t a perfect band, but for me they are almost like family, and how many of us have a full set of perfect relatives? The positive associations I have made with their music for over forty years far outweighs the negatives. When Glenn Frey’s voice comes out of my speakers singing “Heartache Tonight”, I’m back to being 11 years old, waiting for that song to come on the radio so I can catch it on my tape recorder. You can’t put a price on something like that.</span></div>
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The passings of David Bowie and Glenn Frey have underscored for me the idea that, like most art forms, there really isn’t much about music that is absolutely “right” or “wrong”. You might say that there are no bad songs, just missed connections. I’ve come to believe that a lot has to do with the associations we have with music and the people who perform it. If there is a connection between some music and something positive for you, then there is a greater likelihood you are going to have positive feelings about that music, regardless if it is something widely considered “a classic”. If the first dance you had with the love of your life was to “Purple People Eater”, then I think there’s a good chance that even <i>that</i> song could one of your favorites. And as far as today’s music being “crap”, as many in my generation and older like to say, well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Around the time I turned 30, most new music just wasn’t reaching my heart anymore. But if kids today are making their own lifelong memories to a soundtrack of today’s popular songs the way I did to the music of David Bowie and the Eagles, among many others, then who am I to say their music isn’t just as good?</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-52712282644863993242015-11-24T12:37:00.000-05:002015-11-24T12:38:12.235-05:00Lake St. George State Park, Liberty, Maine<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">This year, I was lucky enough to have my summer vacation fall on the hottest and most humid week of the summer. I was also lucky enough to be able to book a few days of tent camping that week at a beautiful Maine state park I had never visited before: Lake St. George in Liberty, which is between Belfast and Augusta. I’d tried unsuccessfully to book campsites at Lake St. George on weekends in the past, but it is very popular with a limited number of sites. The best sites fill up further in advance than I typically like to reserve, due to weather worries. (Tenting in the rain is an activity in one of the inner circles of my personal Hell.) It was easier to book a couple of midweek days I found, and I did just that, getting a great spot right on the lake itself. As warm and sticky as the weather was, I didn’t notice it very much because I could literally walk about ten feet and find myself in the clear, cool waters of Lake St. George any time I wanted.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">For some reason, I didn't take many photos of my stay at Lake St. George, but here is one of my campsite there.</span></i></div>
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<span class="s1">Lake St. George State Park is on the site of an old farmstead, and there is still a large barn in the center of the park that I believe is from that original farm. It’s not a large park compared to some of Maine’s other state parks, only 358 acres total. When you first drive into the park, you can turn left or right from the ranger station. A right takes you to the camping area, and a left to the public day use area. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The day use area features plenty of parking, a large beautiful beach with a lifeguard on duty in season, a children’s play area, and plenty of picnic areas. It is all handicap-accessible. I’m not sure if there is a boat launch area on the day use side of the park, but I do know there is a public one just up the shoreline a bit, as well as an area in the campground where boats can be launched. Motorized boats are allowed on Lake St. George, but I didn’t find there to be a huge number of them, even at the height of summer. There were plenty of canoes, kayaks and sailboats on the water when I was there, and everyone seemed to co-exist peacefully.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The camping area is basically a large loop, with a smaller loop branching off from it. Only about a half dozen campsites are as directly on the water as mine was, but none of the 38 total sites are more than a moment’s walk to the shoreline. Privacy varies from site to site, but none of the sites are ones I would consider uncomfortable. There is a large, centrally-located shower and restroom building in the middle of the camping area that was keep sparkling clean, though I’ve found that most Maine state parks with camping take very good care of their facilities. Water is available at various places around the campground. There is a free wifi kiosk for campers near the ranger station, though I didn’t make use of it during my stay.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One of the things I like best about Lake St. George is that, if you are a user of Google Earth, you can actually see ground-level photographs of each campsite. There is a link at <a href="http://www.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/doc/parksearch/details.pl?park_id=27"><span class="s2">Lake St. George’s page</span></a> on the state of Maine website that allows you to do that. It’s not a 360 degree view, but it does give you a good impression of what you are reserving if you’ve never been there previously. I am really hoping more of Maine’s state parks will start including this feature.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">If Lake St. George sounds familiar, that may be because it is the location of the 6-acre Birch Island, now known as “Hawaii 2”, that was purchased by the makers of the game <i>Cards Against Humanity</i> and given out in 250,000 square foot plots to their customers during a promotion back in 2014. Wikipedia gives <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_2"><span class="s2">a quick overview</span></a> of Hawaii 2. If you are one of the owners of Hawaii 2, then Lake St. George State Park would be a great place to stay while exploring your one square foot of real estate. I don’t think camping is allowed on Hawaii 2 itself, and you’d need a mighty small tent for that one square foot if it was.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Other than the difficulty in making reservations, the only downside I found to Lake St. George State Park is the grocery selection at nearby stores. There are a couple of small convenience stores within a few miles, but on the day I went looking for supplies, they didn’t even have milk on hand. They were all sold out. I’m not sure if it was a fluke or not, but I had a real need (there was cereal to be eaten, after all), and wound up driving all the way into Belfast to get some. It was 32 miles, round trip.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One other note: take care not to confuse Lake </span><span class="s2">St.</span><span class="s1"> George State Park in Liberty with Lake George Regional Park, which is a lovely park near Canaan, Maine. The two names are often confused, but they are nearly an hour’s drive apart from each other, and the Canaan park does not offer camping.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I stayed at eight state parks this past summer, and Lake St. George State Park was definitely one of the highlights. If you are looking for a camping trip or just a place to dip your toes on a hot day, I’d highly recommend it.</span></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-50085270905416929562015-10-13T17:10:00.000-04:002015-10-13T17:13:30.540-04:00Cobscook Bay State Park in Downeast Maine<div class="p1">
From almost anywhere you are in Maine, if you drive east without stopping (or southeast from the northern parts of the state), you are going to end up either in Canada or the Atlantic Ocean. But before you do, you are likely to pass by Cobscook Bay State Park on Route 1 in Edmunds Township, Maine. And unless you have pressing business in Calais, an up-to-date passport, or an amphibious vehicle, you might want to consider stopping there. Even if you <i>do</i> have those things, Cobscook Bay is a 888-acre jewel tucked away in deep Downeast Maine that you really should check out.</div>
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<i>View from the overlook at Cobscook</i></div>
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Cobscook Bay has its roots in the nearby Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, which was established in 1937 with revenue from the federal Duck Stamp program. Moosehorn had an early champion in President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who spent most of his summers at nearby Campobello Island. In 1964, Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge offered a free, long-term lease to the state of Maine on a large recreational area it had created on some of its land near Whiting Bay. The state legislature voted to accept the lease, management of the parcel was taken over by the state, and Cobscook Bay State Park officially came into being.</div>
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I first visited Cobscook Bay State Park in the summer of 2011 and have returned at least once, and usually more than that, each year since then. One thing I wanted while on a day trip Downeast was to find a quiet place by the sea where I could relax and maybe do some reading. Cobscook fit the bill perfectly. It’s large, it’s quiet, and the coastline there has so many inlets and peninsulas that you are almost never more than a stone’s throw from the water. The day-use area occupies the end of a large peninsula and has numerous private areas with covered picnic tables and grills, as well as two open areas for larger gatherings. One of those areas for larger gatherings has a good-sized shelter. The day-use area is also home to the large- and small-group camping sites, which are set apart from other areas, have beautiful water views, shelters, and have nearby water and toilets. While visiting that more wooded side of the park, I have seen quite a lot of wildlife, including sea birds, bald eagles, and deer. Birds are everywhere in the park, and a birdwatcher would be in their element there.</div>
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It is worth mentioning that Cobscook Bay is not really a true oceanside park. The bay itself is an estuary with a narrow opening to the Atlantic Ocean. There are plenty of fishing boats motoring past, and the water is definitely salty and tidal, but if you want to see constantly crashing waves and cruise ships on the horizons, this is not the place. Don’t let that deter you however. Cobscook Bay is still very coastal Maine.</div>
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There are several areas that make up the campground at Cobscook Bay State Park. You would be hard pressed to find a bad site. Almost all of them are set apart from each other and private, and the majority have water views. A number of them are walk-in sites for tenters only, however, and like most state park campgrounds, there are no electrical or water hookups on the sites. Cobscook has well over 100 campsites, and I have never seen them all filled in the 12+ times I have stayed there. Nonetheless, reservations are a good idea, and easy to make online. </div>
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<i>The view from one of the campsites I have had at Cobscook.</i></div>
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If big-time hiking or mountain biking are your things, Cobscook might not be your first choice of destination, though the casual enthusiast such as myself would be quite satisfied. There are several very nice, well-marked trails for hiking, though none of them are very long or would be considered challenging. My favorite hike is a short one up the hill across from the park entrance to an abandoned fire tower. There is also a short but steep hike to a mountain outlook, which is probably the most difficult hike in the park. Both of these have beautiful views through the trees of the surrounding land. The overlook trail is part of a longer nature trail in the park, and there is also a “beach trail” that takes you through the forest to a nearby boat launch and back. The hiking trails are not suited to mountain biking, but I have found that the park roads are perfectly suited for a more casual biker like me. </div>
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<i>The fire tower from far away...</i></div>
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<i>...and an extreme close-up.</i></div>
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The massively fluctuating tides, which are among the highest in the world, are one of Cobscook Bay State Park’s unique features. They can change by as much as 24 to 28 feet. At low tide, when regulations allow, park visitors are allowed to dig a bushel of clams for themselves each day. I personally have never done it, but it is a very popular activity with many visitors. You will likely get mud in places you have never had mud before, so be warned.</div>
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<i>Low tide at Cobscook</i></div>
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<i>High tide at Cobscook (same spot)</i></div>
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Another popular activity at Cobscook is kayaking. The nooks and crannies of the shoreline make it a great place to explore by kayak, and you can put your boat in directly from your campsite in many cases. I am not a kayaker, but every season I’ve been to Cobscook Bay it seems like more and more of the visitors are in kayakers. I would imagine that the rapidly changing and very steep tides would provide a challenge certain times, so do your research before putting out in the water at Cobscook.</div>
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While all my visits have been during the warm weather months, Cobscook Bay State Park is open all year. I can see how it would be a great place to do some cross-country skiing or snowshoeing. They do allow winter camping too if you are into that kind of thing. I love to camp, but in the winter? No thank you.</div>
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<i>Cobscook sheep</i></div>
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Cobscook Bay has some quirks that make it stand out. One is the herd of sheep that works keeping the grass trimmed in a large field in the park. They must have a good union, because they seem to take a lot of coffee breaks, but they do seem to get the job done. Another is the very little cemetery on the far side of the sheep field, along the side of the South Edmunds Road, which runs past the park. There is only one grave, that of a military veteran from the Civil War. I suspect that it might have been a small family cemetery,which was fairly common in Maine in olden days, but only the one gravestone has survived. Local veterans groups continue to see that a fresh American flag flies at the grave every year.</div>
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<i>Gravestone at Cobscook</i></div>
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There are several places near Cobscook Bay State Park that are fun day trips. My favorite is the town of Lubec, which is about a 20 minute drive away and the easternmost point in the United States. A working fishing village with a budding artistic community, I always find something interesting and new ever time I visit Lubec. If you are lucky, you might see seals bobbing in the channel just off the downtown area. I wrote a blog post extolling the virtues of Lubec a few years back, and you can find it <a href="http://iphoenixblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/visiting-lubec-maine.html" target="_blank">here</a>. Roque Bluffs State Park is about 45 minutes away. If you want a “beach fix”, this is the place. Roque Bluffs has a long, gorgeous beach that is rarely busy, even at the peak of summer. There is also a freshwater pond for fishing and canoeing, and a number of very nice hiking trails. You have to pass through the historic town of Machias to get to Roque Bluffs, one of the area’s retail and service hubs. Machias is home to Fort O’Brien, site of the first naval engagement of the Revolutionary War. It is also home to Helen’s Restaurant, site of excellent pie, among other delicious things. About 30 minutes in the other direction from Cobscook Bay State Park is the city of Calais, the area’s other retail and service hub, and Eastport, which is another fishing town with a thriving artistic community.</div>
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<i>A scene from downtown Lubec, Maine</i></div>
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<i>West Quoddy Head, Lubec, Maine</i></div>
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The only negative I can offer about Cobscook Bay State Park is that it can be quite buggy, especially in May and June. (I wrote a two-part blog post about that, <a href="http://iphoenixblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/maine-mosquitoes-and-me-part-one.html" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://iphoenixblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/maine-mosquitoes-and-me-epic-final.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) Blackflies in the spring and mosquitoes in the summer into early fall are going to find you. Some areas of the park are worse than others, with the more wooded areas having the most, but you would be wise to bring insect repellant or other anti-bug measures regardless of when you visit during the warm weather months.</div>
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Don’t let the bugs stop you however. Cobscook Bay State Park is probably my favorite of all Maine’s state parks, and is responsible for turning me on to the pastime of tent camping, which has transformed my summers. For more information, visit their <a href="http://www.maine.gov/cgi-bin/online/doc/parksearch/index.pl?search_radio=1&state_park=15&historic_site=&public_reserved_land=&shared_use_trails=&town=&distance=&submit=Go+%BB" target="_blank">website</a> here.<br />
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<i>All photographs in this post were taken by me. All rights reserved, etc, etc.</i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0Township of Edmunds, ME 04628, USA44.8834108 -67.25776589999998119.3613763 -108.56635989999998 70.4054453 -25.949171899999982tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-53313762295370896312015-09-30T11:55:00.000-04:002015-09-30T11:55:41.346-04:00Camping Maine's State Parks: A Series<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>A sunset view I took from Mount Blue State Park in Weld, Maine.</i></div>
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With the changing of the leaves and the occasional morning frosts, it’s safe to say that summer is over here in northern Maine. With it comes the end of tent camping season for me. This past summer was somewhat stressful for me personally, for reason I won’t go into here, but the frequent camping trips I took to various parts of Maine helped me keep my spirits healthy. Camping is a relatively new pastime for me, having only just gotten into doing it over the past four years or so, but in that time I have pinpointed some favorite spots to camp. Among those favorites are Maine’s many state parks.<br /><br />The first of the Maine state parks I camped at was Cobscook Bay State Park in Edmunds, near Calais, back in 2012. Since then, I have camped at least once in seven others, making it a point to explore new ones with camping facilities if I get a chance during the season. As a way to relive some of the pleasant summer memories, and also to resurrect this blog, which I have been seriously neglecting for some time, I’ve decided to write a series of posts highlighting the state parks I have visited over the past few years, starting with Cobscook Bay. In the weeks to come, I will also be writing about Lamoine State Park in Lamoine, Camden Hills State Park in Camden, Bradbury Mountain State Park in Pownal, Sebago Lake State Park in Naples, Lake St. George State Park in Liberty, Mount Blue State Park in Weld, and Peaks-Kenny State Park in Dover Foxcroft.<br /><br />A post with my take on Cobscook Bay will be coming soon. (Spoiler alert: I am a huge Cobscook fan.) If you have any experience camping or just visiting at any of the parks I’ve mentioned and would like to share it, I’d welcome your input. My e-mail address is <a href="mailto:chriscolter@icloud.com">chriscolter@icloud.com</a>. Please include the words “state park” in your subject line, because that account gets rather spammy sometimes.
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-23591626217945489232015-09-09T19:33:00.001-04:002015-09-09T19:33:05.646-04:00Stay tuned......there's life in this blog yet.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-297269722521942612015-03-03T19:28:00.002-05:002015-03-10T10:12:27.891-04:00Snowshoeing Back In Time<div class="p1">
It’s been a long, rough winter in northern Maine, and it’s not over yet. The other day, for the first time this season, I got to do one of my favorite winter recreational activities: snowshoeing. Up until mid-January, there had not been enough decent snow to do it, and since then, there has been one howling snowstorm followed by another, with extremely frigid temperatures and wind chills sandwiched in between them. There have been a few snowshoe-worthy days here and there, but without fail they have come on days when I have been working. When the thermometer read a tropical 25 degrees (‘nice’ is relative) on my most recent day off, I tossed my snowshoes into the back of my car and headed out into the country to my grandparents’ old place.</div>
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Much has changed on that property from the days when I spent at least a part of every school vacation there as a child. The forest has encroached on much of the land, most of the outbuildings are now gone, and many familiar landmarks on the property like clotheslines and flower gardens have disappeared over time. The house itself is still inhabited by my cousin, though his housekeeping and landscaping habits are worlds apart from those of my late grandparents. As I trod around the property on my snowshoes, enjoying the exercise and lamenting the effects of the inevitable passage of time, I began to sharpen my focus a bit, and found that there were still some reminders of the days gone by.</div>
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For instance, I noticed that a pair of very old and heavy swinging gates were still standing near the rail bed that runs adjacent to the property. The railroad tracks led past my grandparents’ place to the local airport, which was an air base and prisoner of war camp during World War II. The gates had to be manually opened and closed whenever a train passed into or out of the base. I tend to doubt that the gates would have kept an actual train from entering the base, but they probably provided some security that no one would be able to easily drive some other type of vehicle on the tracks into the base without authorization. The rest of the base was ringed with barbed wire fencing, about four feet high, which is not much more than would be used to keep livestock corralled these days. Some of the barbed wire can still be found in the woods there. Securing a military base on home soil meant something very different in the early 1940s compared to today.</div>
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By the time my siblings, cousins and I came along in the 60s and 70s, the air base was long defunct and was now functioning as a somewhat sleepy regional airport. The swinging gates near my grandparents’ place no longer served any purpose, but they still stood, leaning a bit with age even then. They still swung however, and that was what mattered to us kids. With great effort against the weight and rust, we would push the gates up to their nearly closed position, and then jump onto them. The gates leaned enough that they would swing back to the open position on their own, providing a pretty cool ride with a very abrupt stop at the end. The challenge of holding on when the gates crashed open against the brush that they normally leaned against was the best part of it all. <br />
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The gates were certainly not moving that day I was investigating them on my snowshoes, buried as they were in deep snow. I would be surprised if they would move at all now under any circumstances, age having taken more of a toll on them. That doesn’t mean I won’t at least give it a try once spring comes.</div>
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<i>One of the gates in question. There was no swinging on it this day.</i></div>
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Just beyond those gates, a little ways along the rail bed, there is a small tree-covered hillock that seems out of place if you stop and think about it. I recognized it immediately. Underneath all that snow, and probably under quite a bit of brush, I knew there was a thin piece of steel sticking up from the ground. My grandmother and I used to walk by there quite frequently when I was young, and she said that it was the site of a fatal plane crash years before I was born, occurring not long after the air base made the switch to a regional airport. The pilot was killed in the crash, she said, and the remains of the small plane were left there in the woods along the train tracks for some time afterwards. She told me that it wasn’t unusual for people to walk in to see the remains of the plane and take pieces away as souvenirs. My grandmother said she once saw a man carrying out a large piece of what looked like the plane’s tail. In time, railway officials buried the remains of the plane in hopes of discouraging visitors. </div>
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By the time I first saw the site in the mid 1970s, the railroad tracks were seldom used, and the trees still growing over the plane’s burial mound today were already taller than a grown man. As a kid, it was quite sobering, thinking that a man had lost his life on that spot, and it still was on that snowy day of my recent visit, so many years later.</div>
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At the end of my snowshoeing trek, another memory of the days of my grandparents came upon me, also somewhat unexpectedly. It had been my first snowshoeing adventure of the year, and that meant breaking new trails in deep snow while not being especially physically conditioned to the activity. Quite simply, I was wiped out when I got back to my car. Before I packed everything away to head home, I flopped down on my back in a nearby snowbank to rest and just listen, and was reminded of the sounds of being so far out in the country in mid-winter. I used to do much the same thing when I was staying with my grandparents during the winter time and had spent a long afternoon outside playing in the snow, which I often did.</div>
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Mind you, there are not many of sounds out there in mid-winter. The silence is almost total. If you’ve been playing hard, as I was that recent day, the only thing you can hear for a while is the sound of your own heart beating. There are no busy roads nearby, and all the birds have gone south for the winter or are laying low, except for some hardy chickadees. I could hear several of them twittering in the trees nearby, calling to each other in their language. There has always been a large population of chickadees around that property. To my amazement, my grandmother used to be able to hand feed some of them, who were possibly ancestors of the little birds I was listening to now. A breeze came up and blew through the evergreens with a distinctive hiss. There are no leaves on the deciduous trees at all, and the snow has buried anything on the ground that might rustle. The shushing sound of the wind in the pines and spruces remains the defining sound of wintertime for me. </div>
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Before I got up out of the snow, a jetliner passed far overhead with a distant rumble. I remember hearing planes high overhead after a long day of playing hard, and wondering where they were going and who was on them. I liked to follow them with my eyes if I could spot them until they were out of sight. A Cold War-era air force bomber and refueling base was located about an hour north of there when I was a kid, so the sound of B-52s and KC-135s flying high overhead was very common then. I watched the jetliner from the other day leaving contrails in its wake until it was gone behind the trees, just as I might have nearly 40 years ago in that very spot. </div>
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As I was putting my snowshoeing gear into my car, it occurred to me that none of the things I had been pondering had any monetary value or even meaning of any kind to anyone, except maybe to some of my siblings and cousins. A rusty old gate, a small tree covered hill buried in snow, and the sound of jets high overhead would likely go totally unnoticed by most people who had walked the same path I had just taken. Yet they opened up a floodgate of memories for me that day. I want to try to remind myself that it is never a waste of time to stop and take the time to just look around and listen. You never know the significance that seemingly insignificant things might take on in the future.</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-21270155120184473002015-02-04T11:13:00.000-05:002015-02-04T19:54:03.140-05:00Showering with Spiders and Other Camping Miseries<div class="p1">
During the long winter months in Maine, one of the things that keeps my spirits up is the thought of tent camping, one of my favorite warm weather pastimes. It’s a fun and relatively affordable way to experience different parts of this beautiful state, and every summer I do it whenever I can, which is never often enough. Maine is fortunate to have a terrific state park system, many of which are open to camping. There is also no shortage of private campgrounds in every corner of Maine. In my experience, they vary widely in quality, but when you find a good one, and there are many, you’ve usually discovered a real gem.</div>
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Not every day of camping is wonderful though. There was one day last summer at a state park campground in southern Maine that stands out as being the very definition of the opposite of wonderful.</div>
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It was getaway day, the day when you have to pack everything up into the car and make the long drive back home. That, in and of itself, is a bummer, but when there is a steady rain on the morning of getaway day, it’s even worse. Everything that is not already drenched will soon be during the process of tearing down and packing up. Pine needles, dead leaves, and dirt stick to everything, creating a mess of your equipment and your vehicle. Upon returning home it’s necessary to unpack everything and lay it out to dry or else run the risk of mold and mildew forming. Then you have to shake off off the needles, leaves and dirt, and sometimes wipe things down, before repacking your equipment.</div>
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This particular rainy day came after I had typically overdone it physically, having hiked up a mountain that was probably a bit over my head ability-wise. Actually, there was no “probably” about it. It WAS over my head, but I didn’t discover that until I had made it to the summit. Once you’ve made it to the top of a mountain, you don’t really have much choice but to go back down again. My feet were blistered and every muscle in my body was screaming that morning after. Being a light sleeper, the rain woke me very early, around 5:00 a.m., so I figured I would get a jump start on the day with a hot shower, in hopes of loosening up my sore body before loading the car. Campground showers are typically pretty quiet at that early hour, so I didn’t expect any waiting. As is my habit, I tossed my wallet and cellphone into my car and locked it, then headed to the shower with my keys, towel, and toiletry bag.</div>
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As anticipated, the showers were quiet. There were no other campers there, at least no human ones. </div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Daddy Longlegs "Pholcus.phalangioides.6905" by o.leillinger@web.de. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons</span></div>
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What there <u>were</u> plenty of, were daddy longlegs, a type of benign spider that is very common in Maine and most other places. You see them all the time when camping, but never in my life had I seen so many in one place at the same time. It was like something from that 1980s movie <i>Arachnophobia</i>. I’m not sure if the daddy longlegs were attracted to the shower building because the lights left on overnight attracted prey for them like mosquitoes, or because they were seeking shelter from the rains outside. Whatever the reason, they were everywhere: in the sink, on the shower curtain, on the walls, and in the shower stalls themselves. While I am not afraid of spiders, I do draw the line at bathing with them, so I spent the next five minutes or so swatting at as many of them as I could with my sandal. Defeating all of them was a hopeless cause, I soon discovered, so once the shower stall itself was mostly clear, I thought it best to move forward with my showering plans. I was decidedly jumpy by that point, with every slight sensation on my skin causing me to slap at it, thinking it might be a daddy longlegs crawling on me.</div>
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Warily, I stepped into the shower and began my routine keeping one eye open for daddy longlegs. I was at about peak soap suds time, just about to rinse off, when I heard the sound of my pants, hanging on a hook just outside the stall, fall to the floor with a splat into a small puddle of water that was coming from my shower. To make matter exponentially worse, my car keys were in one of the pockets, and when they fell, the car alarm button activated. The wail of my horn came blaring across the sleeping campground like Hell’s alarm clock.</div>
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Things like that happen from time to time in campgrounds, and I have never failed to curse the name of the people who had awakened me with what I perceived at the time as their stupidity. Only now, I was that guy. I bolted out of the shower in full suds mode and rifled through my soaked pants to find my car keys. Once I got hold of them, I immediately pressed the button to turn off the alarm. It didn’t stop. Apparently, I was on the very edge of the alarm’s reception area. Close enough to activate the alarm, but apparently not close enough to deactivate it. I could hear angry shouts coming from outside. In the distance, a baby started to cry. </div>
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Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to wrap a towel around myself as I dashed outside the shower building with keys in hand, which got me just close enough to shut off the alarm. The damage was done, however. It was the height of the summer, and the campground was filled to capacity with now-pissed off campers. Thank goodness it was my getaway day, because I was now branded with a scarlet A for the day. Only in this case, the A stood for “alarm”.</div>
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I took my time finishing up my shower and getting dressed. Not only did I have the unhappy task of having to pack all my stuff up in the rain to look forward to, but now I would be doing so under the watch of scornful eyes in every direction. It was a long perp walk back to my site, and the rain was coming down harder than ever. Never before or since have I packed my stuff in such haste. I literally tossed everything into the back of the car without caring about folding, packing, or putting away. I was on the road within ten minutes, soaked to the skin. The rain stopped about half an hour later, so I pulled into a grocery store parking lot and proceeded to set about ordering my gear so at least I would be able to see out the back with the rearview mirror again. I spent the entire afternoon after I got home drying things out and setting them in order again.</div>
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I’ve since returned to that campground. I went back about a month later, actually. It’s one of my favorite spots in that part of the state, and I figured that the chances of any of the campers who were there that fateful morning still being there and remembering me and my car would be pretty slim. There were important lessons learned though. First of all, be sure your pants are secure before stepping into the shower stall, and second, remember to bring some Raid and a fly swatter with your soap and towel.</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-48868636047712531722015-01-27T16:53:00.000-05:002015-01-27T16:55:02.299-05:00Goals<div class="p1">
I always look to the New Year as a time to set new goals for myself. I try not to view them in the tunnel vision many use to view “resolutions”, where they are black and white things that are tossed aside once they are broken. You know what I mean: resolve to stop drinking soda, break down and have a Mountain Dew on January 3<span class="s1"><sup>rd</sup></span>, and tell yourself “oh well, maybe next year”. It’s too easy to weasel your way out of them if you take that attitude. I try not to even call them resolutions.</div>
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How one phrases goals is key to success or failure, I’ve found. For example, I’d like to lose some weight this year, but “lose weight” is a pretty broad (pardon the pun) goal that can be tricky to approach with any kind of effectiveness. Where do you even begin? So instead, this year I want to exercise more than I did in 2014 and eat less sugar than in that year, which are more specific and for me at least, more achievable. They aren’t specific enough to set me up for disappointment, however. Cutting sugar out of my diet entirely would do that, as would a goal such as going for a run five days a week. Less sugar and more exercise can be as little or as much as my circumstances allow at any given time. As long as I am ahead of where I was with those things last year, I am meeting with success. Hopefully, by exercising more and eating less sugar, the weight loss will come as a side benefit.</div>
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I do have one specific item related to that more exercise goal however. Last July, I ran my first 5K and came in at just over 42 minutes. Not bad for someone who really didn’t take training and preparation all that seriously, I think. This year, I want to come in under 40 minutes in that event. Whether it’s by a lot or a little, time will tell.</div>
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Another goal I have for 2015 is to get back into playing my guitar on a regular basis. Not join a heavy metal band or play Carnegie Hall, just get pick it up and play more often. I’ve played the guitar off and on since I was a teenager, with some lengthy gaps in between. The last time, in the mid 00’s, I made some major strides in my skills and <i>almost</i> reached the point where I was confident enough to play in front of other people. Then I started a new job in a new field, went back to school and started doing a lot more writing, and so back into the carrying case the guitar went. </div>
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But now the guitar is back out, dusted off and fitted with a brand new set of strings. I’ve discovered that <i>GarageBand</i>, one of the programs that came loaded on my MacBook Pro has all kinds of toys and tricks to help me hone my guitar skills and extend my interests, and since my guitar is electric, I can plug directly into it. Playing scales and learning chords is a lot more fun when you can give your guitar the same sound as those of Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhodes.</div>
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I can almost guarantee that you’ll be reading more posts about my latest journey with the guitar in the weeks and months to come.</div>
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This blog is part of another goal I have for 2015: write more than in 2014. I let my writing slip to some extent last year, and posts on this blog are a public and quantifiable way for see that I am indeed writing more. That’s not to say that all my writing has been and will be on this blog. I am knee-deep in revision and editing the first draft of a novel I wrote in partnership with another writer. That project is where a lot of my writing time went in 2014 and where quite a bit will no doubt go this year. I hadn’t been producing much by way of new content though, and that’s where I really want to step things up.</div>
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Now to come up with fresh and engaging post topics, which has been my biggest stumbling block in my writing in general lately, and this blog in particular. Your suggestions are very welcome, of course. I’d also welcome your input on my other goals, especially improving my time on the 5K and jacking up my guitar skills, even if it’s just sending me a tweet or an e-mail asking how it’s going.</div>
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Twitter: @countofbluecars</div>
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E-mail: chriscolter@icloud.com</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-91924616908165866052015-01-08T07:22:00.004-05:002015-01-09T07:07:23.294-05:00Wheels<br />
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I was recently going over my finances for the past twelve months, and noticed that my car took a much larger chunk out of my budget than usual in 2014. The reason is fairly simple: the car, a Hyundai Santa Fe, is a 2007 model year, which means that it has reached the vehicular equivalent of middle age. Just as has happened with me in my own middle age, lots of things have suddenly come up needing some attention. Luckily though, for both me and the car, most of it has been preventative maintenance. I am known as a pretty frugal guy, so one would think that I would be bothered by all the extra cash I laid out on my car last year. If those expenditures were on anything else, say my wardrobe for example, or my lawn and garden equipment, I probably would indeed be a bit irked. The thing is, the primary set of wheels in my life at any given time has always held a rather special place in my heart. I wouldn’t go so far as to say money is no object when it comes to my vehicles, but it is less of an object than it would be for other things.</div>
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<b>Big Wheels Rolling</b></div>
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My love affair with things that go started very young. At Christmas when I was almost three I got a low-slung plastic tricycle popularly known in the early 1970s as a Big Wheel. These slick little machines were heavily marketed during children’s television shows as being the pinnacle of cool for the preschool set. In addition to a storage box in which to keep important “stuff”, the big draw for kids like me was a hand brake on one of the rear wheels which effectively allowed the driver to spin out in the most awesome way possible. And yes, it was well and truly awesome. The house where I grew up had a long sloping driveway that was just perfect to barrel down at high speed and then yank up on the hand brake, spinning almost all the way around. The end of the driveway was constantly marked by rings left behind by my spins. I wore out my first Big Wheel toward the end of its first year by overusing the hand brake to the point where it wore through the rear wheel. Such was my love for the Big Wheel, and my parents’ appreciation for it as an outlet for my energy, that I got a replacement the next Christmas. It came with a parental proviso, however: Lay off the hand brake.</div>
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<object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/9PS_L9s-Xtk/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/9PS_L9s-Xtk&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="https://youtube.googleapis.com/v/9PS_L9s-Xtk&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>
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<i>This vintage ad sums it all up nicely.</i></div>
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Big Wheel #2 ultimately received even rougher treatment than its predecessor. Not only was I getting bigger, but since I was using the hand brake less, I needed to find another way to get a vehicular thrill, and found it in jumping the Big Wheel off whatever makeshift ramp I could concoct. I rode it as fast as I could off curbs, low steps, or any other slight elevation, lifting up on the front end. It was an attempt to “get air” before “getting air” was even a thing. Heck, this was even before the <i>Dukes of Hazzard</i>. Much like the spinouts, these jumps were well and truly awesome in my mind, even if they were usually only an average of four inches off the ground.</div>
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<i>I think this was Big Wheel #2.</i></div>
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My second Big Wheel died when it broke in half. Yes, you read that right. <i>It broke in half!</i> While I won’t disagree that I played pretty hard with it, it is also worth noting that in those days before video games, DVDs and the like, kids spent MUCH more time outside, at least several hours a day for me and even more in the summers and on weekends. The majority of that time for me was spent on wheels. Big plastic ones. Therefore, some attrition was to be expected. Those things got a whole lot of use before they finally gave up their ghosts. Believe it or not, my parents did actually get me a third Big Wheel, but fortunately for their pocketbook, a market in used ones had emerged locally at yard sales, the toys having been around for a while at that point and kids were outgrowing them. They were able to get my last one at a steep discount. </div>
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<b>Frankenstein's Bicycle</b></div>
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My third Big Wheel did not meet the same untimely end as my first two, because shortly after I got it, I got my first two-wheeler, which subsequently dominated my attention. My first bike did not arrive with a lot of fanfare. It was not a Christmas or birthday gift. There was no anticipation, and I did not even ask for it. It just kind of happened. One Saturday in the summer before I started kindergarten, my father and I were nosing around in my grandmother’s garage and found the remains of several of my uncles’ old bicycles, which had been sitting in there for ten years or so. It didn’t take my father very long to determine that he had all the parts he would need to assemble one Frankenstein’s monster of a bicycle for me from the remains of the old ones, and later that afternoon I had my first bicycle. The only expenditure on my parents’ part was a couple of dollars at Western Auto for training wheels. I only used the training wheels for little more than 48 hours, however. The bike had a pretty heavy frame compared to most contemporary bikes of that time, and the training wheels were not made for that kind of weight, so they started bending almost immediately. When it was pointed out to me by my friends that I was riding on two wheels anyway, I took the training wheels off by myself.</div>
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I had several bicycles after that first one, but that bike my father cobbled together in my grandmother’s garage was the best. It was too big for me when I first got it, but that didn’t keep me off it for a second. A shade of dark metallic green with a white banana seat and huge handlebars, it looked like no other bike on my street. The tires were of an early 60s vintage, very wide and thick, and the frame was virtually military-grade. That bike was solid as a tank, and many neighborhood kids recognized its uniqueness. Sure, it wasn’t as sleek and attractive as some of their newer ones, but it was solid as a rock and remarkably fast. I distinctly remember an older boy named Kevin admiring it and asking me how much I wanted for it, and I replied that it wasn’t for sale. Even though I was just a little kid, I could tell that this ten year old was trying to con me when he offered me a hundred dollars, then a thousand, and then a million. “I’ve really got it at home,” he said, counting on a preschooler’s lack of money sense. I only had to let him have the bike now he said, and he’d come right back with the money. Yeah, right. My final response was that I would only sell it “for the highest number there is”, and then pedaled off, with my suspicion that I had something special on my hands confirmed. </div>
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Bicycles were my primary mode of transportation and the symbol of my personal freedom for the next nearly ten years. I always felt naked if I didn’t have my bike within easy reach, and it was always a sad day each year when the first snow came and my bike had to be put away for the winter. It proved to be my parents’ most effective discipline tool in my childhood, as few punishments were worse for me than to have my bike taken away for a day, much less a week or more. Send me to my room. Take away the TV. But leave my bike alone.</div>
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<b>Beloved Rustbucket</b></div>
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My first car came to me before I even got my driver’s license. Living in a rural area, my parents had to do a lot of chauffeuring for my brothers and me, so my being able to get myself around would be a real plus for them. However, they didn’t relish the idea of having to share the family vehicle with another driver, so they encouraged me to start saving for my own car as soon as I laid the subject of driver education classes out on the table. I started working a part time job in the spring of the year I turned 15, and by that August, I had enough saved up for a <span class="s1">very</span> used car my father had found and approved. I paid $575 for a rusty, 13 year-old Chevrolet Caprice with nearly 100,000 miles on it. It sat in the driveway taunting me by its presence for the four weeks between when I got it and when I actually passed my driver’s test. Needless to say, by the time I got behind the wheel to drive it by myself for the first time, I had polished and detailed that car to the point where it probably would have glowed in the dark, in spite of the rust. I spent nearly as much on Turtle Wax, Windex, Armor All and paper towels as I did for the car itself.</div>
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<i>It looked a lot like this, only less sexy and more rusty.</i></div>
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The Caprice was huge, and even in those days of cheaper gasoline it cost me a fortune to keep it filled. I could fit a lot of my friends in it however, which was a real plus because I was one of the first in my class to get my license and one of the only ones to have his own car. My services as a taxi driver to and from school were in high demand. The car wasn’t very reliable. It was always a roll of the dice as to whether it would start when the temperature dropped below freezing, and it had a habit of stalling in almost any weather. There was a constant blue cloud coming from the exhaust pipe, and the interior smelled like burning oil, which I tried to cover up by using a half dozen cherry-scented air fresheners. For a while toward the end of its life, I actually had to keep the passenger side door closed with a piece of rope. It probably would have never passed inspection again, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the Environmental Protection Agency had a warrant out for its arrest. Nonetheless, it was all mine, my ticket to freedom, and I loved it. That Caprice had one of the smoothest rides of any car I’ve ever driven, and was so large that if I had been in an accident, it would have kept me relatively safe compared to the ubiquitous compact cars that were on the road at the time. Plus the radio had great reception and was LOUD! I only had that Caprice for a year before the cost of upkeep got to be too much, and I downsized to a newer, smaller car which had fewer problems and expenses. It just didn’t live up to the standard that the first clunker had set for me, though. I sold the Caprice to a man who wanted to use it for parts. To this day when I smell cherries, I am reminded of the air fresheners I used in that old car and wonder if it is still around, rusting in the woods or in a junkyard somewhere.</div>
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I’ve had quite a few cars in the thirty years since I bought that Caprice, all of which came to be central players in my life. My latest is no exception. It’s my chariot, my set of wheels. I travel a lot, and when I am on the road, my car acts as a mobile comfort zone when I am staying in pleasant but strange places surrounded by welcome but unfamiliar things. There’s always a slight sense of satisfaction when I catch sight of my car in a parking lot after having been away from it for an extended period. I don’t think it is so much the car itself that stirs these feelings, as much as what it represents: freedom, opportunity, and the ability to ultimately return to the things that mean the most to me.<br />
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A glamour shot of my current chariot, from the manufacturer.</div>
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Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-9666211915246979602014-07-09T10:04:00.001-04:002014-07-09T10:04:17.434-04:00Summer HiatusBetween the heavy revision required on the first draft of my most recent writing work in progress and the fact that it is actually <u>summer</u> in northern Maine, and thus time to enjoy the outdoors without risk of polar bear attack, I am putting <i>Wicked Awesomology</i> on hiatus until after Labor Day. I'll be back then, and maybe sooner if one of those posts that just drop out of the sky into my head and write themselves arrives. In the meantime, I'll still be dropping in on Twitter fairly frequently @countofbluecars.<br />
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Enjoy your summer!Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-20836262115943431272014-05-14T11:30:00.001-04:002014-05-14T11:31:20.083-04:00Carded<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In the six or so weeks between late April and mid June of this year, I will have dealt with Mother’s Day (I have both a mother and a grandmother to think of), Father’s Day, my mother’s birthday, my father’s birthday, my parents’ wedding anniversary and my nephew’s first communion. That is one heck of a lot of cards to buy.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">You see, I am still a sentimentalist at heart, and hold on to the belief that buying actual physical cards and either delivering them in person or sending them through the U.S. postal service is a kind tradition worth preserving in our increasingly impersonal electronic-based culture. Don’t get me wrong. I fully appreciate the convenience of modern communication technologies. I interact with most of my friends and family through e-mail and text messages for routine correspondence, but those modes of communication just seem hollow for special occasions. They require something different. And e-cards just don’t cut it, in my book. Ever since I saw the first one back in the 1990s, I thought they were both cheesy and pale imitations of the real thing, much like <i>The Munsters</i> were to <i>The Addams Family</i>.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So, I continue to trek to the drugstore when special occasions come up to choose just the right card. And for those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know that </span><span class="s2">there</span><span class="s1"> is the rub. I am the type of person who can handle metaphorical bags of porcupines tossed at him with grace and dignity, but I can also take something very simple like card shopping and turn it into a task on the level of complexity of establishing peace in the Middle East. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">First, there is finding the appropriate level of sentiment in the card. I am a caring person, but not mushy. As a kid, I was sad when Bambi’s mom died, but I didn’t cry. Much of my family is the same way. A card with too many butterflies and cloying lovey-doveyness would embarrass both the recipient and me. At the same time, giving one of those joke cards (which I love getting, by the way) for anyone other than a fellow male whose sense of humor arrested at the age of 15 would come across as being overly emotionally defensive. So the search is on for just the right tone. Card companies seem to like to go for the emotional jugular, however, and most cards are either too emotional or too cold.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Next, there is a question of cost. I am a practical guy when it comes to finance, and most of the people I am closest to are as well. I know that when I get a card, I read it and appreciate it, but then it goes into a drawer somewhere until an indeterminate period of time has passed and I can toss it into the trash without feeling guilty. And don’t even try to tell me you would never do such a thing! I challenge you to come up with even one card from two birthdays ago. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Mmmm-hmmm…I thought so. My 88 year old grandmother could probably do it, but none of us mere mortals could if our lives depended on it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I don’t head directly for the 99 cent card rack when I am card shopping, but I do set a limit of $6 maximum per card, even those I get for Gram, who has cards in shoeboxes and drawers dating back to the Eisenhower administration. It makes little sense to me to spend more money than that on something that will be read once or twice and then be stored away until it is thrown out.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Another rule I have for card shopping is no singing or talking cards. Those can be tacky, or creepy, or both. Plus, it is always awkward when people open them in the presence of anyone else. I believe that there is a special place in Hell for people who send musical or talking cards. The hottest part of that place is reserved for people who send Disney Channel pop star-themed musical cards.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Cards that people make on the computer are okay I guess, but they don’t quite meet the mark for me. Knowing that almost anyone could put one together and print it out in the space of less than five minutes just seems like the sender didn’t put forth the same amount of effort as they would have getting a store-bought card. Now handmade cards are the very best of all, hands down. To me, they show the very highest level of thought and engagement by the send. However, I can’t draw straws and my handwriting looks like I hold the pen in my mouth, so that’s not a practical choice for me.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The greatest problem I face when card shopping is finding one that addresses the recipient with the same term that I do. I call my father “Dad”, as I think most people do, so finding cards for him that say things like “To my dad” is not too difficult. However, I refer to my mother as “Mum”, and not “Mom”. After 44 years, it is way too late to change that. Almost every card you can find for a mother addresses her as “Mom”, and that just will not do. At all. That restricts me to choosing from among the cards that use the emotionally-distant, third-person term “Mother”, since I have yet in my life to locate one that uses “Mum”. With all the above requirements I also have when buying cards, this cuts back my choices considerably. To make matters worse, I have referred to my grandmother as “Gram” my entire life, and not “Grandma”. Much like the Mum/Mom situation, one can very rarely find cards addressed to “Gram”, though there are tons of “Grandma” cards out there. So I am usually restricted to choosing from those distant, third-person “Grandmother” cards. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Honest to goodness, it took me over an hour and trips to three stores in order to pick out a birthday card for my mother the other day. Thankfully, this six-week period of intense card-shopping only comes once a year for me. The other birthdays and special occasions in my loved ones’ lives are mercifully spread more or less evenly around the rest of the calendar. It’s a good thing too, or else I’d probably have to quit my job and become a full-time card shopper.</span></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-32018521973213261202014-04-16T11:52:00.000-04:002014-04-16T11:56:18.124-04:00Save the Bookstores!<br />
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<span class="s1">Sadly, bookstores are fast becoming a dying breed in the United States. Having grown up in a small farming community in northern Maine that had no less than three of them, I assumed that bookstores were a given part of the landscape of any city or town of any size and always would be, much like a post office, school, library or church. Even as a kid, I could spend hours in a bookstore (and the local library as well), exploring books and topics I had often not even considered. And any trip out of town inevitably meant a chance for me to check out the bookstores in other locales. For that matter, it still does.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In the mid-1990s my eyes were opened to the plight bookstores face when I started dating a woman who worked in a terrific little independent one near where I lived. It was a quirky little place, one of the first bookstores I knew of that served coffee and offered places to sit and read. The selection was wide for such a small shop, and they enjoyed a small but loyal clientele. It was the kind of place that people made a point to visit when they were in town, myself included.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My girlfriend was worried, however. A new “big box” book superstore, part of a large national chain, had just opened in the next city over, offering even greater variety of titles than the little indie at which she worked, and at prices that were often quite a bit lower. While the indie store’s base clients held firm, the casual book shoppers who often made the difference between the store making a profit or not in a given month were flocking to the superstore. As much as I loved the little indie bookstore, I was a struggling young schoolteacher with a limited budget for books for my students, and found myself frequently shopping for classroom literature at the superstore as well, so as to stretch my dollars as far as I could. I still patronized the little indie, but financial reality prevented me from doing as much business there as I would have liked.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">A few months after my girlfriend and I began dating, that little indie bookstore where she worked went out of business. The superstore ten miles away had won the battle. In the final days of the indie, I spent a lot of money on discounted books at their going-out-of-business sale, and even purchased some of their fixtures for use in my classroom. I had incredibly mixed feelings doing so, mind you. It made me feel like some sort of vulture, scavenging from the remains of something that was once so vital.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">By the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, there were not nearly as many independent bookstores compared to just a generation earlier. The large chain superstores had taken their toll and carved out a good chunk of the book-buying market. Not only could they provide greater variety and lower prices for books, but they also had the room to sell music and videos, and to install full-service cafes as well. They had the ability to set up discount clubs and to stage special in-store events on a regular basis with which most independent bookstores just could not compete. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It wasn’t all wine and roses for the superstores, however. The internet was taking a larger piece of the book sales pie. Online-only booksellers with gigantic warehouses but no actual physical stores were growing in popularity. If the chain superstores could deal with books in volume, the internet retailers, unrestricted by geography, could deal with them in MEGA volume. You could shop for an almost infinite variety of books from your living room, and easily compare prices to get the very best deal. E-books, which you could purchase usually much cheaper than a paper copy, and begin reading instantly, also grew in popularity. That was and is a tough thing for any bricks-and-mortar bookseller to go up against, even a large corporate chain. Several national chains went out of business, and others have closed stores or changed their marketing focus in order to try and stay afloat. Unless you have a strong online component, these are very hard times indeed for booksellers.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Compounding the troubles is a problem faced by all booksellers, whether independent or chain, online or bricks-and-mortar, and that is the sad fact that people are just reading fewer books these days. You don’t have to look very hard to see that more people, especially the under-30 crowd, are interested in television, video games, and interactive media than the “old-fashioned” linearity of a book as a means to pass the time. It’s a seismic cultural shift. I frankly don’t think it can be fully stopped, nor do I think it is entirely a bad thing, but I do think it can be slowed, and that we should be doing what we can to read more books ourselves and to encourage others to do the same.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I’ve had an e-reader for over three years now. When I first got it, I used it almost exclusively for my reading. Over time however, I’ve cut back on its use, and not intentionally. I’ve just found myself drawn back to the sensation of having an open book in my hands. I still read e-books, but the ratio of actual books to e-books for me has shifted to about 70% : 30%. The whole e-books versus “paper books” debate is fodder for a separate post.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">When I buy a paper book, I have been making an effort to do so from bricks-and-mortar retailers over the past few years, and avoid the online-only retailers when I can. Bookstores still hold their allure for me, and I find myself drawn to them whenever I am nearby and have a free moment. I travel around the state of Maine a lot, and make it a point to explore at least one or two bookstores on every trip. Even if I have a stack of books still waiting to be read, I always buy at least one book when I visit a brick-and-mortar bookseller. It’s not unlike buying a glass of lemonade from a child’s stand along the sidewalk. Even if you are not thirsty, you want to support and encourage the effort.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">To that end, I’d like to share a list of some of my favorite bookstores that I have explored in my travels in Maine. Some of independent, some are parts of small regional chains, and a couple of part of large corporate chains. </span></div>
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<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.shermans.com/">Sherman’s Books and Stationery</a></span><span class="s1">: A particular favorite. I’ve been to the stores in Bar Harbor, Freeport and Camden, and look forward to visiting their brand new store in the Old Port in Portland soon.</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.longfellowbooks.com/">Longfellow Books</a></span><span class="s1">: For me, this is one of the very hearts of downtown Portland. I have yet to make a trip to the Old Port without stopping at Longfellow.</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.owlandturtle.com/">Owl & Turtle</a></span><span class="s1">: A cozy must-visit when exploring downtown Camden</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.biblio.com/bookstore/stone-soup-books-camden">Stone Soup</a></span><span class="s1">: Secondhand books galore in Camden</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/briarpatchbooks">The Briar Patch</a></span><span class="s1">: Children’s books and toys in downtown Bangor. A great place for gifts for the younger set.</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.bookmarcs.com/">BookMarcs</a></span><span class="s1">: A Bangor institution, featuring an extensive collection of Stephen King’s work, among numerous other titles.</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/store/2742">Barnes & Noble</a></span><span class="s1">: While a different overall experience from the smaller bookstores, I really enjoy spending a few hours at B&N’s Augusta store whenever I get a chance.</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.bullmoose.com/c/4/books">Bull Moose</a></span><span class="s1">: With stores in Maine and New Hampshire, Bull Moose is my very favorite music store. Their locations in Bangor, Scarborough and Mill Creek in South Portland have extensive book selections as well. Between the books and the music, I could literally spent a whole day at Bull Moose.</span></li>
<li><span class="s2"><a href="http://www.booksamillion.com/storefinder?id=5976625121131">Books-A-Million</a></span><span class="s1">: Another national chain, BAM has stores in South Portland, Auburn and Bangor that I can explore for hours.</span></li>
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<span class="s1">Fortunately, there are still </span><span class="s3"><u>many</u></span><span class="s1"> more Maine booksellers than these, though not as many as there once were. I’ve chosen to restrict this list to my favorites that I have visited over the past few years. With travel season not too far away, I am looking forward to visiting most of these again, and highly encourage you to do the same. We are all better off for having thriving bookstores in our communities.</span></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-89259013688894930312014-03-26T10:07:00.001-04:002014-03-27T07:15:15.797-04:00Losing It<br />
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<span class="s1">There are few things that dig at me more than when I misplace something. When an item turns up missing, whether it be large or small, I simply cannot rest easy until I find it. Unfortunately, I have always had an absent-minded professor kind of brain, where my thoughts can be so occupied with some other issue that I can set something down and walk away from it without even noticing. It’s not something that has come with age either. I’ve been absentmindedly setting things down and forgetting them since I was a kid. Of course age hasn’t made it any better.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My favorite things to lose are coffee mugs. Every place I have worked, I have unintentionally left half-full mugs of coffee in various locations like some kind of cross between the Easter Bunny and Juan Valdez. If I was lucky, I’d notice its absence in fairly short order and locate it while the coffee was still drinkable, or someone I worked with would return it to me. There have been a few occasions where I’ve set a coffee mug down in an obscure location like a storage closet, and it goes unfound for weeks or even months. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">In case you were wondering, coffee can become a solid if given enough time. A nasty, blue-green solid.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Another common item for me to lose is, disconcertingly, paychecks. For most of my working life, I have been able to have my paychecks deposited directly into my bank accounts. I haven’t had that option with my current place of work. Over the years I have been working there, I have lost at least three paychecks. Thankfully, our accountant is a kind and forgiving soul (not to mention endlessly patient) and has been willing to issue me a new one in each case. Typically, I cram it into my pocket when I get it, and take it out as soon as I get home, where it safely stays in a secure spot until I am able to take it to the bank for deposit. On all three occasions when I’ve lost a paycheck, I have literally torn apart my home, my car and my workplace looking for it. I’ve also scoured my garage, yard, and the parking lot at work in my searches. Having sent paper through the laundry process on numerous occasions, I know that I didn’t leave it in my pocket and destroy it in the wash, since the evidence left behind when I’ve laundered paper in the past has always been pretty clear.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Oddly enough, no trace of those three missing paychecks has ever turned up. No one has tried to cash them, and they haven’t been found underneath a piece or furniture or under a melting snowbank. It’s like there is some kind of Bermuda Triangle designated especially for my paychecks.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My most recent tragic loss, and the one that inspired this post, was the tiny little USB plug that goes with my wireless mouse. I have a corded mouse that I use when I am on my laptop computer in bed, and a wireless one that I use when the laptop is downstairs in its usual place. Last night, I briefly needed to use one of the USB ports for something else, and since I was in bed at the time, I took out the USB plug for my wireless mouse, which I was not using at the time, and (I thought) set it down on the bed next to me. One thing lead to another, and before long I forgot all about the tiny USB plug I had set aside. As a matter of fact, I didn’t miss it until the next morning, when I got up for my coffee and internet news fix. My wireless mouse was not working, and the USB plug was nowhere to be found.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I immediately knew what had happened to it, but when I went upstairs to look around, I couldn’t find it. Knowing better than to tackle a full search prior to having had coffee, I grabbed the corded mouse and went back to my caffeine and news. I didn’t enjoy it though. While I could very easily replace my wireless mouse, the principle of the thing bothered me. That USB plug was somewhere. I just had to find it. And no, I couldn’t wait until later to do it. So I tore that room apart. Bedding, mattress, box spring, hamper full of laundry, overloaded desk, everything was overturned. All the books and whatnots I shoved underneath the bed came out. Finally, after making a holy old mess, I found it. It was right where I typically put it when I need to use a USB port, on a shelf next to my iPod and various earbuds. I remembered taking it out of the port last night, but didn’t remember putting it in its usual place last night, so I didn’t bother to check there until last, for some reason.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Yes, I am kind of a dope, actually.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">There’s a delicious irony in this post, which I promise you I am not making up. Before I started writing this, I went back over previous posts, because I could have sworn that I had previously written one on this topic of my habit of losing things. Even the title of this post “Losing It”, seemed like one I had used already. So I looked back over nearly three years of posts.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Guess what? I couldn’t find it.</span></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-43120941950073254112014-03-05T11:26:00.000-05:002015-03-03T19:35:43.466-05:00The Annual Winter Whine Post<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>The winter season trudges on unabated here in Maine, despite the fact that the calendar flipped over to March not long ago. Our friendly local meteorologist tells me that today’s high temperature is going to be 12 degrees. 12 degrees </span><span class="s2">fahrenheit</span><span class="s1">, not celsius. That’s cold for this time of year, even by Maine standards. There’s at least a little comfort in knowing that a good chunk of the North American continent is experiencing a harsh winter as well. There are few things left that we all go through together in today’s culture, but the weather is one of them.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>If I had a dime for every time I’ve either uttered or heard “I’m sick of the cold” and “I’m sick of the snow” lately, I could probably settle the national debt. While freezing temperatures and snow are the most common subjects of complaint, I’d like to offer a list of ten less-often-heard but equally valid concerns about winter, as my annual “winter whine” blog post. (See <a href="http://iphoenixblog.blogspot.com/2012_01_01_archive.html"><span class="s2">here</span></a> and <a href="http://iphoenixblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/dont-give-me-any-static.html"><span class="s2">here</span></a> for past examples of winter whines.)</span></div>
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<span class="s1">10. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of those buildups of slush in the wheel wells of my vehicle.</span><span class="s1"> If they freeze solid, they can seriously damage your tire by rubbing against them, not to mention cause you to break a toe if you give it a good kick to remove it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">9. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of taking the garbage out in the cold.</span><span class="s1"> Taking out the trash is an odious task under the best of conditions. Having to do it when the snot in your nose is freezing every time you inhale just adds insult to injury.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">8. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of getting more heating fuel.</span><span class="s1"> Lugging in another ton of wood pellets or another cord of wood in mid to late winter because you are running low is no picnic. Writing a large check for another tank of heating oil you didn’t budget for isn’t either. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">7. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of changing from shoes to boots to shoes.</span><span class="s1"> While boots are great at helping one’s feet stay warm and dry, they tend to go on hard and come off even harder. I’ve fallen on my keister several times this winter already doing the footwear changing dance when coming in or going out the door. With small puddles from the snow melting off your boots, you don’t want your socks to touch the floor, after all.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">6. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of being snow-blind.</span><span class="s1"> Yes, I am actually complaining about the sunshine here. Don’t underestimate my whining skills. The sun reflecting off the snow almost has the same effect as an allergy on my sensitive eyes: watering, sneezing, squinting, headaches. Sunglasses help, but spring helps more. Less white, more green!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">5. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of these crazy cats with their cabin fever.</span><span class="s1"> I am an animal guy, and enjoy watching the birds, squirrels and whatnot gather at the bird feeders outside my window in the winter. Trouble is, so do the cats, and it makes them absolutely insane.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">4. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of stale air.</span><span class="s1"> Sometimes one of the cats drops a bomb in the litterbox. Sometimes I cook things that have a lingering smell. Sometimes I raise dust when I am cleaning around the house. During the winter, one can’t just open up the windows and air things out.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">3. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of tall snowbanks and narrow streets.</span><span class="s1"> I drive a relatively high-profile SUV, and yet I’ve still had more than a few times this winter where I’ve had to stick my nose so far out into and intersection to see if anyone was coming in either direction that I’ve nearly had it clipped off. Just a bit of a thaw to shrink those suckers down is all I ask.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">2. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of not being able to make travel plans in advance.</span><span class="s1"> Any out of town appointment or event at this time of year is a crapshoot, contingent upon travel conditions. A concert you’ve been dying to see for months finally comes to a nearby city, you have tickets and hotel reservations, and then BOOM, an ice storm hits. Epic bummer.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">1. </span><span class="s2">I’m sick of my feet always being cold.</span><span class="s1"> My feet are almost perpetually cold anyway. I tend to wear wool socks from October until April. Even then my feet are chilly, only slightly less so than if I didn't wear them. If there is such a thing as electric socks, I would seriously consider them. I’d probably need a very long extension cord though.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Even though it seems impossible now, the temperatures will warm up, the snow will melt, and spring will arrive, just like it always has for as long as the seasonal wheel has turned. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Of course then I’ll need to find some new things to whine about. </span></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-23257390938831088842014-02-18T19:25:00.002-05:002014-02-23T08:57:52.495-05:00Little Chris and the Naive Politics of Black and White<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Growing up in a small town in the 1970s, there were plenty of other kids with whom I could play. It was a less worried time, when many parents would allow their kids to freely roam their neighborhoods and beyond. For the most part, they did it without fear of anything more than the old lady down the street calling to report to them that their child was climbing on the roof of the toolshed.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>When I was about five years old, I was the youngest member of a group of about a half dozen friends who lived in the houses around mine. The acknowledged leader of this gang of kids was also named Chris like me, so he was called “Big Chris” and I was saddled with the moniker “Little Chris”, a nickname which I loathed and despised with a white hot passion. Nonetheless, that’s how it was.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVyVDkkvRNoKN_ohtreuFeEJXnRTCWZcnZxYbuXYIbmL-nVm0PWnk47lQvzTAeES0FPvACOZhRjY1nMSxlhvB5CprNshGa1YbWJTstPgN3rgb2YoUVNs9wXWBzWeWneR38Vgdx8F0hhcU/s1600/chris1976.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVyVDkkvRNoKN_ohtreuFeEJXnRTCWZcnZxYbuXYIbmL-nVm0PWnk47lQvzTAeES0FPvACOZhRjY1nMSxlhvB5CprNshGa1YbWJTstPgN3rgb2YoUVNs9wXWBzWeWneR38Vgdx8F0hhcU/s1600/chris1976.jpg" height="320" width="209" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Little Chris", from around the time about which I am writing. And yes, turtleneck sweaters were considered "in" at the time.</span></i></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>As the youngest of the group, I was the least worldly, relatively speaking, and because of that naivety and my strong desire to be accepted by the others, I was prone to being put up to things. It was never anything terribly serious, but I was a sucker nonetheless. If they needed someone to swipe some apples from a neighbor’s tree, I was their man. When they wanted to see if the wooden ramp they built for bicycle jumps was too high, I was their go-to guy. And if they wanted to get some candy from Mrs. Johnson, who always had a bowl on her kitchen counter as treats for us kids, I was the emissary who was sent to ask for it, because I was not only the smallest and presumably cutest, but also they knew I would not refuse to go.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Yes, “Little Chris” was gullible, but as I got a bit older and gained some more life experience, that gullibility decreased rapidly. Before too long, I was on to them, and not long after that, I could put others up to doing things if I chose. As a little more light was shed on matters through time and experience, I saw things I hadn't previously, and it worked to my advantage.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I’ve been thinking about my days as gullible “Little Chris” lately as I have read and watched the news, both national and state. It seems like many politicians, pundits, and media outlets these days are implementing a “Little Chris” treatment on you and me, and sadly, are meeting with some degree of success.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>My intent in this post is not to single out a particular person or entity, so I’ll be dealing in generalities here.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>We live in an age with an overwhelming amount of information at our fingertips. There is such a high volume of data out there, much of it conflicting, that many suffer from fatigue in dealing with it. It’s much easier just to have someone distill it for us. And there is no shortage of talking heads who are willing to cherry-pick information and give it to us in a way that they want us to understand it. It is made all the more persuasive when this cherry-picked information is given to us wrapped in emotion, drama, academic language, and/or pre-conceived ideas. The overused term <i>propaganda</i> would apply here, though even it has become highly charged by some of the very people who use it, with direct connections often made to the wartime PR tactics of enemy nations.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>This cherry-picking approach to politics and media bias would not be so pervasive if it didn’t actually work. But it does. Too many of us are easily persuaded. <u>Too many of us buy into what is being sold to us without asking ourselves if there is more to it.</u> The sins of omission seem far more frequent than those of commission in politics and media.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Let me give an example that I am just pulling out of the air. Suppose a local media outlet reports on a horrific home invasion, where an elderly woman is beaten and robbed for drugs and money in her home. It’s a terrible thing, and a legitimate news story, for sure. Then, two nights later, the same media outlet starts airing a series of special reports on how you can protect yourself your loved one and your property from home invasions, complete with ominous music and scary clips from the most recent incident and others that have taken place in other parts of the country. Interviews are aired with people who have experienced such a terrible thing. Many viewers may become fearful. It must be a problem, or else why would the news be devoting so much time and attention to it? (Answer: Ratings.) Not only are viewers locking their doors and keeping their drugs secure, which would be sensible reactions, but some have also become frightened when they see an unfamiliar face in their neighborhood, and may even now refuse to go for a walk down their own street by themselves for fear of crime. Some may go so far as to install an electronic security system in their homes. Their fear has taken away some of their freedom, not to mention money. And here’s the kicker: lost in the midst of it all is the fact that home invasions in that particular area are extremely rare, and the odds are greater that one would have a truck crash through their bedroom than that they would actually experience a home invasion.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>I’m picking on the media taking something out of proper context in the aforementioned example, but politicians and pundits often do the very same thing. It isn’t unusual for them to create a perceived boogeyman cloaked in emotional hot-buttons as they make their case for a particular candidacy or policy decision. </span><span class="s2">Their</span><span class="s1"> candidate or point of view is going to be the one to put a stop to this boogeyman (or “straw man” as it is called in debating terms), and therefore is the one with which all of us in the general public should be on board. Welfare queens, big corporations, illegal aliens, religious fundamentalists, leftist whackos, right-wing nutjobs, the list of boogeymen goes on and on. Some of these entities portrayed as boogeymen are actual problems, and some are not, depending on your own point of view. If you don’t have your own point of view, politicians and pundits are more than willing to give you theirs.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>So what’s my point? It’s a very simple one: Despite what we are often led to believe, very, very few issues in our society are black and white. If something seems too clear, too cut-and-dried, then there is likely something we are missing. Yes, there are people who abuse the welfare system horribly, for example. But there are also many more on welfare who do not and use it as it was intended. Yes, there are some large corporations that exploit their workers and plunder natural resources, as another example, but there are many more of them that do not, never have, and never will. </span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>In other words, don't be naive. D</span><span class="s2">o your homework</span><span class="s1">. Be skeptical without being cynical, especially when you find yourself automatically agreeing or disagreeing with something newly presented to you. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Look at all sides before settling on a conclusion. Don’t be satisfied with letting politicians, pundits, and the media feed you only the information they want you to have. Seek out more for yourself. Consider the source of your information. A press release from a lobbying group or political party headquarters may be “newsy”, but it is not necessarily news. A pundit is not a reporter. A letter to the editor is not a news article. Opinions should be based on facts, but they are not facts themselves. And don’t fall prey to hot-button terminology, especially in headlines. Words like “terror”, “sex”, and “war”, among others, are often squeezed in there to capture your attention, even if they are not the best choices.<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">You owe it to yourself to be a cautious, media-literate consumer of information. Otherwise, you’ll likely end up like “Little Chris”, paying unintended consequences for being unquestioning and naive.</span></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-72948832263385563372014-01-30T20:40:00.001-05:002015-12-02T08:09:11.506-05:00On Poverty<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I’ve been thinking a lot about poverty lately. If you check out the news on your TV or computer these days, you cannot help but hear about the so-called “income gap”, and it seems like we also are seeing more and more cuts being made to programs and services that benefit the less fortunate. There’s almost a demonization of the poor in some quarters. The emphasis that Pope Francis has placed on helping the poor and disenfranchised has also done a great deal to bring issues related to poverty to the forefront for me. On a personal level, I’ve been reading a biography of Robert F. Kennedy who, despite his privileged background, had strong empathy for those living in poverty, and that has also stirred my consciousness of the poor, a consciousness which put down roots many years ago. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">When I was in first grade at St. Mary’s School back in the 1970s, there was an international organization called The Holy Childhood Association that provided parochial school teachers with many educational resources. It still exists today, though it is now known as the <a href="http://www.hcakids.org/"><span class="s2">Missionary Childhood Association</span></a>. Founded in 1843 and supported by the Vatican, its mission in a nutshell is to help Catholic kids in first world countries to learn about and reach out to the less fortunate. The classrooms and hallways in our school were filled with Holy Childhood Association posters and bulletin boards showing the challenges that children our age in less-developed countries were facing. As a school and in our individual classes we undertook many lessons and activities which impressed upon us the obligation of our Catholic faith for caring for one another and especially for those who were less fortunate than us. We learned about what poverty was, where it was occurring, and how we could help.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One of the Holy Childhood Association’s poverty-awareness activities made a particular impression on me: our support as a class of “the pagan babies”. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The way it worked was pretty clever really. Our first grade class was encouraged by our teacher, Sister Eunice, to voluntarily bring in loose change from home, with parental permission of course, and put it in a canister on her desk to help children who didn’t have enough food or shelter. The goal was to get to $10, at which point the class would “adopt” a poor baby. As we started collecting coins toward each new $10 goal, Sister Eunice would announce the gender and nationality of the prospective adoptee, show us a photo sent by the Holy Childhood Association, and tell us a little about where and under what circumstances the child lived. Next, she would choose two students who would be responsible for giving the baby a name once we reached the $10 mark. Now of course no child in a far off country had their actual given name changed by a couple of first graders from the USA, but the symbolic naming of the baby made it a very personal thing for us as kids. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It wasn’t unusual for namers to want to use some version of his or her own name, which was okay. However, the hard and fast rule was that at least one of the two names had to be that of a saint. It <i>was</i> a Catholic school, after all. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">My naming partner and I gave a boy from Chad the name “Louis Christopher”. Louis was the name of my female partner’s French-Canadian grandfather, and we were instructed by her that it was to be pronounced “Loo-Wee”, and NOT “Loo-Iss”. For some reason, many of my first grade buddies and I found this new-to-us pronunciation quite funny. And I suppose you can guess where the name Christopher came from.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Donating, while popular, was strictly voluntary, with no minimum amount. As we were settling in each morning, a few kids would always drop a few pennies and nickels from home into the metal canister as they walked by. Thanks to the blessed innocence of our being so young, we didn’t pay much attention to who was giving and how much it was. The rattle of change in that canister was just part of the soundtrack of our day. The teacher kept a daily tally of how much we had raised posted on the chalkboard.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The drive was limited to coins only. I remember sometimes finding dimes, nickels and pennies lying around the house at that time and asking my parents if I could take it in to school for the Holy Childhood. My grandparents were aware of the campaign as well and when I went to visit them on Sundays they often gave me some pennies and nickels to take in to school the next day for what they still called “the pagan babies” which was kind of politically incorrect even back then in 1976.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">By the end of the school year, our classroom list contained several dozen names. In hindsight it was a pretty powerful way to get the message through to a bunch of young kids that there were poor people in our world, that they needed our help, that it was our obligation to help, and that we really could help, even if we were only six and seven years old.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Flash forward to today.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I recently made a trip from Aroostook County to southern Maine, stopping in several cities on the way down and back. These cities would be considered small by most standards, yet in each I saw at least a few men or women standing in traffic medians, holding signs asking for help. It tugged at my conscience. I wanted to help them directly, but couldn’t be sure if I was feeding a mouth or an addiction. (I did donate to a local service organization in their honor, however.) The plight of these people with their signs really made me think. What depths would one have to reach in order to spend a frigid January day, standing in city traffic, begging? Could that happen to someone I know? Could that happen to me?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The proliferation of panhandlers sharpened my eyes to see other signs of poverty around me: the run-down apartment houses that did not look entirely safe for occupancy, the people in tattered clothing trying to stay warm in the winter cold, the sheer number of food pantries and homeless shelters in a relatively small state like Maine. If the problem is this serious here, what can it possibly be like in New York, Rio de Janeiro or Bombay?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And the biggest question bouncing around my brain: What can I really do as just one person?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I wish there was an easy answer to that question, but there isn’t. At this point, the only answer I have come up with is DO SOMETHING! It may not change the scope of global poverty, but every little bit each of us does, whether it’s a contribution to a charity or service organization, a donation to a food pantry or thrift shop, volunteering at a soup kitchen, or even just working to shift stereotypical thinking about the poor as somehow lesser people, adds another bright new fiber to the sometimes-tattered tapestry of what’s right with us as human beings. </span><br />
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<b><span class="s1">Post Script--This editorial by Robyn Merrill, recently published in the Bangor Daily News, makes many good points about poverty as it impacts Maine: </span><a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2014/01/26/opinion/beyond-the-attacks-ideology-what-poverty-looks-like-in-maine/" target="_blank">Beyond the attacks, ideology: What poverty looks like in Maine</a></b></div>
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Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-76796918871505220532014-01-07T18:41:00.000-05:002014-01-07T18:52:07.854-05:00A Slight Brush With Greatness<div class="p1">
Depending on where you conduct your life, you may or may not come into contact with influential people. For some, standing in line behind a movie star at Starbucks is just part of a typical morning, while for others, attending a party where the mayor of your small town is invited might be as big a deal as it gets. Here in Maine, we have a surprising number of celebrities for a small, relatively rural state, due in part to the large number of vacation homes situated here in “Vacationland”. Stephen King, the Bush family, Martha Stewart, Patrick Dempsey and a number of others call Maine home for at least part of the year.</div>
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One of our more beloved well-known people was the late Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Skowhegan. For those of you unfamiliar with her, she is in the American history books for a number of things, including being the first woman to serve in both houses of the United States Congress, and the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the American Presidency at a major political party's convention. Her famous (and politically courageous) “Declaration of Conscience” speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1950 was the beginning of the end for red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts. She was the first notable person to declare that essentially “Emperor McCarthy” wore no clothes. After serving in Congress, Senator Smith retired to Skowhegan in 1972, where she became somewhat of a “grand old lady” of Maine politics, much beloved by most of her former constituents and especially by those in her hometown, where almost everything is named after her. Members of both political parties held her in very high regard. It was with Senator Smith that I had what I consider my most memorable brush with greatness.</div>
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In the summer of 1992, I was fresh out of college with an education degree, and had been hired for my first teaching job, which was slated to start that September. During that summer, I got my first apartment, a second-floor efficiency, in the town of Skowhegan, Maine and prepared for my first year of teaching as I also adjusted to life on my own. My personal funding would be pretty limited until I started receiving paychecks in September, so I spent most of my time getting my classroom and lesson plans ready, as well as exploring the Skowhegan area on my mountain bike.</div>
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Skowhegan, if you don’t know it, is a beautiful and historic town on the Kennebec River in central Maine, about an hour north of the state capital of Augusta. A working class community of about 6000 people, I felt right at home there, as the town was very similar in size and character to my hometown in the County, from which I had just moved. If the weather cooperated and I didn’t feel compelled to give in to my workaholic nature and head to the school, I often hopped on my bicycle to pedal around the tree-lined streets or dusty back roads. There were cemeteries and historical sites to explore, as well as beautiful scenery and unique architecture. Unless it was very hot of course, when all I would explore by bike was the road from my apartment to Gifford’s Famous Ice Cream, a well-known, locally-based dairy bar on Madison Avenue.</div>
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One particular afternoon, I got on my bike and followed my nose up a rather steep street called Norridgewock Avenue, which I had not previously checked out. Knowing that the next town over was called Norridgewock, I figured I would follow the street to the town line and then turn around. It was pretty hot, and before long I regretted biting off such a lofty goal, but I was young and stubborn, and had nothing else to do, so I powered on. Before long though, I ended up getting off my bike and pushing it up what I later learned was called Neil Hill. I was pretty exhausted from the heat by the time I reached the top. As I stopped to catch my breath and take a drink of water, I saw a sign nearby that indicated I was across the street from the Margaret Chase Smith Library, which I knew was attached to the home of Senator Smith, who by that time was in her mid-90s. While I was catching my breath, I caught sight of a figure dressed in a bright blue bathrobe sitting alone on a wicker chair inside a glass atrium and looking over at me. It was a very slight, elderly lady with a head full of silver-white hair, sipping from a mug. Before it clearly registered in my mind who this actually was, the lady in the blue bathrobe raised her hand and gave me a wave and a smile. Suddenly it clicked in my oxygen-starved brain. It was Senator Margaret Chase Smith herself! Of course, I returned the smile and wave from the woman who would later be selected the most influential Mainer of the 20<span style="font-size: x-small;">th</span> century. </div>
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Having caught my breath again, and not wanting to disturb Senator Smith’s privacy, I gamely mounted my bike again and continued on my way. On my return trip past Senator Smith’s house heading home, she was no longer sitting in the atrium. I biked past there a couple more times over the next few years, but never saw the grand old lady again.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Sen. Smith, as she would have looked around the time I saw her. I believe that is the very chair in which she was sitting that day. (Photo from <a href="http://www.mcslibrary.org/" target="_blank">Margaret Chase Smith Library website</a>)</span></div>
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As “brushes with greatness” go, this could probably be considered a slight brush at best. It wasn’t like I was seated next to Senator Smith at a state dinner and had a foreign policy discussion or anything like that. It was just a simple, friendly wave and smile from an elderly woman to a stranger on a bike on the street near her home. Nonetheless, it made an impression on me. This important and influential woman who had dined with presidents, statesmen and royalty, who had the courage to speak up against a bully when almost every other leader in the country was intimidated, and who had made history by helping clear a path for future female leaders, was still “Margaret from Maine” who would smile and wave at a passing bicyclist.</div>
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The memory of that day has stayed with me all these years. You don't seem to see many in positions of leadership like her anymore. Maybe when we go to choose our leaders, we should be looking more carefully for people of character and courage, like Senator Smith.</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-73198660892819298542014-01-01T11:10:00.000-05:002014-01-01T11:11:11.879-05:00Slogging: A Post for Writerly Types<div class="p1">
I consider myself an actual writer, for whatever that is worth. It’s not my career, and I am not published at this point, but nonetheless I identify with those who have put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, throughout the ages. Writing is something that I have loved to do ever since I was very young, and also something upon which I have gotten a great deal of feedback, mostly positive, since those early days. Various and disparate sources have told me that I have a knack for writing, which has been both a blessing and a curse. It’s been a blessing in that such input has spurred me on to keep up with my writing over the years and to cultivate it. At the same time, as the great philosopher Spiderman once said, “with great power comes great responsibility”. My writing ability is hardly what I would consider a “great power”, but it is something I possess which not everyone does and, I feel, should be used for some greater good. So when I don’t write much, or at all, it seems like squandering, and I’ve been doing a lot of squandering lately.</div>
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Although I’ve been aware of it for a while (witness my post: <i><a href="http://iphoenixblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/writing-about-having-nothing-to-write.html" target="_blank">Writing About Having Nothing To Write About</a></i>, from last April), my lack of writing production really jumped out at me recently when I was examining the layout of this blog, “Wicked Awesomology”. I noticed that I had tallied 47 blog posts in the year 2012, and yet only 27 for 2013. Now I think we all realize that more is not necessarily better and I would be better off posting nothing than tossing something on here that is not very good. Still, being down 20 posts on the year is more of a drop-off than I would like to see, especially considering that my readership numbers, in terms of visitors to the blog, have steadily risen. In addition to the blog, I have two writing works in progress, one of which is a collaborative effort that is moving at a slow crawl at best, and the other is a novel that is still in the outlining phase, where it has been for a couple of months now. A third work in progress, a Maine-based murder-mystery, is no longer in progress by any definition of the word, since I have completely lost my way on it. It isn’t abandoned per say, but it is resting.</div>
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The writing slowdown has also become evident in the nature of my Twitter account, which I originally started several years ago to connect with other writers and foster my own writing. When I first began on Twitter (<a href="https://twitter.com/countofbluecars" target="_blank">@countofbluecars</a>, by the way), the vast majority of followers and people I followed were writers, and the dominant theme of my tweets was writing. My account has evolved over time to be broader based, and I have attracted, and been attracted to, Twitter accounts from other aspects of life, like politics, sports, humor, animal issues, the media, fellow Mainers, and so on. I’d say only about a third of my followers are writing-related people, and the percentage of those I follow who are writers or connected to the field is less than that. My actual tweets on writing have become rare. I enjoy my Twitter account as it is now, so it is not a bad thing, however the demographics of it seem to indicate that the place writing occupies in my life has shrunk.</div>
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So why am I not writing more? Hard to say, really. Yes, I <span class="s1">have</span> been busy with other things in my life, but no more so than in the past when my writing production was much higher. It’s possible that I’ve been more choosey about my topics. A lot of the things that pop into my head as possible topics for blog posts, short stories or novels seem like they have already been done by me, overdone by someone else, or just not feasible. For instance, I am writing this on New Year’s Day. Why not write about my New Year’s resolutions, you might ask? Already did that a couple of years ago and it did not go well at all. (Let’s just say putting them out for public display made not keeping them even harder.) A predictions post? It seems like every other blog out there has one of those up on it. Why not post some personal “Best of 2013” offerings? Also heavily represented in the blogosphere, and plus, who cares?</div>
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It’s that “who cares” attitude that could be at least partly holding me back. There is a popular stereotype that bloggers are self-indulgent people who post merely as a means of inflating their sense of personal worth. It’s about the writer, not the audience, and that’s not how I roll. I’ve tried very hard to keep my readers at the forefront. Before I start any post, I always ask myself: Is the topic something that those reading will actually be interested in? If the answer is no, then I either try to change it so that it is, or else I dump it. And then, if I do choose to stick with it, I ask myself, does it fit “the brand” I have built? Is it the kind of post that people have to come expect from reading Wicked Awesomology in the past? Anecdotal light humor is the general theme. Will writing something outside that realm be well-received on this particular blog? Would it be better suited for another venue?</div>
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A case in point: Recently, a young relative of mine was murdered in a domestic violence situation. It struck me very deeply, and made me want to put something out there in writing to somehow deal with it and to raise awareness. But what, and where, and how? That’s a pretty heavy topic for Wicked Awesomology, and would probably be longer than a standard blog post. Would my typical readers accept such a thing, or should I look elsewhere to get it out there? And then, could I write it in such a way that is inspiring, not maudlin and pitying?</div>
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And so on and so forth. I could make a longer list of writing excuses, but fail to see the benefit of that.</div>
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I tend to be a solution-oriented kind of guy, so all this leads me to wonder what I’m going to actually <span class="s1">do</span> about this lack of writing production, aside from whine about it. A few things come to mind, actually. One is to broaden the scope of the Wicked Awesomology blog in 2014, so that I will have the freedom to write about a wider range of topics and ideas. The core of the blog will remain the same, but the tone will likely vary more as I take more risks with what I write. It would probably be wise to cut myself some slack on the volume of writing I produce also. As I mentioned earlier, more is not better, especially if the content produced is substandard. Not all actual writing involves putting words down. Research and planning are no small parts of the actual process, so setting a goal related to actual volume produced daily or weekly does not seem like a good idea. I am however setting a production goal for at least one of my works-in-progress. Since the collaborative project is, well, collaborative, I’ll get with my writing partner soon enough to set a goal on that, but as far as my adventure novel goes, I’d like to have the rough draft written and be in the midst of the revision stages by the first day of 2015.</div>
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Another thing that I want to do more of as a writer in 2014 is connect in a concrete way with my readers and with fellow writers, in hopes that the increased feedback will drive me further. I have a couple of ideas on how I might go about doing this both in person and online, one of these ideas involves you. I want to open up my e-mail to you for topic suggestions, critiques on posts, and general conversation about writing and/or the topics in my posts. One thing I have heard from other bloggers is that only a fraction of your readers will respond in the “comments” section below a posting, due to its very public nature. Someone said it’s akin to those who make comments or ask questions at a public meeting. Only those comfortable in front of a group tend to speak up. I want to encourage you to share your thoughts on writing, mine or yours, with me via e-mail. My address for the purposes of writing is <a href="mailto:chriscolter@icloud.com">chriscolter@icloud.com</a>. </div>
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I hope to hear from many of you soon. Now let’s get writing! Or at least thinking about it.</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-42423281319943737612013-12-11T11:09:00.000-05:002013-12-12T06:53:50.362-05:00I Don't Shop Well...Or Do I?I’ve been told that I shop like a hunted animal. It’s bad enough online, where I compare prices at various sites and read reviews ad nauseum before I pull the trigger on the purchase days (or weeks, or months) after first starting. But get me out shopping in person, in an actual store, and it just becomes sad. I dither, contemplate and generally wander aimlessly around the store for much longer than a normal person ever would. <br />
<br />
Typically, I’ll pick up an item that may or may not fit the bill, and proceed to carry it around the store a while as I think about it. The whole thing is an exercise in rationalization. Suppose, for example, I pick up a shirt that I think I might like. I’ll start walking around the store with the shirt in hand, and start talking myself out of it. There’s the price. If it is a bargain, I’ll wonder if there is something wrong with it. Is it low quality and prone to shrinking the first time I wash it? If it is not a bargain, I’ll wonder if I really want to spend that much on it. Maybe I can find it cheaper somewhere else. Even if the price is fine, I might find another reason to talk myself out of it. “It’s a lot like another shirt I already have,” I might think, or “It’s not really the kind of thing I will wear very often,” or maybe even “How many Rick Springfield tour t-shirts does a guy really need anyhow?”<br />
<br />
And so on and so forth. Nine times out of ten, the item I have taken for a walk around the store ends up back on the shelf from whence it came, I pick up something else, and the whole cycle begins again. It doesn’t matter if it is a major purchase or a minor one. It’s always the same.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, precious few of my friends and family ever volunteer to go shopping with me.<br />
<br />
For that matter, there are not many people at all who want to be caught up in the epic clusterbumble that tends to be my shopping. I am unfailingly polite and sympathetic to retail salespersons, whose jobs I know can be trying at times. Nonetheless, I am usually part of the problem for them, though not on purpose. I have a tendency to pepper them with endless questions when shopping for something specific, typically only to decide I need to sleep on it, and then walk out of the store without making a purchase. I’m sure they hate people like me.<br />
<br />
My dysfunctional shopping habits are especially problematic for me at this time of year, Christmastime. Not only do I have to do a lot more shopping than usual, but there is a deadline attached to it all. Granted, I find it easier to shop for other people than for myself, but that is like saying it is easier to swim across the Atlantic Ocean because it is not as wide as the Pacific.<br />
<br />
This year, I have cut myself some slack in the Christmas shopping department, though at the possible expense of some sentiment. I am giving everyone on my list two things: a gift card and a charitable donation in their name.<br />
<br />
Gift cards are widely available in almost any amount for almost any place of business. They always “fit”, meaning that the recipients are guaranteed to get something they want and/or need, because they will be getting it themselves. No risk of getting someone a gift in a color they don’t want, a size they don’t fit into, or that they already own.<br />
<br />
The downside is that a gift card does not show the same degree of thoughtfulness that a specific gift might. Getting Uncle Louie that one Miles Davis CD that is missing from his collection might be a great gift, but I would argue that getting him a gift card to his local music store so he can get it, or something else, himself still shows a level of thoughtfulness that a gift card to the Fabric Mart for him would not.<br />
<br />
Another downside, at least as far as gift cards and young kids are concerned, is that in most cases, it isn’t something they can enjoy as soon as they open it. Few kids dream of waking up on Christmas morning, running to the tree, and ending up sitting in the midst of a stack of plastic cards after everything has been opened. Taking that into account for the youngest folks on my list, I do pick them up something else as well.<br />
<br />
The charitable gift giving is the part of this whole thing that I like the best. Most of us have no shortage of “stuff”, and adding unnecessary things to it just doesn’t make a lot of sense, especially given that many people in the world have very little or none of the basics in life. This year, many of the people on my Christmas list are getting a donation made to <a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Heifer International</a> in their name.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-YQC4e4njHdrguNPXxiv3NlQh9TITizVLgHMJTEPirdB6HpLsGMjhjkr0Fis99_5USdT6NyDzP92kz7kjfu_3zOwnyr9Rahyphenhyphenk0ah9Dv3MNXNr3dHqcelbcwbx4w4ZMeosvt_4Af0iKc/s1600/Heifer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt-YQC4e4njHdrguNPXxiv3NlQh9TITizVLgHMJTEPirdB6HpLsGMjhjkr0Fis99_5USdT6NyDzP92kz7kjfu_3zOwnyr9Rahyphenhyphenk0ah9Dv3MNXNr3dHqcelbcwbx4w4ZMeosvt_4Af0iKc/s320/Heifer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Photo from http://www.heifer.org/</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Heifer International</a>, if you haven’t heard of it, is a well-established charity that does work empowering the poor around the globe. Theirs is essentially a “teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime” philosophy. <br />
<br />
Here’s how it works: In their catalogue, you can “buy” gifts that are given to families in need. The gifts are of the type that allow the family to lift themselves out of poverty. For example, for $20, Heifer will provide a flock of geese, along with education and training in their care, so the family in poverty can raise them for their eggs, meat and down, which they can use themselves and also sell. For $30, <a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Heifer International</a> will provide a needy family with a hive of honeybees, along with the education and training to manage the hive and produce honey that they can in turn use, as well as sell locally to provide for themselves. Gifts such as these are also good in that they are living things that can multiply, and therefore can be passed on to empower other poor families nearby.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Heifer International</a> has gifts that range from as large as a camel to as small as a basket of chicks, all of which can be given to a poor family on behalf of the person in whose name you made the donation. If you want, Heifer will send a card or e-mail to that person explaining the donation made in their name and the good that it does. For my young nieces and nephews, I got each a stuffed toy to represent the gift given in their name. My niece in whose name the gift of a flock of ducks was given is also getting a small toy duckling along with her donation card, to help make it more concrete for her.<br />
<br />
A gift donation to <a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Heifer International </a>is easy, fits almost any gift-giving budget, and really fits the spirit of the Christmas season a lot better than a pair of pajama jeans.<br />
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Please don’t get me wrong in my intentions in writing about this charitable giving. I am not trying to give myself a pat on the back by any means. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t originally going to even include it in this posting. However, I’ve decided that by making mention of <a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Heifer International</a>, their philosophy and my personal experience with them, it might nudge some others to do the same thing. I didn’t take the plunge with them myself until someone I knew told me of her positive experience with them. <br />
<br />
One thing that may particularly interest you is that <a href="http://www.heifer.org/" target="_blank">Heifer International</a> does not just help families in far away places. Families in the United States, even right here in Maine, have benefitted from their work. Poverty is not just a far away thing. Half the world’s population, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2.50 USD a day, and 80% live on under $10 USD daily. (<a href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src1" target="_blank">Source</a>)<br />
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So here’s to hoping you and your loved ones have a happy and peaceful Christmas season. And if you see me in a store between now and the 25th, it is probably best if you just steer clear.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-81647016325487370872013-11-11T11:57:00.000-05:002013-11-11T17:46:57.245-05:00Tribute to a Teacher<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my biggest influences as a reader, a writer, and as a
person recently died after a long illness.
<a href="http://www.sunjournal.com/news/obituaries/2013/11/03/sr-mona-louise-hecker/1446563">Sister
Mona Hecker</a> was my English teacher in parochial school from grades five
through eight, which is a very critical period in one’s life in many regards. It’s during those years that we decide a lot
of things, including if reading and writing are things we do for pleasure, or
become merely functions that must be undertaken to get by in day-to-day
life. Sister Mona seemed to make it her
mission that her students would choose the former over the latter. She was passionate about life, her students,
and literacy, and it was easy for us as kids to see that.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG25LFyrI6foEJG54pFYZ_juCgOi_c_AkdsE4XMA-Wvn5XgUfTNpcBvgOSXc9tWn3QMX79rMdWeq75CKguA1d25oZDoQ4FS9TTaHBISXLGIW5WWf9D32-5m98-3RI-iyecBr6eOHaOEWc/s1600/OBTMHeckerP110313.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG25LFyrI6foEJG54pFYZ_juCgOi_c_AkdsE4XMA-Wvn5XgUfTNpcBvgOSXc9tWn3QMX79rMdWeq75CKguA1d25oZDoQ4FS9TTaHBISXLGIW5WWf9D32-5m98-3RI-iyecBr6eOHaOEWc/s320/OBTMHeckerP110313.jpg" width="202" /></a></div>
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Sister Mona Hecker, with that same smile I knew 30+ years ago.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo from the <a href="http://www.sunjournal.com/news/obituaries/2013/11/03/sr-mona-louise-hecker/1446563" target="_blank">Lewiston Sun-Journal</a></span></div>
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The first thing that pops into my head when I think of
Sister Mona is that she was the first teacher who read great books aloud to my
classmates and I on a daily basis. And
by “great books”, I mean books of high quality yet also appealing to kids the
age my classmates and I were. She
introduced us to a boy who adopted a baby raccoon in Sterling North’s <i>Rascal</i>, and to a girl facing many of the
same adolescent trials and tribulations as us in <i>Harriet the Spy</i> by Louise Fitzhugh.
Every year around Halloween, she read something from Edgar Allen Poe to
us, and with great feeling. “The
Tell-Tale Heart” blew our young minds the year she shared it with us. I still hear it in Sister Mona’s voice when I
read the lines where the murderer confesses his horrible deed.</div>
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She of course insisted that we be readers ourselves, and
showed us that being a real reader and being a student in reading class were
two different things. Up until I was in
Sister Mona’s class, “reading” in school was made up entirely of going over
short, mind-numbingly dull passages in dusty old textbooks, followed by doing
endless and mindless worksheets. I was a
bookworm from a very young age, and read a lot in my spare time, but saw very
little connection between my own reading and so-called “reading class”. Sister Mona changed all that by asking that
we read whatever we wanted. Her
classroom library was large and varied, and she made full use of the school
library as well. An occasional book
report was required, primarily for grading purposes, but most of the time, she
held us accountable by randomly calling us up to her desk while everyone else
was reading at their seats and simply asking us one on one to tell her a little
about our current book for a few minutes.
It was very low-key, but very effective.</div>
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Sister Mona never neglected the skills side of English
either. Diagramming sentences was one of
her favorite things, and though such activity could have been deadly in the
hands of a lesser instructor, she actually made diagramming somewhat
entertaining. I have no doubt that I
learned a lot about parts of speech and sentence structure from it. She also let us play the game “Password” as a
class every Friday, which we absolutely loved.
Little did we know at the time that she was also teaching us to broaden
our vocabulary at the same time.</div>
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Every quarter for four years, Sister Mona required that
everyone in the class present a Minute Talk, as she called them. As the name implies, it was an original
one-minute talk each of us had to give on a general topic that she chose, such
as an important person in our lives or a holiday memory. They were a horrifying prospect for us as
young fifth graders, but as the years passed, many of my classmates and I
became fairly calm about public speaking.
She was a great speech coach, and really made a difference in the
presentation skills a number of us developed.
Always one for a good chuckle, Sister Mona often gave an example of a Minute
Talk she never wanted to hear from us, which she said a former student of hers
had once given. It was on the topic of
snow. It went something like: “Snow is
white and it is wet. It is frozen
water. Snow comes in the winter. You can make snowmen from it.” And so on with
brief, random snow observations up until the one minute mark. She delivered it in exactly the opposite way
she would have wanted us to deliver ours: in a deadpan voice with poor
posture. It always cracked us right
up. It was a running gag in our class
all four years for at least one of us to tell her our upcoming Minute Talk
topic was “Snow” when she asked. She
always laughed when someone said it, even after four years of hearing it, just
like we did every time after hearing her snow-themed “what not to do” Minute
Talk.</div>
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Sister Mona loved to laugh, and as the Christmas season
approached in my seventh grade year, she asked me and a small group of others
to take on a pretty hefty assignment in lieu of other work in English
class. We were to rewrite Charles
Dickens’ <i>A Christmas Carol</i> into a
humorous play that we as a whole class would then put on at the school
Christmas program. She insisted that it
be true to the original, but that it also be funny and appropriate to an
audience of students and parents. The
final product, in which I portrayed Bob Crachit, turned out pretty well, if I
do say so myself. I think I learned more
about writing for a specific audience and writing in collaboration with others
from that assignment than any other I ever did in my life. As for whether the final version was really <i>that</i> funny, I’m not so sure, but it sure
made Sister Mona laugh a lot as we prepared to perform it.</div>
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We were required to write compositions and other
assignments, of course, but much like her approach to reading and speaking, Sister
Mona usually gave us some latitude in what we wrote. She set forth page-length requirements, a
time limit and other such necessities, but made sure the topic of the
composition was broad enough that almost anyone could make it their own. Instead of “What I Did Over My Summer
Vacation”, she might assign the more generic “Summer” instead, allowing us to
take it in any number of directions.</div>
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Sister Mona’s influence extended beyond English class for
me. My mother had had a baby just a
couple weeks into my fifth grade year. I
had seen my mother and my new baby brother very briefly for a few minutes
before school the day he was born, but was apparently visibly pre-occupied by
the whole business all day long. My
father had to work until 5:00 that day, so Sister Mona and our principal,
Sister Margaret Anne, called my father and offered to take me up to visit my
mother and the baby at the hospital after school, not only so they could visit,
but also to set me at ease.</div>
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In fifth grade, Sister Mona instituted a nursing home
visitation program with her "homeroomers", as she called us. Every Monday afternoon, she and a large
percentage of my classmates would walk to a nearby nursing home and visit with
the residents, talking and doing activities.
It was a lot of fun, as it gave my classmates and I time to spend with
each other while doing some good deeds.
One of the upsides of Sister Mona’s loud laugh was that it often helped
us know where she was in the nursing home at any given time. As kids, one of our favorite things to do was
to hang out with some of the nursing home residents in the TV room watching
game shows. Sister Mona would rather we
be visiting people in their rooms and interacting with them more directly. As long as we knew where she was, we could
get our <i>Match Game</i> or <i>Family Feud </i>fix along with some of the
residents.</div>
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After eighth grade, my classmates and I were leaving
parochial school for the local high school, and Sister Mona decided that she
was going to the Bahamas. Not for a
vacation, by any stretch. She was going
to do a year of mission work with the poor of that nation. In the final weeks of our eighth grade year,
she shared a great deal of material with us about the nature of her work down
there. It had very little to do with the
golden beaches we imagined. It had
everything to do with shacks that were barely able to stand on their own, cramped
one-room schools with too few teachers and books, and hospitals with too few
doctors and supplies. Sister Mona had to
leave our parochial school for the last time that June day in 1984 one hour
before my classmates and I did, so she could catch her plane to the Bahamas. I never saw her in person again.</div>
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Sister Mona also had a fiery temper and was not someone you
would ever want to cross. My classmates
and I were so fond of her that rarely did it cross our minds to do so. When one of us did…watch out! She was no saint, but neither were we, and as
adolescents it was valuable for us to see that, especially in a nun. Nuns at that time were often seen as holy and
virtually faultless. Sister Mona, on the
other hand, was very down-to-earth. Once,
someone brought a copy of Dr. Hook’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone”, a
semi-novelty record, to school and played it in the classroom during a rainy
recess. Sister Mona, whom we didn't
think was listening, thought it was one of the funniest things she had ever
heard. Every Lent, when Catholics are traditionally
encouraged to make sacrifices, she gave up the same thing: potato chips. As kids, we could really get on board with
something as relatable as that. She
talked with us about what a challenge it was to stay away from them for that
period of time, but also about why she did it and its importance to her. Her leading by example meant a lot to us, and
taught us more than any textbook ever could.</div>
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I owe a great deal to Sister Mona, and I regret that I did
not get a chance in later life to let her know that. As often happens, I lost track of her as I
got older, and never was able to share my gratitude. Books and writing are an important part of my
life, and she deserves no small part of the credit. When the day finally comes that I publish my
first book, Sister Mona’s name will be right there on the dedication page where
it surely belongs.</div>
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God bless you Sister Mona, and thank you.</div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-19799822934509925492013-11-04T12:12:00.000-05:002013-11-09T07:53:47.232-05:00Getting Rattled<div class="MsoNormal">
I've been a “car guy” ever since I was a little kid. Not a car guy in the sense that I could tear
down and rebuild an engine, but a car guy in the sense that I have always enjoyed driving and admiring them. When taking a trip in my car, half the fun for
me is the journey to and from the destination.
An antique auto or any kind of unique vehicle on the road will almost
always turn my head, and I find it impossible to just drive past any kind of car
show or display. One of the highlights
of my summer excursions around Maine this year was a day spent at the Owl’s
Head Transportation Museum in the town of Owl’s Head, just outside of Rockland. I could have made it several days, actually.</div>
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Because I place such a premium on the car experience, it
makes me kind of edgy when something interferes with that pleasure. You may recall that I addressed this <a href="http://iphoenixblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-hear-you-knocking.html" target="_blank">here in this blog</a> a few months ago when my Hyundai Santa Fe developed a mysterious
knock which seemed to be coming from the undercarriage that I could not track
down no matter how hard I tried. It
turned out to be some manner of rod near one of the wheels, according to my
mechanic, who is also likely certified to fly space shuttles. I think this “rod” was actually part of the
flux capacitor or something, and I never would have ferreted it out by myself in
a million years.</div>
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Because my Santa Fe is nearing seven years old, I know that
it, like me, is not getting any younger and is bound to develop more frequent health
quirks. Much as I do with my own health,
I sometimes get concerned that the other shoe could drop on my car’s well-being
at any time. Also much like my own
health, I am not so much worried about some major crisis as much as a series of
irritating little ones. </div>
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Take, for instance, the plastic covering for the fuse panel,
on the side of the dashboard. It has a
loose fit nowadays, and occasionally falls out onto the ground when the door
opens. If it ever gets lost, I would
probably also lose at least a piece of my mind.
On the other hand, there is no good way to secure it in place short of
duct tape, the sight of which would bother me just as much as having to
constantly watch to make sure the covering doesn't get lost.</div>
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And then there are the various and sundry pieces and parts
that are rolling around inside the back door.
When installing a new license plate a few years ago, some washers and
little plasticky things fell inside it, and now rattle around in there whenever
I lift open the door or take a sharp corner.
Taking the door apart myself to retrieve the errant pieces would just be
a recipe for complete and total disaster, and taking it to a mechanic for
something so foolish to someone else would likely be both embarrassing and
expensive. So, I just put on my big boy
pants and deal with it. Not happily,
mind you. Not. At. All.</div>
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About a year ago, I got a pen wedged inside the ashtray,
preventing it from opening. I don’t
smoke unless someone sets me on fire, so it seemed at first like a good place to keep a
pen. I often have need of one while on
the road and can rarely locate one quickly.
And a good place for a pen it was, for quite some time actually, until
one day I went to open up the ashtray/pen receptacle while at a drive-through
ATM with a line of cars behind me. It
was well and truly jammed. No amount of
jiggling, finagling or cajoling could get it to open, and the line behind me
was growing longer and more impatient. I left without completing any of my banking
tasks and immediately pulled into a nearby parking spot. I spent nearly an hour on every strategy short
of explosives to get it open. At long
last it did pop free, with no damage to the ashtray/now-former pen receptacle. It’s a good thing too, because if I had to
look at a broken ashtray every time I got in the car, I’d probably have to sell
it immediately, probably at a loss, just to get it out of my sight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My latest potential vehicle crisis emerged a few days
ago. There was a tiny but highly irritating rattling sound
coming from somewhere inside the cabin whenever I drove over rough roads, which
are not unusual things to encounter in northern Maine. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxeS1sk4JPr8VQcdVRI9Z1IF2ySzYVXOGt3W0thKvu77B81EXxB4l16p36wWnQL9XVBA8-DV6pSWiRb-ce8KdpGbty8TYesA8Mqw8pHvPIrBrMsGtIvWC8JPsN5ZXBXHjhoUog7FDwwJI/s1600/car_rattle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxeS1sk4JPr8VQcdVRI9Z1IF2ySzYVXOGt3W0thKvu77B81EXxB4l16p36wWnQL9XVBA8-DV6pSWiRb-ce8KdpGbty8TYesA8Mqw8pHvPIrBrMsGtIvWC8JPsN5ZXBXHjhoUog7FDwwJI/s320/car_rattle.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Rattles belong in playpens, not in Hyundais.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.2carpros.com/articles/rattle-noise" target="_blank">Source</a>: <a href="http://www.2carpros.com/articles/rattle-noise">http://www.2carpros.com/</a></span></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, I checked the storage compartments, of which my Santa
Fe has more than a herd of kangaroos. I store plenty of stuff in most of them,
like CDs, charging units, my GPS, manuals, a small rubber lizard that came with
a great drink I had in the Old Port in 1996, as well as the typical flotsam and
jetsam that accumulate in a vehicle like paper clips, receipts, gum and the
like. I secured anything and everything that
looked like it might be loose and headed back out on a bumpy street.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The rattle was still there! Drat.<br />
<br />
(Yes, I really did say "drat".)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps some part of the vehicle itself was loose, I thought.
Since I could only hear it when I was driving, which is a less-than-ideal time
to be crawling around looking, I recruited a friend to drive while I attempted
to pinpoint the problem. The thing was,
when I was in the back seat, it sounded like the rattle was coming from the front,
and when I was in the front, it sounded like it was coming from the back. We switched places, and I had my friend try
to find the source of the rattle.
Nothing. After exhausting my
friend’s patience as well as half a tank of gas, I concluded that it wasn’t a loose
part either.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By this point, I had endured the phantom rattle for three
days and seemed no closer to locating the source. I was within inches of deciding to sell the
car for scrap when fate, as it so often does, led me to Dunkin Donuts. Treating
my friend to coffee was on my agenda, and as I got to the drive-through window,
I went for my wallet in the glove compartment.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You see, once in a while I keep my wallet in there, along
with the vehicle manual and other car-related papers. Nothing loose though. It’s a pain to fish anything out of there
when driving, so the glove compartment doesn't accumulate nearly the amount of
stuff that the other ones do. I was so
sure that there was nothing rattle worthy in there that I hadn't even bothered
to check it thoroughly. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I shut the glove compartment, I heard it. The rattle.
Thankfully, no one was in line behind us, so I asked the coffee guy to
wait for just a second, as I unbuckled my seat belt and reached over to pull
everything out onto my friend’s lap.
Under the manuals and paperwork, I found a quarter, which had likely slipped
out of my wallet. It had to be the culprit!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I gave a fist-pump of victory accompanied by a loud “Yussss!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The coffee guy looked at me as though I had lost my
sanity. My friend knew that particular train
had left the station a long time ago and just rolled her eyes, a reaction I
tend to get a lot, especially from women. Regardless, the latest rattle crisis was resolved. I have driven in rattle-free bliss ever since.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Winter’s coming, and no doubt new rattles and knocks will be
popping up in my car. Cold weather seems
to foster them. So if you see me pulled
over on the side of the road frantically fishing around the vehicle, don’t
worry. Probably something has come
loose. Whether it’s in the vehicle cabin
or in my head is a matter of debate, I guess. </div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-4757698216291645102013-10-20T10:33:00.000-04:002013-10-26T07:27:38.318-04:00Things That Make You Go "Hmmmm": Veterinary Edition<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
As you may
know, I work in a busy companion animal veterinary office in a small town. I love what I do and the people with whom I
do it. We have many wonderful patients
and most of them have wonderful owners.
There are a few, however, who are, uh… “interesting”. What follows is an actual interaction that I
had recently at work. Unfortunately, this
type of thing is not unique. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Scene:</b> <i>Our veterinary office during the middle of scheduled office
appointments. I am covering the front
desk while the receptionist is in a meeting.
A man with a large dog on a shoelace leash comes in the front door.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME
(indicating the dog): </b>“Hello, who do you have with you there?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “Umm,
I’m not sure which one this is.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “Do you
have an appointment?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “I
don’t know. I don’t think so.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “Okay,
that’s fine. We normally require an
appointment, but can squeeze you in since we just had a cancellation. What would you like the dog seen for today?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “I’m
not sure.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “Well, let
me see if I can find your dog in our system.
What is your name?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<b>
HIM:</b> “Well, my name is _____, but the dog wouldn't be under my name.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “Can you
tell me the name the account might be under?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “It
might be under my girlfriend’s name, which is _____.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>I look up the name, including various
spelling variations, and find nothing in our system.</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “Is
there another name it might be under?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “Try
_______. That was her married name.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>Still nothing in the system.</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “I’m not
seeing anything under that name either.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM (growing agitated):</b> “Look, she said he’s been here before. Try her sister’s name,
_____. The dog used to belong to her.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “Still
nothing.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “Look
under _________. I think that is her
married name.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>No such person is in our system. Clearly, we are getting nowhere and the man
is getting a bit flustered, so I try another tack.</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME: </b> "Why don’t we just establish a new account
under your name for now?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “Okay.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>I hand him a form to fill out, which he
hands right back.</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p> </o:p><b>HIM:</b> “I
can’t do this. I didn't bring my reading
glasses.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>At this point, I offer to fill it out for
him. I proceed to ask him about his
contact information, which he has, and information about the dog, which he does
not. All I can discern about it is the
breed, gender, and approximate age, and that only from looking at the dog. The dog’s name, vaccine history, health
history, neutered or spayed…it’s all a mystery. I put what little information I have into the
computer and several minutes later go with him into the exam room to see if I
can figure out what it is the dog is being seen for.</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>ME:</b> “Have
you noticed anything unusual about him?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>HIM:</b> “I
think he itches a lot.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>I check the dog’s coat and it is infested
with fleas. When I mention this to the
man, he asks if I will apply a flea treatment, which I do. He also asks if I will trim the dog’s
toenails, which I also do with no small amount of difficulty as he cannot
control the dog and it is not fond of having his nails cut. Finally, the veterinarian and an assistant
come into the room, and I return to the front desk.</i></li>
<li><o:p> </o:p><i>About ten minutes later, the man and dog
come back to the front desk. My computer
says that in addition to the nail trim and flea treatment, the dog received a
full suite of vaccinations, as well as an ear examination and a prescription
for an ear infection. Before I can tell
him the total for his bill, which is well over $100 at this point, his cell
phone rings. He steps to the other side
of the room to answer it, while I answer our office phone, which is
ringing. A few minutes later, he steps
back up to the desk.</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p> </o:p><b>HIM:</b> “This
isn't the right vet’s office. She said she takes him to Dr. ________ (the other
veterinarian in our town).”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>Despite my urge to strangle someone, preferably
him, I laugh it off and tell the man the amount of his bill for the day.</i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<o:p> </o:p><b>HIM:</b> “Oh, I don’t have any money.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Yeah…good times.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-r-FKo_rPugW15JveV6-qYX_EqTQC5zFPAjPLWdeLQUOs0QjXtkpWJN4AHC172a-jEQePR-BYiAyX4RDkWGHzrx5xla98WkueGWpRa9juT5hkbgAOYg6KZiSBFPMcSZKqJV3bOVOzXzc/s1600/Kermit-frown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="249" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-r-FKo_rPugW15JveV6-qYX_EqTQC5zFPAjPLWdeLQUOs0QjXtkpWJN4AHC172a-jEQePR-BYiAyX4RDkWGHzrx5xla98WkueGWpRa9juT5hkbgAOYg6KZiSBFPMcSZKqJV3bOVOzXzc/s320/Kermit-frown.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Source: <a href="http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/facial-expressions.53997/">http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/threads/facial-expressions.53997/</a></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7403080336383508446.post-45369771567328837272013-09-22T19:13:00.000-04:002013-09-23T09:59:42.227-04:00What A Drag It Is Getting Old<div class="MsoNormal">
According to legend, I was born in 1970, so a little
arithmetic will tell you that I am 43 years old. And lately, the “old” part of being 43 years
old has been particularly evident. As I
write this, I am propped up in bed with an ice pack strapped to my swollen
right knee, dealing with a bad case of bursitis. Yes, bursitis! Bursitis, if you don't know, is a painful inflammation of the
cushion between one’s joints, and something up to now I always considered as a
condition for people who are, for lack of a better word, OLD. I've never had
it before, don’t know why I have it now, and hope to high heavens that I don’t have it again
anytime soon. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am only 43, I tell myself. I am
not supposed to have things like bursitis. My
grandmother is. She’s 88. That makes more sense. Not that I am wishing ill upon her by any means. It's just that I am too young for this! After all, I know who Imagine Dragons are and wear cargo
shorts on a regular basis! I’m not old!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And a booming voice comes out of the clouds above: <b>“Wrong,
Grandpa!”</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, I am pretty young at heart, but my body...well, maybe not so
much anymore.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh035_BBU0u6KqtnvpQlDs70DP7p8cWUbCvSnV_vJPr49TS_MjM8JPoGtOYEw6ymRup1p6xuZWlFN7PQ7fYHFEU9a9s4mW0vsbhssDCXlnsY-0wTkjMCqyDCfAnb0JpsvIkbJTqtn-57SU/s1600/GrandpaTellUsMore-13832.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh035_BBU0u6KqtnvpQlDs70DP7p8cWUbCvSnV_vJPr49TS_MjM8JPoGtOYEw6ymRup1p6xuZWlFN7PQ7fYHFEU9a9s4mW0vsbhssDCXlnsY-0wTkjMCqyDCfAnb0JpsvIkbJTqtn-57SU/s320/GrandpaTellUsMore-13832.jpg" width="177" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><a href="http://lolsnaps.com/news/18165/0/" target="_blank">Source</a></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I've always joked about aging and the passage of time at
milestone birthdays, like my 18<sup>th</sup>, 21<sup>st</sup>, and 30<sup>th</sup>,
but truth be told, those came and went and not much really changed. My 40<sup>th</sup>, on the other hand, was
like passing through some kind of gate into a new land. That was when I really started to notice that, physically at least, I wasn't as young as I used to be.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First, there is the noticeable change in stamina. My health has been pretty consistent over the
years. I am overweight for my height by
about 20 pounds, but otherwise suffer from no chronic problems like high blood
pressure or diabetes. In my forties,
however, I've found that things are different. I've been placed into the body of an old guy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A case in point was when I climbed Mt. Megunticook on the coast of Maine recently. It was the sole
physical activity of the day for me. It
took me the better part of the afternoon and several bottles of water to hike
up the 1,385 foot elevation and then down again. When I reached my camp at the bottom, I had
to take some aspirin and a long nap, and was terribly sore for three days. And don’t even get me going on the blistered
feet. The climb took all the wind out of
my sails, and then some. I actually
checked my cell phone’s reception to make sure I’d be
able to dial 911 if necessary.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back in my mid-20s, several other teachers and I climbed that
very same mountain with a group of nearly 80 third and fourth grade students. The weather was iffy, so I didn’t even dress
for the trip, thinking it would be cancelled.
Nonetheless, I climbed that same mountain in a shirt and tie, in half
the time, with no blisters, barely breaking a sweat, and without any
water. I then went back to school with
the students, taught all afternoon, attended a long committee meeting after
school, ran some errands in town and then mowed my lawn after dinner that
evening. If I had aches and soreness
afterward, I don’t remember them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next, I've found that piddly little things are causing me pain. All of a sudden, the motion of raking the
lawn for an hour or so causes my shoulder to ache for the next day or two. Getting down on the floor with a sick animal at
work can easily tweak my back if I am not careful about how I do it, and once
about two years ago, I literally threw out my back while bending over the
bathroom sink to spit out toothpaste. Seriously. If I was in an old-time covered wagon heading
out west, my companions would be completely justified in leaving me alongside
the trail for the coyotes. And if that same party became stranded and had to resort to cannibalism, there is no doubt who they'd eat first, despite the fact that I would probably be quite stringy and gristly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course its not a discussion of male aging without a
mention of hair. I am fortunate to still
have lots of it, on my head and elsewhere, just as I always have, and the vast
majority of it is still the original color (brown). Based on the photos I saw of my 25<sup>th</sup>
high school class reunion, many of my male peers are not so lucky. It still blows my mind when someone my age or
younger has male pattern baldness. Luckily, that is one thing I don't have to get uptight about. It's nowhere to be found in my family tree. Gray hair is a different story. I
found my first gray hair when I was 24, just after I closed on the mortgage for
my first house. I figured I earned that
one. Since then, the gray has been oddly slow in coming. Very, very gradually it is becoming noticeable in my temples, especially just after I get it cut, but I am still
below average in the gray hair department compared to most men my age. Thankfully, the same lack of grayness applies to the
hair that is not on my head, of which I have more than my fair share. I truly think that having the hair on my
chest or arms go gray will bother me much more than the gray on my head. Once in a blue moon a stray gray will make an
appearance there, but I swiftly vanquish the interloper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Interesting side note: people sometimes ask why I do not
grow facial hair or allow more than a day’s growth of stubble. The fact of the matter is, all the gray hairs
I have seem to have come in on my face.
If I go more than two days without shaving, it becomes very clear that
my mustache and beard would be heavily streaked with gray. That’s not a look I could pull off
gracefully especially with a shock of thick brown hair upstairs. Maybe someday I’ll grow some
facial hair when what I have on my head matches, but until then, no thanks.</div>
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For me though, the worst parts of getting physically older
are the surprises. You know, like the
food or drink you've enjoyed regularly over the course of your entire life that
suddenly gives you screaming heartburn.
(I’m talking to <u>you</u>, hot tea!)
Or the sudden back spasms that literally knock you off your feet at work
and cause your coworkers to think for a moment that you've been struck from
behind by a pygmy dart. Or the nights
when you may as well sleep in the bathroom, because you are making so many
trips there to empty your apparently pea-sized bladder. Oh, and waking up one morning with painful bursitis in the right knee, for no known reason. Those are the kinds of surprises I mean.</div>
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It bothered me when Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield retired
from baseball in 2011, because he was the last player on my favorite team that was my
age. As of last season, there were no
major league baseball players my age or older.
That was a milestone I didn't care for at all. It still bothers me when I read an obituary
in the paper of someone my age or younger dying of some health malady. And I don’t think I will ever get used to the
idea of people I went to school with being grandparents now, but a couple of
them are.</div>
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I know what they say: “You are only as old as you feel, ”
and I have no doubt that age is relative.
To my nieces and nephews, I probably am seen as old. To my parents and their generation, I am seen
as pretty young. To my grandmother’s
generation, I am still practically a kid.
There are people old enough to be my parents running marathons and
swimming from Cuba to Florida (not on the same day, mind you), so I guess I just
need to keep setting my sights high.</div>
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I could go on and on about this topic of getting old, but I
had better stop here. It’s 4:00 in the
afternoon, and the early-bird dinner special is starting at the diner downtown. Plus, I need to restock my bowl of hard
ribbon candy.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/E-62QgzmcDQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<i>A video for Mother's Little Helper by the Rolling Stones, from YouTube.</i></div>
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<i>Post-script: There’s no small amount of irony that the title
of this post is borrowed from the first line of an early Rolling Stones song, “Mother’s
Little Helper”. The Rolling Stones are now
quite old, no matter how you slice it, and yet their most recent songs and
footage from their live concerts this past summer prove that they have still
got it going on.</i></div>
Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17515601646237120374noreply@blogger.com0