Everybody gripes about the weather

So it’s the second week of October and the air conditioner is still kicking on. What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s supposed to be chilly. Not just in the mornings, but all day long. I search through my closet in the morning and ask myself “what did I wear all summer long? There’s nothing in here.”

I’m so ready to wear long sleeves, sweaters, and sweatshirts that I fail to see the summer clothes. I’m done with summer. It needs to go away.

I had my coats cleaned a couple of weeks ago. I was so ready to put them away in the spring, but now they’re fresh and ready to go on a cold morning. I have fantasies of bundling up in a heavy parka and feeling warm and cozy. Can’t wear a windbreaker. Hoodies are out of the question. I’m ready to get dressed up to go out in the cold, but there’s no cold to get out into.

It’s time to make homemade soup and warm cornbread. Leaves are turning colors, but people are still kicking around in flip-flops.

The weather forecaster predicts temperatures will drop, but then will go back up into the 80s again. Are we stuck in a time warp where it’s perpetually the end of summer?  

Eventually fall will come and it will be followed by winter. I simply must be patient. At some point, I’ll be complaining that spring is taking its sweet time getting here, and where are the flowers that should be popping up.

And if anyone reminds me then about these words I’ve just lamented concerning fall, I’ll swear they’re lying!

A change of fortune

Recently I had lunch in a Chinese restaurant, and with the bill comes the fortune cookie.

Most of the time when you crack open the cookie you get a little slip of paper with some ambiguous words that make you wonder “This is a fortune?” Then you toss it away and either eat the cookie or toss it with the little slip of paper. Some of them just aren’t very tasty.

Comedian Alan King used to have a routine describing his family’s ritual of reading the fortunes from their cookies. He would always read his as “Help! I’m being held prisoner in a Chinese bakery.”

Some sources say that the little cookies aren’t even Chinese. Some say they’re Japanese; others say they were born in America. If one is in position to buy fortune cookies, it’s possible to customize the fortunes. Some are funny, either by accident or design. They’re all gathered together on the Internet. For instance:

The fortune you seek is in another cookie.

A closed mouth gathers no feet. 

A foolish man listens to his heart. A wise man listens to cookies.

You will die alone and poorly dressed.

If you look back, you’ll soon be going that way.

You will live long enough to open many fortune cookies.

He who laughs last is laughing at you.

He who throws dirt is losing ground. 

We don’t know the future, but here’s a cookie.

You will be hungry again in one hour.

Never forget a friend. Especially if he owes you.

It is a good day to have a good day.

That wasn’t chicken.

I am worth a fortune.

You have rice in your teeth.

Avoid taking unnecessary gambles. Lucky numbers: 12, 15, 23, 28, 37

Normally I don’t pay much attention to the fortunes in the cookies. Sometimes I don’t even bother with them. They’re often stale — the cookies and the fortunes.

This one was different. It had a citrus flavor and was fresh. And I loved the fortune.

A pair of new shoes will do you a world of good.

I plan to test that fortune!

Whatever happened to America?

Someone complained yesterday that flags were not at half mast in recognition of Sept. 11.

I don’t know flag etiquette, but it seems to me like it would show reverence and respect to fly the flag at half mast on this particular day. Maybe it isn’t required; I don’t know. I don’t remember what position flags were in a year ago.

What I do remember though is what the country was in the days and months after Sept. 11, 2001. We as a country were outraged. We vowed that the sleeping giant America had been until that date was awake and really ticked off.

Flags started appearing everywhere. On cars. In yards. In windows. It was a riot of red, white and blue.

And the rallies! Oh, my the rallies. I  can recall people marching toward the courthouse one afternoon. There were speakers. Our elected officials promised we would not be messed with. We were going after the people who killed our people in the towers, in that Pennsylvania field and at the Pentagon.

I recall standing on a corner, taking it all in, looking down the street at a crowd of people marching in tune to their outrage. In the midst of the crowd was a guy in a Taco John costume, a huge sombrero bobbing along with the rest of the crowd. It seemed funny, out of place, and yet so right.

On the second floor of the courthouse an elected official and a couple of staffers taped a sign in the window directed toward Osama bin Laden, believed to be behind the attacks of Sept. 11. It wasn’t obscene but it wasn’t something you’d want your grandmother to see. Yet, no one was offended. It was good for a chuckle.

We get offended a lot lately. That day, the sign seemed appropriate. The crowds felt safe. We were united in our sorrow and anger.

Time went on and little impromptu parades with placards on pickup trucks would roar through town – flags flying, horns honking, sabers rattling. Firefighters and police officers became heroes.

Then life went back to somewhat normal. The flags disappeared from the cars, from the yards, no one seemed outraged so much. The patriotism was there; it just got quieter.

Then it seemed like we forgot our anger, our outrage. We marked Sept. 11 as it came and went each year, but no one posted rude messages to the enemy on the courthouse windows, and the parades and rallies stopped. We were no longer united against an enemy bent on our destruction.

And America did an about face. Police became the enemy, rallies were replaced with riots and looters. Flags were burned and trod on.  As Pogo once said (for those old enough to remember Pogo): “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

What happened?

It’s fall – well, almost

Autumn to me has always felt like the beginning of things. Forget leaves falling from the trees signaling the coming of winter and the end of growing things. There’s nothing gloomy about autumn; there’s something fresh and energizing about it.

I don’t know why we celebrate the new year in the dead of winter. Chinese New Year comes at the beginning of spring, when people begin to look forward to all things new and fresh. That makes more sense than going out and celebrating in sub-zero weather, but really fall is when new years should start.

So much begins in the autumn. When I was a kid school started the day after Labor Day. Summer vacation was over, the swimming pools closed, there seemed to be a nip in the air. It was invigorating, and made you feel like getting out and doing something. There were new fall clothes for school, and new school supplies that brought about the determination that this year, you’re going to really apply yourself and get those grades up.

Autumn means eating hearty soup, chili, sipping hot chocolate. Moms would cook more substantial meals like stews and roasts. Fall meant it was cool enough to bake bread and cinnamon rolls without overheating the kitchen. Pies and cookies started appearing on the table. You just feel more ambitious in the fall, full of new zest and ambition.

New cars come out in the fall. The TV programs introduce their new lineups in the fall. Autumn means dragging your feet through the fallen leaves, wearing sweaters, and stepping on acorns and feeling them pop under your feet.

Fall holidays are more fun. There’s Halloween with hot cider, candy corn, and bobbing for apples. Before it got lost in the holiday rush, there was Thanksgiving with turkey and sweet potatoes and gravy and pumpkin and mincemeat pies. Thanksgiving had its own special feeling before Christmas took over later in December and reminded us that winter was coming.

Air conditioners go off in autumn, and people build bonfires outside to keep warm and roast hotdogs and marshmallows.

And best of all — Daylight Saving Time ends and we go back to normal and get that extra hour of snuggling under the covers against the brisk fall air. I can’t wait!

Happy autumn!

Losing track of time

You know why time seems to fly by?

I’ve just figured it out. It has little to do with getting older. It always seemed that the older you get the faster time goes by — once you get over the hill you pick up speed.

I used to think that, but I don’t any more.

Time flies by because people who are involved with mass marketing make us think it does. Case in point: Here it is August. We can still wear white shoes and pants. Pools haven’t closed yet. People are still grilling in their backyards. By all accounts, it’s summer.

But walk into any grocery or mart store and the first thing you see is Halloween candy. It’s out already. So is pumpkin spice flavored everything from chewing gum to cat litter.

That tricks us into thinking it’s fall. So we pick up a bag of Snickers here, and a couple of bags of candy corn there, and the next thing we know time has flown from August to October.

We open the bags of Halloween candy so we can sample one and make sure it’s fresh, and the next thing you know it’s all gone. Gotta get some more to have for the Trick or Treat ghoulies who come begging at the door. So we buy more, advancing the days even farther into fall. We can’t very well give the little beggars stale candy — if indeed any is left — so we buy even more, and that brings us to Christmas.

What happened to what was left of August, September and November?

Christmas stuff comes into the stores sometimes around the same time Halloween decorations arrive, so it can be easy to lose track of time. Then before the outdoor lights even come down, next thing you know the marketers are pushing heart-shaped boxes of chocolates on consumers. So now we’ve gotten all the way to February and the last thing we knew it was August and we were wondering how long this year’s T-shirts could stand another round in the washer.

I bet if we actually figured up all those lost months throughout the years we might realize that we are actually as young as we claim to be.

Post-Eclipse letdown

After months of buildup, the 2017 solar eclipse is over. This reminds me of a Peanuts cartoon from years ago that showed Charlie Brown talking about his “Post Christmas letdown” on the day after Christmas.

On the day of the eclipse, I received emails that signed off with “happy eclipse day.” Oh, dang! I forgot to order eclipse cards. Come to think of it, I didn’t do any eclipse shopping, although I did go in a few stores that offered eclipse sales and discounts.

Americans love any excuse to throw a party and celebrate, and an eclipse is as good an excuse as any.

And let’s face it, a solar eclipse is an amazing phenomenon. It brings us closer to outer space in a way. Eclipses have been going on for millions of years, and will go on for millions more, and there’s no way we can mess that up.

But then all these thousands of people who traveled to the totality zone are probably going to leave a load of trash. Sure, they’ll buy food and gasoline, but they’ll probably leave burger wrappers and plastic bags.

Mainstream media folks left Washington and New York long enough to learn that there’s another part of the country the sun shines on. That can’t be all bad. They might learn something.

Or they might be the reason the local media feels it has to warn people not to drive while wearing the eclipse glasses. That’s kind of like driving blindfolded, but evidently some folks need to be reminded or they might end up in the hospital – or in court.

We’re not the first people to get hyped up over an eclipse. According to Time, Inc.’s web site, “In June 1878, the Chicago Times began reporting of the “mammoth excursion from the [Great] lakes to the mountains." In Denver, many businesses closed, and people poured into the streets. The Colorado Chieftain reported that the windows in church steeples that would face the eclipse had been leased for 50 cents, and tents in the Garden of the Gods public park sold for 25 cents each. … The best view was at Pikes Peak, but it came at a price. Some scientists got to the area a week in advance to climb up and set up camp there, but were plagued by snowstorms and altitude sickness. Cleveland Abbe, known as the father of the National Weather Service, had to be carted out on a stretcher. Hotels ran out of rooms, and tourists who didn't get a cot had to beg residents of private homes to let them stay. One man reportedly slept on a pool table. … And the market for eclipse glasses — which at the time were made with shards of clear glass blackened over a candle or by fitting blue glass in the bottom of boxes or the tops of old stove pipe hats — saw a boom too: One Denver newsboy was believed to have made as much as $70 selling bootleg eclipse glasses.”

Yet amid all the 1878 hype, Time goes on, “A Denver sheep herder said the scene looked like ‘a black carpet sliding over the plains,’ while a Pikes Peak observer described it as ‘a rounded ball of darkness with an orange-yellow border fading into the light pea-green of the landscape.’ The Denver Daily Tribune reported, ‘Cheer after cheer echoed and re-echoed among the surrounding mountains,’ and revelers on Grays Peak, a summit west of Denver, fired revolvers to celebrate and broke out into ‘My Country 'Tis of Thee.’ Another newspaper reported Coloradans were the ‘favored mortals of earth.’"

I suppose into every event a little hype must fall. But like Charlie Brown, I feel a little post-eclipse letdown.

Who needs another holiday?

Every now and then someone points out that August is the only month of the year that doesn’t have a holiday. Like that’s a bad thing.

Most holidays require some sort of acknowledgement — a card, flowers, gifts, some sort of cash outlay. With some holidays food is involved. That means shopping, baking, cooking, cleaning up afterward.

August is hot. It’s a lazy month. Who needs to make any kind of exertion to celebrate something or other?  Maybe what we need is a month to recuperate from the stress that accompanies the inflated cost of roses on Valentine’s Day. Besides, we need to rest up and get ready for the upcoming onslaught of the holidays that all blend together — Halloween, Thanksgiving and “happy holidays”, otherwise known as Christmas and New Year.

Let’s not mess with August. August is a good time to take it easy and not get worked up over much. But for those who really need to celebrate something this month, there are a few holidays usually started by special interest groups. Take your pick:

We missed it this year, but the first Friday in August is International Beer Day. And it should come as no surprise that the first Saturday in August is International Hangover Day, followed by International Forgiveness Day, the first Sunday in August. Coincidence? Doubt it.

Aug. 5 is Campfire Day, but it could be combined with Aug. 10, National S’mores Day. Or Aug. 30, Toasted Marshmallows Day.

Aug. 9 is Book Lovers’ Day. That’s a worthy cause. Another one I can get behind is Aug. 17, Black Cat Appreciation Day.

Aug. 21 is Senior Citizens’ Day. Be kind to old folks. We didn’t get this old by being stupid.

There are days in August for honoring mountain climbing, raspberry cream pie, ice cream sandwiches, watermelon, chocolate chip cookies, clowns, mustard, underwear, friendship, sisters, lighthouses, bad poetry, potatoes, spumoni, dogs, trail  mix — even Frankenstein.

Worthy causes all. Even worthier: Aug. 26, Women’s Equality Day.

But I draw the line at Aug. 20: National Mosquito Day.

I need a change of neighborhood

It must be the heat. Or the humidity. Or advancing age. I seem to be yearning for a change of scenery. Not necessarily a vacation; a real change.

Recently I was flipping through channels on TV and stopped on PBS. They were airing reruns of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.

That’s where I want to live.

I discovered Mr. Rogers when I was already a stressed-out adult. When I was a kid growing up, TV offered Captain Kangaroo who had an assortment of animal friends — Mr. Moose, Bunny Rabbit, Dancing Bear — and a farmer friend, Mr. Greenjeans. Nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I don’t remember any female roles on the Captain’s show.

After I became a grownup, one day I came home after a lot of aggravation and stress and flipped on the TV and started channel surfing. Something about Mr. Rogers caught my attention. I hadn’t seen that program before. Right off the bat his voice soothed my shattered nerves. He was saying nice things to his TV friends and they were sincere, not snarky. His neighborhood was full of such interesting people doing interesting things, and he made it sound like I could come visit him and meet interesting people and do interesting things too.

He didn’t talk about politics. Oh, there was a King Friday XIII, but he was basically harmless. No one was troubled by violence or sickness or drugs. The neighborhood looked like it didn’t need a lot of negative rules to obey; everyone got along with each other. Mr. Rogers spoke of other neighborhoods, and the people in them were friends who visited and helped his neighborhood when they could. Everybody shared. All got along. And if there was a misunderstanding, it was soon sorted out. And there were women in the neighborhood, and nearby neighborhoods, who had important roles to play.

Mr. Rogers is long gone, but he and his neighborhood keep showing up on PBS. We all would benefit by taking some quiet moments and exploring Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood. There’s no BS with Mr. Rogers. As he would always say, “I like you just the way you are.”

Really, it shouldn’t be that difficult to find such a neighborhood. 

Who’s this Al Fresco guy anyway?

Lately as I drive around commercial areas, it amuses me to see a restaurant with a table and chairs sitting outside by the entrance. Sometimes there’s someone sitting there eating but mostly the table is empty.

Sometimes, there are two tables with chairs.

It’s become trendy to dine al fresco, but some places are missing the mark a bit.

Restaurants who do it right have a patio area off to the side or in front, an area with either a trellis covering the tables or tables with shady umbrellas for outdoor diners to sit under.

Those who go all out and have a corner location often have a tree-filled area behind the restaurant with outdoor lights that may or may not twinkle. There may be piped music or a small live ensemble. And the atmosphere is intimate and special. Especially if the establishment sprays for flying bugs.

But apparently some places want to offer al fresco seating but lack imagination as well as atmosphere.

I’m thinking of places that put a couple of tables and chairs smack dab on the sidewalk near the street so diners can get up close and personal with pedestrians on the sidewalk, while at the same time inhale exhaust from passing cars.

I recall one who had a little space off their parking lot, so they put a couple of tables and chairs off the lot and right next to the Dumpster.

What’s so great about eating outdoors? I can see a picnic in a secluded area with a lot of trees and maybe a picnic table. But if I’m going to go out to eat at a restaurant where someone else cooks and serves the food, then I want air-conditioning! Bring me napkins that won’t fly away when a car passes by, and I want to breathe in the tempting smells of the kitchen, not the noxious smells of a delivery truck pulling up.

C’mon folks. Put those tables and chairs inside. No one wants to sweat from 90-degree temperatures while waiting for their iced tea to arrive. No one wants to pick sidewalk shrapnel out of their salad after a car passes by. If you eat inside, stray dogs won’t beg for your food. And if a sudden storm pops up, the customers are going to have to bring their soggy food inside anyway. Might as well have the tables there ready for them.

Eating for Fun and Profit

Lately I’ve been hearing about Joey Chestnutt. He’s a professional competitive eater. Now there’s a booth you won’t see at the next job fair you go to.
Chestnutt was in the news recently because he won a contest on the Fourth of July by eating 72 Nathan’s hotdogs in 10 minutes. Think about it. Seventy–two hotdogs — and buns — comes to nine packages of hotdogs in 10 minutes time that went down his throat. That’s a package of eight hotdogs a minute! It’s 20,160 calories, 1,296 grams of fat, 2,160 mg of cholesterol, 56,160 mg of sodium, and 720 g of protein.
Joey Chestnutt won $10,000 for 10 minutes’ work. Some internet sources say his net worth is $800,000. He’s 33 years old and holds a degree in civil engineering. I guess he figured he needed something to fall back on in case this eating thing doesn’t work out.
He is not overweight. He conditions himself for competitive eating by fasting and stretching his stomach with milk, water and protein supplements. His weight varies between 225-240 pounds and he’s 6 feet, one inch tall. When he’s not competing he eats mostly vegetables, fish and chicken.
Since 2005, Chesnutt has traveled all over beating other competitive eaters at gobbling up hotdogs; he’s won the annual Nathan’s contest several times. He’s also competitively scarfed down 6.3 pounds of deep fried asparagus in 11 minutes; 32.5 grilled cheese sandwiches in 10 minutes; 182 chicken wings in 30 minutes; 15 pounds of shrimp in 8 minutes; 78 matzoh balls in 8 minutes; 70 bratwursts in 10 minutes; 141 hard boiled eggs in 8 minutes; and 55 4-ounce mutton sandwiches in 10 minutes. He even chugged a gallon of milk in 41 seconds.
There’s much, much more but I’m getting queasy just reading about it.
I have to wonder though, why? Chestnutt says it’s the challenge and the competition that attracts him. Couldn’t he play tennis instead? Or poker? Does he have an eating disorder only with an audience attached? I hope he is investing his money well, because when (not if) he develops gastrointestinal problems as he gets older, he’s going to need it.
One thing for sure though. Kids, if your mom tells you to finish your lunch because kids in Africa are starving, you can tell her, “No worries. Joey Chestnutt already took care of it.”

How now, brown cow?

-->

It was in the news recently that 7 percent of Americans think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

Really?

According to The Washington Post, the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy did a survey of adults, mind you, and came up with those numbers. I kind of think they surveyed a bunch of smart aleck millennials who thought they were being cute when they answered the survey. But the Post is taking the results of the survey seriously and it is putting out there that Americans are basically illiterate about where their food comes from.

According to The Washington Post: “At the end of the day, it’s an exposure issue,” said Cecily Upton, co-founder of the nonprofit FoodCorps, which brings agricultural and nutrition education into elementary schools. “Right now, we’re conditioned to think that if you need food, you go to the store. Nothing in our educational framework teaches kids where food comes from before that point.”

So, somewhere out there are people who really think baby carrots are carrots that have not reached their maturity. They’re really full grown carrots that have been cut and packaged and sold at a higher price than regular carrots. Perhaps somewhere out there are groups of people organizing a march to save the baby carrots from an untimely salad.

I don’t know if anyone has done a study on it, but I have to wonder where kids think chicken fingers come from. Or nuggets. The Washington Post said that many people don’t realize hamburger comes from cows. And many people don’t realize that not only is milk white and comes from cows of all colors, but it also is the starting point for ice cream, yogurt and cheese.

Rural residents seem to know more about where their food comes from because they’re not that many steps removed from it. But, According to the Washington Post, when one team of researchers interviewed fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at an urban California school, they found that more than half of them didn’t know pickles were cucumbers, or that onions and lettuce were plants.

What does this say about society in general? If we don’t know something as basic as where French fries come from, how close to doom are we really? Are we so accustomed to chemicals in soft drinks that we just accept they’re everywhere and just blindly eat what comes from the drive-through? Are we really that stupid to think chocolate milk comes from brown cows? Maybe only 7 percent of the adults think so, but that’s still a lot of people.

Nutritionists and food-system reformers say these basic lessons about the origin of food are critical to raising kids who know how to eat healthfully — an important aid to tackling heart disease and obesity.

Meanwhile, farm groups argue the lack of basic food knowledge can lead to poor policy decisions.

A 2012 white paper from the National Institute for Animal Agriculture blamed consumers for what it considers bad farm regulations, the Post reported: “One factor driving today’s regulatory environment ... is pressure applied by consumers, the authors wrote. “Unfortunately, a majority of today’s consumers are at least three generations removed from agriculture, are not literate about where food comes from and how it is produced.”

I bet they don’t know where Bacon Bits come from either.

Can’t get much for a dime anymore

It hit me like a cup of ice in the face recently. Things cost a lot more than they used to.

Saturday was a warm day and I was at the Barbecue and Bluegrass festival, so I bought a snow cone. A cherry one. Sugar free. It was good. I paid $2 for it.

Two bucks for a little cup of ice and some flavored syrup? If I figured up the markup on that, it would probably raise my temperature.

Why I can remember — here’s where I go into geezer mode — when a snow cone cost a dime!

A teenage boy of driving age usually outfitted the trunk of his car with shaved ice, paper cones, and bottles of flavored syrup and drove up and down the neighborhood selling snow cones as a summer job. On a summer afternoon, it was hot and if you’d been working in the yard, or more likely back then sunbathing, a snow cone was a good thing. And if the guy selling them was cute, so much the better. You would ask for a rainbow snow cone, which took longer to make because he had to pump a stream of syrup from each flavor like stripes over the ball of ice. That gave you time to chat a bit.

He probably enjoyed the benefits of cruising slowly up and down the streets, checking out which cute girl lived where, but more than likely meeting their grubby little brothers with a sticky dime in their hands.

So the guy was probably making payments on his car, but gas back then was about a quarter a gallon. He had wear and tear on his car, tires, insurance, plus his supplies, and he still sold snow cones for a dime, while earning spending money or even feeding a college fund.

I never thought I’d live long enough to see a two-dollar snow cone. Ice cream cones used to cost a nickel for a scoop, but that’s a story for another column.

No more numerals!

Fooling around with math seems to be something that has gone on for centuries. Adults with children in school today try to figure out the Common Core method for teaching math. None of it makes any sense and the processes used in calculating are confusing.

I’m not particularly affected by Common Core math. If I need to figure something out involving numbers, I reach for my iPhone. It has a calculator app. I can do the basic stuff — adding, subtracting, making change at the grocery store. I can multiply and do basic division. It’s all I need to know. Anything above that is just showing off.

But one thing has me baffled. Why, after so many centuries, are we still using Roman numerals?

Back in the dark ages when I was in elementary school, teachers tried to explain the process of Roman numerals in math classes. Made about as much sense then as Common Core math does today.

The only use we have for them in modern times seems to be limited to sequencing the Olympics and Super Bowl Games, keeping track of monarchs and popes, and on movie sequels.

They used to be used on clocks — most people can figure out Roman numerals up to 12 — but not so much any more. Digital clocks have Arabic numerals on them, and some watches have little dots and marks where the numbers once were. My watch has a fake stone where each number should be. If it weren’t for digital clocks and watches displaying the numbers, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to tell time.

What’s the point of keeping this antiquated system alive? Doesn’t it make more sense to refer to Queen Elizabeth 2 than Queen Elizabeth II? Or for computer buffs: Queen Elizabeth 2.0?

Pope Francis is the first pope named Francis, and so far no one has stuck a Roman numeral I after his name. He seems to be progressive; maybe he will be not only the first Jesuit pope, and the first Francis, but the first pope to forgo Roman numerals.

It will be a good start.

A shade of a different color

I was paging through a magazine recently and came across an article about an exciting new color decorators are using to paint walls, and anything else that stands still long enough. The new color? Greige.

It’s apparently a mixture of gray and beige. It isn’t enough to have two nondescript, dull colors; someone had to go and mix them together and come up with greige.

Some time ago, taupe became popular. It looks sort of like greige. Wikipedia says it’s a combination of gray and brown.

According to Wikipedua, “taupe often overlaps with tan and even people who use color professionally (such as designers and artists) frequently disagree as to what "taupe" means.”

 Some people who claim to know say taupe is the color of a French mole. I don’t know about French moles, but I’ve seen a few American moles; they looked brown to me.

So now one can decorate one’s home in greige or taupe. Perhaps gray or beige or tan have become too passé to be considered in one’s living room. One must now redecorate in greige.

Before taupe came along, people who consider themselves experts in color created variations of white: eggshell, off-white, parchment, ad nauseam. No matter how you spread it, it looked like every rental unit in the country – white.

In the early part of this century I bought a car that looked beige. The salesman told me it was champagne. The Mazda website called it sand. This was years before we knew about greige.

Remember teal? It wasn’t blue and it wasn’t green, it was somewhere in the middle. It became a popular color.

What does it all mean? Why do we need to invent new colors, especially new nondescript neutral hues that all look like each other? Is it a marketing ploy to sell paint and fabric? Give a color a different name and people will think it’s new and they have to have it?

It’s tempting to say Henry Ford had the right idea when he said buyers of his Model T could have any color they wanted as long as it was black. According to the Web site Woot, it didn’t happen.  

However, Woot says, “It’s true that the Ford Motor Company turned black paint into a science, using 30 different types of black paint for different parts of the car’s exterior. But when the Model T first came on the market, customers could get almost any common color —except for black! Blue, gray, green, and red were all available, but not black. The first black Model T didn’t roll off the assembly line until five years later. Towards the end of the Model T’s life, six new colors were introduced, from Royal Maroon to Phoenix Brown to Highland Green. In between, it’s true, there was over a decade of monochromatic Model T’s. Some have said that Henry Ford made the switch to black paint because it dried faster, but history suggests it was just an efficiency issue: black paint was cheap and durable, and turning out only one color of car cheaper still.”

I wonder what he’d have to say about greige?

Go out and conquer the world

It’s that time of year again. In between rainstorms and such, high schools and colleges are unleashing classes full of graduates on to the world. Bright, enthusiastic young people are heading off to military, college, graduate school, or life ready to take it on.

They’ve all been told they are the future of the world. But it’s up to these fresh-faced young people to figure out what the world is so they can set about being its future.

That’s what the commencement speakers fail to do – tell them about the world they’re about to enter. They just tell them they can change it.

So these kids go off thinking they’re going to conquer the world because the commencement speaker whose name they’ve now forgotten told them so.

But you gotta know the world before you can conquer it. And once you get to know the world, you gotta figure out is conquering it worth the effort.

So listen up kids. Generations way before yours have all heard the same commencement speech. What we can tell you is that the world is pretty much a day-by-day kind of place. Some things change; some things don’t.

Here’s what you can do to make your mark on the world. Every day, do something nice for someone but just make it part of your day. No fanfare; no attention-grabbing; just do something nice. Doesn’t have to be big; just has to be nice.

Learn something every chance you get. Doesn’t have to come from great professors from great universities. Just learn something you didn’t know before that enriches your life. Coming in out of the rain is a good start. Keep an open mind; keep your eyes and ears open; your mouth less so.

Take care of your friends and family. Pets are part of your friends and family and they depend on you to make the world better. God wants us to love one another. Help each other. Feed the hungry; help the sick. Be satisfied with what you have. All you need is enough.

Find something you like to do and do it. Do it well. Do it without fanfare. Just do it.  

Sweep your own back porch, tend to your knitting, be honest, be kind, love thy neighbor – it ain’t rocket science, kids. The best thing you can be in this world is your own best self.

After you master that, you’ve conquered the world.

USDA Inspected golf balls in your supermarket freezer

It was on the news recently – a North Carolina company recalled bags of frozen hash brown potatoes because there could be traces of — not listeria, not mold, not even ptomaine— but material from golf balls.

Golf balls?

According to the report, McCain Foods USA's recall notice on the US Food & Drug Administration site says the hash browns could be "contaminated with extraneous golf ball materials" that "may have been inadvertently harvested with potatoes used to make this product."

I’ve always wondered where golf balls came from. For all I know, they grow on trees. It seems they’re harvested, in this instance, along with potatoes. Nice crop of golf balls growing over there. I wonder how many golf balls they get per bushel?

Now I’m not much of a cook, but I would think I could whip up a batch of hash browns without involving a trip to the country club. You shred some potatoes, add some onions and salt and pepper and fry them.

I’ve got one of those mandolin gadgets for shredding and slicing. Seems to me that a potato would slide over the blade fairly easily, but a golf ball? Not so much. Once when I was slicing a cucumber my finger slid over the blade easily enough, which required a trip to the doctor. But I would think a golf ball might bend the blade and bounce off the counter. Even a sharp knife would be no match for a golf ball.

Maybe you have to boil them first, you think?

This whole situation brings up many questions. Did someone check the golf balls for eyes when they were planting potatoes? I can understand mistaking a golf ball for a chunk of seed potato. They’re about the same size.

Who plants potatoes that close to a golf course? How many golfers are so bad at the game their balls land in the potato patch? I know from nothing about the game of golf, but I’ve never heard of a ball landing in the spuds although landing in the rough sounds familiar.

Didn’t anyone notice during the harvest that some potatoes had Spalding stamped on them? Didn’t anyone in the kitchen notice some of those spuds were already peeled and had dimples on them when they came in from the field?  

"Consumption of these products may pose a choking hazard or other physical injury to the mouth," says the notice of the voluntary recall.

I wonder if the golf balls are gluten free?

There have been no reported injuries, according to the company.

I’ll bet the cooks and the quality control inspectors are really teed off about this.  

April brings on that gut feeling

April seems like it should be such a fun month. It gets warmer in April, flowers bloom, a lot of kittens are born.

Those who make up holidays and celebrations choose April for such fun things as Adopt a Greyhound Month, Informed Women Month, Holy Humor Month, and the month is also set aside to commemorate pecans, jazz appreciation, kites, licorice, pets and poetry.

April can be pretty somber too. TS Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month. April also acknowledges a lot of serious issues: autism, child abuse, cancer control, Parkinson’s Disease.

And IBS. Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Crohn’s Disease is an irritable bowel disease, and it’s not just irritable – Crohn’s is downright mean.

I know because I have it.

Crohn’s or any IBS doesn’t seem to warrant any pastel ribbons to bring public attention to it. There is no cure for Crohn’s Disease. It can be subdued for a while, but it does not go away. It only gets worse. And the treatments are expensive.

Irritable bowel diseases like Crohn’s are painful. You feel like you have a belly full of bricks crashing against each other. They can disguise themselves as other diseases at first; they can make other diseases you might have worse. They are life-changing.

So here it is April, and the birds are singing, and flowers are blooming, but Crohn’s and other IBS patients are keeping an eye out for the nearest available bathroom. We miss a lot of some of the more subtle niceties of life like fresh fruits and vegetables, anything with fiber; hotdogs; bacon, pizza. It’s hard to plan a picnic or a hike unless you know where the Porta-Potties are.

Even if you’re inclined toward bathroom humor, there isn’t much to laugh about with IBS.

Some advanced cases require chemotherapy treatment, like cancer but without the pastel ribbons.

Here it is April and did you know it was IBS awareness month, like you would know October is breast cancer awareness month? No one talks about it. But a lot of people have it. Some don’t know they have it.

So do yourself a favor this April. If you’re over 50, get a colonoscopy. If you’re under 50 and you have that gut feeling something might be wrong, get a colonoscopy.  Early detection is key. It’s not the most pleasant thing to do, but it’s not painful. A colonoscopy can also detect colon cancer, which is easier to stop when it’s caught early.  

Get on the web and look up the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders. That organization has a Facebook page too. Look up CrohnsAndColitis.com. There’s also a Facebook page for Crohn’s Disease. And while you’re at it, check out Celiac disease, colitis, and other gut-wrenching disorders. You won’t hear much about them during April, and even less any other month, but knowing about them, and getting that colonoscopy, could make a big difference for you.

Giving a cold shoulder to the latest fad

-->

Spring catalogs are being crammed into my mailbox lately. I opened the most recent one, and saw page upon page of blouses and dresses with cut-out shoulders.

I thought, dang! For just a couple dollars more they could have bought enough fabric to make the whole top!

Apparently this is the latest trend, and it’s called the “cold shoulder.” The cold shoulder usually starts at the neckline, skips the shoulder area, and picks up again at mid-arm ending in a short or long sleeve. One can even buy sweaters made in this fashion, but I can’t imagine them being very warm. One would probably have to wear a T-shirt under it.

Like most fads, this is one embraced by younger women. According to an article in the Daily Mail online, the fashion statement being made is to expose a little skin. Be a little flirty. Give the cleavage a rest and focus on the shoulders – most women don’t mind showing a little shoulder. And f you’re over 40 and have a little flab on the underside of the arm, no one will know. 

But if a woman is lavishly endowed and over 40, there’s the issue of how to hide the bra strap. It would seem to me though that you might see this problem only on women at Walmart, where the cold shoulder would blend in with so many other fashion mistakes.

Some over-40 women like the cold shoulder. All women want to look their best, and the cold shoulder kicks it up a notch without being ridiculous. Fashion writer Sarah Rutson said, “The shoulder is the only part of a woman’s body that doesn’t age. Shoulders don’t make us feel fat or get bloated after a pasta dinner.”

Some people who like to speculate think the current trend is a throwback to the off-the-shoulder look of Brigette Bardot, updated a little. Others point out that when Hillary Clinton was First Lady, she was photographed in a formal, black cold-shoulder dress. It has been around a while, but only recently has it been so aggressively marketed.

Fashion experts advise not wearing a big statement necklace with the cold shoulder. “The glimpse of the shoulder is the focus,” they say.

I wonder if it would be appropriate to wear a cold shoulder T-shirt with my comfortable baggy sweatpants.

Making a good spoken impression

Recently a staff member of one a federal office holder called to find out if I’d received a news release the office had sent out. The conversation went something like this:

“I’m calling to find out if you guys got the news release we sent you.”

We did.

“Awesome.”

After hanging up, I suddenly had a vision of my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Curnutt. A formidable woman, at least to a 7-year old, Mrs. Curnutt was determined that her class would learn to be civilized, if not well-versed in arithmetic and language rules.

If she were alive today, I’m pretty certain Mrs. Curnutt would have sent to the cloakroom any student of hers who said “you guys” and “awesome.” When she was holding forth in her classroom, she waged war on kids who said “huh?”

“What do you mean, ‘huh’?” she would say. “There’s no such word as huh. Pull a pig’s tail and it says uh-huh.”

She once asked if anyone in the class knew how to spell that word she insisted didn’t exist. By age 7, I’d begun to devour such comic books as Little Iodine and Nancy and Sluggo, and I’d seen the word used in those books. But I also knew it was safer to pull that pig’s tail than it would be to tell Mrs. Curnutt I could spell the word.

As her students advanced out of her classroom, other teachers in higher grades also tackled the use of ain’t. We retaliated with “we ain’t supposed to say ain’t.”

The teachers reinforced their grammar drillings with the notion that anyone who spoke those words would always come across in public as uneducated, foolish. We’d never amount to much in life if we used those words.

I imagine that besides being a party faithful, or the offspring of one, it takes a certain amount of smarts to get a job in a government official’s office in Washington, D.C.  I imagined the young lady on the other end of the phone as a gum-snapping Millennial in yoga pants whose phone is smarter than she is. But maybe Mrs. Curnutt was wrong. Maybe how one speaks doesn’t make one appear less than awesome.

So, what do you guys think, huh?

Don’t mess with the time!

People in Alaska and Hawaii don’t do it, and people in Montana and Texas are thinking about not doing it. I don’t want to do it.

Do what? Set the clocks ahead an hour on Sunday. Daylight Saving Time is just flat out dumb!

Someone once said a Native American considered moving the clocks up an hour in the summer — when days get longer on their own without any help — is kind of like cutting off one end of a blanket, and then sewing the cut part back on the other end of the blanket to make it longer.

According to the International Business Times, we kick the clocks up an hour because: “In addition to the benefits of energy savings, fewer traffic fatalities, more recreation time and increased economic activity, Daylight Saving Time helps clear away the winter blues a little earlier,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement in 2014. “Government analysis has proven that extra sunshine provides more than just smiles. . . . We all just feel sunnier after we set the clocks ahead.”

That’s ridiculous! I get downright mean after losing an hour’s sleep. And how much did that government analysis cost? I don’t feel sunnier after setting the clocks ahead, and I certainly don’t feel sunnier knowing the government spent money studying the effects of depriving me of an hour’s rest.

Texans want to do away with Daylight Saving Time because, from NEXSTAR Media Group: “There’s really no good reason why we should spring our clocks forward an hour,” State Rep. Jason Isaac, R-Dripping Springs said. “It doesn’t change the amount of daylight, it doesn’t change the amount of daytime….”

Studies have found daylight saving time can lead to workplace accidents, suicide and headaches, likely due to disruption in workers’ sleep cycles.

“For a lot of people, that one week when they lose that extra hour of sleep causes some physical issues,” State Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, said. “Obviously we have all heard of the people getting late to work, getting late to school, but I think it also adds stress unnecessarily.”

It’s spring. The sun is at its strongest and the days get longer anyway. Cows don’t care about daylight saving time; they know when it’s time to be milked and don’t care what number you give it. Pets and farm animals want to be fed at the same time of day – when they’re hungry and are accustomed to being fed.

According to USA Today, For people who eat meals at a certain time, Daylight Saving Time can throw things out of whack. If you're used to eating lunch at noon for a few days your stomach will think, "What? It's only 11."

Think about parents of toddlers trying to put their children to bed while sun streams through their windows. Besides, there's something a little creepy about the fact the sun doesn't set until after 9 p.m. on the western edge of the Eastern Time zone. We're not the Arctic Circle.

Studies suggest any energy or cost savings are minimal at best. Yes, people wind up using less electricity in the evenings but that's offset by heavier usage in the early mornings – the blanket analogy kicks in here.

Like everyone else I’ll spend part of Sunday resetting the clocks at home and the one in my car, and I’ll drag out all my watches and reset them. I’ll go along with it because there’s no choice.

But I ain’t gonna feel sunnier about it.