Why did the little boy ask why and then why again?

Avi wants to know the "why" of just about everything these days.

Avi, my three-year-old grandson, has recently launched into the "Why" stage of life. So he's wondering now why the sky is blue and water wet, why the sun is hot and ice is cold.

Curiosity is a good thing, but when every explanation is met with a question it all can be a little, er, annoying. Fortunately, the why of life can also be funny.

Here's a mostly true conversation Avi and I had just the other day:

Avi: What happened to your hair, Pops?
Pops: It fell out.
Avi: Why?
Pops: Because I got old..
Avi: Why?
Pops: Because I wanted to stick around so I could play with you.
Avi: Why?
Pops: Because you're so darn cute.
Avi: Okay ... gimme a cookie.
Pops: Why?

Big whopping "Zero" makes this birthday special!

Another birthday and it's time to celebrate.

There are birthdays and then there are birthdays! This one comes complete with a big whopping "zero" to remind me that time and tide wait for no man.

With that in mind I've spent the last year out and about -- Boston and New York, Vegas and Salt Lake City; Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons, Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon; Horseshoe Bend, Antelope Canyon and the Grand Staircase Esplanade! Later this month the always lovely Miss Wendy and I will be cruising about the Caribbean and we'll finish up the year back in the Big Apple.

I began 2017 by seeing "Dear Evan Hansen" and "Chicago" on Broadway and will end it in December with the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and, back on Broadway, seeing "Come From Away"! Filling up the time and space from there to here was a smorgasbord of outings with friends -- dinner dates and movies, parties, holiday meals, walks, hikes and meaningful chats; and, certainly worth noting, a mini-reunion with a few folks who I worked and played with at the Red and Black, UGA's student newspaper, when Richard Nixon was still president, computers were the size of a ginormous room and fed with punch cards, and an apple was a snack that, ostensibly, would keep a doctor away if eaten once a day!

So, how old now? Well, just count the candles!

It's also been a year when I've been lucky enough to spend some quality time with my brothers, traveling with them to a few of the top spots on my ever-diminishing bucket list; doing, um, family stuff with my extended family and staying close and busy with my remarkable and amazing daughter, Lauren, and son-in-law Josh. And then there's Bailey and Avi, my absolutely perfect grandkids who fill my life each day with renewed wonder and constant love.

Oh, there's also the lovely Miss Wendy, my wife, partner and soulmate who has been willing to put up with my nonsense for well over four decades; the person most responsible for keeping some semblance of balance in my life with her half-glass-filled vibe and upbeat attitude.

But I digress ... and where's an editor when you need one! The point of this post is to share a bit of distilled wisdom it's taken me nearly seven decades to learn. Plastics, despite the advice offered up by Mr. McGuire to Benjamin, isn't the answer to the big question of life. Who Knew!

Okay, truth to tell, this note is actually my incredibly long and windy way to thank you, all my Facebook friends, for your recent birthday wishes. It's nice to know that, if only for a moment, a gaggle of family and friends was thinking of me and wishing me well on this special day!

Neo-Nazis a wakeup call for Trump's supporters?

Tiki-Torch toting neo-Nazis, other hate group members in Charlottesville.

There's a notion among many people who aren't Jewish that a Jew is a Jew is a Jew. The thought isn't built around bigotry or racist ideas, but a theological construct that suggests all Jews believe and practice Judaism in the same fashion. Of course Jews know this to be false and that there is a wide spectrum of religious and spiritual beliefs both connecting and dividing "Members of the Tribe"!

Once upon a time in America, however, the belief that a Jew is a Jew is a Jew was arguably true -- at least in the political arena. For most of the last century Jews were Democrats, a solid part of the coalition that supported the rise of labor unions and the rights of workers; FDR's New Deal and the world's epic, cataclysmic and, ultimately, successful battle against fascism; MLK's dream and the country's ongoing struggle to provide life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all its citizens.

This leaning towards the left was often a matter of self-preservation. After all, Jews, like most other immigrants making their way to America, were not immediately welcomed into the country with open arms. The embrace of Lady Liberty and the Democratic party's message of hope was a refreshing boon for a folk fleeing repressive regimes, intolerance and persecution.

Melting pot takes on yiddishe tang in recent years.

Skip ahead a century or so and assimilation and hard work has stripped away most of the stumbling blocks Jews faced after paying their dues in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and, decades later, across the Levittowns of America. Quota systems were junked, antisemitism crawled underneath a rock and the country's melting pot took on a decidedly yiddishe tang!

In recent years, opportunity and success have had some Members of the Tribe rethinking their political views, moving gently toward the center before testing the conservative waters of the Grand Old Party. A few -- Henry Kissinger, Alan Greenspan, Ari Fleischer, Eric Cantor, Bernie Marcus -- have even managed to drive the Republican message in ways both grand and small.

What the hell must they be thinking today!

Like many other Republicans, Jews on the political right have spent the last couple of years -- yes, it's been over two years since The Donald walked down that escalator in Trump Towers -- shrugging off the odious comments of the man now sitting in the Oval Office. He's not a politician, they argued, he's a businessman; he'll get the economy moving and drain the swamp; don't take him literally, but take him seriously. And the piece de resistance: He's not great, but he's better than Hillary!

The Donald moments before tossing his hat into the ring.

Meanwhile, white nationalists and a legion of other bigots are certain they have found their champion, a man-child who has surrounded himself with a gaggle of sycophants and, worse, a coterie of aides -- Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka -- offering up a toxic mix of nativist ideology and racist beliefs.

The yamster-in-chief has spent months tilling the soil of hatred and stoking the flames of white supremacy. His bounty could be found in Charlottesville over the weekend, a mixed bag of misfits -- neo-Nazis and klansmen, armed paramilitary footmen and other such haters -- strutting about like preening fools.

Believing that the country's commander-in-chief is their ally, the rabble offered up a disturbing and disgusting message filled with anti-semitic tropes: Jews you lose; Jews will not replace us; the Goyim know; the Jewish media is going down. And they marched, holding aloft tiki torches that lit up the night sky and stretched far back into a darker time when evil was set loose about the globe.

A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. When I write those words it's a statement of identity or an exploration of faith. When a dolt waving a confederate flag and wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with a swastika offers up that thought the message becomes much darker and more sinister.

So I'm wondering where my Jewish friends on the right are today? I'm wondering if they're still shrugging their shoulders and supporting the man who's paved the way to such mayhem with his winks and whistles and endless lies. I'm wondering exactly what it would take to have them pull their heads out of the sand and, finally, I'm wondering about Edmund Burke and the triumph of evil.

It's time for good men -- good people -- to speak out. It's time!

I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely ...

Worker tops pine hanging over my house.

Don't look now, but there's a man hanging out in my backyard. He's found a way to get up in the world, a job that you couldn't pay me enough to ever think about doing.

The guy was part of a package deal, one of a half-dozen or so workers who spent the day taking down a half-dozen or so pines hanging dangerously over my house.

Once upon a time, I was thrilled by the shade and greenery offered up by the trees. But after 30 years of growth -- where did the time go? -- I find myself holding my breath whenever the wind starts blowing and the trees start swaying.

Which brings me back to the guy in the tree. He cut his way up, trimming off branches until he managed to top the last 10 feet. After swaying about a bit he proceeded to work his way down, cutting off huge blocks of the trunk until there was none.

And then he did it again and again and again and, well, yet again.

The good news is that now, when local meteorologists start hyperventilating whenever the sky grows dark and the wind starts howling, I feel relatively safe in my comfy little home. Let them rant on with all that high-tech gear they now have at hand, offering up dire warnings of what can be expected when a low front out of the northwest slams up against a ridge of high pressure speeding in from the southeast.

It's just a bit of sound and fury, signifying, well, nothing.

And now for the  bad news. There are still a dozen or so towering pines in my yard; a benign grove of nature's bounty when all is calm, a menacing presence when the skies and my mind grow cloudy.

Do I think kablooey or just say phooey to the whims of fate? Should I simply hunker down and hope Mother Nature and karma are with me when clouds blanket my little corner of the world?

BTW, did I mention all this inner sturm und drang began when a 90-foot-pine came crashing down a few months ago, falling deep in my backyard into my next door neighbor's yard. Oh, and a few weeks later a second tree -- another pine, just as big -- fell into a second neighbor's yard.

The good news -- and, yes, there is good news here -- no one was injured and there was minimal property damage.

Meanwhile, I am now wondering -- and here, finally, is the point of this blog -- since no one was around when the trees toppled, did they actually make a sound when they crashed to earth?

Pastry, politics and hoping the madness will stop

My mid-morning snack at Sugar Cakes in Marietta.

It being a lovely day in the neighborhood -- thanks and a tip of the hat to Mr. Rogers -- I made a snap decision to get out of the house earlier this week and head over to the Square in Marietta.

It was difficult pulling myself away from cable news and the latest happenings on the campaign trail. It seemed that, yet again, the talk was skirting policy issues -- the economy and jobs, healthcare, education and such -- in favor of a bizarre and misstated position on "the right to life" and nonsense on nukes; arrest warrants, hot wives and all manner of ways to steal delegates from the guy with the golden hair.

I eventually settled in at Sugar Cakes, a patisserie and bistro hidden away on a bustling side street just across from the Square and a squadron of youngsters and their moms enjoying the fresh air while ignoring a yellowish-green wave of seasonal pollen -- can you say ACHOO!

Sugar Cakes is a tiny restaurant with big ideas, featuring a gussied up menu for breakfast and lunch. Since it was too late for breakfast -- the sun was high overhead -- and, at least for me, way too early for lunch, I decided on a mid-morning snack.

The choices were lovely and luscious, heavy on caramelized fruits and glazes, whipped cream and sauces. It all looked good to me! But after a moments reflection and jarring thoughts of my ever expanding midsection and finger-wagging physician, I decided to stick with the basics: coffee and pastry.

Okay, truth to tell, the pastry was a hefty blend of sugary stuff, whirled and swirled and topped with peaches; a delicious treat that was probably filled with a ton of calories. It's the sort of thing I would have shared with the lovely Miss Wendy if the lovely Miss Wendy had been around.

But she wasn't and the pastry was! And this sense of guilt, I'm sure, will soon be a fading memory.

Now I'm back in front of the tube, listening to the latest political rhetoric and spin on the blather from the campaign trail, learning -- once more -- how best to make "America Great, Again!" by building a wall and threatening to nuke our enemies.

I'm thinking it might be time to revisit the Square and grab another hit of sugar or, just maybe, go ahead and bury my head in the sand until the madness stops!

Let's face it, some people are just jerks!

Spewing exhaust for fun and entertainment.

You can file this under disturbing and disgusting.

Wendy and I were out and about the other day when we spotted a bicyclist hugging the side of the road as cars whizzed by.

A pickup truck pulled alongside the guy, slowed down for a moment before the driver hit his accelerator. A plume of noxious exhaust completely enveloped the cyclist as the trucker sped off down the road.

It was clear the bastard in the truck purposely slowed so he could play his little game, knowing exactly what would happen when he stepped on the gas. Turns our this bit of nonsense is so common it actually has a name: "Rolling Coal".

Sadly, this little vignette says volumes about the world we live in today. And so it goes ...

Might be helpful if God started a podcast today

At the risk of stating the obvious, it's funny how my mind works. I was listening recently to a cable news station when they played portions of two new political ads. The messages were predictable, but what caught my attention was what I heard playing in the background.

Both used generic bits of music -- quiet, yet expansive, slightly and lightly melancholy -- that triggered something in my thoughts and, after a moment, had me thinking about a film I'd once seen.

I couldn't remember any details -- name of the film, plot line, time and place. I did recall, in a blurry fashion, the male lead, but couldn't put a name with the face. The more it all lingered and swirled about, I was pretty certain that the film was centered in the 1950s, either produced then or evocative of that simpler time.

This all played out in a few minutes, morphing from a vague notion filled with bland street scenes to my muddled mind latching onto an actor who seemed to be puzzled about some sort of existential issue.

For whatever reason -- I have no real idea how my thoughts play out -- an image of God popped up in my mind and it seemed to be that the film, whatever it was, touched on the cosmic and divine in some fashion.

And so it was, still in my pjs and bathrobe and munching my breakfast cereal, I began googling films about the 1950s and God. After tossing aside blockbusters like "Ben Hur" and "The Ten Commandments", both produced in the late '50s, I added "small town USA" to my search.

Bingo!

The actor stored away in my memory bank tuned out to be James Whitmore and the film, released in 1950, was "The Next Voice You'll Hear". BTW, it's worth mentioning that Whitmore's wife in the film was played by Nancy Davis, the woman who would marry Ronald Reagan two years later and eventually become the "First Lady"!

The movie details the impact on a small community when, for no apparent reason, God begins broadcasting messages over the radio. The voice of God is never actually heard, while the film focuses on the reaction -- confusion, disbelief, fear and faith -- the words have on the local citizenry.

The film was produced only five years after the end of World War II. Harry Truman was president, the Korean War was just beginning and the Cold War was just heating up. Relations with China were stretched to the breaking point and Russia, just a few months earlier, had tested its first atomic bomb.

Yikes!

This dark and jarring mix of woes had folks on the home front feeling a little skittish and filmmakers in Hollywood looking for a way to calm nerves while offering up a bit of hope with a tasty bag of cheesy bromides.

Given the sad state of the world today -- terrorist attacks across Europe and a weak economy that has yet to right itself completely following a global recession nearly a decade ago, a presidential election that has all the gravitas, at least on the conservative side, of a SNL skit and at least one scary candidate who seems to be a bizarre mix of Hitler, Mussolini and Bozo the Clown -- and I'm thinking it might be nice and helpful if God decided to make a sudden appearance across the World Wide Web!

"The Next Voice You'll Hear" ended on an ambiguous note while offering up a message of hope and unity -- essentially we're all in this together and everything is going to be okay if we pull together.

Sadly, I'm not at all certain if an entire pantheon of gods could right our woes today. As one notable blowhard with an awful comb over might say, "It's simply too yuuuuuuge of a job!"

Dealing with yet another yuuuuge win!

Like a few other folks, I've been caught up in the political train wreck that has been playing out the last few months as establishment politicians and a trio of outsiders on the right have offered up a dandy circus of promises and insults filled with xenophobic, misogynistic and racist taunts and tirades.

Their supporters say they're simply telling it like it is, political correctness be damned!

So taking a few ideas from a playbook that was last used successfully in Germany in the 1930s, a few of the candidates and their handlers seemed to quickly understand that the best political strategy in this brave new world is to make stuff up. In political and practical terms that means lying. To make it all believable, simply keep repeating the lie as often and as loudly as possible.

That's what the guy with the orange hair and yuuuge ego did for months, yakking away with the attention span of a toddler. He spent his time in front of yuuuuge crowds, making absurd promises -- Mexico is going to pay to build a wall to keep out all the murderers and rapists they're sending our way -- and tossing out meaningless rhetoric that he was the best, the brightest, the richest, smartest and most likable candidate hanging out near the fringes of the Grand Old Party! 

Oh, and he made sure to mention at every opportunity that he was a winner, a yuuuuge winner; winning all the polls with big numbers, winning really, really big.

Spoiler alert! The Donald didn't win in Iowa. He lost really, really big. In fact, he just managed to hold onto the second spot and, ironically, was beaten by the one person, Ted Cruz, who is loathed even more then Trump by establishment Republicans and members of the rank and file falling anywhere at all to the left of Attila the Hun.

Predictably, Trump managed to spin his second-place finish into yet another yuuuuge win, telling just about anyone willing to listen that beating out eight, 10, 12 or so other candidates was a mighty accomplishment. In fact, it was a decent showing, except for the fact he had been promising and expecting nothing less then total victory.

Which brings us to New Hampshire, the first state to hold a presidential primary this election season. Trump is leading in the polls and made it clear in last Saturday's GOP debate that he -- and all of us --  will win; win and win and win until we're tired of winning.

Given such high hopes, filled with bombast and hot air, I fear he's probably right, at least for himself and his legion of supporters. He's likely going to walk away with the most votes on Tuesday. Which means the rest of us will be walking away from New Hampshire, at least metaphorically, with a mighty headache and a yuuuuge case of  indigestion.

Stay tuned!

Listen up: 'B' is for Bose, Bluetooth and 'buy me'

Bose Soundlink Bluetooth headphones.

My hi-tech buying spree continued last week when I finally pulled the trigger and bought a pair of Bluetooth headphones. After taking a hard look at the market and my wallet, I stumbled across a Bose discount store in my little corner of the world and spotted a deal that seemed too good to be true.

For a month or so I've been researching headphones and earbuds, checking out department stores, specialty shops and other retailers to see what's available; then surfing the web to see if I could find what I wanted at a price that seemed reasonable.

Here's the problem I initially faced. What I could afford I didn't want and what  I wanted I couldn't afford! Sound familiar?

That all changed when I was out and about recently with the lovely Miss Wendy. We had an afternoon to kill, so decided to venture out to the picturesque little village of Woodstock, and spend an hour or so walking around a new outlet mall featuring a wide assortment of retail stores.

Such islands of consumerism and abundance are part of the fabric of the world today, especially
in America. It's just about impossible to drive a few miles in any direction and not spot a new strip shopping center or mall. After all, you really can't be too rich, too thin or own too many pairs of designer shoes -- or shirts, pants, skirts or dresses, electronic devices or gizmos!

Speaking of gizmos, hidden away between a Clark's shoe store and a Sunglasses Warehouse, was the aforementioned Bose factory outlet. Bingo! It only took me a moment to spot a display of on-ear Bluetooth headphones. The good news is they were being offered at a discount that meant I finally had found something I both wanted AND could afford.

It's probably worth noting that this most recent buying spree began a few years ago when I traded in my flip phone for an updated 'smart' model, that got me thinking about tablets and purchasing an iPad, that led me to updating my iTunes library and recently downloading a satellite radio app which, of course, meant I needed some digitally friendly and fashionable way to access all this new and magical stuff.

In the memorable words of our 43rd president: Mission accomplished!

Turns out father DID know best

Close is good enough when typing on an iPad

My father pretty much stayed out of my academic life. Smart move! He was around mostly to grimace and sign my report cards during my elementary and high school years, and hand over cash when I was in college.

But there was this one time during my senior year at Columbus High when he had a really good suggestion. Dad thought it would be a smart idea for me to learn how to type. He was right.

It's not much of a stretch to report, looking back on my life, that being able to type -- and I'm talking classic touch typing now -- had a profound impact on the road I eventually followed in what I would loosely term my professional career.

It also, perhaps, saved my life!

Turns out, after typing my way through college, that I was drafted, tossed into the army when the war in Vietnam was raging and most anyone capable of breathing and holding a rifle was hustled off to the jungles of southeast Asia!

Fortunately for me, I knew my way around a manual typewriter much better than an M-14. So instead of joining an infantry unit in the Mekong Delta, I ended up being shipped off to a NATO base in central Germany.

I like to think that I was part of the mopping up crew in Europe 25 years or so after the end of World War II and also one of the unsung warriors holding the line against the Russian menace when the Cold War was absolutely frigid.

Truth to tell, I mostly sat in an office filing away intel reports from operatives in the field -- okay, they were spies. And on the weekends I took advantage of Uncle Sam's good sense to drop me down in Central Europe by visiting as much of the region as time and finances would permit.

After finishing up my tour of duty, I continued whacking away at a typewriter, first on an ancient Royal at a newspaper in my hometown, then an IBM Selectric when I moved north to greener pastures. By the early '80s I was still pounding out news stories and features, but I was now doing my job on a computer.

Over the next quarter century the work and pounding continued, always on some sort of computer. The hi-tech boxes first got bigger, then smaller. But the keyboards stayed the same. I retired, swapped my office Mac for my first PC and still merrily typed away in pretty much the same fashion I had mastered as a teen four decades earlier!

That all changed a few years ago when I ditched my flip phone in favor of a "smart" update and learned how to send texts and emails on a tiny keyboard featuring a predictive algorithm. All I needed to make it work was to swipe my hand around the keyboard and come close to the letters I was aiming to hit.

I've now taken it to the next level. Recently I purchased an iPad after being warned that it's a great gadget for playing games and consuming info, but not all that handy for producing stuff -- blog posts, stories and features.

Au contraire mom ami!

The iPad uses the same sort of predictive algorithm as my phone, but with a bit of a twist. Instead of swiping at the screen, I use a hunt-and-peck method that seems a tad magical. As long as I get close to the letters I'm aiming for, the iPad manages to both come up with the right words and, drum roll please, auto-corrects my spelling while adding the proper punctuation.

I can only wish I had this sort of hi-tech device when I was laboring over term papers during my college days! Alas, that was not the case. But here's both the good and bad news. The world has caught up with me and today I can create works of blather from just about anywhere.

Stay tuned. BTW, that's not meant as a warning, just a statement of fact.

Stumbling along the information highway

We're well into the 21st century and I'm slowly getting the hang of this brave new digital world that has taken hold of most everyone not living under a rock or too young to have ever whacked away at a manual typewriter!

The good news here is I don't live under a rock. So I managed to dip my tootsies into the digital waters a few years ago when I purchased a laptop and quickly learned that it offered up all sorts of magical ways to keep me entertained and informed. That's not to say I was a complete troglodyte! I, of course, had been traveling along the World Wide Web for years at work.

But when I called it quits, my company's IT department didn't follow me home! That meant the little glitches that hid about in my shiny new computer often turned into big problems. As often as not, it seemed, I was stumbling about the information highway instead of gleefully surfing with the wind at my back.

But I persevered!

And after a time I was up and running, dashing about a wide assortment of sites and even playing a few online games, creating a blog and doing a little webified shopping. Life was good. So it seemed only natural that I take another little baby step into the digital waters and think seriously about replacing my flip phone with one of those newfangled smart ones.

When I learned that another generation -- baby, not phone -- was in the making and that I'd be needing a quick way to text my daughter and, of course, an easy way to document the moment-by-moment happenings of my soon-to-be granddaughter, it all became a done deal. Now I had both a shiny new laptop AND a shiny new smartphone!

Life, yet again, was good. But here's the rub. Apparently that old saw about the more you have the more you want is, um, true. After only a short time, I found that I was using my phone for a wide variety of reasons -- surfing the web, listening to music, checking out Facebook postings and such. In short, I had turned the little hand-held device into a mini-tablet and after awhile it seemed that, well, just maybe, I was actually ready to leap into the 21st century with both feet!

All of this is just a long and rambling way to report that I've recently purchased an iPad and, in fact, am using it right now to whack out this blog posting. That's the good news. Like most everything else in life, there is also a downside to having a magical device that easily links you to the rest of the world in all sorts of ways.

It only took me a few hours to figure out how to navigate around the tablet and only a few days to download an assortment of apps focusing on news and entertainment sites, games, music and videos. I now have access to more books, newspapers and magazines then I'll ever have time to read and a music library -- my own music, satellite radio and Pandora -- that will have me tapping my tootsies for the rest of my digital life; all of this within arm's length, seconds away throughout the day.

So, what's the problem?

Sometimes having it all can be a little too much. Less, as some philosopher once said, is often more.

I'll have to give that notion a little thought as I'm watching The "Dawgs" this weekend on the tube while reading a book on my Kindle and surfing the web on my shiny new tablet.

What's the big fuss about passing a little stone?

Show and tell: Yep, that's the stone, up close and personal!

After a recent kidney stone attack, several folks asked me what it felt like to pass a stone. Not a big deal, right? After all, it's just a tiny bit of calcium, jarringly mixed with other stuff, often no larger then a few grains of sand. All true, except for one important fact: The tiny stone, on its voyage through the urinary tract, has to make its way through the ureter, an itsy-bitsy tunnel between the kidneys and bladder.

The passage is painful. Very painful! Here's a guide to just how painful it can be.

You know how when you were a kid and you lost your balance while riding your bike, skinning up your knees and elbows? Stung like a sum-bitch, remember? Kidney stones are worse.

You know when you were in college and you and your buddy got blitzed and you were walking back to the dorm and instead of walking around a nearby security fence you decided it would be a good idea to leap over it and you landed on your shoulder and the nurse in the infirmary told you it was dislocated and you had to walk around for a week with your arm in a sling? Bummer! Kidney stones are worse.

You know how you sometimes absentmindedly rip open an envelope and a tiny wedge of paper slits into your finger, drawing a tiny bead of blood? Ouch! Kidney Stones are worse.

You know how you pull yourself out of bed when nature calls in the middle of the night; you stumble off toward the bathroom and, oops, crack your shin against a nearby bureau? Jeez, that smarts! Kidney stones are worse.

You know how when you're pounding a nail into a board and it seems like one good whack and the job will be done; so you let loose with a final wallop and, unfortunately, misjudge the target and hit your thumb? Oh, Nellie! Kidney stones are worse.

You know how you're in the zone, weed-whacking away on a sunny day when the plastic line whips around your ankle for an instant, causing a nasty cut and a neat circle of blood to puddle at your feet? Now that's gotta hurt, right? Kidney stones are worse.

Recall that day when you were atop a 10-foot ladder and you needed to take just one more step to reach that little leaf atop the hedge you were cutting, and the ladder gave way, and you bounced onto a nearby juniper bush before your noggin bounced against the driveway, and you were rushed to the emergency room with scrapes, bruises and a concussion? Oy! Kidney stones are worse.

And if you're of the female persuasion, recall how when in the delivery room you're sweating and pushing away mightily, attempting to get seven pounds of pinkness and hair out of your womb and through the birth canal; and after one last heave and sense of relief -- and pressure -- you hear the bawling of your babe, then hear the doctor exclaim: Surprise, you're having twins!? Kidney stones are worse.

So, the next time you hear of a friend having an attack, you might toy with the idea of smashing your thumb with a hammer or simply banging your head against a nearby wall to share the experience. Who knows, after hearing of your show of solidarity, your friend might be willing to share their pain meds! Then again, probably not.

Don’t be messing with my K-cups

 

Exhibit 1: I mean, really, who would

display k-cups in this fashion?

I stumbled into my kitchen in a sleepy haze this morning, reached over to the rack holding the K-cups for the coffee machine and realized something was amiss – badly, badly amiss! Someone or something had rearranged the little packets of coffee.

Just a day earlier, after buying a box of Maxwell House – good to the last drop, you’ll recall – I had painstakingly rearranged the 30 K-cups on the Keurig stand; 15 on the front and 15 on the, ah, other front. I was going for a horizontal vibe, stringing together several rows of the Maxwell House brand, followed by Donut Shop packets and a milder brew fittingly called “Breakfast in Bed”. This last brand is offered up by Wolfgang Puck and is a delightful selection for when I’m feeling, well, puckish!

Did I mention that I had been painstaking in my packet placement? Why, yes, I think I did.

Bizarrely, my efforts at bringing a sense of peace, harmony and coffee-cup Feng Shui into the house had been turned on its head (see exhibit 1). Some sort of vertical mish-mash, involving the obvious misplacement of certain brands, had taken hold of my perfect design. It made absolutely no sense.

I mean, first you play around with coffee packets, then I guess you start placing shirts of different colors and brands next to one another in the closet. Before you know it the world is spinning off of its axis.

I can only come up with two possible scenarios explaining the Sturm und Drang surrounding the packet misplacement. One makes absolutely no sense. I’m thinking that either the lovely Miss Wendy, in a misguided attempt at improving on perfection, rearranged my carefully crafted coffee-packet placement; or, much more likely, Satan had entered the house!

So I’m headed out to the market to buy some garlic and a silver bullet. I’m pretty sure ammunition can be found somewhere between bottles of ammonia and apples. Then, after I finish up ironing my underwear and socks, and making sure my shoes are properly aligned in the closet, I’ll be attacking the Keurig stand yet again. After all, at this point I feel like I’m doing God’s work!

High-tech hijinks in the Land of Israel

I stumbled across a report recently that detailed how various countries around the world were dealing with economic woes brought on by the global recession. It turns out that while many nations have struggled in recent years, Israel’s economic engine has continued to chug along mightily.

All the important indicators – job growth and earnings; the Consumer Price Index, industrial production and GDP – are sharply up and continue moving in the right direction. Analyst, as they often do, offer a mixed-bag of reasons for Israel’s success; but almost all agree that it’s the country’s high-tech sector that has fueled the Jewish homeland’s economic expansion.

It only takes a moment and quick look around the web to see that virtually all the major players in the high-tech world – Intel, IBM, Google, Cisco Systems, Microsoft – have expansive research and development facilities in Israel. The country also boasts a number of home-grown companies that have been hugely successful: Zoran Corporation, CEVA, Inc. and NICE Systems. It’s an impressive list, an innovative group of companies – along with dozens of others – that make up a region that has come to be known as the Silicon Wadi.

I mention this all now as a long and rambling preamble to my personal introduction to the high-tech vibe that spills across Israel. It was a dozen or so years ago, during a trip with the Jewish federation here in The Land of Cotton, that I almost crashed and burned after bumping up against a digital wall of my own making.

My problems started on a high note when I decided it might be fun to mix a little business with pleasure. So I met with a colleague, the editor handling international news for the place with the printing press where I worked, and pitched a few story ideas. We came up with a workable plan, but then I needed to be taught how to file stories and photos back to Dixie on deadline.

Today that would probably mean I’d be handed a laptop and a smartphone, spend five minutes with an IT specialist and be told to stay in touch. A decade ago the digital world was in flux, and staying in touch involved a complicated series of websites, dialup modems, passwords, phone numbers and mistakes waiting to happen.

After a few days of fun spent mostly in Tel Aviv and an evening spent covering Ariel Sharon sharing his vision for the future, I found myself in a tidy pressroom set up for journalists inside the Binyenei HaUma, the International Convention Center in Jerusalem. It was filled with the usual stuff: desks and chairs; paper pads and pens; a few TVs, lots of phones, and some desktop computers.

I was home! Well, not really. Home was on the other side of the world and I needed to figure out how to get my stories and photos onto the web and back to the newsroom. I had a set of instructions. They had made sense when an IT specialist ran me through the list only a few days earlier. Now they looked like Greek.

I managed to download a series of photos onto my laptop and even access the stories I had written earlier that morning. But each time I tried to call up the special modem setup to retrieve information, I would be disconnected. Can you say frustrating in Hebrew?

Eventually a couple of teens, both Israelis, noticed I was having a problem. I think slamming my computer against a nearby wall is what captured their attention. It turns out they had been hired by the convention center to help with digital issues and they offered to work me through the list of instructions that now seemed to have been written by the Marquis de Sade.

I recall them whispering and pointing a bit, then suggesting I ditch the instructions and try another series of steps. I politely and diplomatically explained that my bosses back home had stressed that I was to follow their instructions to the letter! They smiled, said b’seder, okay, went about trying to hook me up to the web and ended up where I had started; which is to say exactly nowhere!

This madness went on for an hour and my deadline was quickly approaching. Finally, one of the kids disconnected a cable connecting my laptop with a nearby phone and punched it into a port on the front of my desk. He then tapped a few keys on my laptop and, magically, I was home – at least digitally!

It turns out, much to my surprise and far beyond my ability to comprehend, that the entire pressroom came complete with dedicated lines linked to the internet. By simply moving the cable from the phone to the waiting port, I was essentially skipping over the first several pages of instructions I had been given and connecting directly with the necessary website. Who knew?

I’m pretty certain that the teens, Ilan and Reuven, helped me make deadline that day and also taught me that sometimes it’s necessary to simply hand a man a trout instead of teaching him how to fish; especially if the clock is ticking and the man doesn’t even understand the point of a fishing pole. But I’ll save that bit of wisdom for another day.

Meanwhile, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Ilan and Reuven are living the good life in Israel’s Silicon Wadi today, just two of the high-tech wizards pushing the country forward and making life better for all of us.

Hot, Cold and thinking about the Falcons!

Life is grand, here in the Land of

Cotton; temps are high and the

Falcons are soaring!

PHOTO / Nor Grebnief

Apparently someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that it’s winter. Here we are in the middle of January and the temperature is hovering around the century mark!

Okay, not really; it just feels that warm! If my high-tech inside/outside thermometer has it right – and that’s not a given – it’s in the low 70s here in the Land of Cotton.

I’ve been staying cool and calm most of the morning, dashing about in gym shorts and a tee-shirt. Another few days of these unseasonably warm temps and my azaleas will start budding and the weeds in the lawn will start stretching out their tendrils! Can you say yard work – sheesh!

What’s particularly bothersome is the vibe is all wrong for the Falcons – I’m referencing football here, not the feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic, egg-laying, vertebrate animal. The, um, birds will be taking the field tomorrow to face off against the Seahawks – yes, another football reference.

I imagine the feathers will be flying, in one fashion or another, and today’s warm temps will grow even warmer inside the Georgia Dome.

And just to carry all this weather talk to its logical conclusion, I’m thinking it will be a cold day in hell before the Falcons actually make it to the Super Bowl!

CEDIA Expo: Woofers, tweeters and high-tech racks!

I’ve just returned from a huge AV expo in Indianapolis and can now reveal that I’ve gotten an up close and personal look at the future. I’m not at all certain what I’ve seen, but I think I can report that it’s pretty darn impressive and headed in our direction.

The price of admission was simply being willing to leave my comfy home in the Land of Cotton and travel to Indiana with my son-in-law Josh to something called the CEDIA Expo, a massive trade show featuring 400 exhibitors from around the world focusing on hot and new stuff for the home automation market.

Josh, fortunately, speaks the lingo and helped me understand all the magical new products that will be spilling onto the market in coming months. For instance, a major manufacturer of entertainment systems and other such stuff, and a high-tech outfit that manufactures, ah, high-tech control systems, offered me all the free booze I wanted before announcing they’ve partnered up on a new audio video receiver featuring a complete home automation system. I’m thinking this is a good thing!

At a lavish, pre-expo gathering, honchoes from the two companies explained that the STR-DA5800ES and STR-DA2800ES both contain the full software suite offered up by one group and differ only by their levels of AV performance. I haven’t a clue what any of that means. Meanwhile, I also learned that the 5800, the ultimate home theater, will feature 180 watts per channel, 9.2 channels, wideband amplification, a new circuit board grounding system and new DSP technology. Fortunately, I also learned that there were brownies and lemon squares for dessert and that the open bar would, ah, remain open after the presentation!

After a good night’s rest, Josh and I joined with a few thousand other AV specialists from across the country, and were greeted at the doors of the convention center by a bevy of really tall women in really tight dresses showing off their woofers and tweeters! They, and a bunch of guys in color-coordinated polo shirts, also showed off the latest in flat screen TVs, speakers, control pads, home entertainment systems, remote control units, keypads, touch screens, home control eco-systems, projectors and dimmers. That pretty much got us through the first of a dozen or so showrooms! I did mention there was booze, right?

On the last evening of the show I started to believe that I could understand some of the high-tech talk that was spilling about me. For instance, I learned that Xantech (I’m not making this up) was planning to introduce Xtranet, its next generation of wired and wireless products for integration into commercial and home AV systems. I actually understood the words wireless and commercial in that annoucement. Truth to tell, I was just happy to hang out with the tall babes at the free bars. As I recall, we spent most of our time chatting about their new, easy to mount racks!

We interrupt your life for this important message

Last weekend I was merrily banging away on my computer, surfing the web, writing nonsense on my blog, stalking friends and acquaintances on Facebook. Life was good. Then I walked away for a moment and returned to find my screen filled with a message, all played out across a not-so-lovely blue screen!

I’ve since learned that there’s a name for what I was witnessing – the Blue Screen of Death. The message was pleasant enough but oh-so-generic. It was also written in compu-talk, a sort of mashing together of English, computer symbols and phrases that were mostly Greek to me!

The very unfortunate bottom line is that my laptop had bellied up with little fanfare, burying my hopes, dreams, musings, music and photos among its fried micro-chips. The good news is my music and photos were backed up on other disks and my hopes and dreams remain part of that bio-computer that rests easily in my noggin.

I’m delighted to report here at This&That Central that we’ve just received word that our new computer is in the neighborhood and will be arriving soon. I’m happy to add that I’ll now stop referring to myself in the third person. It’s also worth noting at this point that the lovely Miss Wendy is whooping in the background since she’ll no longer need to share her computer with the This&That editorial staff!

Blog posts will resume on a regular occasional basis in the next few days. That, btw, is not a warning, just a statement of fact! And now we return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Cell phones, rice and a little tinkle of water

We’ve all heard about someone spilling a glass of water over their cell phone, then fixing the problem by dropping the phone into a box filled with rice. Turns out it’s a solution that really works; just ask my friend Debbie.

No, don't toss out any unused rice you have

at home. You never know when you might

need a bowl of it to fix your phone.

 

She got her lovely new smart phone all wet recently and discovered that a little rice is exactly what the doctor ordered. The much more fascinating story, however, is how she managed to find herself with a dripping communication device.

Accidents do happen and there are all sorts of ways a person might manage to damage their phone. For instance, you might be hustling from your car and drop your phone in a rain puddle; perhaps you’re sitting next to a pool, reach for your phone and fumble it a bit and, oops, now it’s soaked. You could leave it out on your patio and a storm passes your way, or in your convertible when some prankster tosses a water balloon in your direction. None of those things happened to Debbie. But they could have, right?

I’m thinking she wishes her little accident was so simple and straight forward. But, no, Debbie was out and about last week when she needed to, ah, find a restroom. Her problem first began when she found a convenient place that, unfortunately, didn’t have any sort of hook about to hold her pocketbook.

It’s what she did next that has me scratching my noggin. Perhaps Debbie was in a hurry – you know, nature will only wait so long. So she, well, smartly decided to rest her pocketbook in a nearby sink while she dashed into the closest stall.

All seemed good, at least for the moment. Then Debbie heard the quiet little tinkle of water. Oh-so unfortunately, the tinkling was coming from outside the stall. When she finished up her, ah, business and made it back to the sink, water was pouring from the faucet and nicely filling up her pocketbook. You can guess where her cell phone was resting!

It turns out that Debbie had managed to stick her pocketbook into one of those high-tech sinks, one with an electronic eye that automatically activates the faucet. Yikes!

As I mentioned earlier, the rice thing really works. Just Ask Debbie. You might also consider giving her a portable hook with one of those rubber suction thingies on it. I’m thinking it’ll cut down all sorts of problems for her in the future.

Staying really busy and doing absolutely nothing

I had dinner with the minyon group last Thursday. Irwin, praying pal extraordinaire and longtime friend, asked me what I’ve been up to lately. It’s a fair question, but one that often leaves me puzzled.

Since leaving that place with the printing press over, gulp, three years ago, I’ve stayed busy doing all manner of stuff – traveling, volunteering, writing, reading, walking, jogging, painting (both of the house and fine arts variety), yard work and drinking; in short, nothing much.

Mostly, I’ve learned that there’s a talent to doing nothing and that just about anyone can do it by doing, ah, nothing. But over time I’ve actually figured out how to do nothing in much more interesting and creative ways.

In the last year or two I’ve done nothing while watching TV, movies and plays; done nothing at film and book festivals, workshops and seminars; also stayed busy doing nothing working in my yard and cleaning the house and done a whopping amount of nothing sitting in front of my computer.

I’ve done nothing on trains, planes and cars; done nothing in Alaska, Washington, California, Arizona, New York, New Jersey, Georgia and Florida. I’ve also managed to do a whole lot of nothing in Israel – twice!

Of course nothing, for some people, is something. I’m thinking this philosophical notion is buried somewhere in that whole half-glass full or empty concept. So, given my mood on any given day, it actually turns out I’ve been awfully busy! Almost makes me want to take a nap!

The really good news is that’s an option, perhaps one of the very best things I’ve learned over the last three years.  Turns out I’m a natural at doing nothing while napping.

Spring in Dixie – chills and coyotes!

Has Mother Nature gone completely mad? Here in the Land of Cotton we woke to a chill in the air, temperatures dipping into the 30s! Afternoon highs weren’t expected to break out of the 60s and a brisk wind throughout the day made it feel like the winter that never showed up this year has finally decided to pay us a visit.

I thought a light jacket was all I needed to stay warm on my morning walk. Wrong! My noggin had goose bumps on top of goose bumps and my hands, nakedly challenging the elements, were chilled and stinging.

My hat and gloves were where you’d expect them to be in mid-April – buried deeply in the hall closet, snoozing with contentment until the first frost of fall. Unfortunately, Mother Nature has been in a bit of a tizzy over the last year, raising the thermostat last winter and offering up a chill this spring. Go figure!

You could hang beef in our den; but that’s fixable. The lovely Miss Wendy has patted off to bed, the perfect opportunity for me to raise the thermostat. Let’s just keep that a little secret between you and me, okay?

After a splendid afternoon – clear, radiant blue skies – temperatures have yet again plummeted into the high 30s tonight. If you get quiet enough, I’m thinking you can hear the piercing whelp of a coyote in the distance. I wonder if it’s too late to dash out and buy a cord of firewood?