THE MOVABLE MONA LISA

I had to laugh this week when I saw the crowd collected in front of the Mona Lisa. Evidently. Because of refurbishing of the gallery where she normally hangs out, Mona Lisa has been moved to different quarters. To get there, 30,000 visitors a day, they say, have to go up several escalators, through a small door, and there she is. You have to pre-book a ticket just to see her.

Everyone there was taking a picture with their phone. Not one, it seemed, was looking directly at the painting, just studying it, They get just one minute to be in front of the painting. Thousands of people make the trip just to get the “definitive picture” of the picture and then have to move on to make space. Why would they put themselves through all that?

What really got to me was seeing the photo of everyone taking a picture of a picture. I’ve been guilty of that – once. In the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, I took a picture of The Night Watch. It was almost automatic – I turned the corner into the gallery, and there it was – huge – facing me. I lifted the camera, without thinking, and took a picture. A picture of a picture I could easily find a picture of. What stopped me was my flash. The attendant there scolded me, and reminded my about no flash. Embarrassed, because I knew better, I turned off the camera and looked at the painting for quite some time. I really hadn’t thought of taking pictures there or in any museum we visited in Amsterdam - or anywhere else.

There have been times in our travels that I’ve been so fascinated by what I was seeing that I completely forgot to take pictures. I’d have liked a reminder or two to put in our scrapbooks. And I do like to take pictures to use with my greeting cards each year.

It just saddens me that the iPhones are everywhere and people seem more concerned with taking pictures than with enjoying the moment. Being there and actually enjoying the moment, not the picture, insures a lasting memory.

WHAT'S TRENDING?

The local NBC affiliate we usually watch airs six hours of local news programming each day, plus many more hours from the nation feed. “What’s trending” seems to be of vital interest on the local news programs. They pick all this up from the social media, of which I am not a part. (Unless you consider a blog social media? Maybe.) I think the reporting of such trivial nonsense helps the stations fill in the time spaces on otherwise blah news days. Contrary-wise, if some local crime or mishap happens, no matter how minor, they devote much too much time to the incident. Feast or famine, and that’s why I’d turn off the TV if it were just me here. I get my fill of news online.

I heard this was trending on Wednesday: a research group that had nothing better to do, discovered that if you don’t want sea gulls to steal your food at the beach you have to stare them down. Where and how do groups like this find such topics to research? And who is paying for this research? I want to know because I want to get a cushy job like that one where I could hang out at the beach and challenge the sea gulls.

Here’s my one sea gull story. Years ago, we lived next to a restaurant that occupied a large corner lot just across from Long Island’s Manhasset Bay. The gulls would get into the over-full dumpster and pick out the stale rolls. By instinct, these birds will grab something like a clam, fly with it, and drop it on a hard surface to crack it open. Rolls seemed to be like shells, and the gulls would drop them all over the parking lot. They were accurate though, none were ever dropped in our yard.

I found out later that the sea gull study was done by researchers at Britain’s Royal Society. Yes, that Royal Society, officially, the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. It is the society whose members, fellows, if you will, have included Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren, James Cook, Charles Babbage, and Stephen Hawking.

I do think that, if they could, those esteemed gentlemen would be rolling in their graves.

NOTHING TO VIEW HERE

When I'm all caught up with the emails and have sorted everything to its proper file - it's mostly trash these days once I've read it - a notice pops up and says "Nothing to view here."
This morning I went to my blog files of "In Progress" and "Ready to Post." Nothing in either file - it might as well have read "nothing to view here."

I am running out of material. Oh, sure, I have my opinions on what's happening in the community, in the country, and in the world, but my brain doesn't want to contemplate putting my opinions in writing. I've done enough in the recent past. 

I'm not young and physically active and able to report on all our daily doings. No, I'm old, and mostly mentally active, especially with my reading, writing, and magazine editing. For the most part, my physical activities are limited by a set of wonky knees, and we have few "daily doings" worth reporting.

The only thing on my mind this morning is peaches. I had a fairly good one for breakfast. A few weeks ago we went down to McBee and bought luscious peaches at McLeod Farms. Having exhausted the supply, last week we went over to York to try the peaches at Black's Peaches. They were fine, O.K., but not worth the hour trip in the future. Next week we'll try the local place again - Springs Farms' Peach Stand, just over in Fort Mill. We've had peaches from them many times over the years we've been here - they're very good. South Carolina grows more peaches than Georgia, the state with the peach on their license plate. California has us all beat for production, but I don't think their quality compares to the deliciousness of our own picked perfectly peaches.

TGIF - have a lovely weekend.

WHEN WE WERE YOUNGER

As they say, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

When we were younger, if I needed to wash and wax the kitchen floor, we would take the table and chairs out to another room. Today, I just shove them from side to side.

When we were younger, we’d wash the windows at least twice a year – he on the outside, me on the inside. Today, the outside windows get washed when the house gets washed every other year, and the inside windows get done on rare occasions.

When we were younger, we handled any little chore ourselves – changing the light bulb in the high porch ceiling, changing the air filters, even fixing the low hook on the screen door. Those are on my “honey do” list. Today, we depend on a crew of two young sons, in their hale and hardy 50s, to help us with the things that are just beyond our capabilities. We are so pleased that they’re living nearby, not just for the helping hand, but just for their presence in our lives.

LIFE'S LITTLE CHORES

As I was changing the toilet paper roll in the bathroom this afternoon, I thought about how many times I’ve done that before. Then I got to thinking – I wonder just how many times have I done so many other little chores before:

Put in a new roll of toilet paper, a roll of paper towels, or a box of tissues

Done a load of laundry

Changed the bed

Washed the dishes

Prepared breakfast, lunch, or dinner

Vacuumed, dusted

Shopped for groceries

Proved the bank statement …

Well, that’s getting a bit far out there, but those day-to-day jobs are adding up. Did you ever wonder about things like this? They say you can't know everything, and I know that I can make an estimated guess, but I'll never really know how many times I've changed the toilet paper. Ah, well - that's life. 

"AN OUTING FOR THE OLD FOLKS"

--=

Years ago, after we retired, Frank and I shopped at a little, local, IGA store in upstate New York. Before then, when Frank was paid, we’d always shop on Thursday. We were barely seniors – Frank was 55, and I was 43, but happened that the store gave a 10% discount to seniors on Thursdays, so we had a good reason to keep our traditional shopping day. One snide, thirty-something clerk there always had a comment about cheap seniors taking advantage of the discount. She said, “but it makes a nice outing for the old folks.” She repeated it often enough that in the years since then, any time Frank and I go a bit far afield, we always say it’s “an outing for the old folks."

On Wednesday, we really old folks, Frank’s 88, I’m 76, had an outing. We headed south on an hour-long trip along lovely rural roads, to McBee, South Carolina, to McLeod Farms. A colleague of mine from the magazine made the same trip a few weeks ago, and wrote a mouth-watering article about it. What better reason to go than the strong recommendation of a friend.

Along with the farm market, there is a great little museum of interesting stuff from some great old cars, to dolls, farm equipment, and miscellaneous items that are fun to see again. Here's the link to their website, macspride.com

We went, we saw, we bought peaches – among other great produce. I’ve been looking at my stash of peach recipes, and I think I’ll make peach custard bread pudding this afternoon. This morning I’m having a juicy peach for breakfast.

BRITISH ACCENTS

Why is it that advertisers who want to have their products viewed as the best available, use announcers with British accents to gently and genteelly present their wares? It began with items like luxury cars or watches.  Now I hear the dulcet British tones touting things like replacement windows, food products, over-the-counter medications, household cleaners, even CPAP machine cleaners

I don't dislike it, I just wonder why they see a need to go fancy. There's nothing elegant about CPAP machine cleaners. A straightforward ad will do.

THE MOCK TURTLE'S SONG

                                      Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

This is the Mock Turtle as imagined by an artist called Snugglestab.  `

MOCK - Adjective

Not authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive.

"a mock-Georgian red brick house"

synonyms:

imitation, artificial, man-made, manufactured, simulated, synthetic, ersatz, plastic, so-called, fake, false, faux, reproduction, replica, facsimile, dummy, model, toy, make-believe, sham, spurious, bogus, counterfeit, fraudulent, forged, pseudo, pretended

Will you, won’t you – will he, nil he. Willy-nilly, our mock POTUS makes decrees and, soon after that, changes his (alleged) mind. He’s waffled on most of the issues that confront us today: Deportation raids, retaliation attacks on Iran, back and forth with threats of tariffs for Chines goods, staying in NATO, and add in topics like Russia, Syria, and Obama care.

It appears that as soon as he “runs his mouth” on an issue, saner advisers around him bring him back to reality. He called off retaliation against Iran’s downing of a drone, because he was told 150 people would die. Well, more than that would have died if the conflict had escalated.

I hate to say this, but I do agree with the Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman who said "No strategy should go against the times. The trend of the world is mighty and overwhelming. Those who follow it will prosper while those who resist will perish. Peace, development and win-win cooperation are the trends of our times. Any strategy that is closed and exclusive, which is against the general trends, is doomed to failure." He also argued that "no strategy should harm the well-being of people all over the world" or "underscore the confrontation side of relations," calling for greater international dialogue and less unilateral behavior.

I like that “any strategy… which is against the general trends.” Immediately, global warming comes to mind. He never waffles on his stance on that topic. Maybe he can’t – he’s got too many cronies in industries that contribute to the world pollution.

Well, enough about the POTUS. I do go on and on about him, but he just goes against my grain. I’d just like to shake him silly – willy-nilly.

           

The Curmudgeon has spoken.

EDUCATION IS THE KEY

There’s a reparations bill in the offing, but I read that even if it clears the House, it has little chance of passing in the Republican-controlled Senate. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he did not favor reparations “for something that happened 150 years ago, for whom none of us currently living are responsible.”

The idea comes up every so often: we should make reparations to the descendants of slaves. The idea comes up because descendants of the whites of European lineage feel that something should be done to ease that little bit of residual humiliation and regret we might carry because of what our ancestors did.

Geeeeze Loueeeze, you don’t just pay people off and then say to yourself, as the silly phrase goes, “I seen my duty and I done it.”  What? And then we’ll all feel better?  And at what generation of those descendants should we stop the reparations?

What the politicos need to do is put the money where it will benefit everyone in the country: put it into education. We desperately need to raise the educational standards for everyone, because, as an often misattributed saying goes, “an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”  Most of all, we must enhance the educational opportunities for the black students who need assistance.

I don’t recommend giving a blank check to every black student. No, the student must truly need the assistance, and must qualify and be accepted for whatever type of higher education they want to pursue.  The nation will first loan them the funds for their schooling. Once they graduate and receive their qualification certificate, license, or degree, the loan will be written off.  That would be the basic premise of the law – the rest is in the details, and we all know the devil is in the detail.

We’ll see what happens.

A CHICKEN WITH ITS HEAD CUT OFF

If I have to have a picture of a chicken with its head cut off, I'll go for for this colorful one by Barbara Ann Gomez. I do wonder what the inspiration was for her to draw it.

September is a big month for foodie celebrations. There are more celebrations than there are days of the month From Pickles to Popsicles, from Guacamole to Linguini, September is a feast.

We’ve been planning ahead at the community magazine, and we’ll celebrate with several food-related articles, plus a compendium of food memories from some of our staff members.  One gal wrote about not wanting to eat chicken after she saw her grandmother cut the head off one, and saw what was to be her Sunday dinner running around. Another writer’s mother also killed chickens, but she hung them up by their legs on a line. Then she cut the head off. Easier to drain the blood, of course.

Getting a picture of those events in my mind’s eye, I remembered that I too know firsthand what it looks like to see a chicken running around with its head cut off.

When I was around 10, maybe younger, living in a development on suburban Long Island, one of our neighbors bought a mess of baby chicks. There must have been several dozen. They kept them up in their attic, and I remember going up there to see the cute, fuzzy things. This was, as I recall, a lovely but strange family. There were, I think, four or five kids. They really should have been living in a rural area, not in small house on a morsel of an acre, and I remember the house as, shall we say, not being as nice, neat, and clean as where I lived.

Well, the fuzzy chicks, grew. The dad built a coop out in the backyard. The neighbors on each side mustn't have been too happy about it, but...  I know there were complaints about the dirt and smells, but the adults had to deal with that. I thought the chickens were great. One time, it must have been time for a family meal, and I remember the dad killing a few by running their necks under the blades of an upturned reel lawn mower. And then chickens really did run around with their heads cut off. 

Of course, I must have told my mother. What she did about it, what the other mothers did about it, (there were several of us kids there) I don’t know. I know I never saw that again. But once was enough for me to remember. This New York City-born kid still thinks it was cool.

FRIDAY FLOP

Here it is Friday, at almost 8:00 p.m., and I absolutely forgot that it is a Friday, my usual posting day. I must a that nothing earth shattering has happened here this past week. I've just been busy, busy with articles coming in thick and fast for August and later issues of the community magazine. I've written several of my own in the last few days, and I'm really ready for a lazy, rainy weekend.

I just saw this  in the evening report from the Washington Post about a POTUS Tweet: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon — We did that 50 years ago,” Trump wrote. “They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!”  [Oh, really?]

And so, dear friends, good night. It's almost past my bedtime.

"SORRY LOSERS AND HATERS"

“Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q.

       is one of the highest -and you all 

    know it! Please don't feel so stupid or 

       insecure, it's not your fault,” 

    Donald Trump tweeted in 2013.

      Alex Wong/Getty Images

The very interesting article “Trump fixates on IQ as a measure of self-worth,”

by Andrew Restuccia, was featured in yesterday’s Politico.com begins with “People who know Trump suspect his IQ obsession stems in part from a desire to project an image of success, despite scattered business failings and allegations of incompetence.” 

If he truly revered people with high IQs, he’d listen to and respect the research of scientists world wide who have the proof that we are suffering from man-made global warming. He’d listen to those who have studied world politics, world trade, education, and many other fields. He'd use those experts, not business friends, to man (or woman) the appropriate government departments.

To me, the man has the vocabulary of a child, and the temperament of a child bully. I really question why he thinks he has such a high IQ. I’ve seen the figure at 158, but no one can substantiate that. I’ve seen the figure at 73 – that’s more like it, but again, it’s unsubstantiated, and probably bogus. Based on his actions and speeches, and possibly even his Tweets, experts have rated him as having below average intelligence. What he is rated high at is manipulating, threatening, and changing his (alleged) mind. The truly gifted and brilliant don’t ever refer to their own IQs or denigrate those with lower scores.

I wish he’d change his (alleged) mind and not run next year.  Dream on.

CHASING A PANDA

No, not this kind of panda...

I’ve been stopped once or twice by a cop - never got a ticket though – and I’ve never, ever been chased by one. Good grief! But this past Sunday, I turned the tables on the normal way of things, and I chased a cop.

Long story short. Frank was coughing heavily and breathing poorly, so we took a trip to the nearby emergency room. They didn’t like what they were finding, so they sent him to the hospital. We are accustomed to going to the hospital that’s about fourteen miles away, but there was no room there. We got sent to another hospital about twenty-three miles away. Driving to the closer one means driving in a lot of heavy traffic. Driving to the farther one means relatively rural driving, and almost the same time to get there. Nice.

The ambulance driver, who later told Frank to apologize to me, said it was a straight shot down to Rt.75 then east. The hospital is right on Rt.75. Ah, yes it is, but he forgot to tell me about the detour around that huge hole in the road near the end of the trip - the detour that has no signs to tell a driver how to get around it and get to the hospital.

Well, I drove around and around, seeing the some of the gorgeous homes in the town, seeing the municipal buildings and the main streets, but I couldn’t locate the hospital. Then, you guessed it, I saw a policeman in a nice panda car. I latched on and followed him around through several streets and turns. Finally, he thought something was off, and pulled into a parking lot, and then round a big dumpster, checking to see if I’d followed. I did. I met him on the far side.

...this kind of panda!

He was really good about it. He gave me simple directions - just about two miles with two turns. I got to the hospital in no time at all after that, but I was really frazzled by the whole excursion. I can look back now and smile, but until I saw that police car, I thought I was doomed to drive the streets of Monroe, North Carolina, until the cows came home or I ran out of gas.

And, to bring you up to date. It turns out that Frank’s COPD has come back to haunt him after ten or twelve years. Whatever triggered off the change, the strong symptoms, and the seemingly over-reactions of the medicos, he’s doing just fine. He’ll be back on one of the meds he used to take, just to be sure, and we’ll go on from there.

UNDER THE TABLE

I've got a stash of ideas for blog posting. They're just thoughts I've had in passing and remembered to enter into the stash. It's been a busy but nondescript week here, so I thought to take a look. One line says "me and Joy under the table."  That would be my cousin Joy, and the table would be our grandmother's dining room table. It was a massive thing on two slab-like pedestals. We could sit there, each leaning on a pedestal, and converse to our hearts content. We weren't hiding - everyone knew where were were, and they could hear us from the kitchen. We couldn't have been more than four or five or so, because after that we'd never have fit.

I went googling for a suitable picture, and I found this one. Hoo-boy, wouldn't it have been fun for us two to have had iPads then. We'd have been there to this day.

There's something to be said about snug places under dining room tables, in window seats, or in a grownup's big, comfy chair.  The world is reduced to an area as small as we are, a space we can handle. The world is reduced to the equivalent of the womb, to the equivalent of a a hug. We all need that.

WHAT'S IN A TITLE?

I've no title for today's posting. I almost didn't have a subject, but my regular routine stop at the Politico website gave me my subject. I love political cartoons, and each Friday I check the lineup at Politico. This morning's look gave me this:

Bee-u-tee-ful! It's right in line with what I've been thinking: let's get back to the younger generation of lawmakers. If he's re-elected - fate forbid - our current president will be 79 when he leaves office.
Biden would be 83, and much as I do admire a lot of what she's accomplished, Elizabeth Warren will be 76. (I hope I did that math correctly.)

I am now 76, and knowing my own capabilities, I believe Warren could do the job, but, Democrat or Republican, we've got to get some younger, more flexible politicians running our government. I'm going to learn as much as I can about the more prominent of those nineteen dwarfs. If nothing else, the political scene will be very interesting in the months ahead.

HORSE HOCKEY

     Yes, Horse Hockey! This news was in this morning's New York Times:

U.S. passes first big global warming legislation in 10 years

House lawmakers voted to block President Trump from abandoning the Paris Agreement on climate change and to require his administration to devise a plan to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The measure, which passed 231 to 190, stands virtually no chance of approval in the Republican-controlled Senate. What is so unbelievable about the news is that it "stands virtually no chance of approval in the Republican-controlled Senate." Do you mean to tell me that he majority of Republican senators agree with the president that global warming is a hoax? And I see that 190 Representatives - are they all Republicans? - agreed with him too. We're going to hell, degree by degree. Our legislators are fiddling while the world burns.

BRING BACK THAT MAGIC FINGER

I am reprising a post from January 2013. I’ve got someone special here with us this weekend, so I prepared this posting in advance.

I'm sometimes very glad that we’ve not got the power to read each other’s minds. Surely I wouldn’t be thinking this way if we did have the power, but there are so many times that I want to shout at people, tell them off, tell them what I think of their conduct or attitudes. Not nice, not nice, I know. 

I am invariably polite. You’ll rarely hear me say, for instance “I like that dress,” or “I like that haircut.” What I’ll say will be something like “What a dress!” or “That haircut is you!” There’s a subtle difference there, and there’s no point in antagonizing some poor being who’s probably trying her best. I do try my own best, and it may not suit everyone else.

There’s a lovely saying, attributed to Elsie de Wolfe: “Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you.” Sometimes I’ve had to be gracious until my teeth hurt!

I knew a gal once, a friend of a friend, and she and I got talking about people we have no use for. She said she wished she had a magic finger that she could point, just like a kid uses his forefinger and points it like a gun, and just cock the thumb trigger, and ‘poof’, they’d be gone. I’ve been mulling over the idea ever since we had that conversation.*

I suppose it’s good we don’t have this ability. It’s a simplistic solution - and just think of the possible ramifications - but don’t you too sometimes wish you had a magic finger like that? (other than that finger?) 

But then, I wonder who might use that magic finger on me? I’d better watch my p’s and q’s.

*And in these years since the 2016 elections, I too often wish I had that magic finger for real.

THE ONCE AND FUTURE EDITOR

I had to go to my yearbook to pull out this bit of masthead from The Viking View

I’ve been the editor of our community magazine for several months now. (You can view the latest issues of the magazine here.) The other day it dawned on me that I’d been an editor once before in my life. What a hoot! I was sports editor of my high school newspaper, The Viking View. We could find no guy who wanted to do the job that year, so I volunteered. I did have to change the name of the editor’s column from “The Locker Room” to “Grandstand Seat.” I really enjoyed that year, especially because I was allowed to travel on the team bus for away games. I also remembered that I was a stringer for the New York Times, and I earned a mere pittance from calling in the results of the games.

Editing the copy is much the same job: correction grammar, usage, and punctuation. We must still check the content and rewrite for clarity and the overall feel of the article. And spelling too – Spellcheck doesn’t catch everything.

Putting together the final product is quite a bit different these days. Then it was rearranging the printed copy and pasting up dummy sheets. The Publications Room was usually a mess, as recall. Today it’s all done electronically. The final proof process is much the same though, corrections made right on the printout, and, frustrating as it may be to find errors that get through, I really enjoy the job.

While I was scanning things from the yearbook, I copied my senior picture.
That's me at age seventeen.
The blurb under the picture said my goal would be medical
research - that was then.
I finally went into banking and computers, a far stretch from the medical field.

STORM TRACKER

Here it is Friday again. And rain again. It is April, of course, so we should expect the showers to bring all those flowers. Rain is predicted for this afternoon and for another two days, into Monday morning. That's fine for me, because I've got the magazine's May issue in the proof process. It's definitely an indoor job. 

Seeing as how it's a weekday, and weekdays mean lots of almost useless new hours on the TV, there's sure to be a storm tracker out on the roads in and around Charlotte.

Would someone please explain to me the need for the local TV news programs to have a storm tracker when it rains? Or even during a major hurricane? It would seem to me that this would be as useful as using chopsticks to eat ice cream. Watching someone riding around in a van and reporting in on the rain, and often the lack thereof, is just plain useless.

Some TV stations go to great lengths to get out there in the storm.

If you are at home, you don’t usually need to know what’s happening on the main roads. If you’re on the road in your car, I hope you don’t have a TV. If you’ve got the TV station playing on your iPhone, you’re stupid. Turn it off and pay attention to the driving.

I do remember when you could depend on the weather report coming in at about twenty minutes past the hour. One report, nice and neat, and not too much time spent with forgettable information like degree days or moonrise and moonset. Today there are at least two weather reports on per half-hour segment.

I do realize that the local stations have to fill in with something. There isn’t all that much news out there, and what there is is usually a lot of criminal activity that we don’t need to know about. TMI. TMUI – Too Much Useless Information.

The curmudgeon has spoken.

PURPLE PIECE

This lovely purple piece by the American artist Jeff Koons popped up this week on one of the general interest websites I visit. Red is the favorite color of my adulthood, but, as a child, purple was always my favorite, and my eye is always drawn to that color.

The Koons piece is currently display at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. I reminded me of the pictures I’ve seen of the Venus of Willendorf, and indeed, the author of the not very flattering article in The Guardian did mention that ancient statue.

The Venus of Willendorf

I’ve always smiled when I saw pictures of that Venus and others like her – they remind me of me. Though our proportions are bountifully bulbous, they can truthfully be called classical.

Though current standards would have us be sylphlike, and health-wise it would be wiser for us to be more slender, we women of substance can smile and accept ourselves. We can say “I’m all right.”

Women en large