THE Sublime to the Ridiculous

I love salt and vinegar potato chips. I also love sports. One day the twain did meet, though not necessarily in the best way. My oldest son was about two and a half years old, and I was trying to watch the Stanley Cup playoffs. Being a momentarily bad dad, I did not want a distraction. So I sat in my recliner eating salt and vinegar potato chips as I was also supposed to be watching Charlie. I did watch him, kind of. I glanced over occasionally as he played with his toys while I watched TV. Regularly, he would toddle to my perch, and I would give him a couple chips or let him grab some from the bag I held on my lap, to keep him at bay. It was a divine match. We both got what we wanted; he could play, and I could watch hockey. Cool beans. After an hour or so of this, Charlie, again, toddled to my recliner for more chips. And I gave him more. Only this time I turned and looked at him. His lips were white. White as sheets, white as ghosts. And it occurred to me that the vinegar was causin...

Nature is resilient. It adapts. That's the main reason why environmental issues aren't at the forefront of my worries. Yes, we should be good stewards. But Nature rules its own sphere. Over the years in Woodbridge, my local Detroit neighborhood, I've seen wildlife come back in abundance. I've observed pheasants, hawks, rabbit, beavers, and opossum. Feral cats are everywhere; there aren't near the rats there once were, and perhaps that's why.  In the last year there have been two deer sighted, one right by the old barn. And this very day while on my morning constitutional, I saw a wild turkey. No, not an empty bottle of the famous rotgut. A wild turkey, with a baby in tow.  Nature rebounds, it answers all challenges. My own Detroit environs prove it.  

The following is another lesson I garnered from  Fr. Malcolm Willoughby , a wonderful priest and friend. It's about our very nature. Quite often when someone dies we hear things like, 'Heaven needed another angel'. Yet the truth is that we don't become angels. Angels are beings entirely different from humans. They were created in their end form: they were angels right from the start. We were born human, which means we have to develop and grow. We, in the end, become something beyond what we are now, if we cooperate with God's will. To be sure, we don't correct a grieving friend who makes such a remark during a time of loss. But we don't get wings. We are created in the Image of God, and have our own special place in creation. We don't get transformed into something which we're not. We become friends and brothers and sisters of Christ. We become Saints.

Me son Charlie has been visiting the last few days. Me son Frank spent a few days here back in April. Good times. What's weird, at least to my tired old brain, is that they each worked while they were here. At their regular, paying jobs. Charlie set up shop at the dining room table, while Frank had arranged himself a work space in his old bedroom. I actually took a picture of that and labelled it, Frank's Office. Telecommuting is until yet a concept I have trouble wrapping my head around. Working from anywhere with this device called a personal computer? I fully realize it's work but it doesn't seem like it. It would be interesting to know what me Pops or me Grandpa Joe would think. On a certain level it doesn't seem possible. To be sure, work from home has always existed. Writers, indeed many self employed, have done it for years. Hell, doctors and dentists once did. Yet watching my sons work from home hundreds of miles away from their actual job setting? It's ...

While taking my morning walks, I noticed several months ago a car with one of those wheel lock devices, a boot I think is the slang, on it, one which the authorities apply for things such as unpaid parking tickets. Uh, oh, someone's in trouble, I thought. That device appeared to stay on for a long time. I guess maybe they don't need their car. Then I noticed the car had been moved, quite a few times in fact. Finally one morning I saw the owner come out of his house, a tool of some kind in hand, and proceeded to walk to the car, removed the device, get in and drive off. A-ha. I don't know where he got it, but it wasn't about unpaid tickets at all. It was about a guy securing his vehicle. Not a terrible idea when you think about it.

Solitaire. I play too much of it, and generally alone because, well, solitaire. A derivative of solitary. I think. It runs in the family. Dad played, Mom played, and I remember sitting in me Grandpa Joe's kitchen when I was ten or eleven watching him play. Klondike is our version of choice. I didn't even know it had a name other than solitaire until I was an adult. Once I learned that my reaction was, it makes sense. Why should there be only one type of one person card game? Yet that never occurred to me before my twenties. I was once playing it when I admittedly shouldn't have been. For the last ten years I taught I was in a self driven classroom where students could take a myriad of subjects which were streamed in via computer. As such, we were there to facilitate as much as anything, helping students through difficult tasks, getting them needed materials, and grading finished work among other chores.  Our sessions ended at 9 PM weeknights. One evening at around 8:45 with...

I was watering the plants this morning by using a one gallon orange Tupperware jug. It was handy, holding enough water that I only needed to fill it a couple times to complete the chore. Me family  has a history with Kool-Aid  and that jug plays into it. I hadn't used that burnt orange plastic cylinder (I have an exotic description clause in my contract which must invoked from time time) myself in twenty five years. But back then it was our go to container for Kool-Aid. We mixed hundreds of gallons of all the various aromatic, fruity delectables (I've been behind on that clause and have to make up for missed opportunities) when the kids were small. At around 15 cents a packet and with a scoop or two of sugar plus tap water, it was a cheap way to add variety to meals and snacks. Me son Charlie told me awhile back that a school friend of his, I'll call him young Cloyce just to give him a name (those contract clauses get away from you and lawyers have no sense of humor), lov...

Things get stuck in your head, things you just can't erase.  I know that actors typically have dozens if not hundreds of roles over the course of their work. It's unfair even in one's own mind to too closely pigeonhole them into one character. But you can't help do that, especially with a guy you've only seen in one role. Leon Askin  was a regular in the old comedy Hogan's Heroes. He played General Burkhalter, a nemesis of Colonel Klink, who ran Stalag 13. I've only ever seen Askin as Burkhalter. Until late yesterday evening. I found myself watching  Son of Sinbad , an adventure film from the 1950s with something of an interesting cast. Set in Persia about a thousand years ago, it had Dale Robertson in the lead as Sinbad's son. That was incongruent enough, seeing Robertson as an Arabian pirate, considering he was known mostly for oaters. Then he appears, Leon Askin, as the Khalif of Baghdad. Even done up as an Arabian king, it was clear to me who he was....

Father Malcolm Willoughby, a former pastor of our parish at St. Dominic in Detroit and whom I've  spoken of  in the past, once offered during a conversation an idea I'd have never considered. "When bad things happen to someone, there's a tendency to ask, 'Why me?' Well, why not you?" he said. "Why shouldn't you be as subject to the awful things which can and do happen to others?" He's right, of course. And, you'll notice, the question rarely gets asked when good things come along, as though the good might be seen as an entitlement and the bad an outrageous affront. Oh, and Fr. Willoughby made this point too as we talked, you don't say that to someone who is currently suffering from a death in the family, or a personal crisis of some sort. But the question, why me?, really doesn't have any value. It may be perfectly reasonable to feel that way when you're down. Yet just as you're not exempt from the good, you aren't...

Funny, isn’t it, how we sometimes identify people with certain times, places, or things. In the alley behind our old family repair shop there is a row of mulberry bushes which have been there for years. My grandfather would, in the late spring or early summer when they were in season, always stop and treat himself to a few of the little fruits as he went to and from work. Little? Well, mulberries are small compared to most fruits. In context, they’re like raspberries who have spent a lot of time in the gym; a scant few are a handful. They’re juicy and sweet, and Grandpa Joe liked them. I remember vividly his picking and popping them into his mouth as he made his way down the alley, as though he were a kid again. Time passes, and so, sadly, did Grandpa Joe. Yet the mulberries still grew, and I couldn’t help over the years but develop a liking to them myself. As I hike to and from work nowadays I’ll stop and have a few. As it were, my daughter also came to know and like the mulberries to...

I have this old friend, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who seemed be people averse. His personal space halo was about as round as a silo on a farm. This included things like drive through restaurants and toll booths. When exchanging money, Cloyce would situate his car as far away from the window or booth as possible. He would have to stretch as far as fragile human anatomy allowed to hand over payment. The poor attendant would need to reach out to their limit, often leaning out of their perch, until touching the money precisely enough to take it without a tumble to the pavement. I teased Cloyce once that there were extension hooks with metal fingers which could be used to grab objects just out of reach. Funny thing: he seemed to give the idea a lot more thought than it merited. 

Me Grandpaw Hutchins went to bed at 9 o'clock every evening and rose at 5 the next day, like clockwork. If you were a visitor, you could stay as long as you wanted and have whatever you liked from the kitchen. But he was calling it a day.  One night as several of us were gathered around in the front yard he looked at his pocket watch and saw the time. On rising, he explained his courtesy, adding, "Don't even worry about making noise, because I'm taking out my ears." He removed his hearing aids as he spoke. That was a load off our shoulders.

Happy Father's Day to all you Dads out there! Tell the jokes; we won't even groan. Out loud, anyway.

I noticed while coming home down Interstate 75 awhile back that the farther left lanes in central Oakland County are now High Occupancy Vehicle, or HOV lanes, at least during certain hours. That means that only cars and such with at least two passengers can travel along them. Hogwash, at least morally. My taxes pay for every lane on that road, not just 3 out of 4. Each one. I have as much right to drive along them at any given time as any other driver. I have as much right to reach my destination in as reasonable a time as I can make it as they do. Limiting which lanes I can use is simply wrong. I don't care about any of the arguments for them. Encouraging ride share? Don't care. I'm not obliged to share my ride with anyone. Encourage less gas usage? Don't care. I can burn all the gas I'm willing to pay for. The environment? It's resilient. Always has been. It will adjust. Don't tell me that I have to pay for roads I can't use, under reasonable and norma...

What happened to the gas prices? I was gone five days and the same station I gassed up at on the way up north was fifty cents a gallon more on my return.  What did you people do? I can't leave you alone for a minute.

Believe me, you do not want Marty as your kindly old MD. Even I will admit that. For starters, I doubt I'd I'd be all that kindly. Then there's fact that I don't care for blood, which might just make being a doctor a tad difficult. But perhaps I could be mistaken for one. I did actually play a doctor in the background of the movie  Little Murder,  which was filmed in my neighborhood back in 2009. I was in two blink and you miss them scenes but I was in there, lab coat and all. So there's that. I could believably be mistaken for a doctor. In fact I was once mistaken for a doctor. Or more precisely, the doctor was mistaken for me. Me Uncle Frank who lived up in Hessel in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula had to have surgery. He told me that as he was coming out of it and still very groggy, a doctor came over to speak to him. He thought that the doctor was me. All the while he was answering the surgeon's questions Uncle Frank said he was thinking things like,...

It took some doing, but I was able to get the mowers up in Hessel (we have two) running. They hadn't started in a long time, and admittedly I hadn't done much about them. Oh, there were a couple feeble attempts from time to time to coax them to life. Yet the machines seemed recalcitrant, unwilling to start on my whim, and I would surrender to their will. But yesterday I became resolved: they would start. I won't bore you with details, and one took a lot more cajoling than the other, but eventually I was able to stand alongside both as they had roared to life in the afternoon Sun. I must admit to wearing a smug grin as I stared at them puttering. Who's the boss now? My smile soon turned upside down. The thought rose in my mind that, with running mowers, I had to cut the Hessel grass. No more hiring the local landscaper.  Now I'm not sure I'm the winner in this.

I'll admit up front that it's a bit odd, but one thing I'll say for listening to baseball on the radio is that there's an added dimension of the game when you can't actually see what happened. Two dimensions, really. I was listening to yesterday's Detroit Tigers game (Bally Sports and Xfinity don't appear to care whether I can watch live baseball) and, at one point, Tiger outfielder Riley Greene made a spectacular catch to save, the announcers felt, two runs.  It was euphoric to hear. Dan Dickerson, the play by play man (who has a great announcer's voice by the way) described the action. He sounded excited and concerned all at once as the ball fell to earth, telling his audience about Greene's rush towards it, and exploding himself in happiness when the catch was made. I about jumped from my seat too. This leads to the first point: having the play told to you adds more excitement than seeing it. Secondly, I actually felt greater relief at hearing abo...

This post, I'll admit up front, is something of a throwaway. Facebook has been at it again, refusing to allow my main blog, The Sublime to the Ridiculous, to stay on my own personal facebook page. It calls my blog spam. Well if it is, then everything everyone or anyone posts is spam, because we're all trying to gets hits whenever we post anything on our Facebook. Interestingly, Facebook assures me that my page is in good standing, with no violations ever against it. Go figure. So I'll not waste my brilliance (or obvious lack thereof) on anything laugh out loud, inspiring, thought provoking, or reminiscent today. I'll just write and post it, and see what happens. Enjoy.

While picking up a few things at a local store in Hessel, a tiny village in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, I engaged the cashier is a little conversation. "I'm up here from Detroit, doing a few things with our cabin," I said at one point. "Yeah," the cashier, a local, replied, "I have to get down to Harrison and work on our place there." Harrison is just about smack in the middle of the mitten, or lower peninsula, of Michigan. "It's so quiet and peaceful," the man continued. Though I didn't pursue it, I couldn't help but think, 'Quiet and peaceful there? You're in the sparsely populated UP. How could it possibly be quieter downstate (downstate is generally frowned upon by us Yoopers, folks from da UP) than Hessel?'  We all need a getaway, I suppose. I just can't see what he's getting away from in Hessel by going two hours south. No offense, Harrison, because I've been there and you're cool. Bu...