Grill & Chill

After yesterday’s 6+ inches of snow, we’ll probably have to go to the Dairy Queen Grill & Chill rather than “grill” and “chill” on our patio. Henri never believes the weather predictions. He was even willing to bet (money) on Friday that it would not snow. Had I taken the bet, I could have been rich on Saturday morning. Henri got out the long underwear, heavy outer clothing, and a sock cap (With his sock cap, doesn’t he resemble the “pointy-haired boss” in the Dilbert comic? - click on picture above) to prepare for his maiden voyage with the Deere and snow blade. He couldn’t use the Deere for our first snowfall because he was ill, and Bogey Bernie and David got the honors then. It’s a good thing David put the chains on the Deere Friday afternoon because this was a heavy, wet snow. When Henri started blading, Bogey had already begun shoveling his driveway. After Henri finished our driveway, Bogey (click on picture left) used the Deere to finish his driveway and then cleared the driveways of two elderly (older than we!) neighbors. We want to thank all our children. The snow blade was a perfect Christmas gift. It helps us and also helps our neighbors. Now, we wish it would snow more often!

AA – Academics or Athletics?

I read an article in the sports section of the Thursday Southern Illinoisan that makes me question priorities in an educational environment. The writer offered suggestions to increase attendance and school spirit at high school and college sports events. One of these suggestions, Cool for School, is as follows: Teachers should start offering extra credit to students who attend athletic events. It doesn’t have to be a lot of extra credit or for every home game, but five points can be the difference between a B and a C on report cards….

School spirit results from pride in one’s school and community. Motivating attendance at sports events by giving bonus points in academic work is as ridiculous as rewarding good grades with money. Neither increases spirit nor the desire to learn. This nonsensical concept would contribute to the dumbing down of educational standards which already are quite low. Our immigrant ancestors learned to speak the real English language, not the mumbo jumbo version spoken by most collegiate and professional athletes today.

The writer of the article also indicates he had several SIU professors offer attendance at sports events as an option for extra credit. Did students turn in ticket stubs instead of assignments? I wonder if those professors also used stars and smile stickers on theses and dissertations! SIU’s emphasis on sports, particularly football and basketball, is well known. Chris Lowery, the 37 year old basketball coach, is probably the highest paid employee of the university with his seven year contract and $750,000.00 annual salary. The basketball Dawgs, however, are currently in second last place in the Missouri Valley Conference! SIU is renovating the basketball Arena and building a new football stadium at a cost of almost $100,000,000.00 (supposedly from private funds) but may not have money available to make payroll in several months. I am not against sports, but what is wrong with this picture? In the future, will cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude honors at SIU be based on sports attendance rather than academic success?

VIERZIG, QUARANTE, CUARENTA, FORTY

14,610 days, 2,080 weeks, 480 months each equals 40 years, the age Shelly, the oldest of our children, is today. Shelly had just finished eighth grade in 1983 when she moved with her family from Fargo, North Dakota to Marion. After her high school graduation, Shelly pursued a college education and received her bachelor’s degree in math from SIU-Edwardsville. Some years later, she received her master’s degree from the same university. Shelly was always an exemplary student, and she felt anything less than an A was unacceptable.

When Henri and I married, Shelly was a 20 year old college student. Now, she is a successful career woman as well as a wife and mother. Shelly lives with her family in Troy, IL and works for Express Scripts, a pharmaceutical company headquartered in St. Louis. In addition to a full-time job, Shelly and her husband, Mark, are the parents of two daughters, Danielle, age 5, and Bradynn, age 2. It won’t be long before Shelly’s daughters challenge her math prowess. They, however, may be more interested in boys and clothes than math!

Remember, Shelly, regardless if 40 is the new 20, you are now in that “protected” age group known as the “older worker”! Love and best wishes for a very Happy 40th Birthday from Henri (Dad) and Ginger.

HENRI'S GOT THE "FEVER"

Peggy Lee’s song, You Give Me Fever, has lyrics that describe Henri: Fever in the morning Fever all through the night. Henri’s got the fever – new truck fever, that is. We don’t know yet if we are going to get a new vehicle, but we checked out 2010 Rangers at the Ford dealers in Marion and Carbondale yesterday. The Marion dealer didn’t have anything we liked, but we found two Rangers in Carbondale, a red one and a dark gray one. They have exactly the same equipment and options. If we purchase a new truck, the only problem is Henri likes the dark gray truck and Ginger likes the red truck. We bought our current truck, a 2002 Ranger, at the end of 2001. It has 22,000+ actual miles and the original tires and battery. It is in excellent condition, similar to that of vehicles driven by old ladies who only use them to drive to church and the liquor store. We’ll have to think about this before we make a final decision. I guess one determining factor will be how high Henri’s fever rises!

A Political Conundrum

The Illinois primary election is February 2, 2010, Groundhog Day. All the political groundhogs will forage for food – votes. The right to vote is a key element in a democratic society. I am not a politically active person, but I do vote in the general election held in November and sometimes in the primary election. After careful consideration, I decided not to vote in the primary this year. The main reason is that a voter must declare a political party and is allowed to vote only for candidates of that party. Another reason is the overwhelming number of people running for various offices. The governor’s race includes 13 candidates representing the Democrat, Republican, Constitution, Libertarian, and Green Parties, as well as two Independent candidates. The lieutenant governor’s race includes 14 candidates representing the Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, and Green Parties. To analyze the positions of each of these candidates would be a task similar to writing a doctoral dissertation. The money spent on these campaigns is an astronomical waste. Do the Constitution, Libertarian, and Green Party candidates, and also the Independents, truly think they have a chance of winning? I could easier climb to the summit of Mt. Everest! Each day, we receive a number of telephone calls with recorded messages requesting our vote for a particular candidate. One call’s command was, “Press 1 for an important message.” If I had done this, I probably would have been connected to someone in the Dominican Republic at a cost of $2,000.00 per minute. I always said I wouldn’t vote for anyone who called or left flyers on our front door. There’s no one left to get my vote! The real question is WHY would anyone want a political office in the State of Illinois, a state that is beyond broke? Maybe it’s because a political position in Illinois may lead to a federal job – President or prisoner! It’s a perfect example of the 19th century adage, “To the victor belong the spoils.”

Don't Look Up

I am taking it easy today and staying as far away as possible from anything that resembles work. Yesterday, I started my day by taking a shower, the location where I do my best thinking (see blog Sunday, January 24, 2010). When I happened to look up, I couldn’t believe the dust on the wall above the shower. After using a damp cloth to remove this, the wall had two different colors – one on the clean side and one on the dirty side. After I went to the hospital for lab tests, I came home and cleaned Rico’s cage. Then, I started washing all the bathroom walls. By the time this job was finished, I had washed the walls, floors, woodwork, doors, and lights, cleaned the toilet, vanity, and whirlpool tub, washed and dried the rugs and towels, and taken down and cleaned the ceiling fan. Jonathan, you will be glad to know there is no longer any dust in the exhaust fan! You might recall your asking several years ago, “Mom, don’t you ever clean this?” Henri will clean the shower although he always says I am the one responsible for grime in the shower. After cleaning the floor around the toilet, I told Henri about a new bathroom rule. Anyone, male or female, who utilizes Henri’s throne, will have to sit on it, regardless of the reason for using it. Maid Mary, Bogey Bernie’s wife, is a meticulous housekeeper, always cleaning, washing windows, etc., in addition to working at a full-time job. I think our bathroom right now might be more sparkling than Maid Mary’s! Our spotless bathroom should encourage clean thoughts to inspire my blog topics.

For Medicinal Purposes Only

I recently heard on a talk radio program a discussion of a problem that society soon will be facing for the first time – seniors on drugs. This is because of the rapid influx of baby boomers becoming senior citizens. The program referenced illicit drugs as well as prescription drugs. The potheads of the ‘60’s have now turned to the hard stuff, and many other seniors are abusing high-powered pain killers.

The baby boomers were young adults in the 1960’s. This was the decade of protests, flower children, drugs, women’s lib, the sexual revolution, and peace symbols. Although I was the right age to participate in all this, I never had the time or interest. While the hippies in the East were at rock concerts at Woodstock and the hippies in the West were hanging out in Haight-Ashbury, I was in college or teaching in the Midwest. Residing in a dorm at a Catholic girls’ college in St. Louis and later teaching at a conservative high school in Southern Illinois were not conducive to a radical lifestyle. Almost 45 years later, I regret what I missed. I was (and am) very familiar with the taste of beer, but I never smoked pot or knew anyone who did. I certainly don’t want to be a burden to society because of drugs, but my prescriptions for thyroid and cholesterol don’t exactly raise my spirits. It would be a real trip, just once, to experience a true “Rocky Mountain High” rather than just listening to John Denver sing about it! One is never too old, and it’s never too late. Maybe it’s time to get the old gang together for one last Hurrah. I’ll have to put this on my “To Do” list for the future.

Philosophical Musings

A shower stimulates my mental processes. Some of my best thinking takes place in the shower. I believe that is because it blocks my thoughts of how far my body can sag before it hits rock bottom. When I first started the blog the day after Thanksgiving, one of my friends, Donna, asked me what would be the blog subject matter. I told her it was going to be about nothing, similar to Jerry Seinfeld’s description of his show. While taking a shower last night, I thought about the meaning of nothing. If nothing is the absence of something, what is the something that used to be and now is no more? My mind then moved to the concept of zero. Zero is nothing, but it is also the absence of oneness, twoness, threeness, etc. If zero is nothing, why do we have negative numbers? How can something be less than nothing? Getting deeper in thought, I pondered the idea of black and white. Black is the totality of all colors, and white is the absence of all colors. I understand why we can see black, but why are we able to see white which is really nothing? William Shakespeare undoubtedly contemplated these questions because he wrote a romantic comedy entitled Much Ado About Nothing. I’m sure our scientist son, Lance, could resolve this, but my aesthetic mind would probably not be able to comprehend the profundity of his answers. I guess I need to take fewer showers!

Oh, Sheet!

Monday was the traditional wash (pronounced warsh in my St. Louis area dialect) day years ago. Now, wash day can be any day and is sometimes every day. I don’t mind the ordinary laundry, but washing sheets, my task today, is a pain. In the really old days, women would gather at the local watering hole and beat the clothes on rocks. I guess I could still do this in the ditch in our back yard after a good rain. Later, women used lye soap and scrub boards which left raw knuckles. In my younger years, we’d power on the wringer washer in the basement and fill the rinse tubs with water. My father wanted to get an automatic washer and dryer, but my mother would not even entertain the thought. Until she was about 90 years old, this method was good enough for her. Before the advent of dryers, everyone had clotheslines. The ropes had to be strung in the back yard and then elevated with poles so the clothes wouldn’t drag on the ground. The back yard clotheslines were a breeding ground for town gossip among the women of the neighborhood, but the kids were more interested in checking out the underwear. We knew what kind of underwear everyone wore, and we also knew how often they changed by counting the number displayed. The sheets were always white, and there was a special pride in the intensity of whiteness. During the cherry and blackberry seasons, the sheets had polka dots after the birds flew over. Now, I launder the sheets in the privacy of my home without company, gossip, or birds. Making life easier can also make it more boring!

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

Society has encouraged a gross gender inequity between males and females. I am referring to “outward appearance,” not “inner beauty.” Men can meet society’s expectation of acceptability in a 15-minute morning routine to take care of the basics: shave, shower, comb hair, and dress. Women, on the other hand, have a morning ritual that, with touch ups, can continue all day. For some reason, those of us who have been in the working world the greater part of our lives think our public still has standards to which we must aspire. For women, the shower is only the beginning. Hair care involves shampooing, drying, curling, and styling. Buy a wig and save time. Makeup requires even more work. I think permanent make up – eyebrow color, eyeliner, lip color, and false eyelashes – is the answer. It would only take seconds to complete with a brush on eye shadow and blush. Once the hair and makeup are finished, the dressing process is the final fiasco. Do we really need color coordinated clothing with complementary purse and shoes? Why are we doing this? We are creatures of habit and will pursue this inane routine until we die. When we’re residents of the Sleepyville Rest Home in the sunset of our years, we’ll have plenty of time to put on bright red lipstick and blue eye shadow. When I take my “last ride,” I’m going to request “warm” makeup colors. Society expects us to be beautiful to the end! The English poet, John Keats, in his poem "Endymion" expressed it perfectly: "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever...."