Category: Social Anthropology

A seriously big togue

A seriously large togueFishing season opened this weekend past. I did not go, for several reasons unnecessary to list here, but the day did pull out images of fishing seasons of my youth.

Being a boy with little patience for sitting still for long hours, I spent most of my fishing time alone with a homemade spooning rig or a spinning rod and reel set and store-bought lures. Dad, was more into dragging a two-inch piece of silver metal wrapped partially around a strip of mother-of-pearl.

He would go out for hours, trolling – the 5.5 hp Chris Craft Challenger outboard barely ticking over, keeping the boat moving just fast enough to steer as he navigated the triangular circuit, from our house to a curve in the far southern shore, to the island at the north end of the lake and back nearly home.

Continue reading A seriously big togue

A consistency among peoples

In the opening sentence of a letter ostensibly to the leaders of the Iranian government, nearly half the members of the U.S. Senate declared that those leaders “may not fully understand our constitutional system.”

Why do we keep thinking people who aren’t us are, if not stupid, at least ignorant? I’m guessing the leaders of any nation which can produce poets and playwrights, jet fighter pilots, and maybe even nuclear weapons, likely is aware of the governmental machinations of their competition on the world stage.

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Je suis Charlie, je suis du monde

When a pair of state-sponsored bullies attacked and killed journalists and police officers at the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo last week, a large portion of the world picked up banners and declared:

Je suis Charlie Hebdo.

Every time a journalist is murdered, whether by bad guys with guns or bad guys with knives, that is an attack on all of us – on journalists, certainly, but also on those of us who depend on journalists to function as our representatives.

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Corrections and other New Year’s resolutions

Homework assignment: Write on a yellow pad of lined paper, 1,000 times, “I will not reverse the roles of Robert Oppenheimer and Wernher von Braun.”

I do not know why I got their names and roles backward, but when I wrote about my last motorcycle ride of the year, to Fort Ritchie with a friend, I erred. An astute reader wrote to bring it to my attention, and it’s a serious enough error that it deserves correcting.

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They’ll never miss it

There’s been a bit of discussion lately about a lost respect for police. In furtherance of that discussion, consider Exhibit A.

It’s Christmas. You need a Christmas tree, but every tree retailer in the county is sold out.

On the other hand, there are some really nice specimens growing in the national park. Sure, there are laws against cutting trees in the park forest, but you tell yourself it’s really a victimless crime. You take the tree home, decorate it, and gather friends and family to celebrate the festive day.

Continue reading They’ll never miss it

Tastes of Christmas

Candy Cane Peeps! What’s that about?

We found them in the grocery store this week, little white marshmallow chicks, with red flecks of red peppermint. Beside the first box was a slightly more expensive set. I wondered why the extra cost until I saw the bottom of the chicks had been dipped in chocolate.

I have gone through life knowing Peeps are yellow and come for Easter, to be stashed on top of the refrigerator, at the back where they are not easily reached, until they are discovered sometime in late summer, dried to a perfect chewiness. It will not be long, I suppose, until they bear a label proclaiming new Peeps to be “Perfectly Chewy.”

But they did tickle my memories of other Christmas treats.

Continue reading Tastes of Christmas

Questions from Ferguson

Years as a reporter covering courts have taught me most of us can read or watch the news and decide whether the accused is guilty. The most graphic illustration in my memory came at the end of the OJ Simpson murder trial.

For those who may not remember, the former black football and movie star was accused of knifing to death his white ex-wife and her alleged boyfriend, also white. When Simpson’s trial ended in 1995, the jury said he was not guilty.

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Giving thanks

Nephew Greg is downstairs, and his dad and mom and one of his sisters and her two offspring. We were not sure my sister would show up, but her need to aid in the final scenes of another family member has come to its natural conclusion.

My cousin Betty left us Monday morning. She and I were within months of the same age, but from there, we differed some. When we were kids, I lived on the shore of a lake in Maine; she lived in suburban Long Island. I thought skinny-dipping in the lake after a long day’s work was a relaxing experience; Betty could never see the point in living in a place so secluded one could get away with even thinking of skinny-dipping.

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Hey, I turned out OK! Not!

Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice knocked his wife unconscious in an elevator, and from the way the case was handled one might easily think his major offense was doing it where a camera would catch him at it.

For messing up his girlfriend, Rice got a two-game suspension. A new NFL policy would get a four-game suspension for a player caught messing himself up with human growth hormones.

Continue reading Hey, I turned out OK! Not!

Two families, two empty chairs

I‘ve been working on these thoughts since a couple nights ago, when our son was perusing his smartphone and reported a police officer had been ambushed and killed. My first thoughts were several, wrapped in “if you felt a driving need to kill someone, probably a cop was not the best choice.”

A fellow columnist led me to Cpl. Bryon Dickson’s Facebook page. Dickson’s profile picture is of Abraham Lincoln, possibly referring to an interest of Dickson’s, and possibly to avoid putting his picture online for bad guys to use to identify him. When your job is putting bad people where they cannot injure other citizens, you sometimes make enemies for whom vengeance is a serious mission. Not many, but it only takes one.

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Stork is a 3-letter word

Stork deliversI liked Joan Rivers. In “Tonight Show” doses, she was hilarious, and made Dad guffaw. Now she’s gone. The world keeps spinning, but there’s a hole where Joan Rivers stood.

She was 81, and it was her turn. One day, it will be mine. A friend’s brother visited two weeks ago and was the picture of health. He went home and had a heart attack. The doctors opened him up like the little guy on the TV series “Extant,” fiddled with some of his plumbing and circuitry, and David is doing just fine. It wasn’t his turn.

Last week I watched the NBC and ABC “documentaries” about Rivers. Continue reading Stork is a 3-letter word

Beauty leads to love leads to beauty

Dahlias on the stem
Downtown is eerily quiet. The tourists have gone home, and there is plenty of parking. It’s a cliché to say the season is changing, when truth is the seasons never stop changing as the planet on its tilted celestial spindle angles its forehead toward and then away from the warming sun. After a couple weeks of denial, I finally must acknowledge that the seeming storm clouds blanketing me at 4:30 in the afternoon are really sundown moved up from it’s temporary 9 p.m. time slot.

In similar manner, morning comes a few hours later, and though a short time ago I was able to read in bed without the intrusion of artificial light, now there is insufficient illumination on the page and I am faced with the choice of getting up or remaining there in the comfort of my best friend breathing beside me in the unwaning dawn.

A fellow named Socrates noted beauty leads us to love, Continue reading Beauty leads to love leads to beauty

“Not all those who wander are lost”

Stairway to unknown placesThe title quote comes from a poem by J.R.R. Tolkein, but it is something I knew without knowing I knew long before reading the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Many of us who enjoy “nature” go hiking. Down Under, I’m told, Australians go on a walkabout. I always have preferred to aimlessly wander even on seemingly well-defined pathways, with little or no clear destination in mind.

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Coming up: all new episodes of “Blood, Brawn and …”

I thought I’d write this week about nature. Maybe about birds, or about the compost pile we’ve started behind my home by digging up and chipping a pile of brush, beneath which we found tons of worms.

But she won’t stop haunting me, the 25-year-old lass, twinkling blue eyes, light-brown-sugar hair pouring in almost-ruly curls around her face, her young body scattered …

Continue reading Coming up: all new episodes of “Blood, Brawn and …”

We’re all House Sparrows

A few months ago, a pair of English House Sparrows began guarding what they intended would eventually be the place they raised their offspring. Like most of us, they chased away interlopers, including the bluebirds we human yard owners hoped would make a home there.

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Thanks, from the heart

One of my favorite quotes is from Will Rogers: “Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know why I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.”

Like an old car, I have parts that don’t work as well as they once did. Two weeks ago I visited the doctor for a quarterly check to see that my parts were working, if not as they should, at least not worse than they did three months earlier.

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Silly question, silly answer

John's thumbnail(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 5/2/2014)

During a question and answer  period on Russian Television, Russian President Vladimir Putin took one from Edward Snowden – famous in this country for revealing that our National Security Agency has been collecting information on all, or most, of us. Snowden asked Putin whether the Russian government spies on it’s citizens.

Putin was shocked at the suggestion. Of course not, he said. We have laws against such activities.

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Prevention and preparedness: The pillars of SAAFE-T

Staci's thumbnailGuest column by Staci L. George

Be proactive, not simply reactive.

That is the idea that ignited Todd Rosenthal’s establishment of SAAFE-T – an acronym for Situational Awareness & Assailant Force Evasion Training. It was founded in February 2013 and is based in Annapolis.

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Grandkids are our reward

John's thumbnail(Published in the Gettysburg Times, 4/11/2014)

There’s something about the excited cry of a three-year-old calling “Papa John !” across the yard – or the living room. I am still warmed by the memory Granddaughter Kass running from behind the house as I pulled up, singing my name over and over as she approached my vehicle.

Lately, the warm feeling has been instilled by Grandson Peter demanding similar attention. He wants help with something, or wants to show me something, or sometimes is just happy to see me appear.

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