When I started this blog [Note - this was originally written for posting at the Miss Otis blog site], I named it after our beloved family dog, Otis.  Unfortunately, she is no longer with us.  (Wait, you named a girl Otis? - ed.  Yes, I named a female dog Otis, but that’s another story for another day.)  But we were luck to have her for 16 years, she was a sweet, sweet girl and we loved her very much.  It’s been almost two years since she died, and I still can’t find the words to express how much I miss her every day.

Our kids are old enough that they remember Otis, and they are starting to make more and more noise about getting another pet.  Unfortunately, they’ve started pushing for a cat.

For months now we’ve been having occasional discussions with Jordan about her intense, little girl dream of getting a cat.  “Mommy and daddy are really not ‘cat’ people, honey,” we explain.  “We’ve never had a cat, and have always had dogs.  And right now we’re not really sure we have enough time to raise a puppy and give it all of the attention and love that a dog needs.”

Round and round it goes, with Jordan managing to get acknowledgments from us that a cat would not be as burdensome from the standpoint of time and monitoring like a puppy.  And then, heading into the Independence Day weekend, Christine shocked me by asking, out of the earshot of the kids, if maybe we should go to the animal shelter and see about getting a cat.

Again we went back and forth, but eventually our thinking was that Jordan would be an excellent pet owner, and she really loves animals, so maybe this would make sense.  So, on the Friday before Independence Day, we took a family trip to the Princeton animal shelter to find out about adopting a kitten.

It turned out that there were 3 kittens at the shelter, with another 20 or more on the way from a recent cat-hoarding discovery.  All the rest of the cats were full grown, but the kittens were all out of their cage and playing when we went in to visit.

After a lengthy discussion with one of the shelter volunteers, we made the decision to fill out an application to adopt the grey kitten with black stripes.  All three kittens were domestic short hairs, and the other 2 were black and from the same litter.

On leaving the shelter that day, our understanding was that by early the following week, after our references had been checked, we would likely be making arrangements to pick up our new kitten.

But as we sat down to lunch at home after the animal shelter visit, Christine shocked me yet again by telling me that, if we were going to get one cat, maybe we should just get 2 so they would have each other for company.  I half-joking asked if maybe we should just take all 3 of the kittens and be done with it, but Christine was serious, and after another discussion, I called the shelter and amended our application to request 2 kittens.

The kids, of course, were excited about all of this, and I was ok with our decision.  Cats are not my thing, but I don’t dislike them.  And if we had a cat or two in the house, I’m sure I would find some redeeming qualities to enjoy.

But by Sunday night following Independence Day, Christine was ready to surprise me again by telling me she was having really serious doubts about the entire “cat” concept.  Never having had cats, we were both a little concerned about having a “cat odor” house.  And Christine realized that with swim lessons, swim meets, and other things going on, she wasn’t even sure if there was an evening of the coming week when she would have time to pick up the cats from the shelter.  So was it really a good idea to do this?

Then we had to consider the ramifications of telling the kids that, despite the shelter visit , application, adding a second cat, etc., we changed our minds and are now NOT getting a cat, much less 2 cats.

Heading into Monday we figured we had a little time to think things over and make a final decision.  But when my cell phone rang at 9:10 a.m. and it was the shelter telling me our application had been approved and we could make arrangements to pick up the cats, I was in a little bit of a bind.  So I told the lady at the shelter the truth - we’d been thinking very hard over the weekend about the whole thing, and I wasn’t really sure what our final decision was going to be.  Perhaps that’s a not uncommon thing for animal shelters to deal with, for various reasons, as she seemed unfazed and told me to call them when we decided.

That night and the next morning, we talked things through again, and Christine did a nice job of easing the kids into the possibility of not getting a cat so that they were not on the verge of melting down if we decided that we should not get a cat.

And then on Tuesday, Christine called the shelter to tell them we changed our minds and were not going to be adopting a cat after all.

So all of this is good from Otis’ perspective as a dog, right?  We’re still not cat people and life is good?

Largely, yes.  But I was then greeted with Christine’s revelation that maybe the thing to do is to wait until the end of summer, after we’ve taken vacation, maybe even after school starts, and we adopt a puppy.

So now Christine’s unstoppable force of wanting a small, hypo-allergenic dog that won’t shed meets my immovable object of getting another “real” dog, with a solid “thump” to its chest when you pet it, and that’s large enough to pull a wagon or act as a horse for a 2 year old.

We’ll see where it all leads.  If there is such a thing as a 30-35 pound non-shedding dog that has a tail and doesn’t have long fur/hair that requires grooming beyond basic and occasional brushing, I’d sure like to have that in my back pocket as a bargaining position.  Maybe I better start doing some research....

A friend emailed me to ask my thoughts on the idea of requiring congresscritters to read the bills on which they vote.  My early morning musings on same:

The boston.com link didn't work for some reason, but I take it you're referring to Jeff Jacoby's editorial, which I found and skimmed through.

First, it's sad that we're at the point where it has to be proposed to make a law to require elected officials to do their job.  On that basis alone, I have a bit of a problem - if a rep is not doing his or her job, the voters should kick them out next chance they get.  A pledge shouldn't be needed.

Second, if I were serious about efforts like the one Jacoby is writing about, I wouldn't make it a pledge because those are worthless.  These are politicians we're talking about - to paraphrase one of them and apply her words more appropriately, they lie to us all the time.  How many of the clowns who signed "pledges" to term limit themselves are still in DC?

So rather than a pledge, I'd try to do something like get a member of congress to add an amendment to every single bill that comes up for a vote that says that by voting for the bill, a member of congress affirms under penalty of perjury that he or she has read it and understands it.  Ideally, I'd also like to put something in there that says they can point to the specific text of the Constitution that supports the power / authority that is the subject of the legislation and make them do it, and provide that if they are subject to immediate removal from Congress and a lifetime ban on holding public office, voting for public office, and being involved in any way with the fundraising for or election of any public officeholder if they are found to have violated the "read, understand, Constitutional authority" provisions.

Of course, that's completely unworkable in the real world, but if something can be done that would completely tie Congress and the legislative branch in knots so that they can't do further damage to the country, I'm more than happy to see that happen.  As I've commented in many online discussions I've had with people over the past couple of years, I'm at the point of wanting to see every single federally elected official voted out of office every election cycle, forever, and having every single one of them be subject to IRS audits, forever.  But that's just me.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes  which impel them to the separation.”

So begins our nation’s Declaration of Independence, by which the Founding Fathers set forth their intent to create a new and independent nation.  And for all the talk about the Constitution and political disputes between the current major parties about what the Constitution means, I think the Declaration of Independence is a potentially much more important document for our current times.

But before we get there, what does any of this have to do with Farrah Fawcett?  Well, admittedly it may be a bit of a stretch to invoke her name in the context of the quest for liberty.  Still, her unfortunate passing last week was what inspired this minor rambling.  And how could a woman known for her swimsuit pinup posters and fabulous hair be at all related to the Declaration of Independence?

Because, while I came of age right as Farrah Fawcett became an iconic figure on Charlie’s Angels, what caught my attention in the biographies chronicling her life was the middle, possibly largely forgotten, portion of her career.

In the early to mid-1980s, Farrah Fawcett did some creditable work as a serious actress.  She was hailed for her roles in two movies about domestic violence and violence against women - “The Burning Bed” and “Extremities.”  Both movies, as I recall, were well received critically, and Ms. Fawcett was praised for her portrayals of abused women who had been pushed to the point of having to act to protect themselves.

And that’s what made me think about the nation today and the relationship between the local, state and federal governments and the citizens of this country.  I understand that a lot of life is like the probably apocryphal story about the woman from The New Yorker who couldn’t understand how Richard Nixon won the 1972 presidential election because she didn’t know anyone who voted for him.  So my 25+ year shunning of network television news and disdain for any news story from the New York Times or Washington Post that is in any way relevant to law, politics and government means that I find myself reading what was originally termed the “alternative” media, which now is easily accessible online.  As such, I probably find myself isolated, information-wise, in much the same way that the liberals in NYC and the Washington beltway are.

Still, the reports of increasing unrest across the nation in response to the current economic disturbances and the ridiculously out-sized and overly centralized government “plans” to make things right gives me some hope that maybe, just maybe, we’re on the verge of the citizenry waking up and taking a stand against government action, activism, expansion and intrusion into our lives.  Hence, maybe we’re on the verge of fighting back the way Farrah Fawcett did in “The Burning Bed” and “Extremities.”

Just this week, with the passage in the House of Representatives of legislation purportedly aimed at addressing “climate change” (f.k.a. “global warming”), it seems the elected officials in Washington are setting the course for more governmental control and higher costs for taxpayers.  One particularly disturbing element of the legislation I saw noted this week was a requirement for private homeowners to retrofit their homes to comply with federal environmental and energy-efficiency standards when they put their house on the market.  [If you’re interested: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjQzNDM0NjVhNDA3ZjM3MjllZDZjNGMyMTU3NzM3OTU=]

This type of stuff (the legislation, not the blog post) is lunacy.  And it will only get worse with the current administration and heavy liberal Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress.

And we get no relief from over-reaching government officials and bureaucrats at the state and local levels.  We moved to New Jersey over six years ago, and instantly saw our property taxes increase to six times what they had been in Delaware for approximately the same size house and property.

Every year we’re told by the charlatans who run for office, regardless of political party, that they are going to do something to “fix” the outrageous taxes, and especially the property taxes, in New Jersey.

Every year all I see is our property taxes, and taxes in general, going up.  And as a taxpayer / consumer of government services, I certainly can’t say that I see how I’m getting additional services and improvements for all the money that keeps pouring into the state’s coffers.

So I find myself on this Independence Day wondering what I can do to help bring about, essentially, a Declaration of Independence on the part of the citizens against the current government agencies and office-holders, and as much as anything, the major political parties.

I have never contributed money to a politician’s campaign, nor have I ever put a candidate’s bumper sticker or magnet on my car, or sign in my yard.  Given what I see as both parties’ disregard for the fundamental principles of how our government was designed to work and its role in our nation, I don’t see why I should support them financially, and only occasionally support party candidates with my votes, and even then very begrudgingly and with nose held tightly as I struggle to choose the “least worst” option.

But maybe the current Tea Party movement and online organization and communication will help people who are as frustrated with our country’s government, at all levels, as I am.  Certainly I hope that winds up being the case, but I’m still very doubtful.  [Again, if you’re interested:  http://www.teapartypatriots.org]

Months ago when I was writing more regularly on Townhall, I had some conversations / exchanges with other Townhall bloggers about a fundamental problem that conservatives face - how to fight the expansion of government with the promise to do nothing.  Both major parties have fallen into the trap I believe Madison, and likely others, identified - they have decided they can tax one person to promise something to another, and they are getting the votes of those who believe they will “get something.”

No candidate I’ve been aware of has been willing to stand up and say, “Enough!  If I’m elected, here are the first X programs I am going to eliminate and costs I am going to cut.  After those are eliminated, we’re going to keep going with program eliminations and budget cuts until we’ve pared it back to only those government programs specifically in line with the actual words of the United States Constitution.  The government is not a charitable organization - but we recognize the need for those organizations and will do everything we can to help private charities assume as much of the social welfare state programs as possible with X years.  But we will not continue these programs indefinitely just because no private charity appears ready, willing or able to take over.  There are just some things that government, as set forth in the Constitution, is not empowered or intended to do.”

THAT’S the kind of candidate I could start to listen to.  But it’s going to be very difficult for that kind of candidate to compete against the Candy Man candidates put forth by the current parties who promise that government will fix whatever ails you.

I hope that the Tea Party attendees are thinking somewhere along the lines of what I am, but only time will tell.  I plan to keep my ear to the ground, my eyes open, and try to stay optimistic that the flame of individual liberty still burns in enough of my fellow citizens that our current course can be reversed.

Heck, Farrah was from Texas.  I think she might even have agreed with a little of this.

Last week I mentioned having logged over 200,000 miles in my trusty and beloved Subaru Outback.  (“Nice try getting back in my good graces!  Did that trampy German sportswagen throw you over and now you think I’ll just take you back?” - Subie.  Hey, I have to try to placate the car somehow.)  With all that car time on my long commutes, I’ve heard a lot of radio programming.  And in that programming, some of the commercials are memorable, not because of any intent, desire, need, etc.  to use the products and or services advertised, (Why the need for a disclaimer? - ed.  That’ll be clear soon enough.) but because the ads are either so bad they grate on my nerves every time I hear them, or I wonder what’s going on with a lot of other people in the radio show’s target demographic, or because I find myself wondering about how the ads were written and produced.

Annoying Ads

So what in the world am I talking about?  Well, as to the first category of ads, those that annoy me every time I hear them, if you have ever heard the “Ty Coughlin” radio commercials for his online marketing system, you may know what I’m talking about.  He, and I will play along for now with the notion that it really is Ty Coughlin on the commercials, talks in his ads about being a beach bum in Hawaii with some kind of internet marketing program that will allow you to make thousands of dollars a month from the comfort of your home by doing next to nothing.  There is, naturally, a web site, which if memory serves is www.50kamonth.com (Is that really the web address? - ed.  I have no idea if that is how the web site is spelled, and if iWeb turns that into a link when I post this and you click it and it goes somewhere completely different, I had nothing to do with it).

The first ads I heard for this guy and his “system” were annoying because they tried to use the fiction of not being a scripted and produced ad.  They start out like a recording of a conversation that gets interrupted, with laughter and the guy who apparently turns out to be Ty Coughlin asking when they will be ready for him to start the commercial.  When told that they have already started, Ty feigns some mock annoyance and begins his pitch.

A later ad was particularly bad because it sounded to me like the exact same guy from the first commercial, who presumably is Ty Coughlin, but this time he was doing a testimonial on having used the Ty Coughlin internet marketing system and even got to meet Ty, and found that he’s a “really cool dude.”  Well, it’s good to know that Ty thinks of himself as a really cool dude, but not so great that apparently the premise of the commercial is that you’ve never heard any of the prior commercials so you don’t realize it’s Ty talking about himself.  Of even worse, you heard the earlier ads and are not sharp enough to have noticed it’s all the same guy talking about himself!

What’s Going On In The World I Don’t Know About Ads

The second category of ads that always confuse me are those for male prostate pills and medicines.  I think the ads are usually for something called beta prostate, but I’m too lazy right now to try to dogpile it online.  (dogpile? - ed.  Yes, it aggregates various search engines to perform online searching, so I can trick myself into thinking I’m not using Google even though that’s one of the aggregated engines.  Why not use Google? - ed.  Because I think Google is just slightly evil and creepy.)

The thing that gets me with these ads is the casual reference to a comparison of the effectiveness of the product being advertised to the use of something called saw palmetto tablets.  (Is that really how you spell ‘saw palmetto’? - ed.  Yes, that I did dogpile.)  And every time I hear those ads, I think, “What the (*# is ‘saw palmetto’ and how does everyone else listening to this sports talk radio program know what the (*&# it is?!”

I’m willing to concede that the prospect of taking one tablet of whatever is being advertised is probably better than taking 50 ‘saw palemetto’ tablets, whatever they are, but it doesn’t make me any happier or better informed after hearing the commercial.

Am I Reading Too Much Into This Ad?

Finally, if you’ve ever heard ads for the Boston Medical Group and its Boston Method, perhaps you’ve had some of the same questions I have about the commercials.  If you haven’t heard the ads, they are for a clinic for the treatment of male “intimacy” issues such as not enough lead in the pencil or what the ads delicately refer to as “performance issues.”  (Oh, THAT’S why the earlier disclaimer! - ed.  Yes, exactly.)

As an initial matter, I’m always a little confused about the clinic’s claims that in most cases they will show you results during your first office visit.  Given what they seem to be trying to help their patients with, I’m not sure I really want to be thinking about exactly how these guys are able to demonstrate results in the clinic on your first visit to get help with an itchy trigger finger, so to speak.  It always makes me wonder if they are dangerously close to the line in advertising for the sale of sexual services.

But the really interesting part of the commercials are the writing and pacing of the dialogue, especially given the nature of the services they are trying to sell.  When the narrator gives the listeners the clinic’s toll free phone number, he first gives the number speaking quite rapidly.  Then he immediately says something like, “Wait, slower, 1- 800.whatever.”  I have to think this is a deliberate allusion to the whole concept of someone getting over-excited, moving too quickly, and, well, you get the picture.  So in a sense I think it’s a very clever way of getting a message across that they understand the problem some listeners are having and that they know how to help with it.

Or maybe I’m really overthinking the whole commercial.

The car industry and the U.S. auto manufacturers have been in the news a lot recently with the apparent / likely collapse of Chrysler and General Motors.  Cars have also been an interest closer to the home front for us as we start thinking about whether we’re at the point of needing to plan to replace at least one of our vehicles.  My beautiful wife’s 2001 SUV has performed exceedingly well, but as we move past the 100,000 mile plateau, we’re aware that the car won’t last forever.  Similarly, my 2003 wagon has been a model of modern engineering and long-term performance through my long highway commute.  I’ve now passed 200,000 miles, with the overwhelming majority of those being cruising miles at highway speed.

So as we started thinking about cars in a more personal way, I started reminiscing about cars I have owned and/or driven throughout my life.  The old commercial used to say, “Sooner or later, you’ll own General,” for General Tires.  I’m not sure that’s actually been the case for me despite the many tire brands I can recall having purchased, but I’ve certainly driven or owned a variety of different makes of cars.

Some families perhaps have an established loyalty to a particular car maker.  My Uncle Don and Aunt Judy drove Lincoln-Mercuries and Pontiacs for years, and still have a Lincoln in their garage.  They also managed to beat Pontiac to the punch in switching to a Buick before Pontiac’s demise.

My grandmother drove Oldsmobiles as far as I can remember, and my grandfather drove at least a couple of Chevrolets that I can recall.

In our household, there didn’t seem to be quite the same car maker loyalty, for whatever reason.  My earliest memory of my mother’s car was her Ford Cortina wagon.  Mostly, my memory of the car is of the cigarette lighter, as I had to test whether the red coil that popped out really was hot.  The memory of the seared tip of my index finger tells me that it was.

After the Cortina, mom had a ’74 Super Beetle, which was with us for quite a while.  It was the car both my sister and I learned to drive in, and it made it until I graduated from high school in ’83.  I even got to drive it to school my junior and senior years, much to my sister’s dismay at the time.

Dad’s cars were company cars, but he and Papa were the company, so he had more flexibility than most when it came to choosing a vehicle.  I know he had a station wagon when I was little, but I’m not sure what kind it was.  My guess would be a Chevrolet, but I’ll have to confirm that with him some other time.  The first car of his that I have specific memories of is his first VW Bus.  He bought that I think not long after Mom’s Super Beetle joined the family.  The first Bus gave way to a replacement Bus a few years later, and was another vehicle on which I learned to drive.

In college, my sister, and then I, inherited a ’73 Plymouth Valiant.  My friends and I called it The Staff Car, as it was Army green inside and out.  It had been my Aunt Bab’s car, and it definitely looked like something a little old lady would drive.  There was no radio, and to get cool air circulating, you had to open the box vents under the dashboard.  Still, it ran great, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s still out there somewhere being driven by a high school student today.  It was over 10 years old and only had about 27,000 miles on it when it became my ride.

Upon preparing for college graduation, the Staff Car was replaced by a Honda Accord hatchback.  It was blue, and cute, and ran like a top.  Right until I came over a hill in Ohio, was surprised by a traffic signal, and wound up running a red light and getting hit by cross traffic.  Fortunately, the only casualty of the incident was the Accord.

To replace the Honda, another VW came along, this time a Jetta GLI.  It was a little quirky with its hand crank moon roof, but with the GLI engine it really had room at the top end for highway passing.  The miles started to pile up, and with 2 water pump replacements already having been done, I traded the Jetta for a Mazda Protege in order to have some reassurance that I could make long drives between upstate New York, Indiana, and New Jersey.

The Mazda was another car that ran like a top.  It’s only flaw was that it seemed to be invisible, as it was backed and/or run into four or five times in broad daylight.  The champagne color was great at hiding dirt, but apparently it hid the entire vehicle!  Still, none of the fender benders were serious, and the car was still with me when Christine and I were preparing to bring home our first child.

Like all expectant first-time parents, we sought out a vehicle that would protect our newborn like a tank.  Enter the Jeep Grand Cherokee!  It was sufficiently tank-like that it wiped out at least one deer with only minor damage to the front fender panel.  Then when we moved to New Jersey and my days of long, highway commuting began, the Jeep had to be eliminated in favor of something that had better fuel economy.

That brings us all the way to the current Subaru Outback, which has been humming along the northeast corridor for over 6 years now.  I’ve been extremely happy with the car and how it has performed, and was hoping that Subaru would bring their new diesel engine to the U.S. later this year so if I want or need to modernize, I could get even better gas mileage.  Alas, Subaru informed me Friday that there will be no diesel in their 2010 vehicle lineup.

So as I started to think about my vehicle future, I also started to think about my vehicle past.  And it occurred to me that, while I really have liked and been happy with my Subaru, and my wife’s Acura has been a rock-solid vehicle, there’s still something about a Volkswagen that elicits a different, more emotional response and feeling of familiarity in me.  It’s a little like Tom Hanks in “Sleepless in Seattle” when he’s talking about how he knew his wife was the one for him.  He was just taking her hand to help her out of a car, and it felt like coming home.

That’s at least a little like the feeling I get when I checked out the Volkswagen Jetta TDI Sportwagen.  There’s a certain level of familiarity and comfort to the whole layout and feel of the car that just feels and looks “right” to me.

I feel a little guilty even thinking about a different car.  My Subaru doesn’t deserve to be thrown over after all the faithful service it’s given me.  And our hope is that it will give us at least another year or so of solid performance.  With continued maintenance, there’s no reason that it won’t.  But when the time comes, I know I’m going to be tempted to switch.

I tweeted earlier this week about identifying with Homer Simpson in the episode where he finds his long-lost brother, who it turns out is an automobile tycoon.  The brother decides that Homer is somehow representative of the “common man” and what such a potential customer wants in a new car.  So he puts Homer in charge of designing the kind of car HE wants the car companies to make.  Of course, Homer winds up with a wildly impractical design that bankruptcy the company.

But there’s a part of me that understands the desire to be able to take the various parts of cars you’ve had that you really like and somehow make the “perfect” car for you.  My summary of the car specs would include the Subaru all-wheel-drive system, a VW air-cooled diesel engine, and the seating capacity of a Mazda5, with either a third row, or even better a rear-facing flip-up third seat in a small to mid-size wagon.

And of course, the cockpit and main body would be done by VW.  Just so it would feel like home.

UPDATE:  I received an email from Uncle Don commenting on the brief recitation of the history of family cars.  He adds the following valuable contribution that is both automotive and, in its own way, romantic:

Your Dad's first auto (purchased with his own W.F. Lilly earnings) was, I think, a navy blue Buick Skylark station wagon.  Of course, this information is suspect since it comes from a grey-hired old man who wears glasses and doesn't hear too well.  At any rate, it was a sharp vehicle and snowed Marianne Schlosser so that she was wiling to change her name to Lilly.

Thanks for the additional history!

“Possession is nine tenths of the law!”

It’s a schoolyard maxim that children learn very early.  From nearly their first words, toddlers will tell you that whatever object has captured their short attention span is “mine!”

When they get bigger and learn to share, there are always certain things that still are irrevocably “mine” and not for anyone else.  A blanket.  A stuffed animal.  Usually something special and comforting.

Later there are hand-me-downs and gifts, garage sale items and numerous objects that make up life’s detritus that come in and out of your possession.  But they are still “yours” while you have them.

But there are many things we have in our homes that somehow are never really “ours.”  They are forever and always associated with, and in our minds belong to, someone else.  We are merely the caretakers of those items while we have them.

If you don’t have a somewhat direct connection to the person who had the item before you, I don’t think you ever develop the sense that it’s anyone’s but your own.  There are plenty of things we have from antique stores, garage sales, and other second-hand purchases.  But those are different.  Their history is separate and lost to us, and so it becomes ours the moment it comes into our possession.

Perhaps if a short “biography” of items were written and passed down with things, then everything would have its history preserved in some fashion.  At least within the family, it would be an interesting genealogical / archeological exercise.  But once something is made part of the wider world, its history begins all over.

The juicer in our kitchen cupboards is a good example.*  My grandmother, so the story goes, squeezed fresh orange juice every morning with that juicer.  In the days before orange juice was a frozen or pasteurized commodity, if you wanted orange juice you squeezed oranges for it.  It’s a vintage, “Made in the U.S.A.” item from Wearever.  Simple, efficient and a great breakfast treat with eggs, sausage and toast.  It’s been in our kitchen our entire married lives.  And it’s not ours.

Nana, my grandmother passed away years ago.  But it’s still “Nana’s juicer.”  And it’s not anywhere near the only thing that bears such a distinction in our vocabulary and our minds.  There’s Nana’s waffle iron - for some reason the only waffle iron in family history to have the ability to produce waffles that are not stuck like wallpaper paste to the cooking surface.  Brushed lightly with oil before each pour of batter, and you get tremendous waffles every time.

We also have “Mamie’s spoons” on the kitchen counter.  My great grandmother, Grandma Straub, always had silver teaspoons available for use on the table.  They’re monogrammed with an “E” for some reason (it was not one of her initials, but must have been someone in the family’s).  She also has been gone for many years, but still, those are “her spoons.”

Interestingly, the stack of well used iron skillets in the cupboard are a mixture of Nana’s and Grandma Straub’s skillets.  I wouldn’t have the vaguest idea how to “cure” a new iron skillet, but I know that many decades of use by Nana and Grandma Straub preparing things cooked in lard and butter have made them ideal for use.  And every time I pull one out, I remember them both.

It’s not just the women in the family who have passed things down and preserved their ownership of things.  Every day I wear a watch of indeterminate vintage, another “Made in America” item from many years ago.  It was my grandfather’s, and I can still picture him wearing it when I put it on.  I’ve changed the band since he wore it, but “his band” is still in my, oops, “Nana’s” nightstand.  The small cherry chest of drawers next to the bed isn’t mine either.

Even before I get to the point of putting on a watch for work, I use my other grandfather’s razor to shave.  I don’t remember him because he died when I was very little, but Grandma Schlosser saved everything, including his razors.  When I decided several years ago to try using the pre-modern technology of a single, double-sided safety razor rather than the disposables of the modern era, the vintage Gillette from Grandma Schlosser’s medicine cabinet found its way to me.  It’s possible that a decade from now, I’ll try to teach Ben to shave using Grandpa Schlosser’s razor.

There are so many things like those in the house and in our lives - sometimes not just objects but things like recipes.  And it’s not a phenomenon particular to our family.  Our good friends, Hope and Darren, always refer to the dishes in their cupboard as “Darren’s grandparents’ dishes,” and at least a couple of times a year, we make “Hope’s Grandmother’s quiche.”

I suppose there’s some irony in the fact that things we have now that we consider to be someone else’s will only become “ours” in the minds of our children and grandchildren.  Should Nana’s waffle iron continue to turn out chocolate chip waffles as Jordan and Ben grow up, move out and begin their own lives, then someday years from now, after I’m gone, it will become “Grampa’s waffle iron.”  “I remember how he used to sprinkle mini chocolate chips into the batter before he closed the lid,” Jordan will tell her children.

For the next 40-50 years, though, it will still be, along with so many other things we have in our possession, effectively “on loan” from someone else.  So despite Robert Fulghum’s book title (and the title of this post) I guess there are some things we do learn after kindergarten.

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* - The juicer in question is pictured and captioned at our sister site, http://web.me.com/emlilly/

I don’t remember exactly when I learned to ride a bike, or the process of learning to ride a two wheeler both with and without training wheels.  I’m pretty sure my first two wheeler was a red Schwinn Sting-Ray from Uncle’s bike store in downtown Elkhart.  It had a long, banana-style seat of the kind that I see making a small comeback among kids’ bikes today.

It was probably the Sting-Ray I was riding when, shirtless, I tore down the Nappanee overpass that connected the Mary Daly Elementary School with West Side Junior High at top speed, hit the dirt trail at the bottom of the ramp, and promptly flipped over the handlebars and slid through dirt, embedding many pebbles in my back.  It must have hurt, and I likely cried, but I don’t recall how old I was for that incident.

Later, in 5th grade, I had another slightly memorable bike accident on another Schwinn - the Streak.  I bought a black Schwinn Heavy-Duti (see photo above), also from my uncle, to use on my paper route.  It had huge wire baskets on the back, and even now, 30+ years later, the Streak, minus its baskets, is in the garage and rides well.  But on a fall day in 5th grade, I went to make a turn at the start of my paper route, hit a small patch of sand in the street, and promptly had the bike slide out from under me, causing me to crash to the pavement, breaking my thumb, and spilling papers everywhere.  The break was painful, but minor - a hairline break that required only a splint.  The point is, I know falling off a bike can hurt.  But I learned how to ride a bike, and still enjoy doing it.

For example, one of the nice things about living in a small village is being close to things, like the kids’ school, the barber shop, the bakery, etc.  An additional amenity in Lawrenceville is the Lawrenceville Swimming Association - a pool only three houses away from the elementary school where village residents can sign up for memberships.

The village, pool and elementary school are less than a ten minute walk from our house, so my plan last summer, as gas prices shot toward $4 a gallon, was to use our bikes for as many things as possible.  Trips to the farmer’s market, the pool and the barber shop were all things we can do on bikes.

To help facilitate the bike-friendly concept, we added a third wheel trailer to attach to my bike (Thanks again, Gammy & Papa, that was a great garage sale find!).  Jordan has done a great job in the “stoker” position on what’s become the back of my bike.

Of course, with two kids, we then needed to figure out what to do with Ben.  He was too big for a toddler bike seat, so through a little diligence and a little luck, I found a Papoose Caboose two wheel trailer at a second-hand store.  It’s designed to carry up to 100 pounds of kids and/or equipment, so we made many trips last summer with Ben and any pool gear in the trailer, and Jordan on the third wheel.

In theory, we can maintain this arrangement for most, if not all, of this summer.  Ben plus the beach towels and assorted swim gear, or fresh produce on Sundays, is nowhere near the 100 pound limit for the trailer.  But it would be much easier on us, and especially Christine, not to have to haul the Papoose Caboose.  If Jordan were to ride her bike, I could transition Ben over to the third wheel and we’d be all set.

Thinking this was a great idea, I started to mention to Jordan this morning, while we walked down to the opening day of the farmer’s market, that it would be a great day to practice riding her bike.  From her reaction, you would have thought I suggested making a bonfire out of every stuffed animal and American Girl item in the house.  I got the message in no uncertain terms that she was not interested in learning to ride a bike, perhaps ever.

She certainly has the physical coordination and balance to ride a bike, but she’s scared she might get hurt and so she’s refusing to try.  Jordan has a great girlie bike that she picked out herself (thanks Brian and Erika!!) and is thrilled to have, and as I had time last summer being between jobs, I was all set to help Jordan become as independently mobile as an 8 year old can be in today’s society.  We’re nowhere near ready to think about letting Jordan ride off on her bike to the mini-mart over a mile away.  But I can at least imagine letting her have the freedom to ride to her cousin’s house less than a half-mile away.

But Jordan has built up the few falling off incidents she has suffered last summer into a fear of near-phobic proportions.  Christine had what I hoped would be a project-saving idea in proposing that we take Jordan and her bike out into the large, mowed common area in the neighborhood so she could practice riding where the consequences of falling off would not be so severe.  No dice.  Jordan is sure that falling off on the grass will be very painful, especially if the bike falls on her, so she is still refusing to try.

So do I try to persuade a headstrong 8 year old to do something she’s afraid will hurt her?  Do I wait for her to decide it’s time to learn on her own?  Do I try to bribe her with the promise of something she might find valuable enough to entice her to face her fears?  Do I dangle the possibility of being able to ride on her own to her cousin’s house in hopes that will get her to reconsider?

I never imagined that getting a kid to ride a bike would be a challenge from a motivational standpoint.  My guess is, by the end of this summer we’ll have tried all of the ideas in the preceding paragraph and more.  But if the end result is that Jordan has the ability to hop on her bike and pedal around the neighborhood at will, I’ll take it.

It’s Father’s Day, and unfortunately, I have dropped the ball in sending a gift to my dad.  Now, it’s probably fair to say that, much like his father before him, my dad is a tough person for whom to purchase gifts.  Not because he’s ungrateful or critical of gifts.  Far from it.  It’s really just a minor by-product of both heredity and having lived a good life and being able to have the things you need or may just want.

So if dad needs something, or if he gets a rare urge to indulge a whim, he’s fortunate in these economic times to still have the financial ability to buy for himself any of the kinds of things a child may think of sending as a Father’s Day Gift.

Still, my lovely wife and I do try to come up with ideas of things that we may be able to find that he would like.  Sometimes small, kitschy things that may go with the house and my parents’ general decor.  And this year, at Easter, we were actually way ahead of the game when we realized that we had found something that would work well as a Father’s Day idea.

For Easter, we went with Christine’s family to Lambertville, NJ, an artsy community about a half hour northwest of Lawrenceville.  There are many nice shops and restaurants in Lambertville, and for Easter, we made reservations for brunch at Lilly's on the Canal.  If you click through the link you can check out a menu - it’s a nice, eclectic American bistro type of place.  Casual, not too pricey, and everything we’ve had there has been good.

But they have one thing in particular that we thought would be perfect for dad.  To serve water and soft drinks, the restaurant uses large, probably 20 oz or so, red plastic cups with the “Lilly’s” logo [top left corner on their web site if you’re interested] in white.  They’re essentially like the red plastic Coke cups you’d find at pizza places.

As my parents have in their kitchen a nice framed sign that was given to them years ago that advertises dinner and dancing nightly at a different “Lilly’s” restaurant in another part of the country, we thought it would be a perfect complement to that for them to have 4-6 “Lilly’s” cups for summer beverages and general use.

So I asked the hostess before we left if it would be possible to buy some of the cups.  She was hesitant to allow it, and said it really wasn’t her decision to make, which is completely understandable.  But she promised to contact the owner, who was not in that day, to see if she would sell us a few cups, and she would let me know.  She took my phone number, and said she would call me.

A few days passed, and I had not heard from “Lilly’s,” so I thought perhaps the next route I would try would be to use the “contact” link at the restaurant’s web site, explain the reason for my request, and make it easy for them to say, “yes, of course, we can send those right out.”

Didn’t happen.  Rather than replying at all, my email has gone unanswered.  And this is where I largely dropped the ball in not continuing to try to contact the owner or someone else with the authority to release 4-6 precious red plastic cups.

So this weekend, with Father’s Day now upon us, and no gift on its way to Indiana, I reformulated my idea and approach.  Yesterday, I called “Lilly’s” again, and asked about the possibility of buying some cups.  My thought was that if they would agree, I could drive up, get the cups, take a picture of them, and send it electronically so that dad would know what was on its way.

But while the girl who answered the phone promised to get my question to someone who could answer it and call me back, that never happened.

Undaunted, I told Christine that I would drive up to Lambertville and try again in person.  Surely given the fortunate coincidence of the restaurant owner and my family, and the reason for the gift, I would be coming home with at least 4 cups [note - I had now lowered my target in my own mind in the interest of trying to seal the deal].

The same hostess was at the front door that I spoke to at Easter.  When I reminded her of my request back then, she said she remembered me asking, and that when she asked Lilly she was told it wasn’t possible because they want to protect their logo.  I realize that probably sounds like a really solid reason to give someone when you just don’t want to be hassled by people trying to buy your cups all the time, but it’s not very convincing to a lawyer.

So, I politely repeated my request and explained that it would be a perfect Father’s Day gift given our family’s last name, and that the cups would be going to a kitchen in Indiana 800 miles away.  She was nice enough to then go ask the manager if something could be done.

The manager, who I’m sure was very busy as he was in the open kitchen in the middle of the restaurant dealing with a lot of food being prepared and a still full lunch crowd at 2:30 p.m., really had no time to discuss it and simply gave a quick shake of the head and a no in passing as he went about his other business.

The hostess returned, explaining that it just wasn’t possible.  She then commented on the cup being used as a pen holder on the hostess stand, and how the design gets really scratched up over time.  I’m not sure where she was going with that, but in my mind, all it meant was that the cups weren’t disposable, but they are replaceable, so they likely order more when they need them.  Seems like unloading four somewhat scratched cups for cash money would be a smart business decision.  But what do I know?

She then went on to tell me the names of two web sites, one of which I’ve already forgotten, where I could have cups made cheaply.  So apparently if I were to copy the “Lilly’s” logo from the restaurant web site and submit it to have my own cups made, never telling “Lilly’s” what I’d done, they’d be ok with that.  A curious twist on the whole “protecting our logo” position I was given 3 minutes earlier, but there it is.

Now, having driven home pondering this situation, I find myself wondering how the lessons my father and grandfather taught me in the way they live life and treated people in their own business might guide me in figuring out what, if anything I do from here.

Aside from having grown up with my dad around, I also had his father, Horace, until just after I graduated from college.  Grandpa was more a man of actions than words, and one story from later in his life seemed immediately appropriate.

It seems that cousin David was on spring break in college one year and visited Nana and Grandpa while they were in Florida.  Of course, Nana and Grandpa took the guys out for dinner while they were there, and I think they went to the Boathouse, a restaurant in Sarasota where our family has vacationed for years.*

A problem arose when dinner was over and Grandpa realized he did not have his wallet.  Thinking quickly, he suddenly announced to the Sigma Chi fraternity brothers, “You boys ever heard of dine and dash?”

Of course, with Nana there, this plan of action never came to fruition, but still, it apparently impressed the college guys no end that someone’s grandfather was “cool” enough to think about skipping out on a dinner check.**

Following Grandpa’s example, should I then consider a dinner party at “Lilly’s” with two or three other couples, and stashing our water glasses in an oversized purse in order to finally get what I’ve offered three times to pay for, and which gets replaced periodically anyway?

But that’s not the right thing to do.  It’s not my property, and they have a business to run, so swiping cups would be wrong all the way around.

However, just hypothetically speaking of course, and I would never do this, what if I went to “Lilly’s” for lunch or dinner sometime and left an additional $20-$30 on top of my tab and tip, with a note thanking them for the cups?  It would be wrong to do this, even, but perhaps less wrong given the financial restitution supplied in order to have the cups replaced the next time they place an order with their vendor.

For now, we have no cups.  But that may not be the case by the end of the summer.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  I love you.

============================================================================================
* - My dad emailed to correct me on the restaurant, originally mis-identified as Moore’s on Longboat Key.  Thanks, Dad!
** - Due to my increasingly faulty memory, my beautiful wife had to correct my telling of the “dine & dash” story.  Sorry for any confusion for anyone who read my original, incorrect version.

My lovely wife and I went to see “You’ve Got Mail” not long before we became engaged.  Perhaps surprisingly for me, I’m not going to go off on a rant about how annoyed I am by the grammar of the title, and AOL’s ubiquitous marketing of the phrase that became the title of the film [What was that about not going off on a rant? - ed. Ok, Ok].  No, what makes me think of that movie is the completion of a wonderful birthday present Christine gave me:  an iPhone.

With the Apple world-wide developer’s conference still several weeks away at my birthday, and the question of whether a new iPhone would be announced at that time, Christine asked if I wanted to get an iPhone like hers, or wait to see what the conference announcements brought.  Having waited this long, I thought it wise to see if there was something newer I thought I really had to have before taking the plunge.

With the unveiling of the new, faster iPhone and the new pricing structure, we next had to figure out what it meant for us as somewhat recent converts to AT&T on Christine’s birthday last October, when she received her iPhone.  The bad news, such as it was, meant that we could upgrade my phone, but we would not get the promotional / subsidized price.  Thus, we would have to pay full freight on any new iPhone.

A quick review of the commentary and discussion online of the differences between the new and old versions, as well as our own experience over the past 9 months with Christine’s iPhone, convinced us that the smart choice was to pick up the iPhone already on the market and go with the upgraded operating system when it rolls out this week.

So how can I have now gone rambling on for four brief paragraphs about iPhones after saying that I was thinking about “You’ve Got Mail”?  Well, the truth of the matter is, there is no small part of me that sympathizes a great deal with Frank Navasky, the character played by Greg Kinnear in the movie.  In case you don’t remember, Navasky is Kathleen Kelly’s (Meg Ryan’s) boyfriend, a writer who is, in the words of Joe Fox’s (Tom Hanks’) girlfriend, “the greatest living authority on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.”  Navasky was also something of a technophobe, and we are told he wrote a newspaper column that was an ode to his electric typewriter (of which he had at least two of the same model, just in case).

So while I find myself very much impressed with the iPhone, its capabilities, and how very simple it is to use, there’s also a part of me that yearns to log onto eBay and buy an old bakelite telephone from the 40s with a rotary dial and hook it up.  It’s solid, “people oriented” technology I can relate to.  I’ve been “threatening” to do such a thing for several years, and quite frankly, the biggest thing stopping me from following through on it now is that I’m not entirely sure such a phone would work now that we have switched our phone service to Comcast digital.

I suppose a big part of why, despite my inner Luddite, I’m generally comfortable with the iPhone, as well as our iMac, is that the products just work.  I spent almost six years telling Christine I was going to throw our Dell computer against the basement wall because I was so frustrated by its non-performance.  We’ve now had the iMac two and a half years without so much as a hiccup.

And now, a little over a day into the iPhone experience, I’m very impressed and pleased.  It’s well made, easy to use, and works wonderfully in tandem with the iMac in terms of synching everything from contacts to calendars to emails.

That said, if I happened to be surfing the App Store and saw that some like-minded, or like-souled, programmer managed to create a rotary dial screen that you could use as an alternative to the keypad in making calls on the iPhone, and it also made the clicking pulse sounds of a manually dialed telephone, I won’t deny my inner Navasky.

UPDATE - The beautiful Christine, upon reading this entry, immediately picked up her iPhone and found at least 5 rotary dial apps at the App Store.  I think my favorite is, unsurprisingly, Bakelite.  No muss, no fuss.  I think Christine stopped rolling her eyes long enough to update her Facebook page to let people know the insanity she has to live with.  Oh well, crosses to bear and all that.

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I'm pretty sure this is the transcript of the entire pitch meeting: "Nazi Zombies - it's like Pirates of the Caribbean meets Night of the Living Dead."  (h/t Hot Air for linking to the clip)

Not sure if the clip is for real.  Part of me hopes its a spoof.  I guess if it's not, then we have to figure the economy is not so bad if millions can be be wasted making this pile of manure.

[not sure why the embedding of the clip is not working, but will try to figure it out later]

Wow, embedding a YouTube video was pretty easy.

Ok, per Patterico's suggestion, here's yet another place on the webiverse where the Founding Blogger video of CNN's hack job coverage of the Chicago Tea Party demonstration may be found.

If CNN finds it here and contacts me, I'll update accordingly.

Jonah Goldberg at NRO posted a link to a Detroit Free Press story that apparently ran the day after the inauguration.  The premise of the piece is this - take a photo of yourself, and create a split-image by matching half of your face with half of President Obama's face.  Goldberg notes that the piece is "borderline grotesque," and that Democrats would most likely agree if the subject were a Republican.

But then it hit me.  The most likely scenario for a conservative or Republican politician is that an "artist" would get a grant from the federal government to create a work of art that incorporates split-images like the ones shown in the Detroit Free Press story, with the politician's face paired with the likes of Hitler, Stalin, a chimpanzee (in the case of George W. Bush), and a host of things that are best left to the imagination.  And it would be hailed by liberals as daring, subversive and cutting edge.

Now, imagine if an artist, probably without a grant from the federal government, were to create such a display using President Obama's image.

Heck, it would have been interesting of some political cartoonist had done something like this as a counter to the pictures from the Detroit Free Press.  It would take a lot of guts, and carefully crafted images, to not go too far toward poor taste so that one's commercial career would not be ruined.

Byron York has a post over at The Corner at NRO on Timothy Geithner's nomination for Treasury Secretary.  York commented on Sen. Orrin Hatch's support for Geithner, explaining in relevant part as follows:

Hatch is repeating an argument he has used in the Senate Finance Committee — that a president ought to be able to get the appointees he wants, providing they are not incompetent or corrupt.

I can understand that a lot of conservatives might be unhappy with Geithner's confirmation.  And those who still labor under the misconception that Sen. Hatch is some kind of conservative might be flummoxed by his defense of Geithner's nomination.

But this is one of those days when the lessons of the Clinton years come in handy.  During Clinton's presidency, we learned how very, very carefully a politician's language must be parsed in order to truly understand what people are saying, or not saying.

So in Hatch's case, if you read the explanation carefully enough, you reach the revealing truth that poor old Sen. Hatch couldn't refuse to vote for Geithner on grounds that Geithner is incompetent OR corrupt, because Geithner is both incompetent AND corrupt.

It's that darn conjunction that causes all the apparent confusion for Sen. Hatch.  He couldn't wrap his head around what to do with a nominee who failed both tests.

I think it was in the movie "Grand Canyon" where Steve Martin, playing a Hollywood producer, tells Mac, played by Kevin Kline, that he hasn't seen enough movies, because all life's riddles are answered in the movies.  Yep.

And of course, it was in "You've Got Mail" where Tom Hanks tells Meg Ryan that "The Godfather" is the answer to any question.

Sounds to me like it could be a television show, let's call  it "Hollywood Justice."  It's kind of like "The People's Court" and all the judge-oriented shows that arose after it.  But the twist is, the parties who are having a dispute agree that their matter will be settled in accordance with the applicable "precedent" from the movies.

The parties come in, make their arguments to either a single judge or maybe a panel of 3 judges, who are not actually judges but are instead people who are really, really into movies and movie quotes.  Maybe movie critics, aspiring movie critics, or something similar.

After the sides make their case, the judge(s) reach a verdict, which is revealed through various movie clips selected by the judge(s) as being the answer to the case.

I'm seeing the possibility for cameos / guest appearances, video re-release tie-ins, the whole works.