Overheard on the bus

The woman didn't look too out-of-the-ordinary when she climbed onto the King County Metro Transit bus at a stop in downtown Seattle. Middle height. Middle weight. Middle years.

Not at all stark, raving bonkers.

She was cradling something in her arms; a bit of gray fur jutted above her elbow.

"Is that a dead squirrel?" the driver asked.

"It was," the woman said. "But I brought it back to life."

Everyone on board was watching and listening now.

"Uh huh," the driver said. "You know, you can't bring a dead animal onto the bus."

"But I brought it back to life!"

The woman stepped toward the driver, offering proof of the miracle. The squirrel never moved and the driver held her ground; it was enough to make you wonder what else she had seen, operating public transit.

"You can't bring in on board."

The woman took a step back, but before she turned and stomped down the steps, she held the squirrel out for all to see and laid a curse upon the bus, explaining in detail the fiendish nature of all on board and stating her wishes for the vehicle's ultimate destination, once she had made her exit.

The live entertainment is the reason I keep riding the bus.

Thoughts on growing older

It's been almost six weeks since I posted last, but it has been a busy time.

On the writing front, my son and I have been hammering out a rewrite of our screenplay, Black Rock, which we hope to see filmed next summer (2010) in West Virginia. If all goes well, he will be directing it, too.

We're both excited, the production company that optioned it are saying money is looking good, but we are ready to move on to a new project.

I've been writing on my own, as well (for reports on that, check out my writing blog, A Moving Line). And I am flying to Lawrence, Kansas next Saturday for a two-week-long writers' workshop conducted by a science fiction great, James Gunn. Teaching fiction was his "day job" while he wrote and he still is involved in the operation of The Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

I dug around in my book storage boxes last week and found a copy of Future Imperfect, Gunn's collection of short stories published in 1964. I bought it new and it's still in pretty good shape, although the pages have yellowed. The price, printed on the cover for all to see was forty cents.

And that brings me to something I have been mulling upon.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons that it has been six weeks since I have posted is that the days go by so quickly. Does it seem that way to you? That the older you get, the faster times goes by.

My son was thirty-one June 11th.

Rachael and I have been in Seattle for eighteen months now and it seems like just yesterday that we made that non-stop trip here.

She just had another birthday Wednesday and when we went out for pizza to celebrate, she told me that she felt as if the years were picking up speed, as well.

We've been together ten years now.

I can't help but wonder where does the time go?

Shakespeare had MacBeth say:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

I don't want to get all maudlin here, but I'm feeling a bit like that idiot tonight.

A rose by any other name

What ever happened to Dick and Jane?

If you grew up in the United States and are over forty, as I am, you should remember them.

Dick and Jane were brother and sister, main characters in a series of primary readers written by William S. Gray and used within the American public school system from the mid 1930s through the early 1970s to teach reading skills.

The books relied on whole language theories (or "whole word reading") and repetition, using phrases like, "Oh, see. Oh, see Jane. Funny, funny Jane.”

The one most remembered is Fun with Dick and Jane. If you aren’t American or aren’t over forty, you may remember that as the title of two American movies – one in 1997 with George Segal and Jane Fonda and the other in 2005 with Jim Carrey and Tea Leone.

Gray first used the names Dick and Jane because they were, at the time, two of the most popular names parents selected for their children.

Dick is a diminutive of Richard, a name with Norman roots; that means brave ruler or brave power. Jane is a feminization of John, perhaps the most common name, in all its manifestations, in the world. John has roots in Hebrew, Yochanan, and translates as God is gracious.

You don’t see either name on too many birth certificates these days.

According to the Social Security Administration, the most popular names in Washington state in 2008 were Ethan and Olivia.

Ethan means "solid, enduring" in Hebrew. Olivia was first used in this spelling by Shakespeare for a character in Twelfth Night. He probably based it on Oliver, which has its roots in Latin, oliva, which means "olive".

For me, they just don’t have the same feel, particularly with today’s pressures for gender equality.

See Ethan run. Run, Ethan, run. See Olivia run. Run, Olivia, run! You can run faster than Ethan.

And what about Spot, Dick and Jane’s dog?

Last year, the favorite name for male dogs was Max. The favorite name for female dogs was Bella. Both names have Latin roots and mean Great and Beautiful, respectively.

I culled information on name meanings from the Behind the Names web site. Shakespeare, of course, had a bit to say about Spot, too, but it was not found in the Behind the Names database.

Hear me out

I am an eavesdropper; always have been.

My earliest memories include listening to adult conversation, trying to piece together what it was they were talking about. I listen to nearby conversations in airports, at the doctor's office, in convenience stores and while riding the bus.

I have even been known to listen to a single side of a conversation when I catch someone else on the telephone, and with the wide-spread use of cellular telephones, that is becoming easier and easier to do, whether I want to or not.

This week, Rachael and I had a late lunch in the swell neighborhood restaurant in our building -- it's Mexican and serves great chicken flautas -- and we both got hooked on the cell phone conversation in the next booth.

A fellow in his twenties took a call from his grandmother, at least he referred to the caller as Grandma, and they gabbed for almost fifteen minutes. Have you ever heard Abbott and Costello do Who's On First? This was funnier.

He apparently did some sort of sales work; what he sells never came up, but he was telling Granny about an upcoming business trip. She wasn't talking loud enough for us to hear her side of the conversation. He was talking loud enough for both of them.

"I'm leaving Friday for ten days, Grandma."

"I don't know. Paraguay or Uruguay, one of those two."

"I don't know. In South America, I think; maybe Central America. I'm not sure. They speak Spanish."

"A little bit, and the company is paying for an interpreter."

"Yeah, I'm flying. Uh huh. It's too far to drive."

"No. My boss said my commissions are lower than anyone else's and so I have to be the one to go."

"I'm not going to get fired, Grandma! But I may quit; I'm twenty-seven years old and I'm not even making five thousand a week!"

I thought Rachael was going to choke on her refried beans on that last one; it was the funniest thing he said during the entire conversation. The saddest, too. I suspect the fellow is not the only twenty-seven-year-old who expects to make five thousand dollars a week.

Nor the only one uncertain where Uruguay is.

Where is justice?

Now we know what a human life is worth in Seattle.

Three teen-age Seattle boys have pleaded guilty to the unprovoked beating of 53-year-old Edward McMichael last October 25th. McMichael died nine days later of injuries sustained in the beating.

He was something of a local celebrity, a shy fellow known as The Tuba Man, who regularly provided impromptu tuba performances at local sporting events. And he is dead for no other reason that he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and caught someone's attention.

The boys were each fifteen years old the night of the attack. They pleaded guilty to charges of first-degree manslaughter, but because they are juveniles, the most any of the three can receive as punishment for the senseless crime is 72 weeks in the King County Juvenile Detention Center.

County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg called such sentences "inadequate", when he announced Friday that the county had agreed to accept the guilty pleas, adding that Washington State law does not allow stiffer sentences for juveniles defendants in such cases.

Their confessions allowed them to escape the possibility that they could be arrested on more serious charges at some later time. According to Satterberg, the trio of teens could not be charged now, without the confessions, because none of the witnesses to the beating would come forward and identify the attackers.

Seventy-two weeks. Maximum. That is not even ten days for each of McMichael's 53 years on earth. And his three attackers will still be juveniles when they walk away from their cells sometime next year.

Tell me; where is the justice in that?