Ain't it just like a human

Kris Kristofferson wrote this:

The scene was a small roadside café;
The waitress was sweepin’ the floor.
Two truck drivers drinkin’ their coffee
And two Okie kids by the door.

“How much are them candies?” they asked her.
“How much have you got?” she replied.
“We’ve only a penny between us.”
“Them’s two for a penny,” she lied.

One truck driver called to the waitress,
After the kids went outside.
“Them candies ain’t two for a penny.”
“So what’s it to you?” she replied.
In silence they finished their coffee,
Got up and nodded goodbye.
She called, “Hey, you left too much money.”
“So what’s it to you?” they replied.

And the daylight grew heavy with thunder,
And the smell of the rain on the wind.
Ain’t it just like a human?
Here comes that rainbow again.

Some days, I despair when I read the headlines. Take this one, for example, from the morning edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Two women hurt in downtown parking lot brawl.

Here’s what the P.I. reporter said: “Witnesses told police a man driving a silver Honda tried to cut off the woman in the Bank of America Plaza garage. The woman started honking and pulled forward to stop him from cutting in front of her. The man then jumped out of his car, pulled the woman from her car, pushed her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her in the head, according to the report.”

But right next to it was this headline: Neighbors come to rescue in raging fire that kills three.

According to the story, a fire broke out just after midnight this morning at an eight-unit apartment building in Burien, south of Seattle. Three people died in the blaze, but others were saved due to the efforts of neighbors.

One man dialed 911, grabbed a big rock and ran across the street -- shouting "Get back! Get back" – to break the glass of a sliding door. Another fellow ran from window to window, pounding and calling to people to come out. Others helped folks make their way away from the building, carrying children and supporting older residents.

Ain’t it just like a human.

Well, look at that

The mountains were out today.

In Seattle, depending upon where you live, that means the Cascades to the east, the Olympics to the west and, presiding over it all, Mount Ranier, the slumbering behemoth to the south.

For us, it’s the Olympics, rearing up along the horizon, across Puget Sound, hanging over the green lushness of the islands and lowlands to the west of us. On a clear day, like today, the Olympics look close enough for me to reach out and cut my finger on their snow-dusted, snaggle-toothed peaks.

I am told that the Olympics are not particularly tall, as mountains go; Mount Olympus, the highest, tops out at just under eight thousand feet. Even so, five minutes of mountain watching from our upstairs window leaves me feeling as if we live within a picture post card.

One interesting note that doesn’t affect us at all. The western slopes of the Olympics act as a barrier for all manner of moisture coming off the Pacific Ocean, and so is the wettest area in the lower forty-eight states. The Hoh Ranger Station records an average rainfall every year of one hundred and forty-two inches (almost twelve feet).

Rachael and I don’t see much of the Cascade Mountains, to the east of Seattle, but on days like today, if we head up over the hill, we are treated to a view of Mount Rainier. It’s an active volcano, part of the Pacific’s Ring of Fire, and is almost three miles high.

Its most recent recorded spew was in 1854, and the experts say there is no immediate risk of eruption but – and here is the fun part – geologists expect that the volcano will erupt again.

If it does, and it is a major eruption, it would destroy Tacoma, Enumclaw, Kent, Auburn and most or all of Renton. The resulting mudflow could also reach down the Duwamish River estuary and destroy parts of downtown Seattle. No lava or boiling mud for us, here in West Seattle, but our days would certainly be filled with ash. But, hey, we lived with the threat of hurricanes for four years in the Florida Keys.

The view of Ranier is best from the West Seattle Bridge of the floating bridge over Lake Washington. I can’t imagine why folks don’t just stop in the middle of either bridge and stand in gap-jawed wonder, staring at Ranier, which looks as if it’s just floating there in the sky.

It’s like living in a – oh, wait. I said that already, didn’t I?

Always a catch

Author, documentary film maker and futurist Kevin Kelly posts about the world as it is now and as it may become at www.kk.org. One of his blogs, reached through that URL, is Cool Tools, and there he recently listed books that changed his life.

He said, “Books still have the power to change lives. Which ones have changed yours?” I don't mean merely great books, or memorable ones, or favorite ones. I mean books that altered your behavior, changed your mind, redirected the course of your life. Books as levers.”

There are a number of books that would have to be on my list of most influential works -- Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway -- but if I had to pick just one, it would be Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

It was published in 1961, my freshman year in high school, and I got my hands on it was through a retired librarian named Emma Huber, who first hooked me on reading when I was six and with whom I had become good friends, despite a difference in age of nearly four decades. If I am a book junkie, and I am, then Mrs. Huber was my first dealer. God bless her.

The book opened my eyes to the absurdity of life; I grew up in a rural community in Ohio in the 1950s and until Catch-22, I had no idea that the rest of the world was so different from what I knew or that adults were just muddling along, too, trying to figure it all out.

I have a copy of the book, my third since 1961, and I reread it every three or four years. If you have a favorite book that you haven't read for awhile, do so, and see how your perception of it might change when seen through the filter of advancing years.

Would you believe

We went to see Get Smart yesterday; I loved it. It’s like a fungus. Just a little fuzzy at first, but then it grows on you.

Of course, I walked into the theatre with mixed feelings. Get Smart was one of my favorite television programs, way back when. And in the first moments of the movie, my laughs were pure reflex. I wanted to like it, but it sounded like the producers had laid down the wrong chords, but then I settled into the rhythm of it. It was a standard Hollywood spy movie, with a world-saving plot and wowzer special effects, twisted until it fit into Maxwell Smart’s world.

No one does hapless but determined better than Steve Carell, and that’s how he plays Max. Not as the clueless but lucky bumbler from television, but as a bright man with a balance problem, a fellow who can lose the objective in the details, strong on theory but short of practice.

Carell is fast becoming one of my favorite actors. He can do broad comedy, or go for the joke that required thought, all the while presenting a character that you care for, and his Max is funny because he is in there, sometimes missing his intended target, by that much, but always trying as hard as he can.

A bit of monolog Max has in one scene says it all. “We have to look at them (KAOS agents) as people. Sure, they’re evil, but that’s what they do, not who they are.”

Anyway, there are genuine laughs, exciting action scenes, poignant moments, and Anne Hathaway (as Agent 99), beating the snot out of the bad guys, all the while looking sexy in dynamite outfits. Barbara Feldon couldn’t have done it any better.

Alan Arkin, as the Chief, and The Rock (I don’t care if he does want to be called Dwayne Johnson, he still looks like The Rock), as Agent 23, carry some of the weight, too, particularly when the Chief cold-cocks an annoying FBI agent and when Agent 23 demonstrates how to use a stapler. And James Caan is perfect as the POTUS, a man with a touch of southwest twang and no clue as to what is going on in the world.

What more can you ask from a summer movie? Get Smart; go see it.

A chat on the bus

I met a a fellow named Robert on the bus yesterday. He settled into the seat in front of me and, ten minutes into our conversation, mentioned that he is a bartender. That didn’t surprise me; he had an easy way of talking to a stranger, a nice smile and an opinion on almost everything. Most of them I could live with and some of them I liked.

Had I read the recent newspaper stories about how more people are riding the bus? I have.

“It’s not news to me,” Robert said. “I go everywhere by bus, and since I hit sixty-five, it only costs me five dollars and fifty cents a month. It might as well be free.”

He tapped the seat-back between us for emphasis.

“I’ve lived in Seattle since 1990 and I sold my car right after I moved here, I figure between monthly payments, insurance, gasoline and repairs, I save seven hundred, eight hundred dollars a month, and if I need a car, I rent one for a day or two. If everybody did that, gas prices wouldn't scare us so much.”

Had I been following the trial results in the City of Seattle’s suit against the Professional Basketball Club, a group of Oklahoma City businessmen who bought the Sonics basketball team last year and want to move them to Oklahoma? I have.

Robert rolled his eyes and chuckled.

“It’s been a real circus,” he said. “All the finger-pointing and the name-calling, on both sides. I don’t believe the way some of these rich guys act. I guess my Uncle Cecil was right. No amount of money will buy class or style.”

I told him Uncle Cecil and my grandfather would have gotten along. Both sides in the dispute have been offering into evidence reams of damaging memos and e-mails written by the other side. Grandpa always told me never to write down anything I wouldn’t want everyone to read.

Robert nodded and wanted to know if I agreed that it is a shame the way older Americans are shuttled aside, as if we are no longer of use. I do.

“It’s not just for folks like you and me,” Robert said. “How many men do we have now who have been president and just sitting around, twiddling their thumbs?”

Three,” he said, answering his own question. He ticked them off on his fingers. “Clinton, Bush Senior and Jimmy Carter.”

“Why don’t we have a council of past presidents?” Robert asked. “Like a brain trust; they could meet with the current president three, maybe four times a year. With everything they know, all they’ve been through, it would be a chance to pick their brains.”

The bus slowed and pulled over to a stop; Robert stood.

“This is where I get off,” he said. “It’s been fun.”

I agreed and told him I really liked his idea for the ex-presidents’ council; he nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, as he headed for the exit. “Even if they only got together a couple times of year for a cook-out at Camp David, it couldn’t hurt.”

Take two aspirin and call in the morning

I haven’t been able to get to the keyboard for the last few days because I did something stupid when I was fifteen years old. I jumped from the back of a moving pickup truck.

Sure, that was forty-odd years ago, and the truck wasn’t moving very fast, but somewhere between the truck and the ground, I wrapped myself around a metal pole and injured my back. So now, all these years later, all I have to do is bend down just the wrong way to bring down upon myself a world of pain.

I did that last Wednesday.

Please don’t think that I am a whiner; I have suffered broken bones, dislocated my right shoulder five times, muddled through three major surgeries and survived two heart attacks, so I know what pain is. This was bad, a six point five on a ten-scale.

But, after five days of writhing in agony, I am on the mend, should be much better by next week-end, if I am very careful how I move until then. The whole thing has got me thinking about what pain is, though.

I mean, how does my perception of pain compare to everyone else? I have never lost a limb, never been shot or stabbed or beaten into senselessness, all of which, I am told, hurts like hell. So, how can I be sure, when I tell you that my pain falls at such and such a number along a scale, that I really did hurt that much?

The truth is, I can’t, and neither can anyone else.

Pain is subjective, so much so that one of the definitions used by the medical community is that “pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he says it does."

Physical pain is the number one reason why people visit a doctor’s office; no other reason even comes close. There is even a joke about it, one with a million variations.

Doctor: What’s the problem?

Patient: It hurts when I lift my right arm.

Doctor: Don’t lift your right arm.

And, although your doctor can give you prescription medication to numb the pain , there is really only one thing that will eliminate pain—time.

There’s an aphorism about that. Time heals all wounds.

So, be safe, watch your step and be careful out there. And, if not, try to grin and bear it until it gets better.

Bye, George

Al Sleet has offered his last weather forecast.

George Carlin, comedian extraordinaire, creator and alter ego of the hippy-dippy weatherman; the man who gave us the Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television, died Sunday night in Santa Monica of heart failure. He was seventy-one.

Carlin’s sharp tongue, four-letter words and sarcasm may not have suited everyone’s taste, but for those of us who enjoy our comedy with an edge, he will be missed.

Fun for one and all

Yesterday was the sort of day that makes all the rest of life worthwhile.

It was Rachael’s birthday; I won’t say how old she is. It doesn’t matter to me that she can’t run up stairs anymore, two at a time, or that the eyeglasses she used to wear upon occasion are now permanent fixtures. But she is sensitive about such things, and so I try to keep my lip zipped.

We took the bus to downtown Seattle in mid-morning. Rachael had a list of reasons to do it. She is not the sort that usually makes lists; I am and she knows it. And so it was funny to hear her tick them off, because when she does, it is almost always the last item on the list that is the true reason.

She said that it would be an adventure, it was, the sort of simple little trip those of us who were raised according to the gospel of the automobile don’t think much about. She also said it would be cheaper than driving, it was; that it would save wear and tear on the X-Terra, it did, and that it would avoid the potential for accidents, so true. And then we came to the final reason.

“Besides,” she said. “If I don’t have to drive home, I can have a drink or two with lunch.”

There is that,” I said.

And so, we found our way downtown on one of the double-section buses that Metro Transit runs, with accordion pleating between the sections. We sat near the pivot point and laughed at how the floor spun as the bus turned, and played tourist, pointing out the window at the seaport sights, something we don’t get a chance to do, driving the Route 99 viaduct.

Off the bus, we bumped along, peering into display windows, poking through shops that looked interesting and enjoying our favorite joint pastime—people watching. We wandered around Pike Place Market for a time, too, bought some whole-bean coffee for the espresso machine and watched the curds being stirred at Beecher’s Cheese Shop.

Then we strolled over to Etta’s, on Western Avenue north of the Market, for lunch. It was our first time there, but we agreed, on the way out, that it won’t be our last. Melissa was our waitress; if anyone from Etta’s reads this, she was an absolute delight. So was the food.

Crab cake appetizers, with a tart green cocktail sauce, clam chowder at just the right temperature, deep-fried cod and cornbread pudding for me and grilled king salmon for Rachael. She wet her whistle with a beer, brewed at the Market by the Pike Brewing Company, and I had a couple of Harvey Wallbangers, a drink most bartenders don’t know how to make these days. Mine were just right.

After lunch, we strolled back to the bus stop on Third Avenue, and stopped along the way at a candy shop for some after-lunch sugar – a couple of caramels for me; Rachael had dark chocolate filled with raspberry cream.

A good time together with someone you love is what life is all about.

-kc-

Today’s superfluous fact: the use of bus to define a mode of public transportation comes from the Latin word, omnibus, which means “for all, for everyone”.

A cup of joe

KJAQ is a local radio station, better known to listeners as JACK-FM, and it offers up pop music with an irreverent attitude. JACK calls Seattle the city that gave the world the 750-calorie cup of coffee—and convinced them to pay five dollars for it.

Folks in Seattle do love their coffee, perhaps it has something to do with the weather, and over the past eight months, I have—God help me—picked up the habit.

Until now, I have never cared for the taste of coffee. I used to get my morning caffeine in a plastic bottle with diet cola; even now, I can only tolerate coffee by loading the cup with lots of other things. Rachael says I like a little coffee with my milk and sugar.

But, regardless of my tastes, I have always loved the way coffee smelled. Rachael said it was crazy. Now there seems to be some scientific support for my dichotomy.

A university study in Korea has concluded that one sort of antioxidant, released when coffee is brewed, is ingested and give the drinker a transient energy boost, that rush we all feel with the first sip. But, they also discovered a second sort of antioxidant that is released into the air, as coffee brews. It is that aroma that finds it way into the bloodstream, and the brain, stimulating pleasure centers.

The report cautioned that the results still are tentative, but it’s enough proof for me. It’s not crazy to love the smell of coffee but not care for the taste. As Jimmy Durante, the great comedian and singer, used to say: The nose knows.

Tell me the date again

Today is that day that shows up 1.72 times per calendar year. Yep; Friday the thirteenth.

One point seven two times; that’s a statistic, and if studied from a statistical point of view, there’s nothing spooky about Friday the thirteenth. It’s a predictable event brought about by the fact that the Gregorian calendar follows a leap-year pattern that repeats itself every 400 years.

That’s 146,097 days, which is divisible by seven, which produces an even number of weeks, and that means that the thirteenth day is spread across the calendar almost equally. In four hundred years, it falls 688 times on Friday, 687 times on Sunday and Wednesday, 685 times on Tuesday and 684 times on Thursday and Saturday.

If you won’t buy that, then consider this. Thirteen is not universally considered to be unlucky. The Italians think just the opposite. In Sikhism, thirteen is believed to be a special number. April thirteen turns out to be Vaisakhi, almost every year, which is the Sikh New Year and the major Sikh Holiday. And the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics reports that fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur on Friday the thirteenth than on any other Friday.

Here, at home, there were thirteen original states and the Great Seal of the United States has are thirteen olive leaves (with thirteen olives), thirteen arrows, and thirteen stars. These form a triangle over the eagle with the number thirteen at each point.

In addition, Colgate University, in Hamilton, New York, was founded by thirteen men with thirteen dollars, thirteen prayers and thirteen articles. The campus address is 13 Oak Drive and Colgate’s all-men a capella choir is called the Colgate Thirteen. It has, you guessed it, thirteen members.

In Judaism, thirteen is the age at which a boy becomes a Bar Mitzvah. That’s Hebrew for one to whom the commandments apply, which may or may not be a lucky time of life. It is, I suppose, what you make of it, if you’re Jewish.

There are supposed to be thirteen crystal skulls scattered around the world, against the day, according to the ancient Mayans, that they were needed to save humanity from a horrible catastrophe. I don’t know about that one; those crystal skulls didn’t seem to have the power to save the fourth Indiana Jones movie. (I already complained about that, didn’t I?)

And, of course, thirteen is the atomic number of aluminum, which has nothing to do with luck—good or bad—but then, neither does Friday the thirteenth.

Key West on my mind

Rachael and I have been in Seattle for more than half a year, but the Florida Keys still tug at me now and again.

The cool and rainy weather we’ve been having these past few weeks has reminded me of a man I knew for a time in Key West. It was public record that his parents named him Douglas James, but his friends under the Cow Key Channel Bridge called him Dougie.

He was fifty-five years old, but you might guess his age at seventy, if you bothered to look at the bearded little man with the shy smile and bright blue eyes, wearing a ragged Santa Claus hat.

It seemed he was everywhere. Sitting on the seawall along North Roosevelt Boulevard, watching the smooth-green waters of the Gulf of Mexico, while he sipped from a paper-swaddled smooth-green bottle. Wandering Duval Street in downtown Key West, trying to catch the eye of a passing tourist to cage a handout. Asleep under a bush at the buss stop in front of the Winn-Dixie store; that’s where I came upon him one August day.

Dougie was sprawled on his back, snoring. An empty bottle was close at hand, its threaded snout peeking from a rumpled paper bag. His head and shoulders were resting beneath the bus, where there was shade, but his feet, one of them shoeless, were off the curb and in the path of traffic.

I knew him from the Monroe County Detention Center, where I worked as a corrections officer, and where Dougie was what the staff called a frequent flyer. Fourteen days for public intoxication, perhaps; a month for trespassing. Then back onto the street for sixty to ninety days, before returning for another round.

Inside, Dougie cleaned up without effort. After a week of no alcohol, regular meals, medical care and frequent baths, he looked the part of an elderly uncle or that retired bachelor teacher everyone liked in high school.

That is what he claimed to be, a teacher, at least once upon a time. High school history, he said. He was vague about where he taught. “Up north,” was all he ever would say, but he was certain how long he had taught.

“Seventeen years,” he would say. “I taught for seventeen years and then the booze got the better of me.”

He had been in Florida for fifteen years; in Key West since 1998, he wasn’t certain of the exact date. Like other homeless men and women, he found the place local residents refer to as Paradise very nearly that. He discovered that living without a roof was easy where the thermometer almost never drops below room temperature. And, with a little luck, you could survive the mosquitoes, head lice, bored police officers and occasional hurricanes.

And there was always a bottle, somewhere, to be passed around. For Dougie, the bottle was the best part. He was a man for whom a bad habit had become vice, and he just wanted to be left alone with his demon.

On one of those rare rainy days in Key West, Dougie’s luck ran out. He was crossing North Roosevelt Boulevard, with two friends, also homeless, when he was struck by a delivery truck.

“We was crossing the road, right there at Sears,” Dougie’s friend, Terrence, told me later. “Me and Heather and Dougie. He was behind us, and when me and Heather got over to the bike path, we turned just in time to see that truck clip him. Jeez, he went flying.”

The paramedics pronounced Dougie D.R.T. Dead Right There. His remains were taken to Lower Keys Medical Center; no one claimed the body, so it was cremated and the ashes scattered.

There were no services and the only eulogy spoken was said over shared bottles, so I offer these words to Dougie’s memory. His parents named him Douglas James, and he is gone now, but still remembered by one wandering soul who, thank God, never lived under the bridge.

It’s a special day today

My son, David, big lug that he is now, was born on this day thirty years ago; it seems like it was just last week.

When he was two, I took him to see The Empire Strikes Back. It was late in the film’s run, there were just the two of us in the theatre for the matinee performance, and he stood on the seat beside me, balancing himself on the seat back in the next row, and didn’t make a sound through the entire show.

He was already talking in complete sentences by then, it was easy to forget that you were talking to a two-year-old, and we chattered the whole way home; him, pestering me with a thousand questions about what we had just seen, and me, trying to explain the experience in terms he could understand.

He has always been a thoughtful, stubborn sort, wanting to do things his way; I am like that, too. You can debate those qualities, their pros and cons, for days on end, but I think it has worked out okay for both of us.

It did mean that we bumped heads, often, when he was growing up. Once, when he was six or seven, I lose exact dates more and more these days, he told me that he was not pleased with a decision I had made, that he did not love me anymore and that he wanted to find a new family.

I helped him pack, gave him a sack lunch and twenty dollars, and told him to let us know when he found a new home. And then I watched him from an upstairs window, worried to death, for the better part of an hour, as he sat on the suitcase he had dragged down the sidewalk, thinking. When he knocked at the door, and asked if he could come back in, we both were crying.

When he was twelve, he announced that he wanted to be a comic book artist; surprised me with the quality of a pencil drawing he had done of a super hero. He is one of the lucky ones; not all of us discover so early that what we want to do for the rest of our lives is also something we can do well. Even fewer have the courage so young to pursue the dream. David is a commercial artist now; he is still good with pencils, but most of his work is done on computers and he does it for a film production company in Ohio.

Last year, the two of us wrote a screen play together, working long distance via the internet. We have started another, which we expect to complete by the end of this year. It will be such a kick, for both of us, to see our work upon the screen, but it is the ninety minutes each Wednesday that I treasures; just the two of us kicking ideas around, creating something together. It reminds me, every week, of that ride home, all those years ago, from The Empire Strikes Back.

So, I would like to lift this imaginary glass of wine to David, who is miles and miles away, and offer this birthday toast.

May his own son bring as much joy to him as he has brought to me. He was a good kid, even if he was a handful, and he has become a fine man. I am so proud of him and I love him more than I can ever say.

Costs of living

I learned to drive when I was eleven; operated a motor vehicle on public roadways, without a license, when I was twelve.

I paid for my first automobile, a 1947 Oldsmobile manufactured in Michigan the same day I was born in Ohio, with money I earned doing odd jobs. I sold that car, and two others, before I secured a driver’s license in 1963, and in the forty-five years since, I have changed vehicles, on average, every three years.

I am as much a gad-about with automobiles as I am with jobs and places; being able to move about as I please has been an important part of my life for almost half a century.

You need to know all of this to understand the enormity of the adventure I have begun. I am no longer driving on jaunts around Seattle; last Friday, I bought a King County Metro Transit pass. I have stopped being the driver; I am now one of the driven.

It’s not that I no longer can drive; it’s still fun and I’m still good at it. But with gasoline prices at four dollars a gallon, and still climbing, riding the bus is the economic thing to do; if my calculations are correct, we’ll save fifty to one hundred dollars a month. Over a couple of years, that will pay for a cruise up the coast to Alaska.

I’m working on Rachael, too; trying to convince her that she should hop on the bus, as well. She shows signs of relenting. She likes the idea of a cruise; it will stretch the life expectancy of our six-year-old X-Terra, too.

So, wish us luck, and look for tales of on-going adventures in transit land.

Stop me if you've heard this one

An acquaintance told me a joke Friday night; it was about a fellow who asks to collect some butter from the buttercups growing wild along a farmer’s fence; the punch line is risqué, so I won’t repeat it here.

I laughed, of course, because to do otherwise would be impolite. It wasn’t that I didn’t think the joke was funny; I thought it was hilarious—the first time I heard it. That’s not a big deal, either. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one—“ is a part of our culture.

But the first time I heard the buttercup joke was fifteen years ago, and four thousand miles from Seattle, and I haven’t told it to anyone since I got here last October. So, how did that joke make it across all those years and miles? I’m not talking about a joke that is like one I heard; this was the exact joke, word for word.

I suppose we could go for the easy answer. Radio and television comics have been bombarding us with humor over the air waves for the better part of a century; the internet has been doing likewise for a generation.

Even so, this particular joke is a little too racy for public broadcast, a little too sophisticated for the internet. And this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered jokes holding together for miles and years, just the longest and furthest example.

This has got to have been going on for a long time; maybe since people started telling knee-slappers to each other. So, I wonder; is there some sort of international organization that nurses jokes along, sending them back and forth to each other, slipping them into conversations all over the world?

An improvisational comedy group in Philadelphia calls itself the Ministry of Secret Jokes. Maybe these folks know something. Maybe they’re a lunatic fringe group, a militant splinter that doesn't care if other people know their purpose.

Maybe not; if there is a clandestine group spreading laughs hither and yon, I don’t think they would advertise their purpose in such a blatant fashion. There might not be any such group.

But if there is, wouldn’t that be funny.

Indiana who?

I broke down and went to see the Indiana Jones movie.

That would have been "the new Indiana Jones movie", except there was nothing new about it. Just because the Indy movies are based upon old Saturday morning serials doesn't mean they have for follow a formula. A tired formula, at that.

Production values were just plain lazy. The plot was full of holes, the script would have gotten an 'incomplete' if it had been turned in as an assignment for a college sophomore screen writing class; the actors all needed a good night's sleep (the makeup folks should have done something about the bags under Karen Allen's eyes), the special effects were slapdash and muddy and the final moments were stolen from Raiders of the Lost Ark AND The Last Crusade.

Harrison Ford is a good actor, but his days as an action hero are long passed. During the motorcycle chase, I couldn't even pretend to believe the stunt man on the back of the bike, doing all those flips and falls, was Ford. And talk about phony; Cate Blanchett's Russian accent was awful, I expected to hear her to shout for Boris or Natasha, or scream, "Moose and squirrel must die!"

Was there anything I liked about the movie? The opening scene, with the old Ford hotrod was snazzy, and I would love to see the outtakes; it's got to be nothing but one actor starting to read a line and the others breaking into giggles.

Come on guys; enough is enough. Let Jones find a nice crypt somewhere, so that the poor guy can curl up and die.

Excuse me; have you seen my lighthouse?

Spotted this in the news this morning. There’s a 30-feet-tall working lighthouse that’s been a recognized landmark at Point Montara, 25 miles south of San Francisco, for years and years and years.

Are you with me so far? Good, because now it gets a little strange; the lighthouse used to set over Wellfleet Harbor in Massachusetts. Honest. The experts are certain it’s the same structure.

Wait; now it gets really strange. No one has a clue how the thing got from Cap Cod to southern California. The folks in Wellfleet were positive it had been demolished in 1925.

Historian Helen Purcell said, in the current edition of Lighthouse Digest, that the discovery of the Point Montara Light was “a genuine shock”. I’ll bet.

Here’s a thought. A lighthouse can see a lot, setting there by the water, day after day. Maybe it had to get out of town, because it shone a light on something it shouldn’t have; maybe the demolition story was a cover.

I wonder; did the federal government run a witness protection program in 1925?

Raindrops keep falling

It was a good day, yesterday, to stay inside.

It was cool and it rained most of the day; I sat on our new sofa all afternoon, reading, ignoring the wet, gray world, wrapped in layers of clothing so that I could leave the balcony door open to breathe in the aroma of the rain. Not an altogether bad way to pass the time.

The weather wizards say it has been a strange winter and spring, too cool and too wet; acquaintances that have lived here for years, some their entire lives, are eager to apologize for the weather.

It doesn’t really matter to me; a writer can observe as much of interest about folks when it rains as when the skies are clear and bright. I count the number of umbrellas; watch the faces of the men and woman who brave the day without cover, trying to fathom their Puritan souls. I love to guess how passersby will cross a puddle, on tiptoes or tromping, and wonder what someone may have been thinking when they bought an umbrella in that particular shade.

Personal space seems to shrink, too, when it rains; people are more willing to pack in tight to a dry space, waiting for a bus. And it is all I can do not to laugh watching the funny little dance some folks do, waiting in the rain to cross a street.

Years ago, there was a radio and television entertainer named Art Linkletter and his signature catch phrase was, “People are funny.”

I’ll tweak that just a little; people are really funny when it rains.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

A quick note on all things new.

In the middle of May, Rachael and I moved from our cozy one-bedroom apartment into a two-bedroom, two bath unit. Same building. Same view. Lots more space.

When we made the trek to Seattle from the Florida Keys, we cut what we owned right down to the bone, again; if we couldn’t squeeze it into the eight by twelve trailer we bought, we couldn’t bring it.

That was fine for the one bedroom, but last week, after sorting everything, we discovered that we now had empty space – the entire living room. Yesterday, with our federal economic stimulus checks in hand, we headed for IKEA and spent almost all of it on put-it-together-yourself furniture. Putting it together kept us busy the rest of the day.

Finally, with it all in place, we took a moment to consider our handiwork. I know I have said it before, but it wasn't bad for a couple of aging gypsies.

And then Rachael said something that pounded home just how on the move the two of us have been over the years, singly and together; how much we have lived out of backpacks and suitcases, without many permanent possessions.

“You know,” she said. “That’s the first sofa I ever bought that no one else had ever sat on.”

May I speak with the driver of the car?

If you have my telephone number, and it seems that far too many people do, please don't call me mornings, between 8:30 and 9:30 PDT. That hour is the most likely time for me to be behind of the wheel of our SUV, and I won't be able to answer.

Starting July 1, it will be illegal, in the state of Washington, to talk on a hand-held cell phone while driving, unless you use a headset or some other hands-free device. I was discussing the new law yesterday with an acquaintance – he owns a town-car service and pretty much lives or dies through his cell phone – and he told me he had read a recent article discussing the feasibility of implanting a cell phone system within a person’s ear and throat. That scares me; I am attached to my cell phone, but I'm not certain that I want to be, well, attached.

That's an old-fashioned attitude, I suppose, but I can be an old-fashioned sort. I think a telephone should be black. Mine is. I also think that a telephone should ring when it wants you attention, not play a Brahms' concerto or an R. Kelly rap. I'm not too keen on text messaging, either, or taking snapshots with my phone.

And that sounds like Andy Rooney, doesn’t it; off on one of his famous Sixty Minutes rants about technology. Not what I intended when I started this. I want to go on record as saying I love my cell phone, wouldn’t be without it, and haven’t had a land-line at home in almost four years, so I suppose I’m going to have to purchase a blue-tooth headset. Never can tell who’s going to call in the morning.

Of course, if gasoline prices continue to climb, it won't matter when you call or how I answer. I may be behind the wheel, but I won't be able to afford to even start the engine, let alone go out on the highways.