Our local newspaper, the St. Joseph News-Press, has a section titled It’s Your Call. People can phone in and state their opinions without identifying themselves. In other words, it’s a way to voice your opinion irresponsibly. Apparently we enjoy reading it, because it’s there every morning. Here’s a sampling:

Aug 20:

Do St. Joseph drivers know how to use turn signals? It is very frustrating and dangerous. I have never driven in a city that uses less turn signals than St. Joseph.

I agree with the sentiment here, but I doubt it’s limited to our hometown. Probably younger generations aren’t aware of the proper use of turn signals. It is dangerous. It’s very frustrating to people my age, who use proper signaling automatically. But just for the record, they’re using fewer turn signals, not less.

Aug 18:

I have an idea on how the St. Joseph Police Department could make some money. Just go to any store in St. Joseph, especially the Wal-Marts, and hand out tickets to the three to four people who are parked in the fire lane at any given time.

The current population of our city is 76,780 people. Apparently three—or four—of us are responsible for this violation. Does this caller think it’s the same people? He claims it’s occurring “at any given time.” So maybe it’s like a little club or something and they rotate their illegal parking in shifts. I’m betting that two—or three—of them are older or physically limited, and probably would not park in the fire lane if there was an actual fire going on. That narrows it down to one—or two—people committing this heinous crime. So I’m trying to calculate how much money can be made. I calculate not much. I’m retired and I think I would like to join this club.

Aug 14:

I don’t know whether we can change this or not. Today when making a purchase I was told to sign using a black stick on a small glass screen. I stated, “I really don’t like doing this as this is how people get the flu” as I reluctantly signed for the purchase. The cashier then put both hands together, coughed in them then handed me my receipt. We really need to do something about this.

We really do.  We need to eliminate It’s Your Call. Wouldn’t using a real pen and a real piece of paper present the same germs? And seriously, what good was telling the cashier?  The result was a germ-laden receipt.  People like that just aren’t fixable.   I’ll let you decide which one I’m talking about. Buy some disposable latex gloves and stop wasting my oxygen.

Aug 13:

Stop laying on your horns when I am stopped at a yellow flashing light. Listen fools, there are cars coming from the opposite direction and I can’t make a safe left turn in front of them, so lay off your horns. You can’t see all that because you are behind me. I am old and I look easy to bully, but I carry a concealed gun.

If we could learn to identify road rage in its incubation stage, I think we could reduce gunshot wounds at the hospital.  Apparently if you want to honk your horn, be prepared to duck.  By the way, I was the third car back. I was the one honking and shouting “Pull!” Ten of us could have turned left in the time you had available.

Prison education funds cut by Greitens pushed for funding the day before. He isn’t any different than Trump. They are both two-faced.

With a nod to Abraham Lincoln: If Trump is two-faced, do you think he’d be showing you that one?

Aug 22:

I saw a bunch of people on TV pulling a statue down and kicking it and stomping on it. Don’t they know they weren’t hurting that statue one bit? They were only making fools of themselves. Don’t they know that the statue has no feeling and they weren’t hurting anybody but themselves?

I think they’re crazy too, but I’m pretty sure they knew it was a statue.

And this, from today’s newspaper:

I frequently see in the newspaper and on television where Sen. Claire McCaskill is involved in different things, committees and programs. She seems to take an interest in our state’s well-being. I never hear anything from or about Roy Blunt. He is always the guy standing in the background with nothing to say.

 
There’s more than a little irony in using an anonymous platform like It’s Your Call to complain about somebody else “standing in the background with nothing to say.”  It made me shoot my morning coffee out my nose.

I was out on my deck at one o’clock yesterday. Even if it was wet and cloudy, I know that most of you saw an event you’ll remember for the rest of your lives. Me too.  I understand that that you saw something you’ll never see again and I feel the same way.  But I’m here to tell you that what I saw yesterday in the dark eclipses anything you ever saw.

Saint Mary and I had family here for the event. I had only two rules for eclipse-viewing at my home: 1. No parties and 2. No cameras. As to the partying, I simply didn’t want any distractions. I also know from experience that if you’re trying to record an event with a camera , you’ll tend to miss the event itself. So these were my rules. I did, however, allow my dog Joe to join the viewing party. And I’m glad I did.

At one p.m. we donned our eclipse glasses and stared at the sun. The moon’s silhouette was sliding across our view, nearing totality. As that magnificently dark disk slid into place for two minutes of history, I heard something much closer. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the garden shed in my back yard. I wouldn’t call it heavy breathing, because I think you need a phone for that. It was a hoarse, guttural, feral rumble. A sound that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up. Right there in my own back yard.

I looked down at the shed.  As my eyes adjusted to the darkness (I was still wearing the eclipse glasses, mind you), I could make out an obscure figure standing at the southwest corner of my shed, staring at me. Joe saw it too and it probably goes without saying that the hair was standing up on the back of his neck, too.  I don’t know how to tell you this except to just say it: we were face to face with Sasquatch. I know I’m old and I don’t see well in the dark, but I’ve known about Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, as they like to call him, since the early 1960s–over fifty years. I doubt he was seeing as well as he used to either, but I know a questionable legend when I see one and there he stood, all the same.

Now here’s the unbelievable part: the creature was holding something that appeared to be a piece of paneling or aluminum foil. I thought he’d torn a section of siding from my shed. I couldn’t make it out. I wanted to take those eclipse glasses off, but I remembered the dire warning printed on them: “Do not remove glasses EXCEPT DURING ECLIPSE TOTALITY!” So he had me there.

Joe and I stood absolutely still so as not to startle the creature, and waited until that distracting eclipse had reached totality—and then I whipped the glasses off! In the darkness, I realized he was holding—and eating–what appeared to be a portion of an airplane wing. Silver in color, it occasionally caught the light from the corona of the sun. I could make out a series of numbers upon it: NR160 followed by what looked like a partially-eaten 2.

Now, I’m old and I know a few things. And I just happen to know that NR16020 was the registration and call sign of Amelia Earhart’s plane when she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937. And before you even start, I understand your so-called logical objections; those last two digits could have been 21 or 27 or 29 or what have you. They could have been anything. You can argue till who wouldn’t have it, but if you’d seen what I saw, you would know from the expression on that creature’s face that he knew what he was doing. When you find Amelia Earhart’s wing, you don’t just run off somewhere and eat it.

My mind raced. I had to get a photo. My family was still staring at the sun, but this… this was not something you see every day. And of course, I had banned all cameras. I ran into the house and found my cell phone on the kitchen table. Racing back to the deck, I fumbled with the phone as the sun began to emerge from behind the moon. Damn. I had to stop and put those eclipse glasses on again.  It’s difficult enough to take a cell phone photo in the dark. You try taking a one with your phone at night wearing eclipse glasses and you won’t see what I mean. I pushed the button once before Joe growled; he’d had enough of this Bigfoot business. The creature turned quickly and I heard a distinct pop. A small blue flash of light appeared near his big foot. Unbelievably, he looked to be on fire.

You may find this farfetched, but as Joe is my witness, I am probably the only human being on the face of the earth to have witnessed an actual SSCDE—a Sasquatian Spontaneous Combustion During An Eclipse. (On a side note, I now believe this is why Bigfeet are so rarely seen. They’re quite shy, and in the privacy of their forests, they’re just burning to be left alone.)

As the creature and his half-eaten airplane wing fell to the ground, consumed by blue flames, I distinctly heard him cry something. It sounded like “Fake the Aryan race of men,” which may or may not have some historical bearing. It made no sense to me at the time. But now I realize what I heard.  As the last of him disappeared, he was frantically pleading “Make America great again,” which makes more sense.

Well, the sky began to lighten. I whipped off those glasses and ran to the corner of the garden shed. Sasquatch and the airplane wing were completed combusted. Nothing remained but a burned spot upon the ground. My entire family was still staring at the sky. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s the only thing they saw–a rather ordinary total eclipse of the sun, if you ask me. I thoroughly questioned them all and described what I’d seen. Of course, they all looked at me like I had six heads.

I still have the photo, and I’ve included it here. It’s a little hard to make out, but if you look closely, I think you’ll see the facts are on my side.  And I have a witness here, each of us wagging his tale.

 

 

 

If there’s one thing that scares me more than North Korea with a nuclear weapon, it’s the artwork in downtown St. Joseph.

There’s a huge mural on the side of a building down there—depicting the Civil War. It’s interesting and well-done. Among the Civil War symbols depicted are a huge Union soldier and…that’s it. There is no Confederate soldier. They’ve literally painted the South out of history down there. A friend of mine said this is going to make Civil War re-enactors look silly. The Union will haul out their guns and cannon and horses and start shooting at nobody, apparently.

You probably have an opinion about the South, the Rebels and the Civil War. So do I. But now, in the name of “political correctness, “ we’re starting to say  they weren’t there.

As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s true. While we’re re-writing history, art in downtown St. Joseph is merely the tip of the iceberg; it’s part of a much larger issue. I think it’s at the core of something very important and very wrong in our society today. I’m talking about the nagging fear of being “politically incorrect” in today’s society.

Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? Political correctness is the conscious, designed manipulation intended to change the way people speak, write, think, feel and act, in furtherance of an agenda. It is neither political nor correct. It is cultural Marxism disguised as “tolerance.” It has been correctly defined as “tyranny with manners,” and it is a direct and dangerous assault on free speech—yours and mine.

It is one thing for me to refrain from a derogatory term because I believe it is hurtful and thoughtless. I’m sure we all wish that everyone would mind their manners. Yet it is altogether a different and dangerous thing to silence me by law or something that calls itself “correct.” Let me speak for myself here: Let’s say we disagree. If you are allowed to silence my thoughts and words, then it logically follows that your argument can be voiced without challenge. That  is an Orwellian nightmare.

In previous times, free speech was inviolate, yet there were limits born out of common sense. The old saying was that you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theatre. We were supposed to be self-regulating. Times have changed, and not for the better.

At the end of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the animals stared at the pigs who had taken over their lives. They then looked at the side of the barn, where their Seven Commandments had been reduced to one: All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others. They were vaguely aware that someone had changed the rules. As I stared up at the Civil War mural, I may have unconsciously bleated. Like a sheep.

Orwell wrote a preface to Animal Farm. It was not included in the book. In that preface, he wrote “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

Baaaaa.

I wasn’t going to write an essay today, but I accidentally read some confusing directions a few minutes ago and I couldn’t stop myself.

I was installing some solar outdoor light fixtures.  I opened the box, looked at them and decided I didn’t need to read the manual.  If I had stuck with that idea, you wouldn’t be reading this right now, wondering why I’m wasting your time.

Yes, this one is about language, and I’ll apologize to most of you before I get started. I’ll bet my good friend Kasey enjoys it. But if you hate writing and thinking about language, just skip this one and come back next week when I write something well-received.

I installed the lights and they worked just fine.  As I cleaned up the empty boxes and tools, I noticed a small slip of paper, about five by seven inches.  I decided I ought to read it before throwing it away.  At the top were the words “Instruction Manual.” It couldn’t have been over fifty words in total. There wasn’t anything on the back.  I think it took a lot of nerve to call itself a manual, but I’m straying from the subject again.

The very first sentence of this alleged manual read (And I’m quoting here)

“1. Initiation: This solar powered stair Light, in a modern technology,
needs no mains power lead required.”

Yes, I figured out what it meant after staring at it, but I shouldn’t have to translate things that are written in my own language.  And yes, I figured it was written in a rice paddy on the other side of the world.  I would have let all of that go, crumpled the alleged manual  and tossed it into the trash, if I hadn’t made my next mistake:  I kept reading.

Barely three lines under that train wreck of a sentence, were the following words:

c: We do not take responsibility if this instruction
manual is not followed correctly…”

If you distill this all down, the so-called instruction manual is offering incomprehensible instructions and refusing to take responsibility if you don’t comprehend them.

And that was the straw that broke this camel’s back.

I admit it.  I’m a language nerd.  I love our language in spite of its inconsistencies and odd behavior.  I’m betting that’s why I’m a writer.  When I read Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, in which he says “there’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being…” or Abraham Lincoln, hoping we will be “touched…by the better angels of our nature,” I have to stop and admit that those ideas cannot possibly have been expressed better.  I have to acknowledge that I’m reading some of the very best things ever written. And I almost always have to wish I had written them.

But there are rules about writing.  If you fully understand the rules, you can love them and break them at the same time.  I love to break the rules.  (“Shocker!” says absolutely nobody who knows me.) But I promise you that when I break one, I know what I just broke.

I don’t write for you.  I’m always happy when you enjoy it, but I write because I’m compelled to do it.  And that is why an incomprehensible alleged instruction manual resulted in this outburst.

One of the reasons I continue to write this column is that it allows me to break the rules of writing.  If I can throw a bunch of broken rules out there and the message arrives, healthy and understood, I am fulfilled.  If you enjoy it, that’s icing on my cake.  If you don’t enjoy it, I had my cake and ate it, too.

E.B. White wrote in The Elements Of Style that to write well, we must have the proper mind-set.  He said we must  write to please ourselves, and that we should aim for “one moment of felicity.”  Felicity means intense happiness.  I think Mr. White would be pleased with me, though perhaps not intensely happy.  But by the time you read what I’ve written, I’ve had my moment of felicity.  Thanks for putting up with me.

 

For those of you who don’t already know about it, we’re going to experience a total eclipse of the sun on August 21, 2017.  My hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri is dead center in the path of totality, which means we’ll see (or not see, I suppose) the sun for a longer period than almost any other place in the country.

There is a very cool interactive map located on the Front Page Science website which allows you to zero in on any town and determine the length of time you won’t be able to see the sun.  I found my house on the map and it says my “period of totality” will be two minutes and thirty-seven point one seconds.  I need to write that down, but I won’t be able to read it because I don’t see well in the dark.

It is interesting to note that the city which holds the longest period of totality is Carbondale, Illinois.  They will get two minutes and forty-one point six seconds.

Our city planners estimate that St. Joseph will be inundated by eclipse watchers.  They believe the number of inundators to be anywhere between fifty thousand and a half million.  I don’t know why, but my first thought was that we don’t own enough portable toilets for these people, let alone hotel rooms, food, water, transportation and other necessities.  NASA says that August 21 will be the worst traffic day in history.  I have seen traffic like this in New York.  I don’t know about you, but I like to travel to see my traffic jams.

Now, I like my hometown.  Normally it’s a nice, quiet place.  The Pony Express began here.  Jesse James was shot here.  For a while, there were billboards all along Interstate 29 advertising St. Joseph as the place “Where The Pony Express Began And Jesse James Ended.”  I thought it was clever, but apparently somebody got offended.  They took them down.

We have a population of some seventy thousand people. If I use the lowest estimate of an additional fifty thousand people and do some simple math, it creates logistical nightmares that make me want to stop doing simple math.  If I use the highest estimate of a half million people invading us on a single day, well, all we can do is figure out how to clean up when it’s over.  And lock the doors.

It’s not as though they’ll be here for only two minutes and thirty-seven point one seconds. They’ll be arriving for a week prior and on August 21,  it will turn into a full press assault.  I suppose they’ll leave pretty quickly, but I’m betting they won’t tidy up before skipping town.  And what will they do until the sun goes out?  I guess they’ll look at the Pony Express Museum.  Or drop by the Jesse James House where he was shot, and see the bullet hole in the wall (which I don’t believe is really a bullet hole, but that’s another story and I don’t have time to tell it to a half million people.)  I wonder if the folks at Jesse’s house are ready for this.

I’ve never seen a total eclipse of the sun and according to the experts, I won’t have another chance.  I’ve been invited to multiple “eclipse parties,” but I don’t want a bunch of people around me, playing music and spilling their drinks on me.  I don’t want to take photographs of it.  I just want to sit on my deck and experience it, because I’m getting older and there aren’t a lot of things I haven’t experienced yet.  There are a half-million people out there, somewhere, determined to rob me of the experience.  And we’ll have to clean up after them.

Maybe I’ll go to Carbondale, Illinois.  Seems like a nice little town.  And they’ll have an extra  four point five seconds of not seeing the sun.

 

“The time has come,” the walrus said, “to talk of many things…”

I’ll leave it to you and Lewis Carroll to decide who was the Walrus and who was the Eggman and whether or not Paul is dead. But today, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album is fifty years old.  That fact alone deserves a resounding “How can that be?”

You can read all about the birthday of this seminal work in a million places on the internet. There are thousands of musical experts and recording industry kingpins who can tell you what it was like from where they sat. I’d rather try to accomplish something I’ve not yet been able to do, in conversations with younger people who ask about Sgt. Pepper. I’ve not yet been able to explain what it was like from our end and why it was so important—the experience of young people who were listening to music in 1967.

To understand it fully, you must understand not what was, but what wasn’t. And what mostly wasn’t was exploration and experimentation in popular music.  If someone had suggested to Elvis Presley that he create his next album based on an imaginary band, they would have been ushered out of the recording studio. If Fats Domino had been asked to add a sitar and a French horn to his sound, well, it simply wasn’t done. If a recording star had “made it,” the “sound” of that star wasn’t altered; it simply wasn’t done. Nor was the image of the star changed in any way—album art wasn’t art. It was always a photo of the artist, usually in a suit and tie or a nice dress;  Music was, and is, a business. The product belonged on the cover.  If you were a successful artist,  you didn’t change what had made you successful. You “danced with the one what brung you.”

Obviously, the Beatles were popular. We had grown up with them. We waited for each new album and they hadn’t failed to please us. But they were beginning to change from the four lovable mop-topped and innocent balladeers crooning “I Want To Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” to older people who wanted to talk–or sing–about important things. In 1965 they had released Rubber Soul and we realized that they were changing. What we thought was long hair wasn’t long at all. And they weren’t dressing like quadruplets. They had individual personalities, and Lennon was singing about sleeping over in a girl’s apartment in “Norwegian Wood.” The Beatle boots were gone. And what was that sound? Someone said it was a sitar, an Indian guitar-like instrument. McCartney recorded “Michelle,” which is now so well known it’s elevator music. Things were changing.

The next year, in 1966, they released Revolver (still one of my personal favorites) and we knew that wherever we were going, this was the voice that would tell us about it. The subject matter of unrequited love in “Eleanor Rigby” and methamphetamine-dealing physicians in “Dr. Robert” were just, well, unprecedented. Nobody did this. At least not until now. The album art by Klaus Voorman broke all the rules; part line drawing, part collage and part photographs. Didn’t look like any album we’d seen before.

I  have often tried to make this clear; we weren’t sure what was happening, but we knew something was.  Never, I suspect, had an entire buying public (translate as everyone older than ten and younger than 30) been so focused on “the next album.” I doubt it ever will be again.

I suppose it’s hard to imagine making a trip to the local record store each day, just to ask “Is it in, yet?” Downloading was how you got cattle off a truck. Finally the “new album” arrived and sold out everywhere. We were all tearing the cellophane cover off at nearly the same time.

What was this? There they were, wearing military band-style uniforms, looking at what appeared to be a grave with “BEATLES” written in red flowers, surrounded by a host of celebrities. Most of us decided it was a grave. They were saying goodbye to the four mop-tops.  All that before hearing the first track.  So then, of course, we listened.

It needs to be said that the music stands well after fifty years; it’s as good as it ever was–perhaps better. It would be easy to discuss each track on the album, but most of you know them or have heard them at least once. Some of us have heard them thousands of times. The recording techniques were ground-breaking, but you can learn about that from a gazillion places. Today, they would sound commonplace to us and there’s a reason for that: they are commonplace today. But never, before, had we listened to anything like it. I do not believe that a musical group today could create something with the seismic shift of Sgt. Pepper. I don’t think it can be done again.

Each of us has had the experience of hearing an old song and remembering where we were, who we were with, what was happening when the song was released. With Sgt Pepper, for an awful lot of us, it was the turning point for everything that followed.

You can like the music or not; there’s a generation of people my age for whom it’s almost gospel. But no one can deny that this was the day the music changed.

 

Being retired, I have time to think about dumb things we say and do and then write about them.  Usually, the net result of this is that people think I should get un-retired. One friend said to me recently, “Dick, you need something to occupy your time.”  I may have misheard him.  He might have said “You’re a dick. Shut up,” but even if he did, this serves my point:  We need to think about what we say and do.

I came up with a top-ten list of my own, but then I realized we have an internet, thanks be to Al Gore.  So I looked over other peoples’ lists.  It turns out that the other writers and I are often irritated by the same things.  A few of theirs got added to my list.  Maybe a few of these will get added to yours and we can all be irritated by them together.

Here’s the list in ascending order:

Number Ten:  “Do you want an honest answer?”

I always wonder if this means they’ve been lying to me up until now.  If you translate this question correctly, it means “Would you like me to just ruin your day or would you prefer that I make the rest of your life a living hell?”  To people who ask this question:  Stop it.  If you’re going to be critical, pull me into the corner away from other people and have at it.  Beat some sense into my head, but don’t preface it with that question, because nobody really wants an honest answer, even if it’s to their benefit.

Number Nine:  “ I don’t mean to be critical but…”

This is sometimes disguised as “I’m not judging you, but…”  It’s a subset of “do you want an honest answer?” but it’s annoying enough to have its own number.  And we all know why.  Because the person is lying.  They are speaking a great untruth.  They are about to be critical and judgmental.  This can be translated as “I need to feel like a nice person right before I dump this load of crap on you and crush your self-esteem.”  Do me a favor; take me over to the corner again (same corner) and just unload.  Self-esteem is, by definition, my problem. If your advice is good, I’ll probably appreciate it eventually.  If it’s not, well, that’s on you.

Number Eight:  “I could care less.”

We use this one when we really do care, but we want to act like we don’t.  If you’re going to use it, for heaven’s sake be grammatically correct.  If you say you could care less, you are saying that it’s possible that your caring level could actually go down from where it is right now.  The correct use of this ridiculous phrase is “I couldn’t care less.”  That way, you can pretend that you’re done caring, that you are completely out of caring ability, that your tank of human kindness is empty.  And then, you’ve really got them.

Number Seven:  “Looks like Daddy dressed you today!” 

This is for all the young fathers out there.  While I don’t have to deal with it personally any longer, I’m here to fight against misandry.  Misandry is the female equivalent to misogyny and nobody’s talking about the offensive manner in which males are treated in today’s society.  This is one of them.  You need to start answering this with “Yes, I dressed him.  Yeah, it’s a crappy job and yes I know the stripes don’t go with the whatever, but they looked clean and didn’t smell and he doesn’t care what he’s wearing.  We’re men.  One day you will find us both on the sofa, watching the football game and scratching our genitals. Why, you ask? Because we can. Get over it.”  And while we’re on the subject, why do I continually see kids’ things in stores labeled “MOMS PREFER IT TEN TO ONE”?  Do men no longer have a preference that matters? You ladies talk about all the demeaning things that men do “unconsciously.”  So let’s ALL be watchdogs and make sure we don’t use insulting language.  In fact, let’s all just be quiet.  You first.

Number Six: “Are we there yet?”

This one is in the list for my children thirty years ago, and their children and your children and any friends you have whom you consider to be about half simple. The best answer to this question is “If we are still moving, then we are, by definition, not there yet.  But if you want an honest answer, this question should be ignored.  Maybe by doing that, you’ll cause them to think about what they just said.

Number Five: “Um…”

If you feel the need to say “um,” bite your tongue.  Wait until you know exactly what you want to say.  Then start talking without the “um.”  Saying “um” makes you sound like you don’t know what you’re saying and it drives the other person crazy.  Crazy like um, like they want to punch you in the face.  We have to work twice as hard, listening to you, because we have to take all the “ums” out and throw them away.  Because “um” never eventually means anything.  It just stays worthless.  It was worthless when it came out of your mouth and it will be worthless twenty-five years from now. Nobody in the world will ever compliment you on the way you say “um.”  It’s an official time out.  It’s a foul tip into the stands. It’s nothing but a placeholder and we don’t need it.  Most of us are willing to wait for something intelligent.  Stop it.

Number Four: “Look, We’re in Hawaii!!!”

And now we start to get serious.  It really troubles me when my friends announce on social media that they are currently not at home, and post photos of themselves on vacation.  I’m happy for them, but they have announced to the Cat Burglar Society that their house is empty and un-guarded.  And  I found out these people steal more than just cats.  Please, please, please post those things on the day you get home.  Why is it necessary that everybody know immediately that your home is up for grabs?

Number Three: “I know exactly how you feel.”

Seriouser and seriouser.  Let’s all try not to say this unless it’s actually true.  And maybe not even then.  If a person wants to talk, they will.  That’s an opportunity for us to tell our story–if they want to hear it.  Otherwise, maybe just being there is what we ought to be doing.  But saying we know how someone feels is taking a mighty big chance that we don’t.

Number Two: Hiding Our Flaws

I have a lot of good, close friends.  I’m aware of their flaws.  Sometimes they’re not aware of them.  But I realized that, in some cases, their flaws are as endearing, if not more so, than their strengths.  We are asked, in this crazy society today, to live up to some pretty impossible standards.  It would be nice if we all felt like we’re in the same boat; that we all fail them occasionally.  It would also be nice if we all were able to admit it.  I’m going to try to help my friends with this, since I’m the only one I know without any flaws.  Some of my friends laugh at that.  I don’t quite know what this means.  But I’m certain that I don’t want an honest answer.

Number One:  Being Offended

This wasn’t on my list originally.  When I read it, however, I realized it belongs here, as Number One.  I started trying to re-write it, and stopped, because this person said it very well:

“There are some people in this world who seem to believe that they have the right to never be offended, ever. This drives me crazy. Part of freedom of expression is that some people, some times, are going to annoy you or offend you. That’s part of life. And unless you’re inciting people to commit acts of violence, then you really can’t tell them not to.
Being offended is a choice. It’s the difference between getting upset about an insult and simply laughing it off. It’s the difference between trying to silence somebody else and simply acknowledging that they have different values than you do, even if those values are really f***** up.

I get comments on this blog all the time that I find offensive. I almost never delete them. Recently, I had a guy who made a sexist comment about women (the comment was to an article about dating, what a coincidence.) Instead of getting up in arms about it, I simply informed him that I thought he was an idiot. I probably offended him back. And now we’re not friends. It’s amazing how a free society works.”

BUT WAIT—THERE’S MORE!  We’ll call this

Number Zero:   “Awesome”

Yes, I know, you’ve heard me complain about this before. But I refuse to give up on a perfectly good word that has been murdered by its misuse.  Can we just look at what the word  “awe” really means?

Webster’s Dictionary:  an emotion variously combining dread, veneration and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.

More definitions: extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear. “The awesome power of the atomic bomb,” for example.

Synonyms: Breathtaking, magnificent, wonderful, amazing, stunning, staggering, etc. etc. etc.

So, the dictionaries are describing some pretty big stuff here.   In light of that, let’s look at some wrong ways to use it:

“Billy, you flushed the toilet!  Awesome!”

No it’s not.  It’s cleanly and hygienic and eventually expected. When Moses parted the Red Sea, that was awesome. Nobody saw that one coming.  If you use this word in training your children, they will grow up thinking they should be in the headlines because they brushed their teeth.

“Hey, you’re five minutes early!  That’s awesome!”

No it isn’t.  Showing up on time is convenient.  It’s thoughtful.  It’s expected.  When God created the heavens and earth, that was awesome.  Someone being kind enough to be on time should not make you drop to your knees.

I give up for now.  This awesome business could be an entire essay in itself—and probably will be.

Every so often, I do bad movie reviews. My reviews aren’t bad, but the movies are. My reviews are different from most others because I review them before I see them. This is to help both you and me avoid the bad ones. Now you might say that a guy who is going to review movies ought to see them first. I say it seems pointless to me to read a synopsis of a movie, realize it’s probably bad and then compound the error by watching it.

Here are some movies that are probably bad and currently available in my hometown. If you still want to see them after reading this, then, well, you like bad movies and should be shunned and forced to wear a scarlet M sewn to your shirt. Other than that, you’re probably fine. Here they are:

 Unforgettable

 Synopsis: A woman becomes increasingly unhinged after meeting her ex-husband’s fiancée.

 Well, this is certainly nothing new. I have to ask: if your neighbor was becoming increasingly unhinged after meeting her ex-husband’s fiancée, would you want to watch that? I’d rather have a root canal.

The Fate Of The Furious

 Synopsis: The next installment in the franchise.

Seriously, that’s what the synopsis said. There’s an old writing rule about not saying too much. Whoever wrote this synopsis should break that rule. I don’t know what the franchise is. I don’t know what happened in the other installments. I won’t be remembering what happens in this one.

Going In Style

Synopsis: Lifelong buddies Willie, Joe and Al decide to buck retirement and step off the straight-and-narrow for the first time in their lives when their pension fund becomes a corporate casualty.

 The plot seems silly and it probably is. It stars Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin. That evens the score. This is probably a movie I’d enjoy once and never watch again.

Smurfs: The Lost Village

 Synopsis: The Smurfs embark on a journey through the Forbidden Forest to find a mysterious village.

 First, it’s a cartoon. Second, you can talk to me till you’re blue in the face, but I’m old and have limited time. I’m not watching Smurfs do anything.

The Boss Baby

 Synopsis: The Boss Baby is a hilariously universal story about how a new baby’s arrival impacts a family, told from the point of view of a delightfully unreliable narrator, a wildly imaginative 7 year old named Tim.

I am going to guess that this one’s for young mothers. I don’t know about you, but I already have too many young people telling me how life works. It’s a cartoon. And so is the movie.

Everyone should avoid the movie theater this week and do something more pleasurable. Schedule that root canal, for example.

I have been thinking about photography lately. In this age of instant photographs, of immediate gratification, in which every individual carries a camera in their cell phone, many readers may find this essay boring. Actually, that idea is what made me start typing. Those of you who are photographers at heart will probably enjoy it.

Many who know me today don’t know that I was a professional photographer for about seven years, owning and operating a photography studio. In the years prior to that, I was an avid amateur photographer. I have had a lifelong relationship with the art form.

I come from an age when making a photograph that caught your interest and imagination was a fairly unique art form. Today, almost everybody has the technical ability to do it, if not the creative capacity.

Back in my day—and I seem to start a lot of sentences these days with “back in my day”—not everyone had a camera. Many families had none. If they owned a camera, it was “the family camera.” Many people my age will remember having to change clothes and clean up because “Dad’s going to take a picture.”

A week or so ago, I happened upon an E-Bay ad for a Polaroid Model 100 camera. And the memories came flooding back.

At age nine, I was one of the few kids I knew who owned his own camera. It was an inexpensive plastic box camera and I don’t remember the manufacturer or the model. I didn’t give it a lot of thought and had no particular interest in photography, so I don’t remember why I owned one. But maybe it was destiny.

In 1967, I was sixteen or seventeen years old, working on my high school newspaper staff as the resident sportswriter. My good friend Terry Andereck was our editor and photographer. Terry was taking black and white photos with a 35mm camera and I was struck by that. Struck, I think, because he was doing interesting portraits of people and had control over the lighting and angles.   His shots were interesting to view. And I wanted to do that. Terry was an influence on me.

Our “family camera” was a brand spanking new Poloroid Model 100. It was state-of-the-art and cutting edge. My dad bought it to replace the old Kodak #2 camera that had served my parents since they were in high school, probably. Polaroid cameras are old-school now, old enough that today they have a certain kitsch. But they were our version of instant gratification. The very idea that one could see his photograph within sixty seconds was, frankly, amazing to us.

I don’t remember the day, but I clearly remember taking that Model 100 around town and for the first time in my life, holding a camera in my hand with the intention of creating something rather than simply “taking a picture.” I knew nothing about photography. I didn’t know what an f-stop was, or how shutter speed affected a photograph. The phrase “depth of field” would have gone in one ear and out the other. I needed some film, so I purchased black and white film because it was less expensive than color. I no longer have those photographs. I lost them or discarded them years ago, but I can still see them in my mind. One was a pastoral setting of black Angus cattle grazing on a hillside, and I liked the feeling of the black and white film. It probably wasn’t as good as my mind’s version, but it wasn’t bad.

I started getting better. Terry showed me his 35mm camera, and I remember being amazed that he could see the actual photograph he was taking, through the lens of the camera, rather than an approximation of it through a viewfinder, as I was doing with that old Polaroid. I was soon to learn that Terry’s camera was a single lens reflex or SLR. I had to have one.

And again—more destiny–my next door neighbor was the town’s local professional photographer. He hired me for a summer to “help out” at his studio. I was more bother than I was worth, but he taught me some basic, very important things about photography. He taught me that it wasn’t about the camera—it was all about the light. I began to study photography. I went to the library and took correspondence courses. There was no internet because Al Gore was only about nineteen and hadn’t invented it yet.

It’s about light. The very meaning of the word photography means “painting or drawing with light.” The camera is just the tool. It’s like a shovel; if you don’t know how to use it, you’ll never dig a hole. I’ve owned some very expensive cameras in my life. But the truth is a question: how can you improve a shovel?

And so I learned. What followed were fifty years of learning about photography, and I’m grateful for them. On the day I took that Model 100 out and took photos of cattle on a hill, I discovered that I enjoyed the process. Years later, when I saw those old photos, I realized that, even then, I had what was needed to change a “picture” into an art form. I had the eye. I could visualize the finished photograph. When you have the eye, you don’t care what kind of camera is around. You are basically just saying “Somebody hand me a shovel!” Great photographers can create art with an old Polaroid Model 100. And there are people around with $5000 cameras wondering why they haven’t dug a hole.

I don’t practice the art much anymore, because it’s been devalued by the cell phone. Everybody has a camera and everyone, apparently, is an artist. I don’t see it that way. What I see is that lots of people have shovels in their hand.

Photography was a way for me to come into the world. It got me noticed. Girls noticed me, finally. And it was something upon which I could hang my hat. It turns out I was very good at it. It’s a little sad to me that the creativity in it has diminished with the advent of cell phones. But nobody can take the experience of it away from me.

I bought the old Polaroid on E-Bay. I’ll probably never take a photograph with it. But I’ll clean it up and hold it and remember how I dug holes with it and how it changed me.

In late January, the Boy Scouts of America announced it will begin accepting members based on their gender identity, opening the door for transgender youth to join.

I have no doubt that a great deal of thought went into the decision.  In a nutshell, the Scouting powers-that-be felt it was financially prudent.  The organization spent years and untold millions to defend its position on gay Scouters.  They likely feel they’re money ahead to simply fold like a cheap card table.  And that’s what they’ve done.

Some may feel this is only a slight additional wound to Scouting’s pride.  I think it spells the end of Scouting as we know it.

Set any arguments and pre-conceived transgender biases aside, for a moment.  Scouting in the United States is currently an organization for physically male youth.  Allowing a physically female youth as a member is a short hop away from opening the gate to any female youth–and believe me, that’s the next logical step.  If physically female members are accepted into that adolescent and hormonally-charged mix, well, it’s going to change things considerably.  I’ll let you imagine the consequences, because I really don’t want to think about them.  The organization will have to fundamentally change.

I’ve been involved in Scouting in one way or another for well over fifty years. There are many in our society today who scoff at the concept of “male bonding.”  I don’t suppose I blame them.  I don’t think males are allowed to bond in today’s society.  Females, on the other hand, are within their rights to march on Washington wearing vagina hats. I’m so happy that the world has finally come to its senses.  That was sarcasm.

In the years I’ve known it, Scouting has, among other things, allowed the male youth the opportunity to discover his gender identity in a tremendously healthy way.  Put simply, it’s given him the opportunity to spend time in a male-oriented environment.  It was just “the guys,” young and old, doing the things that liberals, female rights activists and others regard as “silly, man stuff.”  I loved it.

This is no socio-political claptrap or buzzword baloney;  you simply can’t have a male-oriented environment if you inject females into it.  If you add females, the male-only label comes off and it becomes…something else.  Scouting will now be that something else, for better or worse.  Maybe it will become financially successful.  Maybe it will be a wonderful organization.  The organization and environment I knew as a boy and know today as a man will no longer exist.  It will be gone.

No doubt the decision was carefully considered. Scouting is hurting for membership right now.  They know full well that eventually including females may dramatically increase their membership and hence their money.  If they are correct, they won’t hurt for members; it’s a calculated gamble and they have decided the risks are low enough to roll the dice.  They have considered all this—and they have likely considered me, and the people who feel the way I do.  They have considered us and made a decision.  They cared less about me than they cared about their finances.

I’m not against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, x-genders or food blenders.  I never have been.  But I believe in an organization’s right to say who and what it is.

I suppose it was a business decision, but it hurts to realize that an organization I loved cares more about it’s money than it does about me.  Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for me.