ON BEING LEFT HANDED

I am not left handed, but my wife is.  There is a distinct difference in the way we perceive things, the way we manipulate objects and even the way we interact with the world around us. 

The world is right handed, and I often feel sorry that my wife has to move through a society that is unsympathetic and alien to her natural inclinations. 

I could make a list; but it is better expressed by Salman Rushdie in Luka and the Fire of Life.

Door knobs turn the wrong way.   Screws insist on being turned clockwise, guitars were strung upside down, and the scripts in which most languages were written ran awkwardly from left to right…  Potter wheels wheeled perversely, dervishes would have whirled better if they whirled in the opposite direction, and how much finer and more sensible the whole world would be, Luka thought, if the sun rose in the west and set in the east.

Seeing things in reverse to accepted norms is a special gift that results in innovation.   Some of our most brilliant people, and I include my wife, were and are left handed.

the Ol’Buzzard

SO MANY BOOKS SO LITTLE TIME

I am never without a book to read.  I am an eclectic reader.  From cozy Ms Marple mysteries to the Icelandic legends of Sigurd and Gudrun; from the Cat Who mysteries to The Elegant Universe; The Three Pillars of Zen to manuals for Dummies.  

The new book I have picked up is a cozy read – light – a quick read – a pleasant read for a rainy day.  

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley, is the story of an eleven year old female Chemistry prodigy who is obsessed with poisons and prisoners.   The stories take place in the 1950’s in rural England.  Flavia de Luce has the keen perceptions of Sherlock Holmes; and being eleven years old she can move through the adult world practically unnoticed.   She comes from a totally dysfunctional home with an eccentric father and two older sisters that attempt to make her life a misery.  Brilliant beyond her age, Flavia is able to solve mysteries that the local constabulary find baffling. 

A mixture of Tom Sawyer and Nancy Drew with a splash of Ms Marple and Sherlock Holmes; Flavia becomes a lovable, rascally heroine that will make you want to read the rest of the series. 

If you are looking from a respite from the government foolishness you could do worse that spend an afternoon with Flavia de Luce.

the Ol’Buzzard  

A POX ON THE CONGRESS

It is probably my age.

                                       

Or perhaps it is the month of October: a month of ghost and goblins and ghouls – Oh my! 

                             

But, the debt ceiling fight and the government shutdown seems totally out of place at this time of the year: a time of harvest – a time of food and friends and fairs and celebration from a year of toil.  

I have said before that I can’t seem to get goaded into depression about what seems now to be business as usual in Washington.   

People are posting dooms day scenarios on what Rachel Maddow calls the internet machine.  

But in reality: all of this will end in just one way.   We will grow old and infirmed or diseased or suffer an accident – and then we all die.  We will get put in the ground, or cremated and have our ashes in an urn – or some not so lovable relative will flush us down the toilet.   Whatever the outcome; when this happens, we won’t care about the debt ceiling or governments or political parties. 

And then two or three generations in the future – when we are long forgotten – people will still be exasperated with their politicians; liberals will be disgusted with the way the rich treat the poor; and people with hearts and brains will be protesting the next war. 

Things move on but stay the same.    You can’t walk in the same river twice, but the river is still there.  This slipstream of time that man has created – and mankind him and her self – are relevant only in the small self-centered ego of our species.

We change the things we can and accept the things we can’t change. 

We are approaching the season of All Hallows Eve when the dead can walk - in our minds.  We should use this season to put things in perspective.  

Celebrate this season.

A pox on the Congress.

the Ol’Buzzard

IT IS A MOUSEY DAY IN OCTOBER

The day is overcast and grey, the leaves have fallen off the trees and the temperature is in the fifties.    This is the kind of day I love.   I could be perfectly happy living in a black and white Edward Gorey world.  

                   

Sherlock Holmes stories have been a passion of mine since early teens.   To me the Jeremy Brett portrayal is the epitome of my vision of Sherlock Holmes.

However, when I read Holmes I always picture the stories in black and white. 

It is the same when reading Dracula.   If you haven’t read Dracula you should read it.  

However the best, in my opinion, vampire book ever written (and the worst vampire movie ever made) was Stephen Kings Salem’s Lot. 

                                          

I first read Salem’s Lot when I was in the Navy.   Salem's Lot supposedly took place in the vicinity of Maine where I was living.   I had been on a night flight and had been reading the Lot on board the aircraft.   I got home about one-thirty in the morning, the house was quiet and empty; I poured a glass of whiskey, settled in my favorite chair and picked back up the book.   I was just at the point where a young man was dead in an upstairs bedroom and the old man that owned the house was hearing noises from that room…fearfully he started up the steps…

BAM!

The toile seat in the bathroom slammed down.   That noise, at that time of night, while reading Salem’s Lot, scared the hell out of me.   I threw the book down and went to bed. 

My wife and I read the book together after we had moved into an old decrepit 1832 farmhouse located in the woods one mile off a main road.   The house had no electricity and no plumbing – it had been vacant for twenty years.   We read ‘The Lot’ aloud each night, in bed, by lamp light; while the wind blew outside and the old house creaked. 

Salem’s Lot holds a special place in our memories.

I have been a horror movie fan since early childhood.  My grandmother and I moved to a small Mississippi Delta town when I was eight.   The movie house was three blocks from our house and a movie ticket cost ten cents.   I always went to the horror movies even though they scared me.   Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, The She Wolf of London: I would often hide my face during the scary parts. 

 But the real scare was the trip home.   There were no street lights and I had to cross the bridge spanning Deer Creek.   I would walk nonchalant as far as the lights in front of the movie house illuminated – and then I ran – it seemed my feet would never touch the ground – through the town with its dark store fronts, across the bridge, and a final sprint to my house and up the steps.   

 I remember those movies, and those nights as black and white. 

the Ol’Buzzard

WW-II VETERANS MEMORIAL IS CLOSED – GET OVER IT.

I am a veteran.  And Veterans of all wars are my brothers and sisters.   But let’s not get distracted here.   The WW-II memorial was closed – and that is regrettable; but in the totality of things this is a non-starter.

The Republicans have refused to fund the Veterans Administration at a rate to cover the increases due to vets returning from two simultaneous wars. 

Services have been cut back over the past year; and now due to the government shutdown VA staff is being furloughed starting today.    The local regional office in Rumford, Maine that handles my medical needs is closed, along with counseling services, VA hotlines, VA registration offices and more.    For all practical purposed the VA is in stand-down.  

So let’s stop bemoaning the parks and monuments closings that are inconvenience peoples vacation plans.

The whole country is taking a hit, and a photo-op of Michelle Bachman and the rest of the Mickey Mouse Club escorting WW-II vets past the barriers at the memorial was a disservice to all veterans. 

the Ol’Buzzard

ALL HALLOWS EVE

From pagan time to present All Hallows Eve has been the time that ghost can walk upon the earth.  

Do you believe in ghost?  It seems to me that if you believe in the Christian God and angels and resurrection you must also believe in ghost. 

New England is full of ghost stories and first hand accounts.   A friend of mine who was working as a painter in an old Maine house swears he saw a ghost dressed in a Civil War uniform.   An older couple my wife and I know swear that while staying in a noted haunted bed and breakfast they saw a woman in white walk through their room one night.  

Even down south the stories are ripe.   In the Vicksburg (Mississippi) Battle Ground Park there are people who swear they have seen a southern officer mounted on a horse galloping through the park late in the evening.

I won’t even dignify a remark about the ghost hunter reality shows on television.

The one point that all these sightings have in common is that the ghost were wearing clothes. 

 

You are not born with clothes on and it only stands to reason that if you could appear after death you would be necked.  

Do you take your clothes with you when you die, or do ghost have a wardrobe to choose from after death and before their haunting presence?   

No one seems to question that the Battle Field ghost is riding a ghost horse, on a ghost saddle, wearing a ghost uniform and carrying a ghost sword.   Makes you wonder if he has ghost underwear on beneath his uniform and ghost socks inside his boots.

OK, a horse and a man: they can die.   But clothing – how can clothing return?   Can you be haunted by an empty suite of clothes or a ghostly bra and panties?    

I am just asking?

the Ol’Buzzard 

GHOST AND GHOULS AND ZOMBIES AND GOBLINS AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT.

This is the month that I have always loved – better than Christmas.   This is the witching month – the month that the spirits of the dead occupy a parallel universe – a sheer membrane away - from the living. 

All around us the world is dying: leaves are falling from the trees and the grass is turning brown; and the chill in the air portends snow which can turn our visual world into a skeletal realm of black and white.

You can’t explain it, but you can feel it in your soul, at night, when the moon is shining…that something wicked this way comes.  

I do not believe in ghost, goblins, angles, devils; or gods for that matter.   My mind is too logical – but – there is something witching in the month of October.

the Ol'Buzzard