Anonymous Comments

Every once-in-a-while I receive an anonymous comment. I read and consider all the comments I receive, whether signed or anonymous. Some of the anonymous comments are favorable, some are not. So far, none have been nasty. I try to consider the merits of each comment, especially those from people that disagree with me.

I often wonder why someone would post an anonymous comment. I know newspapers usually will not publish anonymous letters to the editor and I have not made it my practice to do so, either. There are a number of valid reasons to hide behind anonymity.

The first reason that comes to mind is that perhaps the commenter is gun shy. Even the most nicely worded contrary opinion can, in some, evoke distressing emotions including rage — and nobody wants to be on the receiving end of that.

Another reason one may post anonymously is I may know them. The blogosphere is huge and the likelihood of this may be remote. I do, however, know some of my readers. Maybe they do not want to be personally associated with any umbrage taken at their responses to my posts. Or maybe they live close by and don't want a midnight visit.

Anonymous posters are less likely to end up with their e-mail address added to spam lists. That's a good reason to not reveal who you are.

Well, anonymous posters, I welcome your comments. Those things that I find hard to swallow I will still consider and make corrections as needed. Some remarks I will relegate to the “everyone is entitled to their opinion” pile. The good things I don’t take all that seriously, either. I don’t want to get too big a head. I am glad you read my entries and if I excite you to writing, I know at least that someone is thinking about the things that I’ve been thinking.

I'm the Pied Piper....

Even though I subscribe to the local daily newspaper I seldom read it. I like to wait a few days or even a week or so and then I can scan it for important things that I haven't read on the Internet or heard discussed in the streets. The campaign just concluded for the Presidency was not, in my opinion, newsworthy. On the one hand you had a liberal who tried to disguise himself as a moderate conservative and on the other hand you had a liberal that flaunted his colors. Not much of a choice, if you ask me.

I had concluded quite some time before election day that Barack Obama would win the election and that McCain did not have a snowball's chance. The President-elect did a grand job of rallying people behind him. I just can't understand why.

By his own admission, he is unqualified to assume the highest office of the land. He has no experience at anything that matters. Being a lawyer certainly does not qualify him. Being an absentee Senator does not qualify him.

Ah, you say, but he offered change and hope. What kind of change? On the few occasions I talked to an Obama supporter I never got a clear-cut answer on why they were voting for him. None could articulate what he stood for. Looking at his record, will the change he speaks of repeat the disastrous Jimmy Carter administration? Not all change is good. Lenin offered change and look what happened. Hitler offered change and hope, too. We looked back on that era and ask, "How could the German people have fallen for him?" Someday, I think, others will look back on our day and ask the same thing.

Now that Obama has one the election I am following the news more closely. Some of the things I have read indicate my analogy to Hitler may not be that far off. I hope I am wrong.

"Come on, babe, follow me; I'm the Pied Piper, follow me...." and the people did.

Devastated woman

Photo courtesy of Chiara Angelini.
I pulled into a parking spot right in front of the grocery store. In the adjacent spot was an older Z-model Datsun (Nissan). The windows were down and a beautiful labrador retriever was stretched out across the passenger seat. It seemed to be comfortably sleeping, like the one pictured above. The car was filled with the driver's stuff and appeared to be a home for someone.

I was busy trying to get some stuff rearranged in my van and did not notice the woman come out of the store and return to her car, the one parked next to mine. I saw her leaning through the driver's side open window and moving things around. She extricated herself from her car and I commented, “Looks like a comfortable dog.”

“He's dead,” she said quietly, and went back into the store. He had died while she was shopping.

Several minutes later she returned, tears streaming down her face. I was not in a position to talk to her and could offer her no comfort. She got in her car and I noticed her steering wheel wobble like a top just before it falls over at the end of a spin. She drove off, wiping her tears. I imagine the dog and the car were all that she had.

We come into contact with all sorts of people every day. We never know the sufferings or the delights of most. I wish I could have consoled this poor woman. Those that could have, I later learned, did not. I thank God for the things I have and enjoy, having known both plenty and deprivation. That woman may not have had much by way of the world's goods but she had a heart and she had love — love for a dog who would never again return it.

Don't Correct Me

I take great pride in my command of the English language — or at least the American English language. I am better-than-average at spelling and pronunciation. Over forty years have passed since I graduated high school and I am still studying English.

It really irritates me when someone, especially an uneducated and ignorant someone, corrects my pronunciation. I know that grimace rhymes with face and the accent is on the second syllable. I know that dissect is not pronounced die-sect, but dissect.

I also have a familiarity with several languages, in none of which I can claim any proficiency. I know how to pronounce German, Spanish, and Latin. I am not so good in French (and a native-born Frenchman would tell me I never will be).

I know some words, particularly names, are pronounced differently depending where you are in the country. Bergen, NY and Bergen, NJ are not pronounced the same. Charlotte, NY and Charlotte, NC are pronounced differently as is Ephrata, PA and Ephrata, WA and the cities of Moscow, Russia and Moscow, ID. If I pronounce the name of a place wrong and am corrected by someone from that area or familiar with the proper pronunciation I take no umbrage.

I went to the deli at a local supermarket and asked if they had Lebanon balogna. I enunciated clearly: Leb-a-non, with the accent on the first syllable. The waif behind the counter said, "Leb-e-NON," to which I replied, "I pronounced it correctly." After ascertaining that they did not sell the product I asked for a pound of Münster cheese, using the correct German pronunciation of Myunster (the the y and umlauted u being pronounced as one letter). You meant "Munster," didn't you?" she asked. Somewhat indignantly I told her that I had said it as it should be.

OK, most people use the pronunciations that the young lady working at the counter did. That makes it neither right nor acceptable. Where do these aberrant pronunciations come from? They come from ignorant TV reporters and radio announcers who seem bent on changing the way we speak. Grenada, that tiny island nation in the West Indies, was until the recent military engagement there (under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, for those to young to remember) pronounced with an "ah" sound. Now it is Gren-nay-da. Too bad Frankie Lane didn't know that. He would never have been able to rhyme it with Nevada — or will we be calling that Ne-vay-da ten years from now? Oh, just in case you are a public speaker, its English pronunciation is with the middle a as the a in at, not Nev-ah-da. Yes, I know, because I lived there.

If you are one of those people who feel it is your duty to correct everyone's pronunciation and use of the English language I have but one word for you: STOP! Sooner or later you will find yourself with egg on your face. If you are proficient in these areas and you want to save someone from future embarrassment, do it quietly and privately. And as for you, young lady behind the counter, remember this: the customer is always right — even when he's wrong.

How do they stay in business — Pt. 1

This is an advertisement in the Kitsap Sun for McGavins Bakery in Bremerton, Washington. Bremerton has a bad reputation, rightly earned, of poor customer service from its businesses. What once was a lively, productive city is now a moribund municipality gasping for its last breath as it applies cosmetic fixes that make it more appealing to the eye but do nothing to attract shoppers.

McGavins bakery is a fixture in Bremerton. It was there when I arrived in the Autumn of 1970. That was back when the city was booming. It advertises itself as the “home of the pink champagne cake.”

My wife saw the advertisement pictured above and called the bakery to place an order. Among other things, she specifically asked what was on the cake and was told, “nothing.” We do not ordinarily purchase cakes from a bakery because I can make my own equaling or exceeding the quality of that which you find in the majority of bakeries. However, this was for our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, and it was a champagne cake — a little out of the ordinary. She placed an order and I picked it up several days later, on Saturday.

I arrived at the bakery and had to wait a few minutes while other customers were being served. When my cake was brought out from the back I do not remember if it was boxed or not. Because of the press of other customers I was not able to pay close attention to what was going on. I do remember looking at the cakes in the glass case and observing the skimpy icing covering some of them and that two were covered in what appeared to be either coconut or crumbs. I paid for my purchase and proceeded home where, without looking at the cake, I placed it in the refrigerator.

The following Monday was our wedding anniversary. That evening I got the cake out and told my wife that it appeared to have coconut on it. A pinch of the questionable matter confirmed my hunch. My wife was livid. She was disappointed. She had looked forward to having this cake for weeks. It isn't that she doesn't like coconut. It's much worse than that. Coconut ingestion can be fatal to her. Needless to say, it strained and dampened our celebration.

My wife later called the bakery and talked to a counter person while a man in the background provided the answers. Whether he was the owner, the manager, the baker, or the janitor I do not know. What I do know (the telephone was on the external speaker) was that he was arrogantly unconcerned. His bottom line was that if we did not want coconut we should have so stated that. Were we also to say we did not want catsup, mustard, nuts, meringue, whipped cream, etc. on it? When you are told nothing was on it, you expect nothing to be on it.

This is the mentality of many Bremerton businesses. This is the reason that Bremerton is now a fourth-rate city — a small metropolis of run-down, empty storefronts. “The customer is always right” never found acceptance here. I hope McGavins Bakery learns that customer service is what keeps a store in business. There are others who would gladly have their disgruntled patrons.

April Fools' Day

 

Practical jokes and hoaxes traditionally are the fare for April Fool's Day. Where it originated and why it came about are speculative matters, but the custom goes back many centuries and seems to have been widespread throughout much of Europe.

Being a practical joker at heart, I have been known to perpetrate some good-spirited hoaxes, not necessarily original, on unsuspecting subjects.

As a young man, I had an acquaintance who was deaf. I called this person's mother representing myself as an agent for a Dr. Frank Lee Lyon and said that Dr. Lyon was on track for developing a cure for deafness and would her child be interested in being a trial subject. I gave her the doctor's telephone number and asked her to call him that afternoon. The number I gave was for the local zoo.

About three o'clock that afternoon, I again called the mother who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, was somewhat irate. "Frankly, your liein'," she said and summarily hung up the telephone.

That evening I had occasion to see the mother, who was with her husband. She was in an emotional state of mind and was telling him of the telephone call she had received earlier that day. As I listened to her I could not help but start laughing. "That was you?" she asked unbelievably. I confessed it was, and the three of us had a good laugh.

On another occasion, much later in life, I left "While you were out" messages on several engineers' desks saying that a certain Myra Mains had called and would like them to return the call. The number given was that of a local funeral home. It is hard to suppress laughter when your "professional" coworker is asking to speak with Myra Mains.

We all need a good laugh from time-to-time and this day provides that opportunity. Have a happy, rollicking day!

I See Red When I See Pink

Thank you, Lars Brinkman, for the use of your photograph.

See the cruel man and the cruel tourist inflicting inhumane and cruel treatment on the nice horsey. See the famished horse as he shivers and shudders, breathing in all that foul and polluted Central Park air, pulling those lazy, self-indulgent tourists being pampered by its unethical and tyrannical owner. Doesn't that just make you see red?

I see red when I see Pink. Who is Pink? That's the question I had when I heard that Pink is calling for the ban of horse drawn carriages in the city of New York. So who is Pink? I always that Pink was a color. This Pink is something else. Pink is a sometimes androgynous-looking woman (who can look beautiful when she wants to), foul-mouthed, rocker from Philadelphia. Her notoriety and following among the world's easily-mislead youth gives her the platform to express her ridiculously silly ideas and to promote her favorite cause: the prevention of animal cruelty.

Do i support animal cruelty? No way! I just don't believe that Pink and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) are always right when it comes to animal cruelty. In the first place, PETA believes that animals and people are equal. I do not. I believe that humans are far superior to the most superior animal. I also believe that God gave us animals to make our labor easier, and for eating. I have no problem with poisoning rats or trapping rats and mice in those cruel snap-action traps. Rats and mice might be Pink’s equal (and that I do not find hard to imagine) but they are not equal to me. And I find a horse-drawn carriage ride most enjoyable and relaxing.

So what does Pink have against horse-drawn carriages? The poor horsey has to walk in his bare feet in the snow. Oh, how pitiful. So do the Sherpa's of Nepal. The poor horsey has to breathe all that carcinogenic automobile exhaust. The poor horsey gets cold in winter and sweats in the summertime. Look, Pink, if you don’t like watching the poor horsies in Central Park or on the avenues of New York, go to India where the animals are venerated and inflict cruelty on the people.

A look at PETA’s home page on their web site is revealing. While I might find something(s) to agree with, I really wonder what PETA would do with all the animals if they had the “rights” that PETA thinks they should have.

But back to horse-drawn carriage rides. Are they really inhumane for the horses? I don’t believe they are. I have had horse-drawn carriage rides in New York, Honolulu, Victoria, B.C. and have seen them in a number of other localities. I have never seen a horse mistreated. That would be killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Sure, they have to breathe automobile exhaust. So, Pink, why are you not concerned about the driver breathing those same fumes? Why are you not concerned about the tourists having to breathe those fumes? Doesn’t the driver have to endure the cold of winter and the heat of summer? Why are you not concerned about him or her?

Some people have nothing better to do than to meddle with centuries-old customs and ideas. I guess that’s the only outlet for those who have no real skills and little wisdom and too much time and money. If you’re really against cruelty, campaign against partial-birth abortion or saline-induced abortion. Than you might be believable.