Powerful prank ammo for peaceful warriors

Mr. Rogers BBALL

Neighborhood bricklayer

Letter to Jerry Brady and Lee Enterprises

Letter to Lee Enterprises:

To Whom It May Concern:

Much has been made of the fact that the Idaho Mountain Express now owns the newspaper records of the Wood River Journal. Some of these ancient archives even precede electricity coming to this valley by several years! However, there seems to be some confusion around here regarding the Wood River Journal’s online archives. 

Unless, I am clicking on the wrong link, the searchable online archives for the old Wood River Journal are down and have been for several weeks. When I mentioned this to some of my former colleagues at both newspapers, they told me that they thought Lee Enterprises still holds the rights for these online archives. If this is true, I wondered if the old archives are offline, due to a cost-cutting measure; because if so I cannot imagine that keeping these precious archives up would be very expensive. Especially when that cost is measured against the invaluable benefits, such historical records can contribute to communities. 

If Lee Enterprises is struggling with this cost, several solutions are at hand, including a fundraiser here, oriented towards newspaper aficionados and local historical buffs. Before I go into further depth with those suggestions, I wanted to do a little homework, to discover if indeed these archives belong to Lee and if so, why they are no longer online.

If beetle infestations occur at Galena Summit, it makes for a stronger pro-cell tower argument, as this will have then made the area even more avalanche-prone, in a territory where young sports enthusiasts have already lost their lives after suffering needless communication delays.

I used to feel much the same way as the anti-monopine huggers. Then my mindset matured on that dark day when, I saw two young girls have their lives agonizingly stripped away from them, for want of an ambulance - if not for saving their lives, at least for relieving their horrible pain and that of their family's.

In this context, the cultural values of our SNRA should include providing these long overdue and potentially lifesaving cell towers.

It is great that an emergency landline will soon be installed at the Galena Overlook. About a dozen years ago, some friends and I stood at that exact spot witnessing a lightning-started forest fire spreading quickly, and wondered if we should dangerously rush down to the Smiley Creek payphones to report it, as none of the twenty witnesses standing there had any way of knowing if the Forest Service had yet been informed.

But what happens if crash victims are nowhere near the soon-to-be installed landline, or if it's disabled, or the crash disables the victims and their vehicles, so that they can't possibly cowboy up to it? In the event of one those probable cases, wouldn't most of us wish that we had the foresight to implement a dynamic back-up plan, logically starting with cell towers, as now most travelers use cell phones?

While it's true that our forebears did not use cell phones, as they recklessly cowboyed over Al Ross's ancient pass; back then they didn't have to contend with monster rigs barreling down the icy highway straight towards each other, at 65 mph +. And why is it that none of the fossilized-Flintstonians came out opposing the raising of the SNRA's Highway 75 speed limit to sixty-five, refusing to acknowledge the inherent and widely documented danger involved in operating a motor vehicle on narrow, twisting mountain roads at such high irresponsible speeds?

Moreover, disinformation in the above letter claims, "At best the proposed tower will provide a narrow band of cell coverage near the top of Galena Summit." This is a Baldy-faced lie, as the Galena tower will greatly fill in the gaps, not serviced by town towers. Extensive surveys conducted for the strongly capitalistic tower company have shown, that another simple cell tower strategically placed, way up yonder in the piney woods behind SNRA Headquarters will greatly augment 95% of the remaining most used recreation areas.

The above letter also states, "Proponents speak broadly of public safety concerns, but ignore the fact that the landline option is in development. They also refuse to acknowledge the inherent and widely documented danger involved in operating a motor vehicle on narrow, twisting mountain roads while talking on a cell phone." This makes me wonder how close these four expert authors have actually followed the issue. Either these pillars of the community are refusing to acknowledge, or have missed my widely published commentary; Cell phones, not cell towers, are the problem:

www.magicvalley.com

blog.sunvalleyonline.com - comment-66873

One of my friends wondered why Homeland Security would want to be involved with SNRA communications. Are we forgetting, the important dignitaries who often enjoy visiting, Idaho? Besides the annual Allen & Company event, in the last five years plenty of powerful figures have visited this area, including John Kerry, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, The President of Mexico, Tony Blair, One of Google's founders - the list is long.

Will Secret Service pointmen politely laugh, when they inform future Presidents who might want to visit this special place, that the SNRA is sadly out-of-bounds for their enjoyment, because we don't have simple back up plans in place for their important safety, and we're crippled by non-coverage without these interactive pillars for our community?

Idaho Governor again wholeheartedly agrees with Mr. Banholzer

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005124281&var_Year=2009&var_Month=01&var_Day=07

If the Friedman family stands by their earlier intention of donating the Friedman airport land for a useful cause, what do you think will best fit here?

a. A transformative healing center for our War Veterans / expansion of CSI’s nursing center/ Paralympics training center.

b. An emergency cell tower, tall enough to serve every crease, crevice and cave throughout Idaho.

c. A state-of-the-art Frisbee golf center

d. I think we have room for all the above here, including a small helipad, although we may need to set up another small fund for the cell tower shadow encroaching on Eccle’s ranch.

Your suggestion here_______________________________________

A bloggers brief history of anonymity

Rep. Stephen Hartgen is drafting a bill requiring bloggers and online commenters to post under their real names. While some say this is sensible, when authors reveal their true selves, they often surrender much power.

If Steve’s law actually passes, how do we purport to penalize, parables and plenteous poems posted by ‘Anonymous’?

And what sentence would we mete out, for someone like Samuel Clemens who blogs whimsical wisdoms under Mark Twain’s pseudonym?

Will readers be less intrigued when they discover George Eliot is masking femininity?

Please don’t tell me Stephen King was disingenuous when he penned his entertaining Richard Bachman paperbacks.

Should we have lashed JCampbell for his posting a treatise about the hero with a thousand faces?

And how should we expect Clint Eastwood to sign his mark as Pale Rider’s nameless preacher?

Is our government suited to sue in matters of The Bible’s true author, shaky proofs of Shakespeare and secret scribes of the Koran?

And what about unidentified whistleblowers, who sense the importance of reporting unfortunate industrial mishaps, in hopes of preventing needless reoccurrences.

As such clampdowns, made little sense for anonymous authors of antiquity, we should not impose speech-crippling regulations on our modern-day blogosphere.

-JBanholzer

related links:

http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2009/01/04/opinion/editors_column/152155.txt

(Letter 6)

http://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/story/641866.html#none

Banholzerian underground zymurgy

Banholzerian underground zymurgy

For those interested in reading more about Banholzer ancestry the family also had a brewery in St. Paul, where they stored beer bottles in a mile and a half long cave they dug beneath the city:

From The Master Brewers association of the Americas website:

“Frederick Banholzer, who was born in Wurttemberg, Germany, in 1824, had been since 1856 a busy St. Paul stone mason and contractor, working primarily around the Uppertown district. Described "as a man of great humor," Banholzer was less interested in brewing than was his son, and so after only six years in the trade he sold his interest to 30-year-old William.
A rotund man with a handlebar moustache, William Banholzer "was all business." Almost single-handedly, he turned a 1,000 barrel-a-year brewery into a 12,000 barrel-a-year operation. "Banholzer's North Mississippi Beer" became by the 1880s one of the five most popular brews in the city. The company's facilities included nine buildings and a one-half-mile deep, multi-chambered cave.
The cave was accessible from both the bottom of the river bluff (south of the brewery) and from the top of the cliff (right inside the plant's main stone building). Today this cave still runs from the river bank, under Shepard Road, to the vicinity of Butternut street and one can still see the old stone archway at the lower entrance - a lasting reminder of Banholzer's Brewery.
In 1886, William established "Banholzer's Park" in the empty lots north of the brewery. The park was to serve as a recreation area for neighborhood picnickers who drank at Banholzer's outdoor beer garden, and it provided barbeques, outdoor bowling, German band music, balloon rides to Lilydale and, of course, cold kegs of North Mississippi beer.
THE FINANCIAL SUCCESS of the North Mississippi Company can probably best be measured by the prosperity of its owner, William Banholzer. In 1885, he built a magnificent stone house at 689 Stewart Avenue for $10,000, a great expense for 1885. The still-standing mansion is one of the more impressive 19th century houses in St. Paul, a testimonial to the success of the North Mississippi Brewery.”
Evidently, spelunkers still explore the streets beneath St. Paul in search of an elusive Banholzer Beer. I can almost taste the foamy suds from one now…
http://www.citypages.com/content/printVersion/12739

Uh-oh! Just discovered some bad news about why the brewery began floundering: A worker fell into a hot vat of beer and was boiled to death!

http://fieldguide.fmr.org/site_detail.php?site_id=215

Now, I’m not so thirsty as before.

From Hermann Hesse's "Demian" (written in 1919)

Aus Hermann Hesses "Demian" (geschrieben 1919)

Das Ende von Kapitel 5 - Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei heraus

" Häufig haben wir uns auch unsere Träume erzählt. Pistorius wusste, wie man sie interpretiert. Ein Beispiel dafür fällt mir gerade ein. Ich träumte, ich könnte fliegen, aber so, dass ich kapituliert in der Luft wirkte und alles verlor Das Gefühl des Fliegens begeisterte mich, aber die Erheiterung wurde zu einer Angst, als ich mich immer höher fahren sah und immer machtloser wurde. In diesem Moment machte ich die sichere Entdeckung, dass ich den Aufstieg oder Fall meines Fluges regulieren konnte meinen Atem anhalten oder loslassen.

Pistorius 'Kommentar lautete: „Der Antrieb, der Sie zum Fliegen bringt, ist unser größter menschlicher Besitz. Jeder hat es. Es ist das Gefühl, mit den Wurzeln der Macht verbunden zu sein, aber man bekommt bald Angst vor diesem Gefühl. Es ist verdammt gefährlich! Das ist der Grund, warum die meisten Menschen ihre Flügel ablegen und lieber gehen und das Gesetz befolgen. Aber du nicht. Du fliegst weiter. Und schau! Sie stellen fest, dass Sie allmählich beginnen, Ihren Flug zu meistern, dass zu der großen allgemeinen Kraft, die Sie nach oben reißt, eine eigene feine kleine Kraft, ein Organ, ein Steuerungsmechanismus hinzukommt. Wie wunderbar! Ohne das wärst du in die Höhe gezogen, machtlos - was mit Verrückten passiert. Sie besitzen tiefere Andeutungen als Menschen, die erdgebunden bleiben, aber sie haben keinen Schlüssel und keinen Steuerungsmechanismus und brausen ins Unendliche.


Aber Sie, Sinclair, gehen Sie richtig vor. Wie? Sie kennen sich wahrscheinlich nicht. Du machst es mit einem neuen Organ, mit etwas, das deine Atmung reguliert. Und jetzt wirst du erkennen, wie wenig „Individualität“ deine Seele in ihren tiefsten Tiefen hat. Denn diesen Regler erfindet er nicht! Es ist nicht neu! Sie haben es ausgeliehen: Es existiert seit Tausenden von Jahren. Es ist das Organ, mit dem Fische ihr Gleichgewicht regulieren - die Luftblase. Tatsächlich gibt es unter den Fischen noch einige merkwürdige Urgattungen, bei denen die Luftblase als eine Art Lunge fungiert und gelegentlich als Atmungsmechanismus verwendet werden kann. Mit anderen Worten, genau wie die Lunge, die Sie in Ihrem Traum als fliegende Blase verwenden.

Er brachte sogar ein Zoologiebuch heraus und zeigte mir die Namen und Illustrationen dieser anachronistischen Fische. Und mit einem merkwürdigen Schauder fühlte ich, dass ein Organ aus einer früheren Evolutionsperiode noch in mir lebte. "

The ending of chapter 5 – The bird fights its way out of the egg

"Frequently we also told each other our dreams. Pistorius knew how to interpret them. An example of this comes to mind just now. I dreamed I was able to fly, but in such a way that I seemed capitulated into the air and lost all control. The feeling of flying exhilarated me, but exhilaration turned to fear when I saw myself driven higher and higher, becoming more and more powerless. At that instant, I made the saving discovery that I could regulate the rise or fall of my flight by holding or releasing my breath. 

Pistorius’ comment was: ‘The impetus that makes you fly is our greatest human possession. Everybody has it. It is the feeling of being linked with the roots of power, but one soon becomes afraid of this feeling. It’s damned dangerous! That is why most people shed their wings and prefer to walk and obey the law. But not you. You go on flying. And look! You discover that you gradually begin to master your flight, that to the great general force that tears you upward there is added a delicate, small force of your own, an organ, a steering mechanism. How marvelous! Lacking that, you would be drawn up to the heights, powerless – which is what happens to madmen. They possess deeper intimations than people who remain earthbound, but they have no key and no steering mechanism and roar off into infinity.


But you Sinclair, you are going about it in the right way. How? You probably don’t know yourself. You are doing it with a new organ, with something that regulates your breathing. And now you will realize how little ‘individuality’ your soul has in its deepest reaches. For it does not invent this regulator! It is not new! You borrowed it: it has existed for thousands of years. It is the organ with which fish regulate their equilibrium ---the air bladder. And in fact among the fish there are still a few strange primeval genera where the air bladder functions as a kind of lung and can be used on occasion as a breathing mechanism. In other words, exactly like the lung which you in your dream use as a flying bladder’

He even brought out a zoology book and showed me the names and illustrations of these anachronistic fish. And with a peculiar shudder I felt that an organ from an earlier period of evolution was still alive within me."

The salty boat instructor

As I waddled up to Lake of the Woods pier point, I instantly saw that the man who was going to instruct me on how to power a speedboat was missing a leg. His name was Zippy Swainwright and he told me that an alligator had chomped it off down at Chicahominee Sea.

I didn’t believe him, but I climbed aboard anyhow, as he cranked up the Beach Boys, so we’d have something to hear over the Bladdy-Bladdy-Bladdy of the powerboat engines.

I stripped down to my shorts, as it was warm now on the boat deck and as we reeled in the tether, he saw the gouges in my leg muscle and blurted out, “So you’ve been in a boat wreck too!”

I replied, “I thought you said yours was bitten off by an alligator!”

As he handed the helm over to me, he said, “Yes but that was after they flipped it going 100 miles an hour, which disturbed the monsters of the id beneath Chicken Harmony Sea, ya see matey”

Scorching Sunspots

There’s an enlightening episode of the Simpson’s, where Bart and Homer are having a heated discussion about the Sun and Bart suddenly asks, “Dad is the sun, God?” Homer says, “Yes son” and leaves it at that.

With global warming spinning from both sides, I often think about our good friend Sol. If you hold him up next to an SUV, he makes the rig look rather infinitesimal.

Sometimes I find myself worrying that our orbit is not magically tethered to Mister Soul. How does his baking oven even work? The scientist with the longest beard pretends to know about who esoterically controls our sundials. And now we’ve isolated temperatures in the lab that are even hotter than Our Father’s Son (and off the charts like John Lennon). How much do we pay the sentries who guard those hellish gates?

When I worked a meter reader, there was plenty of time to contemplate the heat. But when I found myself thinking about it too deeply, I felt like I was getting burned. Five leap years ago, over on Highland Avenue, I found myself lost in dark thought. I had a strong compulsion that we were blindly heading for disaster by not watching our sun close enough and the lazy dogs in our government had become jaded, thoughtlessly basking in their cushy sun too long.

As I screamed about our insanity, I thrust my tools down into Highland Avenue’s shadowy gutter, next to where a sunspot had scorched the earth. It was an intense panic episode, as they label it; but still a large part of me thought it was called for. After this episode, I slowly returned to normal, and went on to finish my meter route that afternoon. Fortunately, nobody called in on me by reporting my sunny badge number to city authorities. They were inside their soul kitchens gazing at the sunset channel.

Little kids around the world ceaselessly paint smiles on the sun. I yearn for the day when I can eclipse these revolving bad feelings. A day when my beard grows out long again and I follow their lead by simply pretending to kiss the nutritious sun and display a sunnier smile.

Keep it simple stupid. Kiss the sun, to lick the dark, before you kick the can.

Icky CIA Germ

A few days ago, I unearthed a note about an old dream. It was a dream I had while living in a little shack over by Zaney’s. In the dream, a small brown rectangular package arrived at my doorstep. I picked it up and saw the return address was marked in thick black sharpie ink: CIA MIND CONTROL. To show that I wasn’t intimidated, I immediately tore open the package and discovered two small controlled fires burning inside! In the center of each fire was a spindly metal device. I took the package into work to show everyone, where the boss inquired, “Has anybody contacted the authorities about this yet? But by then, already 40 or 50 people had put their marks on the intriguing package.

Satchel Paige quotes

"Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move."

“How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?”

“Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.”

“If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.”

“I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation.”

“Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.”

A cool place

We had the best sledding hill in the world. It was right between the Smiths’ house and ours, in the snowy woods of Kings Park West. I always admired dad for investing in family homes on the edges of Virginia’s hilly wilderness.

Recently, I uncovered an old photo of Dad’s 49’er, stripped down to the bare metal. I wrote a brief story about it entitled, “Whitefield Street down to the bare bones”

Anyhow, back to the sledding hill: Some obstreperous teenagers built the path for it in the summer of ’70. They felled some ancient oak trees with their chainsaws to start a mini-bike path –which incidentally reminds me – I read that there are absolutely no acorns out east this year. I wonder if it’s a manifestation reflecting what the bankrupt eastern seaboard humans did, by not squirreling nuts away before their walled mart crushing frenzies.

Back to the marked trail: Smith and I still talk about those pathways every few years. On icier days, you had to dig your feet in deep before reaching the sharp hairpin corners, to keep from splashing into Rabbit Run’s icy waters, or cracking your head open like a young fragile eggshell mind in Jim Morrison’s American Prayer.

The upper part of the path branched behind Fonzie McKenzie’s property. He was from Lebanon and sometimes we bombed his house with crabapples. Once he called me on the rotary, just as I returned from one of our neighborhood bombing missions & like a rat, I squealed on another boy, seemingly getting off Scott-free myself.

A few years back, Smith bummled alone again through the old oak tree branching paths. As he sat, he began to well up, thinking about his old wet rosebud sled in those simplier days. When I think about my bad judgment of bombing the Lebanese family, I feel the same way. I feel lower than a clitellum.

News to Digest in the Year 2025

MMXXV was supposed to be the year for me to retire. However, President Jenna Blush’s impeccably developed scientific task force has shown that we industrious ape-evolvers thrive longer by not retiring. So now, for our own good, social security biscuits start at age 75.

Robbie is my reliable robot helper for delivering underground newspapers. Readers still prefer actual newspapers –now that they’re edible. It’s just that the soy ink doesn’t stick as well to the reader’s stomach when it’s bad news. The sidewalks stay clear of snow for our distribution Segways, since the city elders were wise enough in the 20-teens to invest in a new maintenance-free radiant heat development. One can of “depleted” plutonium mixed in cement goes a long way. Even the wolves feel safe warming their bellies on these sidewalks, knowing that every bullet has a number on it, so will be traced back to the owner via RFID tracking.

Last week we rode up the Baldy Gondola for the price of a Cheney dollar. Robbie and I looked down at the new buildings on the hill. I never thought that the definition of what a “hillside” is could be so easily amended. Well, it doesn’t look nearly as bad from the top as it does from downtown. Just hope we don’t get another avalanche like the Borah quake of ’09 when that slab of rock closed Trail Creek all summer.

Riding down the Greenhorn YMCA gondola, we intersect the airport tram that transfers to the Mackay area. Ten years ago, that town came alive to embrace the Chilly Slough airport /spaceport, where your tax dollars are shipped to astronomical places. Deicing’s no environmental problem for the reservoir downstream either. Microwaves do it all now. The reservoir is being transformed into a holding pond for the ILL (Idaho Lunar Lab). It makes perfect horse sense too, since farmers get all the rain they need from designer storms –seeded from that old slough naturally. These storms on demand are great backup systems for Baldy’s snowmaking and you even know when they’re scheduled -unless you’ve already munched on that section of the newspaper for lunch.

Think we’ll zip over on the tram to the Sacagawea Superdome this evening and catch the Frisbee Golf tournament. It’s retro day and players will be tossing discs the old-fashioned way –savages without remote controls. One back alley geezer, who resembles yours truly, tosses an Aerobie up into the ozone and lands it around the neck of an emerald dinosaur statue on his first try. Robbie enjoys this. I nudge him with my elbow pad, joking that his frothing mouth will rust his tin lips. However, he just stares entranced at the game and takes another bite out of the program.

We head over to the Salmon Interpretive Museum. Some kids are learning about what Salmon were. One whippersnapper holding a duzz-all device mentions he’s amazed that enough humans didn’t want to blast those darn dams. The HDTV on his wrist buzzes out a news report that the AFLAC duck has succumbed to avian flu. Well enough of this. At least the museum doesn’t yet have to display photos, to remind visitors of what a Tamarack was. That’s only on the other side of the cypress pond, where out of necessity, sharp inventors developed underwater chainsaws.

It’s time for the bus to take us back to our affordable cell. We insert our marked wrists into the holographic security harness to come aboard. Confirming we’re disarmed, it allows us through. Our driver dons an appropriate clown suit. Perhaps he’s the only unchanged thing about the valley! Even the elevation of the entire valley floor has risen five feet on account of all the garden mulch and earthly possessions hauled up from Twin over the years.

FEMA finally fixed that housing problem. The Timmerman Trapezoidal Manage-Mental camp rolls a Dash-Train up valley for us minimum wage workers. When Jeb Blush declared Martial law back in ’11, they netted anyone suspected to have spoken too fancy-free into a new workforce-housing program. There’s even a store on the train. Good thing since most of Ketchum’s old shops are now vacuous second homes.

So in the spirit of Maxwell Smart memorize these words under a cone of silence before quickly swallowing them. Back in 2005, the United States was rated 44th in freedoms of the press. (See: Reporters sans frontières - Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index - 2005 ) We’ve been spiraling down a slippery Timmerman slope ever since. We’ll print all the news that fits until Allen & Company week, when a high and mighty authority pops out from his protected penthouse, picks up a nutritious news wrap, deciphers what’s going on and then immediately tries to extinguish these blindingly brilliant underground points of light with all his force.

Rainbow connection puddle

Prompt from Two Skies Idaho Conversation League

“What happened this afternoon?”

Pete & I were waiting to deliver furniture to a client, when I looked down at the driveway and momentarily thought I saw a rainbow puddle. It was next to a quaking aspen blinding me under the brilliant sun. But after a pause, I saw it was only children’s chalk coloring on their driveway.

Still, it reminded me of a similar dog day afternoon when I saw Tammy standing in front of an oil rainbow puddle by Nelson’s Lube. She was with her beagle and it was the last time that they would stand there, the two of them; because her dog always so obedient before, did something quite out of character and ran off the full length of Broadford Road.

After a few days, her beagle returned. The dog had been unwell and now it kept running off. When it returned the second time, she thought it was a ghost because she assumed it was a goner.

I tried to write a Haiku Poem about the incident. It sputtered some, but came out okay. Then I told her in person that the rainbow connection puddle had reminded me of my own dog, her final Broadford journey and her seventeen secret nicknames, sometimes still on the tip of my tongue. And the time she tried to save me when she thought I was drowning beneath a Wildhorse Canyon waterfall, while pawing my head in the brilliant wet sun.

Reverse bank enrichment

I wish I could see the security video of me snatching out some twenties, struck in the bottom plate of my bank ATM, as the door began clamping shut. It all happened so fast. At first, I thought the machine had accidentally dispensed eighty extra dollars. However, after quickly examining the money, I saw that I was indeed short twenty bucks and the last twenty was ripe for plucking by the next man.

Although it was only twenty, I immediately went inside to report the odd incident. Sandra[1], the teller in charge, was on break, but came through to address my complaint. She inspected the machine with her special key; however, by then, the next man had already absconded with my twenty. I saw this as rich writing fodder and observed closely as the actions unfolded. Sandra, spoke quietly to a manager in the far corner about the dilemma and discreetly motioned my way. Perhaps I was a bit scruffy, but they could see I was not a lowdown shabster. After all, if I were trying to con them, why would I be asking for only twenty? Then I mentioned that we could file a police report.

Something like this had happened before, at an earlier incarnation of the bank. Years ago, one of the twenties came out as a five on a Friday evening. That next Monday, as I made my case, they told me that they would have to “inspect the tapes” before offering a refund. Inspect the tapes? What tapes? The video of my ticked of reaction for being short-shifted? This was almost funny, but I also sensed that seemingly small incidents like these are also, the types that trigger something deep within, making some people “go off.” In the earlier incident, the personnel inspected the tapes and credited my account, along with a written apology. One friend suggested that an apology from a bank is worthy of framing.

As we waited for resolution of the current ATM incident, I related this old episode to Sandra, which lightened our tension. I also wondered if I would have been so keen to report this, had the machine accidentally dispensed me an extra eighty, as I first thought it had. Last winter, when I found a bag of money in front of Telly’s Deli’s, I did not hesitate to call the owner, thinking that I would be richer for the story.

In other cases though, I wasn’t always so honest. Being a late night delivery person for many years, I found a number of interesting items, which had become separated from their owners. At one point after five losers in a row had expressed no gratitude for the safe return of their items, I thought, “For the next valuable item I discover, I shall keep it, and like a modern day Robin Hood toss the coinage to Poverty Flats children!”

However, this remains perplexing. After all, you’re either 100 percent honest or not honest at all, aren’t you? But, aren’t there some grey areas with a little nudge room here? As I relayed this story, it triggered interesting reactions within my colleagues. It’s easy to see how some would think, “With times this tough, now the bank is ripping me off too!” Some wanted to point out what a fool I was for not telling the man behind me in line to hold off, because there was a problem with the machine. I did not see a machine trouble button, nor were there any fire alarms nearby. Most folks who listened to the story seemed to clamp their minds tight around the elusive twenty, rather than focusing on extracting the broader aspect of the story or taking advantage of a unique situation to become better acquainted with those involved in the incident.

As I drove away from the bank, rightly compensated for my misplaced twenty, the incident reminded me of fabled basketball days. Like after playing with some people I’ve seen hanging around the courts, but never really knew that well; and then after sharing a sportingly good time, feeling a common bond, whenever we saw each other bouncing around town.

---

[1] Not her real name

Whitefield Street down to the bare bones

Whitefield Street down to the bare bones

I dreamt that David and I were back in our teenage years on Whitefield Street. Something was wrong with our VW and David helped me look at the problem. We saw that the roof had come loose from the side panel and hoisted it into the correct position. However, we would need two pins or rivets to secure it properly, so we set the frame back down with one corner of it leaning into the driver’s seat.

Suddenly, a pulley appeared and David inserted his neck within the four chains at the top of the pulley, to balance everything in place, so we could reset the top onto the side panel. I set up in a position at the front of the VW. From there, I could raise or lower the pulley as needed. As I made a slight adjustment, David became tangled in the chains bumping his head slightly on the underside of the beetle shell. Although it looked like he bumped his head hard, he did not complain.

I directed the pulley to lower, and even though I was certain that, I had pulled the chain in the correct manner; it rose, banging David’s head again. Again, he cowboyed up, by not complaining; although it certainly must have strung. In fact, the noise from his head kept ringing in my own and even though he was dozens of paces away from the vehicle, a mechanical noise resounded, repeating every five or six seconds from his forehead. The mechanical echoing reminded me of another dream involving David and as with that dream, continued ringing in my head upon awakening.

In the dream, as I went over to embrace him, he had become even younger. Now he was somewhere between 4 and 6 years old. The future Marine still would not complain about what hurt and I begin embracing him with a protective hug as an apology for every horrible thing that my young brother faced or would face in this wacky world. Suddenly I realized that I was apologizing to the David of all ages and wished that I could grow into a stronger brother for the David’s of young and old.

The Cell Catcher in the Galena Rye

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some unconnected game in this big field of SNRA and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around - nobody big, with cell phone reception I mean - except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the reception area cliff- I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the cell catcher in the SNRA and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.”

Jimi Hendrix- Belly Button Window (rare version)

In Memory of Mitch Mitchell

90 years ago, today:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armistice_Day

The Statesman should test market edible information products

draft 2

After delivering millions of sometimes-bland newspapers, I finally came up with a recipe ripe to compete with the Internet; via products you can simply eat, rather than wastefully toss out or recycle:

Start out small, like at the food mall, and then mix nutritious soy based ink with cellulose news columns. Wrap into hermetically sealed rice paper, stuffed with ads. Organically orient the A Section to include everyman’s essential waking vitamins, with a whiff of caffeine providing the Buzz for B. In winter, Lifestyles could supply Vitamin C, to lick the dark.

Occasionally articles come along that are so well written, such as Zimo’s Overlooked diving ducks, that they don’t need extra spices to whet readers hardy appetites.

To alleviate rogue dogs from snatching the tasty wraps from the ground, require home subscribers to maintain a sanitary Statesman box, modified in the form of a child’s toy oven. When neighbors see subscribers pull out steamingly nutritious news wraps, they, too, will greatly desire your munchable broadsheets.

Your first edible edition could proudly proclaim, “Newspaper naysayers eat their words.” To prove this is not a half-baked idea, you could swiftly upgrade your Internet version to include text-message toast. (This is credible)

P.S. When the day comes that you can strengthen your rice paper by bonding it with edible hemp fibers; that too, will be a newsworthy event unto itself.