New Scheme

For years I’ve been getting credit card offers in the mail. You get ‘em too? I usually mail the offers back to the companies making the offer. I open the envelope and stuff all the promotional stuff into the enclosed postage-paid envelope and send it back to the sender. I give them the pleasure of throwing the junk away AND paying for the postage. You know, they only pay the postage when you actually mail it back to them. Everybody should do this. I look at it as a backdoor civil disobedience. The US Post Office, through the postage you pay every time you mail something, already subsidizes the mailing of the junk to you in the first place. Tell your friends! Maybe if enough people do this they’ll stop (wishful thinking).

Here’s the new scheme.

Credit cards I have accounts with keep sending me these convenient little checks. Usually three or four at a time. They’re meant to be used to transfer balances from one card to another. I look at them as just that much more junk floating through the postal system. More junk that forces the Postal Service to raise the rate of a first class postage stamp every nine or ten months. They’re getting as bad as the oil companies.

I have a friend, he’s a moron, who got several of these checks and went out and bought a bunch of mildly expensive toys with them. When the charges appeared, as if by magic, on his next credit card bill, he was way shocked. What a moron! By all means, don’t be another moron. We have enough of them already (no political jokes here, thank you).

Here’s what I do with their little checks. I use them. I cash one in the cafeteria at my office to buy a soda from the machine. I use one to buy a cup of coffee in the morning as I drive to work. Never for more than $1.50. There are no extra service charges. No minimums that I’ve seen. I’ve even read the fine print. I figure it costs the credit card company at least $2.00 to print, mail, and process the check. I’d mail them back to the credit card companies but they don’t send postage-paid envelopes with them. Tell all your credit card holding friends. Stop the insanity.

I wonder when Al Gore will start in on the environmental cost of the raw tonnage of pure waste traversing our postal system. Not to mention all the oxygen-producing trees cut down to produce the paper in a somewhat less than environmentally sensitive chemical process.

Think about it!

Has Spring Sprung?

Ok, maybe it’s premature, but maybe spring is here. I’ve seen some signs recently. Yesterday it got up into the low 70s and today it was up to the mid 60s.

This afternoon I got home grabbed the dog and went for a walk in the park around the corner. I walked in a relatively straight line while Mowgli zigzagged back and forth in front of me. He probably covered twice the ground I did. We walked for half an hour and got home WELL before dark. I really hadn’t noticed the days “getting longer” because a week ago, we had been overcast for a month and a half. I wore shorts and a t-shirt. What a treat!

The park was full of people. Moms hovering over kids at the playground. Out-of-shape people playing basketball: you got to start someplace. People walking dogs. Everybody had that just-getting-over-my-annual-dose-of-cabin-fever look on their faces. They were happy. Their dogs were happy. Even the robins poking through the still brown grass looked happy.

Some of the daffodils are blooming. Some bloomed last week. Some are mere clusters of tender green shoots about four inches tall that haven’t put out their bright yellow blooms yet. The buds on the dogwoods are all swollen up and look like they’re ready to burst. I know the bloom should be a couple of weeks away, or maybe a month, but it sure looks promising. The azaleas all have big fat buds as well. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the dogwoods and azaleas will bloom together.

Pitchers and catchers reported to spring training camps the end of last week and some of the big name position players are starting to arrive. Newspaper articles are appearing with stories about the new young phenoms or the veterans recovering from off-season surgeries. Managers and owners are justifying trades and acquisitions, or in some cases, the lack thereof. Go Cardinals!

My mailbox has been inundated with fishing supply catalogs. I remember a sure-fire sign of spring when I was a kid, the arrival of the Herter’s catalog. Thick, with an orange and black cover, and chock full of the latest and greatest rods, reels, baits, and accessories. Yes ladies us guys know all about accessorizing.

I realize Mother Nature is bound to have a few frigid days left up her sleeve. But after the last couple of days, let ‘em come! They won’t last long and the bikinis will start appearing any day. WOOHOO!

October 20, 2005

Today I travel through a small town on the White River where old men still sit on store front benches in the shade of faded awnings and wave to passers by. The old men are sitting in front of closed stores. Only a few remain open to business, maybe five or six on either side of four blocks of “downtown”. Mom and Pop department stores that once thrived before the days of the shopping malls with the big chain anchors. Maybe a Woolworth’s once satisfied the residents’ needs. Main Street is now, only a dim reflection of once vibrant life of countless similar little towns. But why, there isn’t a Wal-Mart within 30 miles of here? If only the benches and awnings could tell stories. They’d tell of droughts and tornados and floods, of good harvests and poor harvests, of births and deaths and weddings. The stories would describe the life-blood of rural communities whose residents were and still are close to one another.

I drive past old women in gliders rocking beneath pecan trees in their well kept front yards. I imagine them talking about the weather, the crops, the upcoming church social, or Betty’s new granddaughter, “She’s the spitting image of Betty”. They wave too. I wave back. People here actually use their front yards to socialize in. Not like the front yards in cities that are only used for cosmetic purposes. Curb appeal is much more important in cities.

It could once have been the town where Atticus Finch or Dilsey Gibson lived or where the Sheriff’s boy was named Opie. But now, the best that can be said about it is that it had seen better days. The Mayor runs the hardware store in town. Unless you have an appointment, you’re more apt to meet with him behind the counter at the store selling paint or nails to one of his constituents. Most all the mayors of the communities I’ll drive through today are part-time mayors. Some are local farmers. Some mayors are the wives of local farmers. Some work in a factory twenty miles away. Some are mayors because nobody else wants the job.

Later in the day I drive past houses sitting in a transition area between two different geographic regions. Their front porches sit in the fertile Delta where alternating crops of corn, cotton, rice, soy beans, milo, and winter wheat mark the passage of time. Their back porches lie at the foot of Crowley’s Ridge, a ribbon of wind blown loessial soils that once served as the divider between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The Delta is dotted with grain bins and small farmhouses. Farm owners once lived in these houses. Now they’ve been occupied by farm hands because the owners live in the cities where there is more to do and nobody waves to one another. The Ridge is dotted with ponds and fruit orchards and small neat houses. The trees in the Delta have been cut down to make more space for tillable land while those on the Ridge have been spared for the most part. The only wildlife in the Delta lives in scattered wood lots that may or may not be connected to one another by grown over ditch banks. The ditches were dug to drain the swamps that once covered the Delta from the Gulf of Mexico to southern Missouri. Wildlife on the Ridge is varied and plentiful. The beauty in the Ridge is instantly evident. If you take the time to look closely, the Delta will unveil its beauty but you have to look for it. Its not slap your face, here I am beauty.

Everybody here waves. Big ol’ hand flappin’ howdy do waves. The kind that gets the flab on the bottom side of your upper arm wobblin’ back n forth. It’s impolite not to wave back, downright hurtful. In this part of the state people wave to one another; it’s just a fact of life. While driving, the finger wave (palm forward mind you) is common practice, especially from a hand grasping the top of a steering wheel in a pick-up truck. In other parts of the state you’ll only get the wave if you too are driving a pick-up truck. It can sometimes be a war of wavering waving wills when two vehicles approach one another from opposite directions, each driver waiting to see if the other will wave first. It’s a friendly form of rural jousting. Around here, it’s a contest to see who can wave first. Most of the people on this day’s drive wave regardless of the vehicle they’re driving. I’m driving a mid-size sedan and they wave to me. I wave back. I can tell when I’m getting closer to a city or town of any size. The closer I get the fewer waves I get. City folk aren’t big wavers. I’ll bet they don’t hug much either.

Flyfishers’ Prayer

May our footing be firm,
With the current just right,
And our waders be warm and dry.

May our rods be true,
No snags for our cast,
And the day’s hatch match our fly.

May we read the water,
Like a child’s primer,
And know the fish’s lair.

May the cast drive our fly,
To the perfect spot,
Where it lights as a wisp of air.

May our quarry hit hard,
Our knots hold tight,
The thrill of the fight to know.

An easy release,
How sweet life would be,
If the Lord would bless us so.

FENG SHUI BLUES

My aura isn’t happy!
My psyche’s all a’dither!
My office space is funky,
It makes my senses whither.

The table’s over there,
It can’t be reached from here.
I can’t see people coming.
My bounds are all too near.

The plugs are in the wrong place.
I got cables in the air.
It’s got me so perplexed,
I want to pull out all my hair.

I got those low down aggravatin’,
Personally irritatin’,
Aura bruisin’,
Psyche abusin’,
Feng Shui Blues.

November 17, 2005

Today I travel through the southern edge of the Ozark Mountains, just north of the Arkansas River valley. While not big mountains like the Rockies or Appalachians, mountains just the same. Elevations run from 1,600 to 2,100 feet with steep, oak-hickory forested slopes. Stream crossings, switch-backs, and saddle gaps are numerous as are the areas where man has cut the oaks and hickories and replaced them with fast growing, extremely marketable loblolly pines (pinus taeda). Due to the varying terrain, I seldom encounter a stretch of road that offers more than 200 yards of sight line. The views across the valley from the ridge I drive along to the next one or two ridges are awe-inspiring. In many places the trees on either side of the road grow to touch one another’s branches over the center of the road. It’s like driving through the technicolor dreamcoat.

The color of the fall foliage is much more spectacular than expected. There must have been just enough rain at critical times to aid the color change process. It’s been real dry here and nobody believed we’d have the near the color we have in a good year. Bright yellows, deep dark reds, a few glowing oranges and various shades of brown are magnified by the sharply contrasting vivid green of the pines. As much as people dislike the pines, they really add to the fall color.

Sign of deer hunters abound. Men and women with blaze orange vests and hats, bundled up against the cold. Pick-up trucks with ATV ramps parked off the side of the roads. Small camps and some pretty elaborate camps set up in little pull-offs nestled in the forest. Most of this is part of the Ozark National Forest and is therefore public land. A few deer are spotted in openings off to the side of the road or running across it up ahead. It’s no wonder so many deer are hit by vehicles every year.

I pass by little homes scattered along the road. I always wonder what the people who live in these houses do for a living so far from “civilization”. All but a few are well kept. Most have an assortment of children’s’ toys in their yards: big-wheels, wagons, maybe one of those portable basketball goals, and trampolines. Old dogs and young dogs all eye me suspiciously as I drive by. Most have garden patches waiting for the tiller next spring. I see a few chickens foraging in the yards. Some have the ubiquitous dilapidated car or truck peaking out of the weeds at the edge of their yards; some have several. I also pass houses that haven’t been lived in for years. Their roofs collapsing, windows broken, and yards choked with weeds. Concentrations of these little houses have names like Fern, or Piney, or Batson. You won’t find these places on any but the most detailed of maps.

There are no Seven-Elevens here. No Sonic drive-ins or McDonalds. No traffic lights and rarely a stop sign. Very little traffic. If I’m lucky I see some of my favorite signs: “One Lane Bridge”, “Pavement Ends”, “Crooked And Steep Next ## Miles – Drive With Care”, “Forest Road ###”. No “One Way” signs out here, no speed limit signs either. The closer I get to “civilization”, “Stop” signs become more common.

This is a good place to be.

I'm baaaaaaack

I'm back.

This will be a new, kinder, gentler version. No more political rants. I'll assauge my political bone by getting involved in local politics (it's all local anyway, isn't it?) and by writing letters to my elected officials. They need to hear our thoughts.

I'm not going to feel driven to post daily. Maybe not even weekly. When the urge hits and the muse prods, you'll see the results here.

Stay tuned.