04/12/2012

The New Cigarette

I fly on a fairly regular basis and these trips always begin with a 6 a.m. flight, which means the plane boards around 5:30.  Because I’m a frequent flyer, I always board in Zone 2.  I’m not frequent enough to qualify for Zone 1, but I’m still among the first on the plane, which gives me a chance to settle in before my seatmate arrives.

I rarely speak to strangers on airplanes, so elaborate avoidance schemes are unnecessary, but invariably the person who sits next to me stows his or her carry-on, fastens her or his seatbelt and pulls out his or her smart phone and begins scrolling through her or his email.

Really?  Email?  At 5:40 a.m.?  From whom, the Union Bank of Switzerland?  Not only that, but guess what?  I’ve got a smart phone, too, so even from the next seat I can tell that you’re not looking at new email, but just shuffling through crap you’ve already read.

I already had my book out and after the perfunctory nod to make sure you saw that I wasn’t sitting on your seat belt, I was already (for the most part) ignoring you.  In fact, the only reason I pay these people any attention at all is because I couldn’t help noticing these bizarre, pointless smart phone ceremonies and now I keep stealing glances out of pure bafflement.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Comments (0)
04/05/2012

Al Gore’s Igloo

This is the fourth installment of my New Year’s pay more attention to the weather resolution.  It was hard to wait until the first of the month, given the summer-like heat Vermont experienced a few weeks ago.  When a late-winter storm hit Washington, DC in 2010 (I was on one of the last planes out of National Airport), Republican Congressional aides built an igloo on the Capitol lawn with a mailbox reading “Al Gore” out front.  Perhaps I should have built a cabana in my front yard with a mailbox reading “Jim Inhofe” out front.

If, as oil companies, Republican senators and presidential candidates claim, global warming is nothing more than a hoax dreamed up by environmentalists to raise money, it’s one hell of a hoax.  On the radio yesterday, the announcer said we were having yet another “red flag day,” meaning that the threat of brush or forest fire was high.  I first heard a red flag warning on March 23.  Late winter and early spring in Vermont are supposed to be exemplified by mud, not fire, but “new normal” are the words on everyone’s lips.  (I really didn’t want this resolution series to be all about global warming either, but these circumstances are beyond my control.)

The winter of 2012 was dry, with neither much snow nor rain falling.  Global warming models call for the northeast to get wetter overall, but also call for precipitation to fall in short, intense bursts, as we saw late last summer with Hurricane Irene.  The US Geological Survey maintains a web site that records the water level in Lake Champlain and because I have a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, I check the lake level every morning.  In March, that level dipped below average for the first time in four and a half years. Continue reading »

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
03/29/2012

Missing the Connection

What if I wasn’t me?  How would the world look?  I guess it would depend on whichever skin other than my own I stand in.

I’ll give you an example.  The other day, remembering my youth, I realized synagogues – Temple Beth David and Temple Emanu-El – stood on two of the four corners of an intersection a few blocks from my house.  This is neither remarkable nor ironic, unless you know that the intersection at which these houses of worship stood is of Titus Avenue and St. Paul Boulevard.

To me, a Catholic, this meant nothing for 50 years.  Had I been raised Jewish, I would have learned early that Titus was the Roman general (later emperor) who destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, slaughtered thousands of Jews and dispersed the nation of Israel.  There are few villains in Jewish history more cruel than Titus.

St. Paul, on the other hand, was Jewish, but he was also the person who converted Christianity from a Jewish sect to one open to – and quickly dominated by – Gentiles, who then turned the church into an agency of anti-Semitism.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
03/22/2012

Still the Story of America

The story of America is the story of race.  It has been since a couple Germans grafted the name of an Italian navigator onto the continents in the middle of the last millenium.  That it is still the story of America (especially the United States of) is evidenced by two stories in the news this week.

The first concerns two life sentences assigned to Deryl Dedmon, a slight, blue-eyed, blond-haired lad of 19, who last year took part in the random and vicious beating of James Craig Anderson in Jackson Mississippi, then deliberately ran Mr. Anderson over with a truck, killing him.  Then he got on his cell phone and called his friends to laugh and brag about what he’d done.  You can see the murder on video, if you have the stomach for it.

The family of Mr. Anderson – by all accounts a kind man and pillar of his community – asked the judge in the case to spare Dedmon from a death sentence and asked the community to pray for reconciliation.

CNN reports that Dedmon’s attorney, in a bail hearing last year, “told the court he saw nothing to back up the ‘racial allegations.’”  There are none so blind as those who will not see, as reporters easily found any number of people who described as Dedmon as a racist thug for years before the incident.
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By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
03/15/2012

How to Lose Five Dollars

Beware the Ides of March.  I just thought I’d say that.  How often do a) the Ides of March fall on a Thursday, the day I usually post here and b) I actually remember it’s the Ides of March?

Less than a week until the end of winter and it’s warm and sunny, supposed to approach 80 degrees here this weekend, but no sermon on fossil fuels and carbon dioxide equivalents (for now).

No, today is also the beginning of (the second round of) the 2012 NCAA basketball tournament.  I’ve got my computer set up so I can check scores this afternoon during the monthly staff meeting.  (I have the NY Times crossword handy too, just in case.)

I’m not a huge follower of college basketball, but I participate in this pool every year, because it’s only five dollars, because I like the challenge of, essentially, trying to pass a test for which I have not studied and because it gives me something to do during at least one staff meeting a year.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Economy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
03/08/2012

A Quorum of Crows

The collective noun “school of fish” comes from a corruption of the term “shoal of fish,” which seems like a fairly accurate means of quantifying fish in the days before GPS.

This led to an unfortunate anthropomorphic trend of naming aggregations of animals based on some perceived quality – a “pride of lions, a gaggle of geese.”  I don’t know if lions are proud.  I don’t know whether pride equals one-seventh of the deadliest sins a lion can commit.  It seems nonsensical.

A “gaggle of geese” makes more sense.  “Gaggle” is a Middle English word meaning, “to cackle” and has an onomatopoeic connection to the noise geese make, particularly in groups.

A “parliament of owls” (no, I’m not making this up) is completely ridiculous.  First, owls are not given to aggregation.  Second, we have this notion owls are wise.  (This is likely due to the fact that the owl was associated with Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.  I will make no comment on Greek wisdom for now, things being what they are.)  So, if owls congregated, which they don’t, a group of them must constitute some sort of legislature.  Should this be a “congress of owls” in the U.S.?  (Should “congress” be capitalized in this instance?)  Is there a “reichstag of owls” in Germany?  A “diet of owls” in Japan?  (You can imagine how that might lead to confusion in translation.)
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
03/01/2012

In Like a Lion?

February and March are (traditionally) the heaviest snow months in Vermont, although not the February that ended yesterday, extra day notwithstanding.  It did snow last Friday.  We were all duly warned about a winter storm and got maybe an inch and a half.  The snow did, however – more or less – stay on the ground all week.

That was fairly rare this winter and one evening, as I was watching the light die through the back window, I realized how much I’d missed the snow cover this year.  I guess it was a strange case of Seasonal Affective Disorder.  The term usually applies to people who find the lack of light during winter depressing.  I find the gray and dark comforting and restful, as opposed to constant light, which I find enervating, as if I should always be doing something more productive than whatever I’m doing.

I used to feel I needed two weeks of below-zero weather to feel I’d had a winter, now I’ll settle for a few weeks of snow cover.  We’re getting covered in snow today, as we’re in the midst of our first proper snowfall of the season.  It’s been coming down since mid-morning, but there’s only a few inches of accumulation.  The thermometer stands one degree below freezing and the forecast says temperatures will be back in the 40s by Saturday.
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By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Tagged , | Comments (0)