Know thyself!
From Rusty of St. Paul: “Subject: The aging process.
“I FaceTimed a family member (who is MUCH older than I) the other day and made note of a sizable wattle on him. My best friend (who is a month younger than I) has a noticeable one as well.
“Signs of aging, I guess, as I know no young person with flabby neck skin.
“I don’t have a wattle yet (and I’m on Medicare), unless it is hidden under my beard.
“What I do have is thinning hair on my head but ectopic hair in unexpected places — such as boar bristles in my ear canals.
“I’m doing a major wet-plaster repair and paint project in the laundry room of our 1939 home, in anticipation of delivery of our new washer/dryer, and am using my very loud shop vac to suck up debris.
“I don’t like noise, so I wear ear protection. My ear muffs weren’t handy, so I used those little malleable foam ear plugs. I got them squeezed into a small shape, pushed them into my ear canals and . . . they popped right out. Squeezed again. Placed. And out. My aging ear bristles were rejecting the ear plugs!
“As my late mother said about aging: ‘Don’t get old; it only gets worse.'”
Older Than Dirt?
Or: Know thyself (if no one else)!
The Doryman of Prescott, Wisconsin: “Subject: The long and short of it.
“Years ago I remember writing a piece here about my theory that aging creates an appreciation of lawn ornaments . . . .
“I’ve moved on. These later days, I’ve noticed that every child I see is as-cute-as-can-be — and just about every adult I see reminds me of someone whose name I have forgotten.”
Our pets, ourselves
The Astronomer of Nininger writes: “The Good Wife and I own a grayish-rust-colored Weimaraner, Harper, who loves to ride with either or both of us whenever we drive somewhere. We enjoy her company, too.
“This morning, I opened the door of our GMC pickup, and Harper leaped to get into the back seat so she could nestle into her blanket spread out for her. Instead of clearing the step of the opened door, she missed, stumbled, and bumped against the edge of the seat. She looked around at me, apologetically, her eyes telling me that she did not mean to miss the step. She is still quite agile for her age — but, I know, she is getting old faster than I am.
“I am getting older, too. Now that I am into the midst of my octogenarian years, I recognize certain limitations more often. Activities that were commonplace need to be approached more carefully or at least more slowly.
“I remember running in a 5K around Como Lake in St. Paul. I was only 51 years old then. I won that race, beating everyone else by perhaps 50 yards or so. I still have the trophy.
“The following year, I was unable to repeat that victory. There were a lot of younger guys running on that cool September morn. A rather steep hill rises up shortly before the finish line alongside the lake. I actually was in second place approaching that ascent. Hills were my strength. I managed to pass the leader as we struggled up the incline. The finish was a mere 200 yards or so before me. I was in front, but I could go only so fast. No matter how hard I tried, I was unable to go any faster. And just a few yards from that winner’s ribbon waiting across the finish line, I was passed by a younger man.
“It has been said that anybody who says winning isn’t important never won anything. When I won that race the year before, everyone wanted to talk with me, run with me, or just shake my hand. Nobody knows who came in second.
“Harper doesn’t hear as well as she used to. She is a very obedient dog, but with her hearing deficiencies, she knows not what you would like her to do. I can’t hear as well as I used to, either. The VA tells me that my hearing loss was caused by the intense whining sounds of jet engines impacting my ears years ago when I was an Air Force pilot. Still, I am sure glad that I had a chance to fly. I do not mean to even suggest that it is worth trading one for the other. Hearing aids help, but they do not make it possible to hear as well as I used to. Words cannot describe what it is like to ‘slip the surly bonds of Earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings.’
“I am more thankful for things I have been able to do than I am concerned about things I cannot. My professional work as a university professor has taken me to all seven continents. My love of the outdoors has enabled me to hunt and fish and explore around the world, to partake of nature and be one with it. No, hip replacements do not prepare one to run races, but I look at all the things I can still do. And Harper — why, she can still, even after two ACL tears, run with the best of them. Age does not deter us, but it does make us aware of our limitations and how we might compensate for any shortcomings.”
Life (and death) as we know it
Betty writes: “Subject: The Last Leaf Upon the Tree.
“‘And if I should live to be / The last leaf upon the tree / In the spring / Let them smile, as I do now, / At the old forsaken bough / Where I cling.’ I have always loved the poem [“The Last Leaf”] by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Lately I have been thinking about it a lot. I feel that I am that leaf. It’s not a sad feeling. It’s more a calm, relaxed feeling. A feeling that I am done. I have done all that I could do and I can be at peace now.
“My parents lived into their 70s. They never used preventive medicine. People in that community went to a doctor only when they were very ill. We had never heard of cholesterol. My sister and brother lived to the age of 86.
“Yes, I am alone now. My parents, my siblings and even my children have predeceased me. There is no one to talk to about the old times. No one who remembers the same things that I do. There are simple things such as a recipe that Mom used to make, and there is no one else who remembers it. Who was the man who used to sing ‘Jimmy Crack Corn’? No one remembers. Whatever happened to the quilt that my mom had? No one knows.
“I have many friends, but it somehow seems lonely to be the only one left from that family.”
BULLETIN BOARD SAYS: Here is one fine version (of many versions, some finer than others) of “Jimmy Crack Corn”:
Dept. of Neat Stuff
Let Them Eat Cake Division
Writes Gregory J. of Dayton’s Bluff: “My niece Amy is a very accomplished and talented person, so it seems a bit demeaning to praise her for her baking skills. But it’s her own fault. She is an incredible baker who supplies the family with all sorts of excellent cakes, pies and cookies for holiday and birthday gatherings.
“A few of her latest creations have forced me to expand my definition of Neat Stuff to include her cakes.
“The neatest of them is a chocolate cake that resembles a tree stump covered with a variety of fungi. Everything on the cake is edible. Amy tried to explain to me how she made the mushrooms, toadstools, lichen, etc. but it was beyond my comprehension.
“Another cake was made to look like a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. This one I understood. The meatballs are chocolate cake, the spaghetti is colored frosting, and the tomato sauce is a strawberry concoction.
“Seeing this cake immediately brought to mind the scene in Laurel and Hardy’s ‘Saps at Sea’ where the boys made fake spaghetti and meatballs for the escaped convict:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTZ5XX4fco.
“I can guarantee that Amy’s version tasted much better.”
Then & Now
LeoJEOSP writes: “When it was time to visit my maternal grandmother, my mother reviewed rules prior to the visit. Do not touch anything!
“I would often read Reader’s Digest magazine, one of the few things I was allowed to touch. She had many boxes jammed with copies of Reader’s Digest.
“Back at home, my beloved brought today’s mail in, and there was my new R.D. I picked up the magazine and announced that they would soon have to change the magazine’s name to ‘Reader’s Pamphlet!’”
BULLETIN BOARD SAYS: We have (sadly) had essentially the same thought when holding various other publications.
Fun facts to know and tell
Auntie PJ writes: “For those of the BB readers who remember Howard Hughes, Bemidji native Jane Russell, and the old commercials for bras that lift and separate, here is a fun bit of trivia:
“Howard Hughes was a man of many talents, including aerospace engineering and being a film producer and director. Jane Russell was a talented singer and actress. Hughes hired Russell for her film debut in ‘The Outlaw,’ a 1943 Western. Russell was quite a buxom lady, with 38-D’s, and Hughes saw there were problems with properly costuming her because of her ‘uniboob.’ Being an engineer, Hughes was able to design a bra that lifted and separated Russell’s bosoms. Per the official description, the bra had structural steel rods sewn into each cup, allowing the bosoms to be separated and pushed upward. Though Russell never wore the specially made bra in the film, it was later exhibited in a Hollywood museum.
“The design led Playtex to manufacture and sell a similar bra, with the tag line ‘lifts and separates.’”
Till death us do part
The Doryman of Prescott, Wisconsin: “Subject: Now and then forecasts.
“The Runabout finished the Pioneer Press this morning and, as she passed by me on her way to the deck, remarked: ‘It’s going to be really cold today, and then tomorrow it’s going to be really warm.’
“Sometimes I feel like I’m married to the world’s most concise weather girl.”
The sign on the road to the cemetery said “Dead End”
Donald: “Subject: To the point.
“My wife has a sign in the laundry room that reads:
“‘Be nice
“‘Or leave’”
Gaining everything in translation
Kathy S. of St. Paul writes: “Subject: Adventures in Languages.
“In 1969-70, and some years before and after, six local private colleges offered two-semester Area Studies courses. Each one covered an ‘area’ such as Russia [Bulletin Board interjects: the Soviet Union, perhaps?] or Latin America, and I wish I could have taken more than East Asian Studies. My Library Science major was not accredited by the A.L.A., so I had to fit in another full major — in my case, History.
“East Asian Studies covered Japan and China, before President Nixon went to China. Fall semester covered history, geography, and political science. Spring semester covered literature, music, art, and sociology. We discussed Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia in class that spring, and the Macalester students left school to ‘teach the people’ about the war in Vietnam. I resented studying for a final exam they got to skip. But the final included one fun question from Sister Mary Davida. We were to identify Asian art objects as Japanese or Chinese. I was stumped by a bowl decorated with a five-fingered dragon, since it could have come from either country — until I turned it upside-down and saw the ‘Made in Japan’ mark.
“A bit of advice from the Sociology teacher stuck with me. He said we should not try to bow with Asian people, since we would inevitably make a mistake and cause offense — advice reinforced for me by an experience of an American WWII vet whom I met while dabbling with learning Japanese at Guy World. He was to read a paper at a gathering in Japan, and got coaching to improve his limited and rusty Japanese. Unfortunately, his audience concluded that his Japanese was much better than it was, and he struggled with Japanese for the rest of it.
“The reason I’m sharing this now is that a new version of the miniseries ‘Shōgun‘ debuted last week. I listen to languages, and often identify which one is being spoken. But when I took an interim crash course in Japanese in January 1972, I could not ‘hear’ it. For two of the four weeks of this class, covering most of a semester of Japanese, I was yelling at the language — and proving that Mom was a saint for putting up with me. The only Japanese spoken on TV back then was sayonara or tora tora tora, in movies about World War II. The 1980 miniseries ‘Shōgun’ was a groundbreaker, and I really wished it had come out sooner.
“The interim class was pass/fail — and I didn’t need the credit — but the teacher was very lenient to pass me. Of course, more languages and cultures are now common on our media. And I have taken Duolingo Japanese classes for over two years, starting during the COVID shutdown. I can now understand some Japanese, both spoken and written. But I will never be good at it — and I will probably never get to see Japan, per my long-ago plans.
“So, what I learned back then: You can’t learn a language until you ‘hear’ it. And I’ll add what I learned in Paris in 1980: You can be exhausted, dealing with a foreign language. That day I could understand what people around me were saying, including insults against Americans who don’t bother to learn languages, but I could not speak — until I noticed that a little girl had lost her mother, and I waved over a clerk to tell her ‘No maman.’ (No mom.) As the clerk escorted the girl away, she looked at me over her shoulder. I figure she had decided that I wasn’t as dumb as she thought.”
Hmmmmmmmm
Here’s Liza the Librarian (via Tia2d): “Oh, the adventures of a new library. When I started, they gave me a bag of labeled keys to everything in the building. Some of the keys were labeled ‘Mystery Key.’ What did they do? I don’t know! It seemed magical, so I kept them.
“A few weeks later, I found an old Ziploc bag with more keys. The bag had an aged note that read: ‘Keys, Important.’ None of the keys went to any of the doors or fixtures in the building that I could find. I told the staff that I would reward them with chocolate if they could determine where these keys came from. No one could figure it out.
“Last week, when I crashed the library computers, I decided that I needed to move the refrigerator to a different outlet. Wanna guess what I found behind the fridge? More keys! And again, we had no idea where they came from.
“It was truly mind-boggling, but also magical. There is nothing better than a good library mystery!
“Today, while searching for the missing weather radio, I opened an obscure cabinet and found a box of door knobs! Most of the mystery keys went to these knobs. Now the keys and door knobs have been reunited, and once again everything is right in libraryland.”
The Verbing of America
The Retired Pedagogue of Arden Hills: “This appeared in the ‘Sports briefing’ section on Page 2C of the March 3 edition of the Pioneer Press:
“‘BASEBALL’
“‘Nationals prospect stretchered off’”
Our theater of seasons
Gregory of the North: “It seems the recent weather has confused some of the wildlife. Here is a mallard couple that arrived just a little too early to the pond behind my house.”
Everyone’s a critic!
Headline Division
Red’s Offspring, north of St. Paul: “Subject: Clever headline.
“The Timberwolves defeated the Portland Trail Blazers 119-114 on Monday night. Rudy Gobert scored 25 points, had 16 rebounds, and blocked three shots.
“This was the headline on the front page of SPORTS in Tuesday’s Pioneer Press: ‘RUDY WAKENING.’”
This ’n’ that ’n’ the other ’n’ the other ’n’ . . .
All from Al B of Hartland: “I’ve learned:
“My wife’s extra-sensitive toothpaste doesn’t like it when she uses another brand.
“Bad rainbows are sent to prism to give them time to reflect. If they’ve had a colorful past, they are given light sentences.
“When you clean a vacuum cleaner, you become a vacuum cleaner.
“Lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but nobody knows where that place is.
“Politicians are those who will double-cross that bridge when they come to it.
“The cold that a man gets and the one a woman catches are different. No man has a casual cold. Every cold contracted by a male is catastrophic.
“Worrying works. Most of the things we worry about never happen.”
Band Name of the Day: The Aging Ear Bristles
Website of the Day: The Week
Bulletin Board 