Life In A Word

Lifeless Buds

I have a Venus flytrap named Frankie. He lives alone in a plastic cup on the patio table, happy in the humid air as he nabs the occasional bug. My wife’s nearby garden is boasting fruit, vegetables, and colorful blooms but I’m content to just watch my little tabletop carnivore do his thing. I’ll get to why I named my bud “Frankie” in a minute but let me just say this: At least he’s a live little bud. That’s more than a lot of people can say about their more imaginary friends.

Here’s a morsel of self-discovery for you, extracted from my several years of blog posts. I have a habit of referring to inanimate objects with terms of endearment. My most recent example: two weeks ago when I discovered the SpaceX satellites launching into outer space. I referred to those technological marvels as “little guys who talk to one another”, and, “when their time is done they’ll return home for a proper burial”. Whether this is just cheap entertainment or an effort to elicit empathy from you readers, I regularly inject life into the lifeless (or in this case, a soul into the metal and mechanical).

I didn’t have to scroll back very far to find other examples. My post a week before the satellites, Hail, Caesium, endeared of all things, a lost capsule of nuclear waste. First, I nicknamed the capsule “Little Caesar”. Then I re-nicknamed it “LC” and noted how detection equipment ultimately “…led the search team right to our little friend”. Were you more relieved to know the waste had been contained or that our little lost friend had finally been found?

Conifer Confetti, a post from last fall, lamented the hours I sacrifice to contain the untold number of pine cones on our property. I referred to the cones as “females” (because biologically, they really are) and in one frustrated burst of endearment, said “It’s like having the world’s biggest sorority row above my backyard, and every house is about to disgorge its girls for a giant party on the ground”. So which is it Dave, a whole lot of “yard waste” or thousands of “little ladies”?

The “poor” leftover pieces from the LEGO Grand Piano

Finally, my series of posts on building the LEGO Grand Piano and LEGO Fallingwater were rife with terms of endearment. All those plastic pieces were like little families bagged up in a single box; couples waiting to be married. At times I thought I lost “one of the little guys”, and I felt sorry for the leftovers who’d never realize their destiny of being a part of the completed model.

This topic was inspired by an article in The Atlantic about the spacecraft Cassini. Six years ago, Cassini completed a 13-year data-gathering cruise around Saturn and its moons. Utterly alone and running out of fuel, Cassini turned towards the planet, eventually burning up in the atmosphere. As NASA described the final moments, Cassini “fought to keep its antenna pointed at Earth as it transmitted its farewell”. An entire room of scientists at Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory fell into tears. Cassini is the perfect example of – big word here – anthropomorphism. In simpler terms, the more “alive” a machine appears to be, the more empathetic the response from humans. Some robots are deliberately anthropomorphic, a subtopic we just don’t have enough words for today.

As I watch Frankie ingest another insect, it’s time to reveal the genesis of his name. Maybe you don’t remember Frankie Avalon in his prime but you do remember the 1970s movie Grease. Avalon showed up in a memorable scene, descending a staircase dressed in white while singing “Beauty School Dropout” to Didi Conn’s “Frenchy”. Guess what? Avalon had an even bigger hit: Venus. That song is a plea to the goddess of love to bring him romance; someone pretty and very much alive. Okay, so my Frankie isn’t pretty, but at least he’s alive. That’s more than I can say about all those other little buds who keep showing up in my blog posts.

Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “How to Mourn a Space Robot”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

State Flyovers

The heavy-duty bracket I purchased to display our American flag sits patiently on the garage shelf. The flagpole and flag stay wrapped in the plastic they came in. I hesitate with this little DIY project because I’m mounting the bracket onto a rounded wood column on the front porch. If the column isn’t solid throughout, it may not support the Stars and Stripes. Or the Palmetto State flag, for that matter.

If you’re not familiar with the South Carolina state flag, you are now. Not very exciting, eh? A white palmetto tree in the middle and a white crescent to the upper left, on a rectangle of deep blue. Okay, but what about why the flag has this look? That’s a little more interesting. All of it is a nod to the Revolutionary War. The crescent could be found on an American soldier’s cap, palmetto logs were used to build the forts they fought from, and the deep blue was the color of their uniforms. My assumption was simply, “Oh, our state has a lot of palm trees and a lot of clear moonlit nights.”

The same could be said for the state of our former residence. Colorado’s flag is likewise simple, with a big red “C” for Colorado surrounding what I assumed was a yellow nod to the state’s bountiful days of sunshine (300+/year). Nope, I only got the sunshine part right. The “C” represents “columbine” (state flower) and “centennial” (Colorado became a state in the hundredth year of America’s independence). The red represents the state’s distinctive sandstone soil, the white its ever-present snow, and the blue its endless skies (which really are an amazing blue). More than meets the eye with this “state flyover”, am I right?

Not content with just SC and CO, I decided to give a few other state flags a whirl… literally. I flicked my mouse wheel the way someone might spin the bottle, for an unsuspecting ~~kiss~~ choice from the list. Up came ME. There’s a lot going on with Maine’s state flag, including a couple of proud characters and a moose that looks rather cartoonish. “Dirigo”, from a long-ago-but-now-defunct language of the region, means simply, “I lead”.

Here’s a further sampling of U.S. state flag trivia:

Arkansas was the first of the fifty states to produce diamonds.
Hawaii was once under British control, so their flag includes a small version of the “Union Jack”.
Montana’s motto is “gold and silver”.
Ohio’s flag is not rectangular and includes a “swallowtail” notch (which can’t be said for any of the others).
Oregon’s flag has a different design on each side.
Utah’s flag changes in 2024, to better represent the makeup of the state’s residents.

If you live in an American state, you should play this game yourself. Scroll to the image of your flag in the article: The state flag for all 50 states… but before you read the written description, make your best guess on the colors and symbols. It’s fair to say most Americans don’t really know our state flags.

South Carolinians love to fly flags. You’ll see the colors of colleges and universities from all over down here (including the red/black of those nearby football champion Georgia Bulldogs). You’ll see a lot of those “garden flags” designed to represent the year’s seasons and holidays. But mostly you see the Stars and Stripes, and the Palmetto and Crescent. South Carolina’s forever nod to the Revolutionary War means I’ll never look at our flag the same way again. Now I just have to get the bracket where it belongs so I can hoist the banner same as every other resident.

Some content sourced from the USA Today article, “The state flag for all 50 states…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Celestial Strings of Pearls

When I take the dog for a walk after dark, I never know what to expect in the night sky above me. We live in an area devoid of city lights so the celestial show is clear and sometimes dramatic. Ursa Major (aka Big Dipper) often makes an appearance. Venus is the brightest ~~star~~ planet low in the western sky at twilight. And the full moon, seemingly biggest as it rises just above the pine trees, can be breathtaking. But none of this prepared me for the bold processional streaking across the heavens last Thursday night.

It could’ve been Santa Claus and his reindeer for all I knew. Sitting around a backyard fire pit with friends, having drinks and swapping stories, one of the women suddenly shrieked, “LOOK!!!” and pointed skyward. At first it didn’t register what we were seeing (nor at second, nor at third). I can only describe it as a tiny string of bright pearls, two or three dozen in the strand, perfectly spaced and moving silently across the sky. Neither pulling nor pushing, they simply proceeded in a line as if drawn to some unknown destination. It almost looked like the one-after-another cars of a roller coaster, heading up that first steep incline.

Our group was at a loss to explain this extraterrestrial. We thought it might be the neatly arranged contrails of a stealth fighter. Or some faraway electronic billboard advertising in Morse code (only with dots, no dashes). Turns out we weren’t even close. Our little alien spacecraft parade was the latest launch of Starlink satellites from SpaceX.

You’ve probably heard of SpaceX, even if you don’t know much about what they do. Founded in 2002, SpaceX is one of Elon Musk’s ambitious companies, with the “modest” long-term goal of colonizing Mars. While they design and launch the spacecraft to make that happen, SpaceX is providing Starlink Internet service to under-served areas of the globe by building a “constellation” of satellites around the planet. 42,000 of them.

This is technology way beyond my understanding, but here’s the basic setup. A transmitter somewhere on earth sends the Internet up to one of those satellites and the satellite then rebounds the signal back to you. If the satellite loses your direct line of sight, it can hand off the signal to one of its buddies and your Internet service continues uninterrupted. SpaceX earned the license for a ten-year window – starting in 2019 – to complete its Starlink constellation. At last count they’ve already got 4,000 of these little guys in orbit.

Credit Musk for identifying a market in need. Mars may not be on my bucket list but faster Internet service certainly is. Two years ago 10,000 Earthlings signed up for Starlink subscriptions (at $599 USD for the hardware and $120/month for the service). Today? Fully 1.5 million customers are bouncing data back and forth with all those satellites. My rural location here in South Carolina (and the s-l-o-w speed of my current Internet provider) make me a prime Starlink candidate. Later this year, I’ll also be able to switch over my cell phone service. Yep, Elon Musk is literally taking over the planet. Come to think of it, maybe the entire solar system.

A “string of pearls” before the satellites go their separate ways

Whether or not I subscribe to Starlink, I find the satellite technology fascinating. We have a lot of “space junk” circling Earth but this constellation of man-made stars seems more elegant. They’re launched in strings of up to 60, separating once they’re high enough. Each satellite’s thruster is powered by krypton and argon. They talk to one another to avoid collisions. They’re currently undergoing “dimming” to appease astronomers by taking a back seat to the real stars in space. Finally, these satellites can “de-orbit”. In other words, when they’re time is done (even satellites don’t live forever), they return home for a proper burial, which means burning up entirely as they attempt reentry through Earth’s atmosphere.

Several websites track the continuing launches of Starlink satellite strings (like this one). You can find out exactly when they’ll be passing overhead in your neighborhood, destined for their rightful place in the budding constellation. If you see them stream by, remember, it’s not Santa and his reindeer (wrong month). It’s a string of pearls designed to provide you with faster Internet service.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Hail, Caesium!

I acquired a taste for Caesar salad later in life. After decades of boring lettuce/tomato and franchise salad bars, I learned to branch out a little. Caesar, with its romaine, croutons, Parmesan, and distinctive dressing, has become my go-to at restaurants. But I always double-check my “hold the anchovies, please” because even a thimbleful would put a damper on things. Kind of like caesium-137.

You probably don’t know much about caesium. Pronounce it just like the salad (or like “seize” in Seize the day!). Caesium-137 is a nasty little byproduct of nuclear fission, deadly enough to turn your life into a… uh, half-life with just a brief introduction. So here’s the story of the little caesium capsule – a.k.a. Little Caesar – that could get away, and did.

It’s a simple enough task, really. Transport an item from Point A to Point B, like the new washing machine we just had delivered from Home Depot. But let’s make the job a little more challenging, shall we? The distance you have to travel shall be almost 900 miles. The journey itself shall be on the oft-barren Great Northern Highway of Western Australia, which isn’t always the smoothest of rides. Finally, transport a potentially lethal substance… without dropping it.

You’d think radioactive caesium-137 – no matter how small an amount – would be literally welded into the delivery truck it rides in. Instead, the pill-sized capsule – already parked inside the density gauge equipment it was a part of, was placed in a “package”, then attached to the truck with four mounting bolts.

Now then, imagine you’ve just completed the long and boring four-day drive to the nuclear waste treatment facility in Perth. You hop off the truck, walk around to the back, open the doors, and discover not only a broken gauge and a missing mounting bolt, but no caesium-137 capsule. In fact, the delivery truck wasn’t even inspected until nine days after arrival.

This scenario raises a half-life of questions for me. First, just how bumpy was that Great Northern Highway? Second, even if the gauge broke open and the capsule got loose, how the heck did it escape, not only out of the package but out of the entire truck? Finally, we’re talking about lethal goods here. Wouldn’t some sort of alarm go off if Little Caesar skipped town? I’m guessing someone is answering these kinds of questions as we speak, and his/her seat is a little warm.

imagine being a member of the ad hoc search-and-rescue crew. Not only are you looking for something that can kill you just by being in close proximity, it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack, only the needle is the size of a paper clip and the haystack is a highway longer than the coast of California. No matter, you’re handed a radiation detection device, the keys to a truck with flashing hazard lights, and off you go. Oh, and by the way, you can’t go faster than 30 mph or your detector can’t do its job.

This isn’t the first unintended release of Little Caesar. He escaped in much larger quantities from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 and from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011. You can read about nine other incidents involving “LC” here, including one in Seattle four years ago and one in Thailand in March.

At the time I saved this story in January, Little Caesar was still at large. Worst-case scenarios were running rampant. What if LC bounced to freedom on a populated area of the highway? What if a hiker happened upon the capsule and threw it into his or her backpack before returning home? Or, God forbid, what if a bird snatched the capsule in its beak and transported it to its nest in the middle of downtown Perth?

Three months later (this week), I caught up with this story. The run-of-the-mill conclusion is that Little Caesar was found just six days after his escape, off the highway in a remote area not far from the truck’s point of departure. The radiation detection equipment sounded the alarm and led the search team right to our little friend.

As for what happened once LC was found? A 20-meter “hot zone” was set up around him to fend off the inevitable lookie-loos. He was given a thick casing of lead in case he was feeling “radiant”. Finally, Little Caesar was scheduled to be transported to the county health facility for further examination. Yes, I said “transported”. No word on whether or not he made it to his final destination.

Some content sourced from the ABC News article “Missing radioactive capsule found in WA outback after frantic search”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Another Peg in the Car

Our daughter gave birth to her firstborn this week, a precious little bundle with rosy cheeks and strawberry blonde hair. For her and her husband, life has changed forever. And for our granddaughter, barely two days old now, every sight and sound will be a complete and utter mystery. In other words, her game of life has only just begun.

I was only nine or ten myself when I started playing at life. Not real life, of course, but the board game in a box by Milton Bradley . “Life” (as we simply called it back then) was a significant rung up on the board game ladder. Once discovered, “Don’t Break the Ice”, “Hi Ho! Cherry O”, “Chutes and Ladders”, and the well-worn “Candy Land“stayed on the shelf forever. Win or lose, “Life” was a ton of fun pretending to be an adult. After all, we kids had no idea what we were doing.

The genius of “Life”, like “Monopoly”, is that its players are too young to understand what they’re playing at. In Monopoly, you buy and sell real estate, mortgage properties, and pay income tax, and somehow all of this is “fun” (especially when you win and become the one and only landlord in town).

In “Life”, you’re making decisions ten or fifteen years ahead of your time. I find it ironic “Life” is a game for kids yet it skips the entire chapter of childhood. The first move is to “Start a Career” or “Start College” (you choose). If you start college you “Borrow $100,000 from the bank”, so you’re already saddled with debt. You pay taxes or get a refund. You earn raises or sometimes lose your job. Wait, this is fun? You bet it is. You’re a kid and you don’t know the meaning of “responsibilities”.

Eventually, the colorful cardboard path of “Life” takes you by a church, where you get married and add a spouse peg to your car. Soon after you have babies (more pegs) and soon after that you buy a house. The meandering path continues, until it stops “years” later at either “Millionaire Estates” (you’re rich!) or “Countryside Acres” (you’re not!)

When “Life” is over, it’s time to account for your accomplishments, which means simply adding up all of your cash. The player with the most money wins. Wouldn’t that be an interesting conversation with St. Peter? Hey Pete, I won The Game of Life because I had the most money! Open up the gates – I’ve earned my entry!

“The Game of Life” has evolved since it was first produced many years ago. My childhood plays were on the 1960s version, which included a folding rectangular board with the wandering path for the cars, little plastic mountains you’d pass through at the corners, little plastic buildings you’d pass by here and there, and, smack-dab in the middle, a giant spinning numbers wheel to determine how far your car would go on any given turn.

The 1960s version also had insurance policies, promissory notes, and stock certificates. Art Linkletter, who promoted the board game on TV, smiled out at you from the center of the $100,000 bills. Finally, your choices on your final “Day of Reckoning” were “Millionaire Acres” or “Poor Farm”, depending on the size of your bank account. But even before you chose “Poor Farm” you had a last-gasp chance to win the game by betting all of your money on the numbers wheel.

The newest version of “Life” seems the same, with the little mountains and plastic buildings and giant numbers wheel. But look closer and you’ll find the game is delightfully “PC” now. You can perform “community service” or “good deeds” (which translate to monetary value at the end). Your career choices include less traditional vocations like “Hair Stylist” and “Athlete”. Your housing includes a mobile home or a “luxurious mountain retreat”. You can even sue other players to the tune of six figures. Today’s kids might actually understand that aspect of the game.

Finally, in a full-on nod to modern times, “Life” wants you to know it’s “Your Life, Your Way”. Accordingly, you can choose pets instead of kids. And the little people pegs are no longer just pink or blue because… you know.

Here’s the last word on “Life”. The corner of the box top gleefully shouts, “Now with one-time assembly!”, meaning as soon as you put the mountains and buildings and spinner into place, the board is good to go every time you play it. Now what fun is that? Just like “Mouse Trap”, half the enjoyment of “The Game of Life” was putting the whole thing together. At least we kids understood how to do that. As for what the game itself represented? Not so much.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Phantom Farewell

Tonight, hours after this post goes public, my wife and I will attend a local stage production called Lovesong. It’s our first foray into the offerings of our community theater so we’re really looking forward to it. Lovesong has a run of five evening performances and one Sunday matinee while it’s in town. A check of the theater website indicates about 20% of Thursday’s seats have been sold. By my calculation, that’s about 80% less than any Broadway performance of Phantom of the Opera.

Maybe you heard. After 35 years and 14,000 performances, last Sunday the curtain dropped for good on Phantom of the Opera. Its creator, Andrew Lloyd Weber, was on hand at New York City’s Majestic Theater to offer the cast and crew a personal farewell. He claimed their final performance as the best he’d ever seen. You’ll forgive Andrew for being a little sentimental after all these years.

Theater District, Midtown Manhattan, NYC

Whether the stage production, the 2004 movie, the glorious soundtrack, or even the books on which it was based, you’re familiar with Phantom. It’s a captivating story; part haunting and part romantic, with a lead character who has you wondering, “Is he real or imagined?”. Reading Phantom’s synopsis (which you can do here), I realize I overlooked some details of the story the one and only time I saw the show. No matter. The sets and the songs will stay with me for life.

Phantom took my admiration of stage performances to an entirely new level. The one time my wife and I saw the show, in San Francisco in 1997, it literally took our breaths away. The only shows we’d seen prior were the “off-off-off Broadway” offerings; the kind where they recruit locals just to fill out the cast. Phantom left us yearning for more of the best, including seeing something on Broadway (which we did years later with Les Miserables, deserving of its own blog post).

Phantom was also a technical marvel. What other show boasted a giant chandelier swinging out over the audience and threatening to fall? Or a staircase giving the optical illusion of descending several levels as the Phantom dragged Christine downward? Or the subterranean lake the Phantom rowed across, where you swore you were looking at a giant body of water right there on the stage?

Every Broadway production seems to have three or four unforgettable songs. Phantom was no exception. The show kicks off with an orchestral version of “Phantom of the Opera”, turns sweet with Christine’s solo “Think of Me”, and overwhelms with the duet All I Ask of You and especially The Music of the Night. The latter includes one of the most powerful notes I’ve ever heard, when the Phantom sings, “Close your eyes… and let music set you… FREE-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E…!”

Deservedly, Phantom won the “Laurence Olivier Award” for Best New Musical in 1986, the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1988, and pretty much everything else it was nominated for. Besides the London and Broadway productions, Phantom enjoyed nine worldwide tours and one revival. Over its 35 years, Phantom employed 6,500 people and played to over twenty million theater-goers. Phantom even had a short-lived sequel, Love Never Dies, debuting in London but never making it to Broadway.

Sadly, Phantom’s closing can be considered a casualty of the pandemic. The show was suspended from March 2020 to October 2021 (when all Broadway productions ceased). After reopening, attendance was sporadic because patrons were still hesitant. Meanwhile, Phantom’s production costs continued at a staggering $1M/week, which eventually became unsustainable.

Phantom was originally slated to close in February but once theatergoers found out, the show experienced a brief resurgence and lasted another two months. I don’t expect Lovesong to extend its little run at our community theater. Thanks to Phantom of the Opera however, I’m simply excited for the potential of a wondrous stage performance.

Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “Final curtain comes down on ‘Phantom of the Opera'”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Crescents and Con Artists

Every Christmas without fail, my family enjoys croissants as part of the morning meal. We pop them into the oven after seeing what Santa left in our stockings (but before unwrapping anything under the tree). So last week, as I loaded our Easter ham into the garage frig, a tantalizing thought occurred to me: the leftover Christmas croissants are parked right next door in the freezer. Could they possibly be as light and flaky as they once were, four months after their initial rise-and-shine?

If you know anything about authentic croissants, “rise and shine” is a fitting description. Thanks to some seriously active yeast, croissants rise to a soft, pillow-y consistency. Thanks to a whole lot of butter (and a little egg yolk), croissants finish with a pleasing sheen on their delicate, crispy crust. If there’s a more decadent baked good on the planet, my crescent-shaped ears are open and listening.

Croissants have been around a long time. They got their start centuries ago in ~~France~~ Austria as the more pedestrian kipferi yeast bread roll. Eventually the French stepped up the game using leavened laminated dough and butter, ending up as the light, flaky, many-layered version you know and love today.

Croissant means “crescent” of course (which is why I get hunger pangs whenever I gaze at the moon). Croissant also has an elegant pronunciation. Turn the “roi” into a “weh”, drop the final “t”, and keep the sound a little inside the nose. Cweh-saw. Congratulations! You speak French.

Even “crescent” has a dignified definition: a shape resembling a segment of a ring, tapering to points at the ends. Can you picture it? Sure you can, because now you’re thinking of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. They’re so “American”, aren’t they? We take a centuries-old, meticulously refined shoo-in for the Baked Goods Hall of Fame and reduce it to sticky, doughy, fast food; vacuum-packed into a can you open with a spoon.

[Speaking of Pillsbury, here’s something you didn’t know about the Dough Boy, otherwise known as “Poppin’ Fresh”. He has a family! His wife is Poppie Fresh, his kids are Popper and Bun-Bun, his grandparents Granpopper and Granmommer, and his Uncle Rollie. Don’t forget the dog (Flapjack) and the cat (Biscuit). In the 1970s you could purchase the entire clan as a set of dolls.]

Pillsbury isn’t the only crescent con artist out there. Burger King made a name for itself with its popular Croissan’wich breakfast entrees. And Galaxy, the Williams-Sonoma mail-order croissants my family and I enjoy at Christmas, start out as frozen minis, rise impressively overnight on the kitchen counter, and bake to an excellent knock-off of the bakery-made originals.

The preparation of authentic croissants requires time and attention we Americans don’t have the patience for. Watch the following video (which is thirteen minutes long so… maybe not) and you’ll learn what it takes. At the least, you’ll understand why I pay almost $4.50 for a single croissant from Galaxy/Williams-Sonoma.

Most of us wouldn’t make it past the initial “pre-dough” step in the video, let alone the labor-intensive lamination (folding/flattening), forming, fermentation, baking, cooling, and storage. We’re talking hours and hours in the kitchen here, and that’s assuming you have the right equipment. No wonder we’d rather just whack a Pillsbury tube on the counter edge and produce “crescent rolls” hot out of the oven 9-11 minutes later.

Still, I implore you to watch the cweh-saw video. The star of the show is Frédéric from Boulangerie Roy Le Capitole, narrating the process in his beautiful native language. This man could be saying … and then we drag the smelly garbage out to the back alley for the cats to dig through and I’d still be glued the sound of his words. Or, listen to our lovely video host and her delightful French accent (with the occasional incorrect word sprinkled in).

I was so mesmerized by the French voices I really don’t remember much about the croissant-making itself. But it’s hard to forget the facts. Making an authentic batch takes three days. A croissant is 30% butter and can have as many as fifty layers. French bakeries have “bread laws” to protect their artisan products. Finally, you can “hear” the sound of an authentic croissant by pushing through the crispy crust to the softer layers inside.

To the matter of my Christmas… er, Easter croissants, I’m happy (and satisfied) to report they tasted just as good last week as their holly, jolly predecessors a while ago. Apparently four months isn’t too long to wait for good croissants. But three days is too long to make them from scratch so I’ll keep buying from con artists.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Games of the Travel Gods

Blondie is the trend-setting American rock band from the 1970’s. A blondie is also a rich vanilla dessert bar. But just for today, Blondie is the newspaper comic strip that, remarkably, still runs after 92 years. Blondie is the female lead and Dagwood is her food-loving husband. Which brings me to today’s topic. A Dagwood is a tall, multi-layered sandwich… the perfect image for my travel nightmare from last Friday.

It all started with a bridge. Make that seventeen bridges. As my wife and I were motoring mid-morning towards the Charlotte airport, en route to my niece’s wedding in Los Angeles, the Maps app colored the interstate yellow here and there. No big deal; traffic slowed, then quickly started up again. All of a sudden, middle of nowhere, we came to a complete stop. Five minutes passed without movement. Ten. When I finally looked down at the Map app twenty minuets later, our section of the interstate was colored black. Wait, black? Never seen that color before.

My car is somewhere beyond the vanishing point

For future reference, Map app black means “not an option” (or better still, “you’re dead”). Five miles of the upcoming interstate were closed off for nine days to repair all those bridges. We didn’t “eye-spy” so much as a detour sign before we joined the monstrous backup. When cars began leaking into the grass median and making U-turns, I sensed the presence of the travel gods, selecting a dawdling pawn for their vicious game.

Heading back the way we came, the first detour we encountered was the same idea as a hundred other drivers. The off-ramp was backed up forever. Instead, we continued miles further, finally exiting onto a two-lane highway to what can only be described as a drive through the backwoods of the back country of America’s uh… backside. Tight little curvy roads sprouting driveways to nowhere, bars with bars on the windows, churches with desperate Easter pleas like “It’s not about the Bunny, it’s about the Lamb”, and one-stop-sign towns you really don’t want to stop in. Eventually we emerged unscathed (physically, not mentally), flung back to a point on the interstate that wasn’t colored Map app black.

The travel clock ticks faster now. When the travel gods remind you bags must be checked forty-five minutes before departure, beads of sweat start to pop. The Dagwood sandwich gains another layer.

Our daughter (who I now refer to as “GPS Goddess”) expertly phone-guided us all the way into the Charlotte Airport hourly parking garage ($24 USD/day), where she offered a not-so-confident “you’ll make it” before hanging up. And so we dashed, from one end of the garage to the other, down the elevator, across the lanes of buses and taxis, through the under-construction section of the terminal sidewalk, finally bursting through the sliding doors to the American Airlines self check-in kiosks to declare our victory. Which was premature.

Just like the black of the Map app, I’ve never seen a self check-in kiosk dispense a piece of paper saying “See Counter Agent”. Uh-oh. Sure enough, we missed the deadline to check luggage. Our bags were also too big to gate check or they would’ve pushed us through. I thought we were done.

But at the ticket counter, I deflected phrases like “You can’t travel without your luggage, sir” or “We’re not finding any other flight options, sir” with “I have faith in you, American Airlines!” and “You can do this!”, and darned it they didn’t find an itinerary to get this “sir” (and his “ma’am”) to Los Angeles. Through Boston. Uh, sorry miss, isn’t Boston taking us in the wrong direction? She told me not to argue. Add another layer to the sandwich.

Cut to the Charlotte boarding gate. Flight to Boston delayed. Then again. Then again. In a phrase that sounds comical (just not at the time), the gate agent calmly informed passengers “the control tower can’t seem to locate our flight crew”. But then they did, then we boarded, and suddenly we’re flying to Boston… knowing we have, oh, ten minutes to catch our connection once we land.

For the record, you can make a connecting flight in Boston in ten minutes. You need five of those minutes to let the achingly slow passengers in front of you deplane. You need the other five minutes to hustle down the concourse (ignoring the bathrooms that beckon for good reason), cursing the loudspeaker blasting your name with “Flight XXX to Los Angeles, this is your final call. We’re about to close the doors”.

Which is exactly what the gate agents did, right behind us as we sprinted down the jetway, but not before shouting, “Don’t worry, your baggage has a much better chance of making the connection than you do!” [Wrong. Turns out only one of our bags made the flight. The other would arrive (mercifully) the next morning, just in time to change into wrinkled formalwear before the wedding.]

Hoping I looked more like the guy on the left

On the Boston-Los Angeles flight, sitting in the very last row (where you meet/greet every single passenger headed to the bathroom) I let out a slow breath and assessed the good and bad of our whirlwind journey. The good: we’d make the wedding after facing a dozen trip-blocks. The bad: the Boston-LA flight ended up having to go wide-right over Canada to avoid some nasty weather in the Midwest. Add an hour to an already long, seriously turbulent flight. We could’ve headed the other direction and made it to Ireland in less time.

In total, the travel gods played their game for twenty-one hours, leaving us bleary-eyed by the time we walked into the wedding venue the next afternoon. (Hey, at least they got married. After all, the wedding was on April Fools’ Day. A no-show at the altar would’ve been just another layer on the sandwich.)

Here’s a little Blondie trivia. Dagwood was the heir to the Bumstead locomotive fortune, but when he married Blondie the deal was off. I didn’t know that. I only knew about his namesake – the tall, multi-layered sandwich. Otherwise I might’ve thought to take the train to Los Angeles instead.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Trees We’ll Never See

A few weeks ago my wife requested a landscaper’s estimate to remove six or seven trees from the back of our property. They’ll have to knock down a few lengths of perimeter fencing so they can get their big equipment through, and they’ll make several trips to the dump with all of the branches and stumps they’ll pile up.

But when all’s said and done my wife will have the blank canvas she wants for a future riding arena for her horses. Minus a few trees, of course.

The neighbor lady won’t be happy because she’s all about keeping the trees, She drops hints here and there about “leaving things the way God intended”. She also doesn’t seem to mind the endless waste the trees generate, whether falling leaves from the oaks or cones and needles from the pines. But here’s what I want to say to her. First, we have over forty trees on our property (and thousands in the community) so losing six is just a needle in the haystack. Second, we’ll replace those trees over time, in other areas of the property. We’re already making plans to switch out the rose bushes in our driveway circle for a Flowering dogwood.

I can still hear the neighbor lady pleading, “Dave, do you know how long those trees have been standing back there?” Why yes, good neighbor, I’m sure some of them have been around a hundred years. But just like the ones that came down so our house could be built, it’s time to get rid of a few more. You sort of make an agreement with the forest when you live in it. Let me take down a few of your trees and in return I’ll care for the ones that remain.

Amy Grant, the well-known Christian singer (and most recent recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors), just released her latest single. It’s perfect for the start of spring. Trees We’ll Never See is a gentle, lilting ballad about the brevity of human life. The song covers a lot of ground in its few verses: the things we learn from our parents, the challenges we face, the value of hard work, and leaving a legacy. Amy also reminds us about the importance of faith and prayer (as she usually does). But it’s the song’s title that sticks with me. We’re all planting trees we’ll never see.

I remember talking to one of my cousins years ago, and hearing about a locked-down project he was a part of for America’s Space Administration. I can’t recall the what, where, or why of it all, but I do remember the time frame to get it done. Generations. Meaning, my cousin (and his kids, and maybe even their kids) will be long gone before the work is finished. My cousin is planting a tree he’ll never see.

Here’s my favorite lyric in the Amy Grant song:

Statues fall and glory fades but a hundred-year-old oak tree still gives shade.

That’s powerful stuff in my book. You can be somebody big or you can do something big, but what can you be or do to make the world a better place after you’re gone? I’m still working on my answer to that question.

I first covered Amy Grant a few years ago, blogging about her single I Need A Silent Night. It’s a frank anthem about seeking the Christmas spirit amidst the inevitable chaos. I’m not always struck by Amy’s lyrics but I was then and I am again now.

Here’s my final take on Amy’s song. If you’re familiar with her music you know she’s been around a long time. She released her first album in 1977, meaning almost fifty years and hundreds of songs. And in that time Amy’s style moved a little towards pop and a little towards country, but never far from Christian themes. Trees We’ll Never See could be straight out of Amy’s early years. It’s like she tapped the roots of a tree she planted decades ago, just to create a brand new one for future generations. I’ll keep that in mind whenever we plant our Dogwood.

Some content sourced from IMDB, “the Internet Movie Database”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Advert Converts

Texting while driving has quickly become the norm, at least in U.S. states where it continues to be legal. Not a day goes by where I’m not witness to a slow or erratic driver, the annoying behavior the direct result of a smartphone. My car horn gets a regular punch, reminding drivers, “HEY… the light just turned green!” All of which makes the notion of billboards as a driving distraction almost obsolete.

Like most things, billboards had their young and innocent days. They popped up on interstates and major thoroughfares almost as soon as cars themselves did; bright, colorful advertisements meant to plant seeds in driver brains for future purchases. At last count there were over 350,000 billboards in America alone.

Unlike smartphones however, billboards earn nothing but a passing glance as you speed by. Their images and words are simple by design so you “get the picture” in an instant. A few scientific studies went to great lengths to prove billboards increased the potential for accidents. Others showed they really had no impact at all. Whichever is true, billboards stubbornly continue a part of the urban landscape.

But no matter how I spin this topic, we’re just talking about a straightforward means of advertising. What’s so interesting about that, you ask? Well, let me tell you.

Consider the lifespan of a billboard. The artwork is created on a smaller scale, reproduced to billboard size (previously by hand, now by computer), mounted up high on a roadside frame, and then allowed to distract drivers for months. But eventually the billboard comes back down and you’re left with 700 square feet of heavy-duty used vinyl. What now – off to the dump?

Not if you’re Rareform. This company converts adverts into bags, totes, and duffles. You can purchase anything from a travel surfboard bag to a soft-sided cooler, all fashioned from billboard vinyl. You can even buy a cross-body bag for your laptop, with a cushy interior made of recycled water bottles. Talk about “walking advertisements”, eh?

I really admire people who think outside of the box (because I find it so much more comfortable inside). Rareform thinks outside of the board. They brokered deals with advertising agencies for the used vinyl, hired cleaners, designers, sewers, and photographers to produce their one-of-a-kind products, and then created a website to bring it all to you. As Rareform’s founders put it, “We’re in the business of change… and we believe billboards deserve a second chance.” Considering they stock over 50,000 unique re-creations in their warehouse, I’d say they’re on to something.

A billboard can be a cooler if it wants to be

Billboards never really caught my eye until now. Sure, I enjoy their creative advertising tactics, like using several billboards spread out over a mile or two, each one containing part of a message about a business you’ll find off the next off-ramp. Or how about the ones like Chick-fil-A’s, with three-dimensional characters in front of the boards? In 2010 in North Carolina, you could find a billboard of a giant, juicy steak with a big fork sticking out of it, emitting the scent of black pepper and charcoal. Ready to grill?

Today’s billboards, of course, have gone digital. You can pack a rotation of advertisements into the same space where there used to be one. On broadcasts of Major League Baseball, you’ll see advertisements on the walls behind home plate as the camera shows the pitcher’s view of the batter. Those advertisements aren’t really in the ballpark; they’ve just been digitally applied back in the television studio.

None of these billboard tricks impress me like the one Rareform conjured up. I mean, what kind of brain looks at a billboard and goes “Hey, that could be a fashionable bag one day!” Not my brain. Rareform not only diverts tons of vinyl from landfills, it then puts it to practical re-use. Makes me want to dumpster-dive my garbage can out back to see if I can come up with a trash rehash of my own.

Some content sourced from the Rareform website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.