Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

Ellen Makes Her Move

When we moved into our current house (and even the one before it), we made the classic mistake of saying, “We’re never moving again”. After all, picking up and going from one place to the next can be a real pain in the you-know-what, especially with pets and vehicles to relocate on top of the furniture and clothes. But at least we’re only talking about moving houses. What if you had to move an entire town?

If you live in an RV or a tiny home, you’d think nothing of pulling up stakes and going somewhere else. You have the wheels or the flatbed to make it happen. But moving an entire town means a population of people and a collection of structures. it sounds like something that could only happen on a Hollywood movie set. Unless you’re the U.S. government with its sights set on Ellenton, South Carolina.

Ellenton first appeared on a map the way a lot of small towns did back in the day. The railroad was interested in running new tracks through the farms of the area and a deal was made to acquire the land, including a plot for the train station. In Ellenton’s case, the railroad developer was smitten with the primary landowner’s daughter (Ellen). The relationship never blossomed but he did name the budding town after her. Thus we have “Ellen’s Town”, shortened to “Ellenton”.

Ellenton grew quickly in the late 1800s, from a host of agricultural productions to a working, living community of 600 residents. Eventually you’d find churches, schools, a post office, a general store, a dairy, and even a milling company and a cotton gin. But what nobody saw coming was the potential of the area for the construction of a massive facility know as the Savannah River Site (SRS). In the 1950’s in Cold War America, the U.S. government decided Ellenton and its surrounds were the perfect riverside location for plutonium and tritium production, for the development of the hydrogen bomb. Ellenton “won the lottery” over a hundred other locations.

I can’t imagine sitting in Ellenton’s town hall back when the announcement was made. Someone who drew a very short straw had to stand in front of the residents and say, “Sorry folks, we’re going to tear down your town so we need you to find somewhere else to live”. Then the government wrote checks for the properties and businesses and simply walked away. Eminent domain in capital letters.

I’ll admit I thought the government really did move Ellenton to another location. I pictured a cartoon image of the world’s largest spatula, sliding under Ellenton’s streets and buildings like an entire sheet cake, then dropping the whole mess several miles away. But I really thought the government moved Ellenton because we live right down the street from a town called New Ellenton. Turns out, New Ellenton is simply where a good chunk of the original residents chose to call home. The government had nothing to do with it.

Maybe the government didn’t move the living but the law required they move the dead. By the time Ellenton and several other small towns were acquired and shut down, the SRS property encompassed 310 square miles. That meant the relocation of 130 cemeteries, amounting to over 6,000 grave sites. They didn’t get every last one, so it’s fair to say old Ellenton still has a few residents.

The black-and-white photos I share here – from the Ellenton website – give the town a charming, old-timey feel. The few residents alive today hold reunions to share the memories of a place they can no longer see or even visit. Some of Ellenton’s stories make it sound very cozy. I wish I could say the same about New Ellenton, which is nothing more than a couple miles of highway with gas stations and bars scattered on either side. Frankly, the only reason you drive through New Ellenton is because you’re on your way to somewhere else.

I wouldn’t be nostalgic for Ellenton if the government didn’t make it disappear. Kind of reminds me of Brigadoon, the Scottish village that magically appeared out of the mist every hundred years. Maybe Ellenton will appear out of a nuclear winter on the hundredth anniversary of it’s own demise. In the meantime, a songwriter captured the story of the town in a rather sad ballad. “The Death of Ellenton” was never a big hit, but the town it celebrates sure took one.

Some content sourced from the WJBF website article, “Hometown History: The Forgotten Town of Ellenton”; the Ellenton SC website (including all photographs); and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

(Not So) Gently Down the Stream

The small gym I belong to has a fairly set routine with its instructor-led classes. You spend a half-hour on the treadmill and another half on the weight floor, effectively giving the heart and muscles equal attention. The runner in me prefers the treadmill but the brain in me knows – at my age – the weights are the more critical component. Now if only they didn’t throw in the rower every now and then.

If you belong to a gym yourself, I’d be curious to know what piece of equipment (or kind of workout) appeals to you most. Some people get lost in a treadmill run by following a virtual trail or listening to a really good playlist. Others stomp endlessly on the stair-stepper like they’re climbing the Empire State Building. Fans of the elliptical machine look like cross-country skiers going back-and-forth to nowhere. But where-oh-where are the rowing machines? Oh, they’re parked way over in the corner, just begging somebody to jump on.

I can’t remember when I first I tried the rower but I do remember thinking, there is nothing appealing whatsoever about this exercise. A straight back is critical to avoid injury (something I learned years later), and your arms and legs get a heckuva workout. But unlike say, planks, the workout on your abs is not as obvious. Not until later the same day at least, when you can’t sit or stand without midriff pain.

The topic of rowing makes it into my blog because of a recent and ridiculous world record. Three brothers – Ewan, Jamie, and Lachlan Maclean (how’s that for Scottish?) – just finished a row from Peru (the country) to Australia (also the country) in 139 days. That’s 9,000 miles for those of you who didn’t scurry over to Google Maps to find out.

As if 9,000 miles isn’t impressive enough, the Macleans row-row-rowed their boat continuously, which is to say they never stopped. Two brothers rowed while one brother slept. Their food supply was fresh fish (of course) or the occasional freeze-dried meal. The brothers endured everything you’d expect the Pacific Ocean to throw at them: seasickness, tropical storms, a shrinking food supply, and so on. One of the brothers even went man-overboard one night when a rogue wave came out of nowhere.

“World record” implies someone gave this crazy journey a shot before the Macleans did. Yep, a Russian made the same trip in 2014, only he did it solo. Don’t these crazies know they can get their rowing fill at a nearby gym?

Maybe your image if rowing is a little more romantic, as in crew, where teams of athletes scull long, narrow boats down rivers in races against each other. Crew really is elegance in motion whether “eights” or “singles”, the long oars moving back and forth in perfect synchronization to generate the glide, with hardly a disturbance to the water below. Crew is Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. Crew is outdoors on a picturesque, tree-lined river. Crew is anything but synonymous with the pursuit of a world record on the Pacific Ocean.

Speaking of racing, my little gym often injects “challenges” into our workouts by timing performance against a set distance. On the rower, the longest go is 2,000 meters, which most of us do in say, 8-10 minutes. I’ll admit, the competitor in me tolerates rowing just a sliver more when I’m on the clock. I close my eyes and pretend I’m in the Olympics, going for the gold. Okay no, I don’t do that at all. I just stare in the mirror in front of me with agony written all over my face instead.

My 2,000m gym row equates to about a mile and a quarter. Great. My online calculator says I only need another 7,200 rounds to make it to 9,000 miles. But hey, if I can maintain my pace and never sleep, I’ll go the distance in 50 days! Shatters the Maclean world record! Yeah, no. Not only am I putting down my rowing machine “oars”, I’m heading back to the treadmill with hopes of putting this torture device completely out of my mind.

Some content sourced from the CNN World article, “Scottish brothers complete record 139-day row across Pacific…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Only In Iowa

If you’ve ever made graham crackers from scratch (which are miles better than the store-bought ones), there’s a step in the recipe where you have to get your hands dirty. Take a stick of butter, cut it into very small pieces, dump the pieces into the mixture of dry ingredients, and dive on in with your fingers until the dough starts to clump together. It may be the only time butter and my hands ever come in contact with each other. Which is also to say, I won’t be sculpting a butter cow any time soon.

Creating art out of food seems like an inevitable destination. I mean, back in Michelangelo’s day everyone was taking a block of marble and seeing what they could do with it. Then all but one of them quickly realized there was only one Michelangelo. The others probably turned to an easier material to work with like wood or clay. 1,000 years on, we’re sculpting food. Chocolate is a popular medium. Cakes are shaped into just about everything imaginable. But a cow made out of butter – what’s that all about?

We turn to Iowa to learn more about this oddity. Most people prefer to fly over Iowa but since you’re reading and not flying, let me enlighten you. On the list of 10 Things to Know About Iowa, there is no butter and there is no cow. There are a lot of pigs (the most of any state) and millions of acres of corn (also “the most”), and Iowa’s “Hawkeye” nickname is a reference to the birth of the red delicious apple (who knew?). But none of this gets us to butter and cows.

The “10 Things…” list does mention the Iowa State Fair, and it is here that we find real cows by the hundreds… and a life-sized one made out of butter. The Fair, whose 2025 edition wrapped up three weeks ago, has been making “buttered cows” since 1911, thanks to five Iowans who’ve passed the butter baton down over the years. The latest, Sarah Pratt, has been making the cows for the last nineteen years, and only after apprenticing with the last sculptor fifteen years before that. Some people blog; others make cows out of butter.

Like papier-mâché, a butter cow is created on top of a frame built from wood, wire, and/or metal. Then we heap on some fun statistics. 600 lbs. of “low moisture, pure cream, Iowa butter” is applied to create a cow that’s five-and-a-half feet tall and eight feet long. The sculptor’s “studio” is a walk-in cooler set to 40ºF. After the cow is displayed at the fair, all that butter is recycled for use on the next ten years of cows. Unless you’d rather use it for toast, which would butter 19,200 slices.

Michelangelo didn’t stop sculpting after his famous David, of course, and neither does Sarah Pratt with her butter cows. Also following tradition, she creates a “companion sculpture” to keep the cow company. Sometimes the companion is an homage to Iowa, such as a John Deere tractor. Most years the companion is a random anniversary, like the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon (totally random because Neil wasn’t born in Iowa). This year the sculpture featured the characters from “Toy Story”, denoting the movie’s 30th anniversary. You get the feeling Sarah enjoys sculpting butter so much that a life-sized cow just isn’t enough.

For all of my research, I can’t figure out why a cow made out of butter and Iowa belong in the same sentence. Nearby Wisconsin and Michigan are better known for dairy cows. California tops the list of the five states producing the most butter (and Iowa isn’t one of the other four). No matter, this tradition isn’t stopping anytime soon. The butter cow even has a place in the Smithsonian Institution (thankfully, as a replica that will never melt).

I love butter, but more on top of baked goods and in graham cracker recipes than in the shape of a cow. I will admit to buying my butter by the brick instead of by the stick. But now that I know about Iowa’s annual creations, I’ll never look at my morning toast again without thinking, mooooooooo.

Some content sourced from the Iowa State Fair website, the U.S. News article, “10 Things to Know About Iowa”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Ten Days to “Ben-Yays”

I’ve never met a French baked good I didn’t want to devour at first sight. Macarons have called my name ever since my wife and I tried them in a little shop in Strasbourg. I’ve made a surprisingly good Croquet Madame (disguised as a three-cheese breakfast pizza) considering my limited skills in the kitchen. And croissants, well, croissants speak for themselves don’t they? So when a neighbor challenged my wife and I to make beignets ten days ago, I confidently replied, “oui!”

Technically we’re not talking about a baked good today. Beignets are fried in oil, like doughnuts. In fact, they’re exactly like sugar doughnuts, just not as sweet. Think Krispy Kreme’s Original Glazed without the glaze. Small, chewy pillows of heaven.

So why would a neighbor request beignets? Because she invited us to a college football game watch (Clemson vs. Louisiana State) and she’s one of those who turns a basic entertainment into a full-on festivity. Louisiana State is in Baton Rouge so her menu was start-to-finish Cajun. Étouffée. Muffuletta. Red Beans and Rice. Chantilly Cake. I mean, if she’s going to make all of that how could I say non to beignets?

Thankfully, I found an “Easy Beignets Recipe” online (note: whenever a recipe starts with “easy”, it’s anything but). At least I already had the ingredients in my pantry. But beignets start out like a high school science experiment. Heat the water to exactly 105°. Add yeast and a little sugar, because yeast “feeds” on sugar. Then watch it all foam. If it doesn’t foam, you killed the yeast and you have to start over. (No pressure Dave, little lives are at stake here.)

My yeast foamed (it lives!) so I was then allowed to proceed with the more traditional ingredients. Shortening, sugar, milk, and egg whites all mixed together, to which you add boiling water. When the temp is exactly 105°-110° (again with the science experiment) add the foamy yeast, flour and salt, and into the refrigerator it all goes, to rise for an hour or more.

Did my foamy-yeast-shortening-and-other-stuff concoction really rise? I have no idea. It looked the same as it did an hour before. But I threw caution to the wind and proceeded. At this point my wife had to get involved, because (as the recipe warns in capital letters), THIS IS A TWO-PERSON JOB. Maybe a three-person. One of you slaves over a pot of boiling oil (my wife), another gently transfers the beignets to paper towels to “oil off” (me), and the third suffocates them in powdered sugar (me again).

That last sentence happens very quickly. You can’t get the timing wrong on any step or the beignets won’t taste right. They fry for a minute or so on each side, rest for a minute on the paper towel, and don their coat of powdered sugar with just enough oil remaining to serve as the glue.

When beignets are done correctly, they’re light and flaky. The shortening and yeast create an air pocket inside. But you’re not really sure if this science happens until you rescue them from the boiling oil. Remarkably, ours really did rise. Doused in powdered sugar they really were pretty good (then my wife mixed a little cinnamon and vanilla into the dough and they were even better).

There’s a reason why beignets are so much better at the famous Cafe du Monde in New Orleans than in Dave’s kitchen. You need to eat them as soon as they’re powdered with sugar, and wash them down with a top-shelf cup of coffee. You see, beignets, sadly, have the shortest life of any baked good I know. If you don’t eat them warm, minutes after they’re fried, they’ll shed their light and airy consistency. An hour later they’re as cold and chewy as day-old doughnuts at 7-Eleven. And God forbid you leave them overnight on the counter. The next morning you’ll have nothing but rocks.

So, you ask, were our beignets a hit at our neighbor’s game watch? Well, let’s just say the other guests were being polite by declaring, “very good!”, especially when they ate more of our frosted sugar cookies instead (our backup dessert). Hey, our kitchen is no Cafe du Monde. I never said it was. It’s the reason I’m never making étoufée. At least I have a neighbor who will be happy to do it for me.

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

Where The Buffalo Roam

In southwestern Alberta, Canada, there’s a historical landmark curiously named “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump”. It’s the former location of a vast communal bison trap. Thousands of years ago native hunters would drive herds of the roaming animals over the plains and then right over the adjacent cliffs, in what is described as “the single greatest food-gathering method ever developed in human history.” The buffalo aren’t running in this part of Canada anymore. They’re no longer running in Boulder, Colorado either.

In case you missed it, the American college football season kicked off last Saturday… in Dublin, Ireland. Kansas State played Iowa State in a converted rugby stadium in front of a sell-out Guinness-filled crowd. A roving reporter took to the streets to ask locals what they knew about the American game and the answers were wonderfully ignorant. How many points is a touchdown? (“4?”) Name any American college football team (“Yankees?” “Dodgers?”) And then my favorite: What is Kansas State’s mascot? (“A tractor?”) Not a bad answer if you ask me. I’d guess there are more tractors than wildcats in Kansas.

Speaking of wild things, let’s get back to Boulder. The University of Colorado (CU) boasts one of the few live animal mascots in college football: a full-grown snortin’ stompin’ buffalo named Ralphie. Before each half of the home games Ralphie is released from her trailer on the sidelines (yes, Ralphie is a “her”) to run a horseshoe lap around the field at full speed, before her five handlers corral her back into the trailer. It’s the stuff of rodeos, and more than a few handlers have eaten dirt in the process (but at least they earn a varsity letter for their efforts).

Ralphie is actually the sixth live buffalo to represent CU since the mascot was selected in 1934. But Ralphie VI – aka “Ember” – has a singular distinction. She’s just not into the run. Whereas her five predecessors ran for at least ten seasons each, Ember decided to call it quits after just three. The University officially called it “indifference to running” and cut Ember from the team so she could spend the rest of her days roaming in pastures. Maybe Ember’s thinking she’s going to go over a cliff every time she runs. Can you blame her for hanging it up? No word on whether Ralphie VII is up for the task.

At least CU has a ferocious mascot, one a fan would associate with the Colorado surrounds. Like Texas’s Longhorn or Florida’s ‘Gator, you want a mascot that speaks to your particular locale and does so with a confident puff of the chest. But instead, a lot of America’s college football mascots have you thinking either lightweight or what the heck is THAT?

Cases in point. If I pull up this year’s top college football teams, I guarantee I’ll find several to underscore my point. And I am right. Ohio State’s mascot is a buckeye (which is a tree, and not a very ferocious one at that). Georgia’s is a bulldog, described as “loyal, gentle, and affectionate”. Oregon’s is a duck (A duck!) Alabama is known as “the Crimson Tide”, which was a reporter’s colorful spin on a long-ago game played in the mud (and not a mascot at all). Finally, Arizona State’s is a Sun Devil, which better belongs on Saturday morning cartoons than Saturday afternoon football fields.

On the other hand, you have the Penn State Nittany (Mountain) Lions, the Michigan Wolverines (don’t mess with wolverines), the South Carolina Gamecocks (don’t mess with those either), and the Miami Hurricanes (not an animal, but points for ferociousness and local flavor). Any one of those deserves to stand side-by-side with a live buffalo.

As much as I’d like leave this topic with Ember the Buffalo and her chest-thumping buddies, I sheepishly include one more: my beloved alma mater Notre Dame. We at Notre Dame are the Fightin’ Irish, because our football teams (at least those from the early 1900s) showed “the grit, determination, and tenacity characteristic of Irish immigrants”) That all sounds great until you see our mascot: a leprechaun who looks like he’s taking a break from the Lucky Charms cereal box. Is there anything less ferocious and less “state of Indiana” than that?

If it were up to me, Notre Dame’s mascot would be an open-wheeled, open-cockpit IndyCar (VROOM! VROOM!), the kind they race every year at the Indianapolis 500 just four hours south of campus. An IndyCar toughs out a jigging leprechaun by a mile, not to mention an indifferent buffalo who’d rather roam than run. I still say, good on you for choosing to head out to pasture, Ember. I wish the Notre Dame leprechaun would tag along.

Some content sourced from the Athabasca University Press article, “Imagining Head-Smashed-In”, the CUBuffs.com article, “Ralphie VI retires”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Shark Attack!

Our annual summer vacations in San Diego have become a little more adventurous because of an increase in shark activity off the coast of California. I enjoy body surfing, but the thought of a pair of big, hungry jaws beneath the water’s surface gets my heart a-pounding. So imagine my shock when I really did have an encounter with a baby shark. Er, make those letters capitals. I meant to say “Baby Shark”.

My adorable two-year old granddaughter is just beginning to take off with her vocabulary. She can say “Mama”, “Dada”, and even “Chop! Chop!” when she wants us to hurry up. She also says “Bayba Shawk”… constantly, because she wants an adult to play the song for the forty-thousandth time. After three weeks on repeat I can’t get the darned thing out of my head. I need brain surgery.

“Baby Shark” is the story of a little family of sharks hunting for fish. The fish get away and… that’s it. It’s not so much a story as an excuse to sing a verse about each family member: Baby, Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, and Grandpa. The first time I heard it (forty thousand time ago) I wondered, Why doesn’t Baby Shark have siblings? Where are his (her?) other grandparents? Aunts? Uncles?

Of course, it’s not really Baby Shark’s family that make the tune so addicting. It’s the “doo’s”… as in doo doo doo-doo doo-doo. You sing those six “doo’s” in every verse and that’s the part that gets into your head. Add in the accompanying up-and-down arm dance (imitating the jaws of a shark) and you somehow have a hit. More like a worldwide phenomenon.

If a children’s sing-song doesn’t get your attention, consider this. “Baby Shark” is the most-watched YouTube video of all time. I said of all time. If your guess would’ve been something by Ed Sheeran or Katy Perry or Maroon 5 you would’ve also landed in the Top Thirty, but nowhere near the top of the list. “Baby Shark” has been viewed over 16 billion times, more than twice the number as the runner-up. And that’s only for the version from South Korea’s Pingfong. The one by Cocomelon (a children’s YouTube channel) lands in twenty-third place with another four billion views.

“Baby Shark” has been around longer than you might think. It showed up somewhere in the late 1990’s in the public domain. Then Pinkfong got ahold of it, created the 2016 video with cute little Korean kids, and the rest continues to be history. Coincidentally, a lawsuit was settled just this month where an American songwriter claimed rights to “Baby Shark”. He lost, but only because the song was still in the public domain when he created his version. You can’t blame him for trying; “Baby Shark” has generated over $150M in revenue in the last ten years.

Of course, all that revenue comes from more than just a YouTube video (hence the “worldwide phenomenon”). “Baby Shark” is showing up in places and with people that seem downright ridiculous. There’s a children’s book and a television series. There’s a video game. It’s part of a tourism promotion for Singapore. It’s used by certain professional baseball players as they walk up to the plate. Or certain politicians as they walk up to the podium. Finally, it’s the subject of a Kellogg’s breakfast cereal, a berry version of Fruit Loops with little marshmallows posing as sharks. “Yum?”

My favorite use of “Baby Shark” comes out of West Palm Beach, FL. Local authorities were desperate to clear a lakeside pavilion of homeless people, so they played the song over and over on loudspeakers until everyone left (running and screaming for the hills, no doubt). If I’m inclined to run and scream myself, I can drive a couple hours north of here to see a production of Baby Shark Live, a 75-minute stage musical. I’m not inclined.

The whole time I’ve been typing this post I’ve had doo doo doo-doo doo-doo on loop in my head. If my hands and arms weren’t busy on the keyboard they’d be doing the Baby Shark Dance instead. It’s maddening, and makes me want to body surf again with hopes I’ll be eaten by a real shark. Instead, I’ll just hope I find another blog topic next week that consumes me more than “Baby Shark”. I leave you with the video. Guard your sanity.

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

Golden Recall

My wife and I go for massages once a month, which has turned out to be a solid therapeutic routine. As is the case with any spa, the air is diffused with pleasant scents as well as soothing instrumental music. They also overlay a soundtrack of birds, as if to place you in the out of doors. The sensations are designed to relax and they do their job; so well in fact I’d swear I was transported to the shores of a pond. More on that in a minute.

Candidly, it’s not often I notice the background music in a spa. I focus on breathing deep and keeping my eyes closed instead. But I couldn’t ignore the music when “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserables started playing. Whatever playlist the spa chose included a simple rendition of that song; just piano and violin. It was beautiful, and suddenly I was back in the Broadway theater where we saw the show years ago. I would’ve put “Bring Him Home” on “repeat” if I could have.

But we’re not talking about Les Miserables today. We’re talking about a pond. “Bring Him Home” was followed by a nameless instrumental piano piece, and again my mind began to drift. Then I heard the birds. Piano keys. Birds. And there I went… back to “On Golden Pond”.

Several instrumental movie soundtracks will reside in my brain forever. Whenever their signature melodies play I’m immediately returned to the film itself. I’m not talking about the bold, orchestral works of John Williams (think Star Wars or Jurassic Park) but rather the simpler repetitive tunes that still somehow define the story on the screen. Chariots of Fire is a good example. Cast Away is another. Leap Year was a so-so movie but the soundtrack is wonderfully catchy. And the music of A Little Romance – Diane Lane’s debut film – was so well done it won 1979’s Oscar for Best Original Score.

So you see, this is how a massage becomes a trip back to On Golden Pond, a movie from almost fifty years ago. The piano plays. The birds sing (even if they aren’t loons). And there it is, that simple poignant story playing out in front of my closed eyes as if I’d just seen the film last week.

Was I ever a fan of Jane Fonda? Not really. I remember her more for her workout videos than her movies. But On Golden Pond was the exception because she’s on screen with Henry Fonda, her father in real life and her father in the movie. The movie is about the struggles of their father-daughter relationship, which surely echoed real life. Add in Katherine Hepburn as the mother character and the bar is raised well beyond the movie itself. The story is good enough, but who from my generation wouldn’t watch Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn in anything together?

Henry Fonda died less than a year after the filming of On Golden Pond. Katherine Hepburn made a few more movies but this was pretty much the conclusion of her career as well. So On Golden Pond is something of a swan song for both. If you have any recollection of the film, try this: Ask Alexa for instrumental piano music. Ask Siri for a soundtrack of birds at the same time. Then close your eyes and relax. You may be transported back to a golden pond. It’s pretty cool.

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

Tripping on Trips

I should pay more attention to the actual cost of things. A movie ticket is fifteen dollars… until you add in concessions, preferred seating, and online processing. A dinner out can be reasonable… until you add in the taxes and tip. And rental car companies add so many fees to the base rate it’s like you’ve just been bumped to a new tax bracket. With that in mind let’s visit the airport today, or more specifically, getting to the airport.

Flying is expensive; always has been. But it’s easy to overlook the cost of the airport itself. Maybe you already know, a portion of the ticket you just bought goes to a landing fee (LF) – what the airline pays the airport for the privilege of pulling up to the gate. Maybe you also know another portion goes to a passenger facility charge (PFC), which supposedly goes to improvement projects in the name of airport safety and security.

I don’t trust PFCs. I think they really go to things like art exhibits, children’s play areas, pet relief areas, and smoking lounges. I mean really, how much less would that plane ticket be if all you had for an airport was a ticket counter, some security and restrooms, and a gate to board your plane?

The airport needs more than LF’s and PFC’s to pay its bills, of course. It’s the reason you pay so much for parking. I mean, think about it. Once the parking garage is built it requires little to operate. Mechanical systems and a few employee salaries yes, but certainly nothing in the neighborhood of say, $30/car/day. Which brings me to my current conundrum.

Most of you don’t have the following challenge. When you fly, you’re close enough to the airport to where you can get a ride from a friend or take mass transit. Me? I have a choice of three major airports here in the South… but each of them is a two to three hour drive from my house. Which begs the question, how does Dave get from his house to the airport and back for the least amount of money?

Simple but Expensive. Dave drives his car to the airport, parks, and drives his car back to his house after he gets back. Works for short trips but what if I’m gone for three weeks (starting next Saturday)? Parking at Atlanta-Hartsfield is $30/day (and that’s long-term). Throw in a tank of gas for the car and I’m north of $700 just for the airport to/from.
Simpler but Even More Expensive. This idea unexpectedly sent me in the wrong direction (financial, not travel). I put in for a quote for car and driver from a service right here in our little town. They got back to me almost immediately. Little did I know my car is a limo and my driver wears a tuxedo. My wife and I can “sit back and enjoy their ride” for $520 each way. Gratuity not included.
Slightly Less Expensive. Here’s a fun option/comparison. Drive to nearby (tiny) Augusta Regional Airport and fly to Atlanta. The two round trip tickets plus parking? Less than the cost of the drive and parking at Atlanta. If flights out of Augusta were ever on time I might actually consider it.
Clever But… Drive to nearby (tiny) Augusta Regional Airport, rent a car, drive to Atlanta, and return the car. Repeat the procedure in reverse when I return. No. The rental car companies want $300+ for Augusta to Atlanta. Multiply that by two to get back home.
By shuttle? “Cozy”
Less Expensive but More Cozy. We have shuttle services nearby; van companies where you share the ride to the airport with strangers. $200 gets us the trip to Atlanta and back. Okay, but now we’re driving our car just to get driven by a van just to get flown in a plane. Seems like a lot. And you leave when the shuttle service says you leave; not when you really want to.

Five solutions in and I still haven’t made it to Atlanta with any sense of fiscal satisfaction. I’m starting to think I should just skip the airplane and drive all the way to our destination. Or ride my bike with a pile of luggage on my back. But wait! There’s always 6. Entirely Less Expensive. Convince local son-in-law to drive us to Atlanta (and back). He can’t charge me more than the options I presented here, can he? Er, not if he doesn’t read this blog post first. I better call him… stat.

I’m All About Paul

Before another Independence Day celebration completely fades into the July of last week, I want to visit a story from early early American history. In 1973 I began middle school at Palisades-Brentwood Junior High, so named because it straddled the limits of both towns just outside of Los Angeles. But I never knew it as “Palisades-Brentwood”. A year after opening in 1955 it was rebranded Paul Revere Junior High. So Paul and I have a little something in common. It’s like we’re compatriots, only separated by two and a half centuries.

If you know nothing else about Paul Revere, you’ll recall his courageous “midnight ride”. In the months leading up to the Revolutionary War in 1775 Revere took to his horse outside of Boston to alert “minutemen” of the approaching British troops. Minutemen were residents of the American colonies trained to defend “at a minute’s notice”. Revere himself was the notice, at least for what would become the early battles at Lexington and Concord.

Were it not for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow a hundred years later, Revere’s legacy would’ve faded as quickly as last Friday’s fireworks. Instead we have the poet’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” as the chronicle, with these well-known opening lines:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive…

Thanks to Longfellow’s poetic license (lots of it), we have a skewed version of what Revere did and did not do in April, 1775. For starters, he was one of three riders spreading the news that “The British are coming! The British are coming!” (so why didn’t the other two riders get any poetic love?) Further, Revere never said the words “The British are coming!” but rather some disguised version of the warning to fool the Redcoats already hiding in the countryside. And the famous “one-if-by-land, two-if-by-sea” lanterns were put in place by Revere, not for him.

Revere didn’t even own a horse. He had to borrow a neighbor’s steed (named “Brown Beauty”) to make the ride. And instead of galloping all the way to Concord as the poem suggests, Revere and his horse were captured by British troops somewhere along the way. Lucky for Paul, the capture turned into a release when the Brits realized they were about to be overwhelmed by the locals. So they took Paul’s horse and fled instead.

Enough of the history lesson (real or poetic). Why a West Coast middle school would go with “Paul Revere” is beyond me, but the campus culture certainly embraced the name. A select number of boys (including me) were the “Minutemen” who raised and lowered the American flag each day. A select number of girls – “Colonial Belles” – were responsible for some similar task. The school yearbook was known as the “Patriot”, while the newspaper was labeled the “Town Crier”. And students called “Silversmiths” did something-or-other, but it certainly wasn’t casting fine products in Metal Shop.

Our school even plagiarized Longfellow (and not very well), as in:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
of the growing pride of Paul Revere.
On the twelfth of September in Fifty-Five
Our middle school began to thrive.

If all I can point to is my middle school’s name, it’s a weak argument to claim Paul Revere and I have something in common. We have nothing in common. Revere was a ~~Jack~~ Paul of all trades, dabbling in roles from military leader to dentist, artist, and silversmith, before finally settling on copper caster. Revere became the best caster of church bells in all of young America before his midnight ride became his signature accomplishment.

You’d be better off saying Revere and I were polar opposites. I never served in the military. I’ve only been the patient of a dentist (too often at that), I have zero art skills, I don’t make the silver (I just polish it), and the only casters I’m familiar with are the ones under a couple of my rolling chairs.

Thanks to the church bell thing, Revere Copper Company became a successful business which still exists to this day. You may remember their “Revere Ware” products, most of which are considered collectibles today. Maybe I should collect a few pieces myself. They’d remind me of the guy I seem to think I have something in common with. Or at least, they’d remind me of junior high school.

Some content sourced from the Paul Revere Charter Middle School website, the History Channel article, “9 Things You May Not Know About Paul Revere”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Here’s What’s Bugging Me

In the years we raised our family in Colorado we made a lot of friends and acquaintances… but none of them were bugs. Actually that’s not true; every now and then a spider would introduce itself; somehow enduring the region’s high altitude and low oxygen. But the other 99.9% of the world’s insect population flew south for the winter… and stayed there. Or rather, here. Right here on the property where we now live. On that not-so-exaggerated claim let’s you and I make a deal. I’ll happily take all of your cicadas, wasps, and fire ants in exchange for my countless gnats.

A gnat may be the most annoying living thing you’ll ever encounter, (including every last one of your family members). Anyone who’s experienced an out-of-nowhere cloud of these little dive-bombers knows what I’m talking about. Gnats are so tiny instead of “now you see ’em, now you don’t” you just say no-see-um. Gnats are so whiny you’ll swear your ears are being perforated by dozens of microscopic dentist drills. Finally, gnats have such a sense of smell that once you give off your particular scent (i.e. sweat) they’ll happily follow you to the ends of the earth.

Here’s what a gnat looks like (blown up a million, billion times). I’m not surprised to see they’re a relatively simple-looking creature. After all, there can’t be much to something beyond microscopic. In all fairness, a gnat’s virtual invisibility has to do with a preference for shade, nighttime hours and things that grow. At least that’s my experience. I’m out there walking the dog on a humid summer evening and it’s as quiet as the “g” in gnat. Suddenly the little air force shows up out of nowhere and for the rest of the walk you’re swatting your head every time you hear a dentist drill. And it’s not like you kill gnats with your swats (or maybe you do but they’re so small you have no idea if you did, so why bother?)

Entering this third summer of my newfound cloud of Southern friends, I decided it was time to go on the offensive. My wife bought a stack of human-head sized mosquito nets. These nets work great in that you’ll no longer feel that slightest of sensations when a gnat lands on your ear. But the little sand grains still knock-knock-knock on the net with their dentist-drill buzzes. You still swat and you still no-see-um. Not to mention, a sweaty mosquito net is really uncomfortable.

A month or so ago we were at our local farm supply and came across this product at check-out. The cashier was all about it, so I figured I’d give it a try. Gnats don’t like particular botanicals: citronella, lemongrass, rosemary, and geranium, and No Natz has them all in a nice little spray cocktail. Darned if the stuff doesn’t work! You put it on like sunscreen, you smell like an entire can of Lemon Pledge, but the gnats keep their distance. For a little while anyway. Eventually you sweat off the No Natz and then it’s “mo natz” all over again.

I might have to try a batch of pyrethrins instead (my new favorite word). Pyrethrins are compounds found in chrysanthemums which, conveniently, target the nervous system of a gnat. Gets at ’em from the inside out. The idea of a gnat spiraling out of control like a wounded helicopter is entirely appealing in my present state of mind.

Per Wikipedia, there is “no scientific consensus on what constitutes a gnat”. Whichever ones are my new best friends here are harmless because they just buzz around your eyes and ears making their dentist-drill noises. Other varieties prefer biting and blood so I guess I should be grateful. Doesn’t make “Gnatus South Carolinus” any less annoying.

Maybe subscribing to the alleged origin of “no-see-um” will put me out of my misery. The word is rooted in skeptical theism. That is, if a human (me) thinks hard enough about a given thing (gnat) and can’t come up with a single God-justifying reason for permitting such an organism (nope, not one), AND considering said organism can’t be seen (they’re invisible!) then perhaps I should entertain the notion that a gnat doesn’t really exist.

Yes, let’s go with skeptical theism. There aren’t any gnats in South Carolina after all (hooray!) Ignore the previous 500+ words of this post. My countless friends were all in my head. Or uh, around my head? Whatever.. guess I’m just hearing things.

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