Pumping Gas with Mouse Ears On

Last night I attended the Squallis Puppeteers annual Fools Day Fund Raiser. The theme this year was "Forest of Fools" and those attending were given the option of donning animal ears as part of the merriment. I selected a set of gray mouse ears that matched my graying hair pretty well. Too well really. By the time the evening was drawing to a close Carmen was tired so I took her home before returning to help strike the set and return the decorations and party supplies back to the Shark Tank headquarters of the puppet gang. I had completely forgotten that I was sporting the set of ears when I pulled into the Broadway Chevron a little past midnight to get a little petrol into my below E tank. As I was pumping a few gallons of gas in my truck there were two angry drunk fellows arguing about some kind of soured drug deal just a dozen feet from me. I kept my eye on them not really knowing whether their anger would spill over to me as an innocent bystander. The conversation got more and more aggressive and I half way expected to see a weapon appear when one of the guys just started laughing.

Angry guy 1: "Mother fucker you don't do me like that without gettin your ass whooped. Now give me my god damn money mother fucker or I'll cut your ass."
Angry guy 2: (starts laughing)
Angry guy 1: "What you laughin at mother fucker? I put a cap in your ass."
Angry guy 2: "I ain't laughin at you mother fucker. That white dude over there with ears on be freakin me out."
Angry guys 1 and 2: (laughing at me and pointing at me pumping gas with mouse ears on)
Me: "What? You mother fuckers ain't never seen mouse ears before."

What the Easter Bunny brung me.

I was almost ready to declare the Easter Bunny an imaginary construct. Another one of those false emissaries of childhood happiness that just happens to appear at some important moment in the yearly cycle of Christian teaching. But now I am a believer all over again. (In bunnies, not religion.)

This year I returned from a trip to the coffee shop on Easter morning to find the above pictured "Lay an Egg" game waiting for me on my doorstep. What joy spread over me when I found the box sporting a life size image of a laying hen nestled into the clean straw bedding. What fun it was to open the box and find the plastic contraption that provides "fun for the whole family" by encouraging folks to gather around a table together slapping buttons that, if timed right, compel the cute red headed clucker to swivel its ass end over your own personal nest to lay an egg.

Now don't get me wrong. I still have my suspicions that there are mammals other than lagomorphs involved in this conspiracy of mirth. But I can't prove it. So until otherwise notified... count me as an Easter Bunny believer. Does anyone have a current email address for the tooth fairy?

Thought you should know.

The top picture is of a waterless urinal. The diagram is how it works. Thought you should know. Just one of these saves about 40,000 gallons a year in most buildings. A moderately sized office with 25 of these installed would save a million gallons of water a year.

In Utah these things are required. In Kentucky you can't get them permitted. Thought you should know that too.

Revolution Revisited

A few days ago Fidel Castro announced he was stepping aside as the military head of Cuba. The Cuban revolution has fascinated me for a very long time. Not only because it is a remarkable story of how a handful of passionate people changed the political course of events on an island but also because the Cuban revolution tracks along with my personal history. In May of 1958 (I was baking inside of mama.) a brutal dictator propped up by US policy sent an army of 10,000 soldiers into the Sierra Maestra mountains to capture Fidel, Che Guevara and a ragtag band of guerrilla soldiers. By most historical accounts the size of Fidel's band numbered around 300. By early January of 1959 (I am a little over 3 months old.) Fidel and his revolutionary soldiers are marching into Havana and Batista has fled the island. Now I am nearing 50 and Fidel is voluntarily stepping aside. Still alive. Still ranting against US imperialism. Still a player on the stage of world politics. He was the only world leader mentioned in the most recent debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Regardless of how you feel about Fidels politics there is an important lesson in the Cuban revolution. For me it is this: Passion wins. No political system is without debit because no political system is free from human weakness. We are not perfect creatures. Collectively we are not a perfect community. But a compelling message beats bullets every time if you know how to hide within the environment.

Fidel continues to rant. Most recently he said something along the lines of... All the U.S. presidential candidates are calling for change, change, change. I agree. The U.S. must change. It sounds like we are all on the same page. Now lets start hammering out the details. With passion please.
(This photograph is by Jack Manning of the New York Times.)

Nine Ways to Look at a Crow

(With apologies to Wallace Stevens)

i
In a lidded can, all paint is the same color.

ii
Crows like edges. In the heart of the wood the red-eyed vireo is king.

iii
Spanish moss is neither Spanish nor moss.

iv
I see the bidding of wind but not it's soul or home.

v
A card laid is a card played. I shall never run for public office.

vi
A Mayan fisherman once told me that if I started watching a frigate bird I should continue watching until it beat its wings. To look away was rude and would invite illness.

vii
The carpenter that laid out the rafters and joists in my family home numbered them with roman numerals. The number sequence was wrong but consistent. The house is 200 years old. Consistency has its merits.

viii
Milk moves different when the pail is cold.

ix
Pregnant women know more than they are letting on. We should grant them that mystery willingly.

Sunday is for Gloating

I don't like rubbing this in peoples faces but I live in Kentucky. I couldn't imagine living in a better spot, if the truth be told, and I have seen other places. Plenty of them. There is an honesty about this region that wraps around you like a wool sweater. That the sweater might have the occasional hole only speaks to the authenticity beneath that honesty. This past Sunday I read a letter to the editor penned by Wendell Berry that simultaneously spanked the Courier Journal for not asking critical questions that should be the bedrock of good journalism and placed the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) program championed by University of Kentucky's president Lee Todd under a much needed critical eye. Berry's primary point being that complex public policy invariably has both merit and debit and that we should give no career politician a free pass at the creation of policy without fair and considered public debate. No offense to Todd, but if he can not reasonably answer the questions put to him by Berry in his letter then we should not embrace the policies Todd champions. It was good to see good writing in the newspaper even if it was "Special to the Courier Journal."

So there I was, sitting at home thinking about my Kentucky roots and the talented people that live here when I remembered that a LAVA House benefit was about to begin at Lisa's Oak Street Lounge. I moseyed over to listen to some tunes and was treated to another dose of honesty and guts. John Haywood, from Eastern Kentucky, started off the evening playing banjo and singing songs about good ole hobos and ballads of love ending in blood. You might see something like this in another state but it wouldn't be the same. I do not claim to know exactly what it is about steep terrain and coal dust and poverty that breeds haunting lyric but I am sure it exists. You can not fake some things and Haywood was happy not to try. The banjo came to us from Africa where it was originally mostly drum and only secondarily melody. John's banjo work is the clack of train wheels and his singing is whistle through fog. I could have stood more of it. Then Joe Manning took the stage and added another sip of whiskey to the evening.

It all got me to thinking. Could I stand to live out my days in a lesser place? I am sure I could not.

Commercial Design Gone South

Jessica Woolards "AND HOW" blog "I hate you baby corn" got me thinking about canned goods. You know, those things you gather up at Christmas time to box up for some needy family. It's hard not to hate canned goods these days. The food inside isn't likely to be all that good and it's almost certain to have come from thousands of miles away. But worse still, it isn't even packaged very pleasingly. What happened to our canned food design ethic? From looking around in junk stores over the better part of my life I have come to realize that our marketing people could learn a few things from the label designers of the mid 1900s. I would buy a can of something if it looked good.

And to that end I have a recommendation for you. Down at the Cressman Center (100 E. Main Street, Louisville) the show that's up for a short time longer (I think it comes down on Feb. 16th) includes a collection of vintage dog food cans. And get this, they still have dog food in them. In essence they are time-capsules of genetic information about horses, cows, pigs, ducks, bunnies, and such.

Here's a tip from a fellow that has navigated most of my valentine days successfully. Take your gal on a romantic gallery hop for two to see the dog food cans. But follow it up with a nice dinner at Proof or something like that.