The twenty-first century lynch mob: some members of the 24 hour television news media and what we owe them.

Why do so many ordinary people under suspicion, in distress, or related to a personal tragedy appear on so-called television news? What the hell are they thinking? Isn’t anyone advising them to stay in the house and close the curtains? What do they think the advantage will be?

And here I’m not talking about those dopey trailer park residents who get a free trip somewhere and lots of money to talk about their sexual relationship with their cousin Joe Bob. We would all continue to live successfully if they went away.

I heard a guy on TV a couple of weeks ago, a so-called media adviser, saying that the only way Tiger Woods could turn his terrible situation around was to appear immediately on TV and declare his sorrow for all he had done. The very worst thing he could do, this moron said, was to not put his face on the screen. After all, the American media had made him who he was and they deserved their pound of flesh. No mention of the fact that he was a pretty good golfer to begin with.

I think that is descriptive of just how important certain media elements think they are in forming the news as opposed to reporting it. You owe us. It appears to be what drives paparazzi photographers who will go to any length, legal or otherwise, endangering lives even, to take an embarrassing picture of a movie actor. The actor owes them. They made them who they are. Their ability to act is irrelevant.

There is a lady on Head Line News named Nancy Grace who decides what she believes is the news of the day, week, month or year, at least in her scandal-ridden mind, and literally beats the story to death. She screams and shouts at anyone appearing on her program if they suggest anything that differs from her view on the murder, kidnapping or whatever she is currently promoting or the person she has chosen as the murderer, kidnapper, etc. Sadly, she is not alone.

Not only do these poor, sorry souls, guilty or not, owe her, she is their one person lynch mob. She is making the news, not reporting it. She is relentless. These people are getting what Nancy Grace has decided they deserve. She must, like God, never be mistaken. We can only hope.

When the elderly make their own reservations

I have a complaint. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. Apparently it didn’t surprise United Airlines. I made my flight arrangements for the holidays online. The prices were quite high, I thought. I also noticed an odd quirk at United.com. When I put a December departure date in, at least in the second half of the month, the month of the return section shifted ahead a month. Does no one travel within the same month?

I looked several times at the site and was discouraged each time regarding the prices until, at last, I knew I had to make a reservation and, by golly, there was a flight for a very reasonable price. My good fortune. I booked it, printed out the itinerary, checked the dates, felt superior.

I was leaving from Providence, RI for a change on December 22 at 6 am in the morning. This is my latest theory about flying. Go first. It won’t get really screwed up until later in the day. So I booked early to go to Raleigh and early coming back. I assumed that was why the flight was so inexpensive.

This was my first time traveling with a pacemaker. I had my driver’s license out, along with my card from Meditech, my shoes and jacket off, everything in three gray plastic tubs when I told the TSA guy I had a pacemaker and could not go through their machinery. He looked at me like I was demented and said in a loud voice that I should be in line seven. Where, I asked, was that. Line seven he said again. I asked if there was a sign. He sighed. Only complete morons fly from Providence, that’s what that sigh conveyed.

He led me to Line seven which was not identified in any way whatsoever that I could see. The female agent at line seven used the microphone to request a male agent for a pat down and I was instructed to enter the glass room and sit down. People stared as they passed by in the regular security lines. Finally, an old buck showed up in a uniform bejeweled with the same array of medals and ribbons that Francisco Franco wore.

He asked if I would prefer to hear what he was going to do or just have him do it. I said I thought he should just do it. I was actually there to catch a plane as opposed to hear a lecture on patting down old fellows with pacemakers. This was before Christmas. But he seemed to know where something might be hidden. Too bad he didn’t work in Lagos. Luckily, I did not giggle.

On the Saturday after Christmas, I went on daughter Jessica’s old computer and attempted to print out my boarding pass for Sunday December 27. No luck. I was confused. I tried again. I should be able to get a boarding pass within 24 hours of departure. Still no luck. I thought it might be her computer.

Then I looked closer. I couldn’t print a boarding pass because my departure wasn’t until JANUARY 27! No wonder the damned flight was so cheap. I called United. Now remember, we are two days after Christmas and we all know what had happened that day. I couldn’t get through in this lifetime.

I attempted to switch my ticket from January to December online. In fact, the computer said I could get a flight later in the day Sunday the 27 of December for an additional $150. I grabbed it. It was, after all, my mistake.

So I flew out of Raleigh at 2:30 pm. At security, I got in the old geezer-pacemaker line by looking at the folks in each line. I got to Dulles for my change to Providence and everything was complete chaos. Four hours later I finally got on a small plane and arrived at 8 pm.

All in all, it could have been worse given that it was Christmas and shit was happening. But two days later I filled out the survey provided by United online and told them us elderly had trouble with calendars that automatically moved ahead. So far the company President has not thought to call me and apologize!

I know I got up to do something…

I used to pride myself on my efficiency. I didn’t waste a lot of motion. I even knew how to take a Navy shower and not waste any water or movement. Talk about efficient! I could load the truck to go to the dump on a Saturday morning and do every errand I needed to do that was either on the way to or from. I never had to make two trips anywhere.

And I was efficient at work as well. The organizations I managed were examples of great efficiency. If I had to prepare a budget for one entity I might as well prepare budgets for all the other organizations we sought funding from in a year. If I wrote a speech for the Rotary Club I knew just where else I might use that same material.

It is a good thing I retired June 30 of 2009. I had very little stamina over the summer ending with the installation of a pacemaker in September. I now, apparently, can work only in short bursts. Then I’m looking for a nap! Eight hours of hard work a day without stop has faded into a memory.

I’m up at 7 am, believe it or not. But I can’t get out of the house until 11 am or so after my morning routine of meditation, treadmill walking, other exercises, looking at my e-mail, reading a chapter or so of a book, drinking 3 cups of coffee, eating breakfast, taking a shower and various pills, perhaps even shaving. I then work on whatever the project is until perhaps 3 pm at the latest. Then it’s time to take a nap, then fix supper, watch some sports on TV, hit the sack by 8 pm. Toddler hours.

Believe me, however, when I suggest I am not going all out like a toddler when working on whatever the day’s project might be either. It’s a pace slightly faster than just plain puttering around.

In part that’s because the old mind wanders. Aimlessness is my best friend. I was sorting paperwork for filing the other day when I heard my tea kettle whistling. My first thought was who the hell was making tea in my kitchen! Of course, it was me before I wandered into the den and discovered the paperwork.

I went to the dump three times this week. It wasn’t that I didn’t remember going the first or second times. It was that I forgot items each time. And the horrifying aspect to it: I didn’t mind going back! What the hell. It’s not like I have any budgets to prepare. I think I’ll take a nap.

The game

Little granddaughter Olivia expressed some reservations regarding attending full-day public kindergarten in September. This was despite the fact that her older sister Lillian would be in second grade at the same school.

At the open house in August Olivia, never shy about expressing her opinion, was expressing her reservations to the kindergarten teacher. Ms. Poltkin, without hesitation, took Olivia to see the guinea pigs, Bob and Patches, who lived in a cage in the classroom. Olivia was immediately smitten with these small, smelly animals. When her teacher explained that the guinea pigs would need a home on the weekends Olivia was hooked. She immediately offered her house.

Unfortunately, the very young Ms. Polkin, unaware of certain characteristics of guinea pigs in the wild, had to find a permanent home for Bob shortly after class began and there was the terrible “incident” in the cage in the classroom. The less said about this the better. Patches would stay, a little worse for wear, and be rotated among the parents on weekends. Bob was sent to “The Farm”.

Olivia proudly took Patches home for the first weekend. She showed Patches to her parents, sisters, neighborhood children and her cat. She let Patches out to play. The cat appeared to be appalled, if cats can be such a thing. But, much to his credit, he refrained from jumping on Patches and leaving the classroom pig-less.

On Sunday Olivia’s mom Jessica noticed Patches was not in his cage. The children were in their rooms picking up. Jess searched for Patches but couldn’t locate him in the immediate vicinity of the cage. As she went upstairs to ask the children she passed the master suite and heard the plaintive cry of the captive guinea pig.

What, she thought, is he doing in my bedroom. No, that wasn’t right. The cries were coming from the bathroom next door. Still she couldn’t see old Patches anywhere out in the open. Where were the cries coming from exactly. She began opening drawers in her vanity until, lo and behold, there he was. Stuffed into the middle left hand drawer.

She took the shaken Patches to the children and demanded to know what was going on.

Olivia put her hand on her hip and while tapping her foot calmly stated that they were playing hide and seek and it was Patches turn to hide when she had been called away from her game to clean her stupid room. Now mother had completely ruined the game.

Winter on the river

Surprisingly, winter on the Bass River is busy. Not with boaters and bathers but rather with loons, seals, small arctic ducks and terns.

I find it amazing that loons spend the summer in the Rangeley Lakes of Maine and northern-most lakes of New Hampshire and then come to the Bass River for the “mild” winter. Granted the water is still mostly open here in winter, unlike the lakes, but it is still very cold and windy. Oh well, they must be pretty tough.

The gray and harbor seals from Monomoy Island off Chatham find their way here in winter to catch fish coming and going with the tides at the mouth of the river. I watched one last winter with a big flounder in his mouth, flip the fish until it was head down and then swallow it whole!

The little, bright black and white arctic ducks never stop diving. I should think they would freeze solid after the first dive but they shake off the water and start again. They bob over whitecaps and steep waves like corks then fly back against the tide to drift and dive again with the tide.

Usually someone will leave an old boat on a mooring over the winter, sort of abandoned. I watch as the winds eventually tear to shreds whatever canvas remains and the hull begins to settle in the stormy water. I speculate as to what may have happened to cause the boat to still be on its mooring. Was the owner called away on a top-secret mission before he had time to tend to his beloved old boat? Did he fall on such hard times financially that he couldn’t afford to drag the old girl up a ramp to shore for the season? Or is he actually still aboard, living out the winter in isolation, banned from civilization for his transgressions?

Or did some old fella simply forget the damned thing?

A better mouse trap

I have an old foundation under my old house made, in part, of porous old brick. I keep promising to get some mortar and fill in all the cracks. It’s still on my list.

Field mice come into the crawl space under the house in the fall through these tiny openings, some of which they have expanded over the years. In and of itself that would not be a big problem. I learned to share in kindergarten. The real problem is when they get bold and enter my space! After all, they don’t pay rent and we are never formally introduced so why should I be housing AND feeding these little bastards?

I set out old fashioned traps with old cheese as bait in one of my cellars. These types of traps, wood base with a metal snap held back by a small rod lightly connected to the cheese platform, have been around forever. Clearly there is no wisdom passed down the generations in the mice world. In fact, even with one lying “trapped”, other mice will stop by for a taste of cheese at another trap nearby. Talk about cold!

I hate removing these deceased mice. I wear an old pair of gloves so as to not catch some exotic disease known only to doctors on Indian reservations in the southwest. I used to bag them and discard them at the dump with my trash until I watched a neighborhood hawk eating one she had caught in the yard.

Now I discard them in the yard by the cellar door and, by golly, the little corpses are gone within minutes. Talk about recycling!

I need to know...

As I drove to South Carolina I noticed lots of license plates from Quebec. And as I got closer to Hilton Head, I saw lots of cars with license plates from Michigan. The thought occurred to me that perhaps no one remains in Quebec over the winter and maybe most people are leaving Michigan. Who could blame either group. It makes sense to me.

Both places are colder than you know what in the winter. And all the jobs in Michigan have left for places unknown. Places like South Carolina and Alabama and India and China. Probably people from Quebec also need a break from all that French language and unceasing romance. Especially us elderly.

Now, I’m assuming the travelers from Michigan, what without having jobs and all, probably don’t have to worry about health insurance except in the broadest sense of having none but what about all those Quebecois? Doesn’t Canada have, you know, socialized medicine? Who pays the medical bills of all these old geezers from up there when they spend the winter in Hilton Head?

They must get sick while they are here. Their blood must thin out awfully in the warm weather. Their resistance must get down to nothing. When they go to the doctor or the hospital do they present a card that says something like, “Health insurance provided by the Commonwealth of Canada, eh! Send us a bill. Keep your stick on the ice, eh!”

If anyone is left in Quebec, could you let me know? You betcha!