James Rising

God must love rude people.

He made so many of them, after all.

It’s just astounding to me that we all don’t choke the life out of each other on a daily basis. You would think after thousands of years of civilization that certain ground rules of behavior would be so ingrained by now that it would be second nature. But then you go out into the real world and you discover that most of the population has not progressed all that far from our knuckle dragging ancestors.

Case in point. I try to hold doors for people. I think it’s only common courtesy to at least nod to me when I do this or, heaven forefend, say thank you. On a recent weekend when we were out and about I had the chance to hode de door about 50 times. In and out of stores, restaurants, gas stations etc etc.

Of those 50 times I got a nod or a word of thanks about 25 times. The rest of the humans I helped out acted like I wasn’t there. And doesn’t that make you feel great?

Another example. Bumping into someone. First of all if you pay the minimum amount of attention it’s very tough to not see another human. We are pretty much the biggest moving animal around at any given moment and most of us can recognize our trajectory well enough to prevent collisions. But hey, inadvertent contact does occur. And when it does I always am quick to offer a “pardon me” or “excuse me”. I don’t often get it back. Most times I am greeted with a glare that would melt ice, even if the moron walked into me!

My long suffering wife is most often the victim of this type of collision, primarily I suspect because she is petite. I will often see her staggering to keep her footing after some linebacker sized cretin slams her almost into a sprawl on the floor. Now we make a joke of it. I will say to her in loud voice, “you’re in the way again”, but the linebacker has usually moved down field and pays no never mind.

Most of this behavior I believe goes back to early childhood. Yes, I blame elementary school teachers for the lack of manners in today’s society. But deeper than that it’s the abolition of corporal punishment in school. When I was a kid if you weren’t polite you got your knuckles rapped with a ruler by the teacher who was often the size of the Goodyear blimp. Nowadays if a teacher talks to a kid in stern voice the ACLU is salivating to bring the deal to court.

Bring back the days of putting rude kids in the coat closet and we will all have better manners.

Aggregate

Aggregate Saturday:

Once again into the breach we go-car shopping. Our destination? Towanda and a nice sounding lady named Pattie.

Please dear lord of all things automotive..let this be the right car, the right deal.

Please?
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It’s more than just wanting to make the long-suffering wife happy, although heaven knows that is the biggest part.

She has been driving my “Outlander” while this long ordeal has been going on and hates it. Although its not the biggest of SUV’s she does prefer a sedan.

I have been driving the MG. The brakes mostly failed about a month ago. It has no horn. It’s exciting to say the least. I am avoiding hills at all costs.
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I’m trying to figure out the City-vest deal. The old Hotel Sterling in Wilkes-Barre will be demolished after years of this City-Vest group spending in the neighborhood of $10 million of taxpayers money spent to develop the property? What did they do with all that money?

It’s a shame. When I first moved to town we were considering the hotel lobby area as our studio. It had served as that for WBRE after the flood and some of the studio areas were still intact. Good thing we choose to move elsewhere, as it turned out.
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The feds busted an Asian Massage parlor racket and herewith the 98 page indictment. It’s mind numbingly boring in a way that only a federal court doc can be but there are some very interesting passages if you can wade thru the legal mumbo-jumbo.

Lurid reading? Massage Parlor Indictment PDF

Yikes! Tools indeed!
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I lived in Springfield Massachusetts for years before I moved here. You watch pictures of places that you don’t know and you feel for the people in the devastation. The other day I was looking at places I knew well. We drive by Springfield every year on our way to Vt. twice. My daughter and my youngest son live near Hartford. Close enough to scare me. My daughter does business all around the area hit hard. 7 or eight of her locations are closed.

What the hell is going on with these tornadoes? Almost, not quite, but almost can make you believe in the coming apocalypse.
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I have just been informed that we WILL hit a yard sale on the way to Towanda. This changes our route. Mapquest says several times on the new route “If you go by _______ you have gone too far. Should be an adventure.
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Coffee to make, pool to check on and miles to go.

TheRant D’Jour is about baseball.

ED NOTE: Written and published originally in 2008

It’s been while since I have been up to the ball game at PNC Field. How long? The last time I was inside the joint was called the Lackawanna Multi-Purpose stadium.

Or to put it another way: Last time I sat in the cheap seats I overheard a young boy say “Daddy! The “Grump” TOUCHED me!” So now it’s “PNC Field” and the Red Barons are the dead Barons and the Yankees rule the roost. A lot of peanuts, popcorn and crackerjacks have passed through the 10,310 seats at the old Ball Game. Although it really isn’t as old as all that. 19 years old this past April to be exact.

I have to say it looks great. I watched nine innings of pretty good baseball and half an hour or so of great fireworks on July Fourth and I felt as American as apple pie which is the only thing I didn’t eat. Somehow a visit to a ballgame, any ball game is not complete without a “Haw Dawg.” So I had two. Along with nachos and a big pretzel (seven bucks!)

But the memories that night brought back. Like the game that Kent Westling the ex-announcer called out “One ball on John Kruc” and he was right in more ways than one. Looking at the fancy video scoreboard with every statistic you could ever want including the speed of the pitch I remembered the old scoreboard which I believe was three guys with big post it notes and magic markers. But now of course everything is sponsored so it’s big and shiny and new.

Freddie the M.C. (Baseball games now have an M.C. ?) runs around and directs between inning fun and games usually involving kids and American flags, a somewhat different endeavor than one of his previous gigs at the Diamond club. Something that involved whipped cream and…well I was never actually there so I can’t say much more.

Back to baseball. My buddy had great seats on the third baseline, close enough so the threat of a line drive right between the eyes was a distinct possibility. Watching one pop fly soar right above our heads his girlfriend shouted “Jeepers Cats” which I think about sums it up. How many other spectator sports promise on the ticket that you may be hurt? I was nearly hurt myself when I dragged out all my old baseball jokes. I think the one about the young couple in the stands was the best one: He kisses her on the strikes and she kisses him on the….

So it’s one, two, three strikes and you’re OUT at the old ball game.

By the way the Yankees lost to the Syracuse Chiefs 8-5.

And I still don’t understand that play at third base.

Opened the pool yesterday.

Who would think those four little words could bring such pain and misery into your life?

The Rising ranch came equipped with a 32′ x 16′ in-ground pool when we bought it all those years ago. It wasn’t the reason we made the choice but it didn’t hurt either. On those few summer days when the weather is right it is indeed a joy.

The rest of the time it is an obligation. A Chinese curse. You know, when you save someones life you are then responsible for them. That is what pool ownership is like. A constant, nagging, needy responsibility.

Vacuum me, clean me, chlorinate me, skim me. It’s me, me, me with the pool.

I have help when it comes to closing the pool. I am too afraid I will bollix something up, not drain an important component properly and expensive freezing will occur. But in the spring I have elected to go it alone. Fun, it is not.

The pool has a cover. This is one of those things that make it so much joy. The cover protects the pool from leaves and such falling into it over the cold months. These end up in the pool anyway in the process of removing the cover. I am not sure of the wisdom here.

The cover weighs four tons. This is of course only an estimate. Give or take several tons.

There is a science, a methodology to removing the cover. The guy who closes the pool every year will patiently explain it to me. It involves folding the ends to the middle and pulling it off. When he does it it’s like a magician’s trick, the one where the tablecloth is removed and all the dishes stay in place. When I do it all the leaves get in the pool. And the cover fills up with water which is heavier than guilt.

Trying to pull the water filled cover out of the pool by myself is like watching Sisyphus. But he was on dry land. I pull on one side, the other slides in the pool. I rush to that side and heave and the other side goes for a swim. Eventually I get the damn thing out and lie panting beside it. Now the real fun can begin.

The water is a disturbing shade of green. It is so cloudy that the Loch Ness monster could be in it’s depths. And all the leaves that the cover kept from it are floating merrily on the surface.

The pump must be reassembled and started. Dozens of plugs and stoppers and clamps and hoses must be found, reattached, inserted and tightened. In the best of times I am not mechanical. This process takes hours of sweating, searching, trips back and forth to the house for more tools after I drop them into the murky depths of lake Rising.

Finally the pump pumps.

Now the clean up around the pool can begin. The winters worth of leaves and debris that has collected around the perimeter. The dirt and scum buildup on the flashing and the diving board. The ladders that are somewhat less than bright polished chrome. All needs to be attended to.

It takes a day to to it. And it is why I am trying to type this without moving any part of my body. Because all parts of my body hurt.

What do we do in summer in NEPA? We swim on that day.

The Rant D’Jour has to do with religion.

Well now we know what your immortal soul is worth…more

Well now we know what your immortal soul is worth. At least on EBay. $504 to be exact.

Of course there is a little more to the story than that.

A few weeks back a guy named Hemant Mehta who is an acknowledged atheist put on EBay this offer. For every ten dollars bid he would attend an hour of church services. His point was that he might come across the truth in one of the services and be lead to a higher understanding of the higher power.

Both atheists and evangelists bid but a funny thing happened at the end of the on line auction. A man named Jim Henderson, a former preacher who left the days of collar and bible because he became disenchanted with his fellow preacher’s obsession with increasing the size and bankroll of their churches won the auction. Henderson runs a website http://offthemap.com/people/jim-henderson-team/ whose mission is to help Christians be normal.

What Henderson asked Mehta to do is to attend 10-15 services of his choosing and then write about them on the website. It’s pretty interesting stuff-here’s a sample.

Salem Baptist Church is a large concert-venue-type auditorium on the South side of Chicago.

When we walked in for the 10:00 am service, the choir was singing (It was massive). The band was playing. I think there was a even a church Color Guard that was dancing with flags. This seemed like a nice way to begin Sunday. At the risk of sounding like a Richard Pryor bit, the White churches had bands with a few singers and instrumentalists, and it was welcoming to hear it, but this was more intense. So many singers. And they were loud.

Mehta goes on to talk about the preacher, the church bulletin and makes a number of comments about feeling out of place.

The Church visits haven’t converted Hemant yet but he did write this. “I admire churches for the communities they create. Church is not such a bad place to be.”

As Cab Calloway said to Jake Blues:
“Jake, you get wise. You get to church.”

RaDio Daze:

I have mentioned before that I have become somewhat old school in my technology at the Rising ranch. I resisted the changeover over from analog cable to digital cable until my hand was forced.

Now, I am really going back to old days.

I have always collected radios. I have never really cared whether they worked or not. I just liked to look at them. Well now I am collecting old radios and using them instead of the hi tech radios that I should be. The advent of HD radio has meant that I have a spanking new HD radio. The company I work for was nice enough to give me one. I could be listening to the great sound of HD radio in my house. But instead I just bought a KLH radio from the 1960’s on EBAY and I just love it. It has a wood cabinet and a huge tuner dial. It sounds great but…it’s mono.

It gets worse.

Back on EBAY again I found a 60’s vintage turntable with an AM/FM stereo tuner. I bought it and then immediately bought another one that had the correct speakers so now I have two turntables, one of which works. There is something so comforting about slipping an LP out of the jacket and gently placing it on the turntable and then equally gently placing the needle on the lead in grooves. Even the scratches and surface noise seem to be warm and friendly.

Over the years I have collected music in all the forms that the recording industry has tried to force down our throats. I had a huge collection of 8-tracks (yes I am that old) and cassettes. I even bought pre-recorded Mini discs. They have all met the landfill long ago.

Of all the technology that has come out I have of course plenty of CD’s but I have held onto my albums. Why sometimes I couldn’t have told you. It was frankly a pain to move them and in fact after moving the last time the movers asked that if I was to move again that I call another company. They broke their backs lugging my many boxes of vinyl. But now I am glad I did. It gives me something to play on my old school turntables and that makes me happy. Just an old DJ I guess, spinning those platters that matter, the wax to watch.

The Rant D’Jour is about parrots. And neighbors.

No one really likes their neighbors. I don’t like my neighbors. On both sides of the Rising Ranch I am…more

No one really likes their neighbors. I don’t like my neighbors. On both sides of the Rising Ranch I am surrounded by annoying people. Actually annoying is far too mild a word. These people would try the patience of Gandhi. On one side I have a skinflint who is too cheap to pay for garbage pick-up so he burns his trash. All his trash. At times it smells like I have moved next door to a crematorium. On another side I have a maniac who runs power equipment 24/7/365. Nothing like the sound of a chainsaw in the morning. EVERY MORNING.

But my problems pale compared to this poor woman in Dallas. It sounds like something out of a Monty Python sketch. Or maybe the punch line to a bad joke. I refer to the news item the other day about the woman and the parrot. It seems that there is a parrot living on Country Club Road in Dallas. I have been on Country Club Road in Dallas. It sounds far nicer than it really is. It’s named, I would presume, after the Irem Temple Country Club which is indeed on the road in question.

You have a love to road that has a 15 foot high fez as a sign on it. The tassel alone will take your breath away! The image of a County Club with tuxedo-ed men and gowned ladies shipping sherry on the verandah? Not so much at the Irem Country Club.

But that has nothing to do with our story.

It seems that this parrot that lives on Country Club Road is noisy. Noisy enough that it’s “repetitious screeching and screaming” is keeping the neighbors from taking an afternoon nap. The vocal bird lives about 30 feet away from the bedroom of the anonymous would be napper. It probably sounds like the parrot is on her nightstand trying out for American Idol. The unfortunate woman tried to do the right thing. After speaking to the parrot owners, she appealed to the board of supervisors for help. And got nada. Zip. Bupkis.

She was told to get a lawyer. It’s considered a private matter. In case you think the woman is overly sensitive it’s been verified that a parrot screech can exceed 150 decibels. Just for context standing 100 feet from a departing jet airplane rates 130 decibels. A rock concert averages 120 DB. So I think the woman has cause for complaint.

In the famous Monty Python Sketch the Norwegian Blue Parrot ends up as an Ex-parrot. I predict a similar ending for the Parrot of Country Club Road if it doesn’t learn to speak softly.