Hopin' For Some Global Warming

A Mr. Cranky's neighborhood episode. 

15% more words this week at no extra charge!

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.   

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent." -Dave Barry 

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

Unhappily, Neo-Hooterville was hammered by a horrendous heavy snowfall followed by single-digit temperatures not long ago. The majority of the resulting iceberg-covered sidewalks are still untouched by human hands or feet and I'm hopin' for some global warming because for some reason, this, or something very much like it, happens every year. 

As this is being written we're eagerly anticipating the arrival of a few days of temperatures in the balmy low-forties that the weatherpersons are predicting. Fingers crossed.

But as everyone knows, malevolent butterflies on the other side of the world regularly get together in the parking lots of their favorite bars after closing time and flap their wings so as to screw up the predictions of American meteorologists.

Personally, I think the Pooteen or Xi Dada is behind this phenomenon, maybe both of 'em.   

 

Nowadays, as you might imagine, passable driveways are important, sidewalks not so much. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled back in 1993 that homeowners have no legal obligation to shovel their sidewalks and no shortage of Hootervillians take them at their word.

However...

A gaggle of aggravated citizens that managed to get out of their driveways showed up at a city council meeting to demand that the "city" should clear their sidewalks for them. I wasn't there but I'll betcha a bottle-a-pop the fact that Hooterville has been shrinking for years and can't afford to properly maintain the sidewalks currently hidden under the frozen tundra was not discussed. 

And...

I know for a fact that no one suggested merging with other surrounding "cities" and townships that have the same/similar problem(s) and should've joined forces a looong time ago.

{If you weren't there how do you know they didn't?} 

It's the local equivalent of saying Voldemort out loud, Dana, it just isn't done. 

On the other hand...

The good news is that the Hooterville School System, which has been on fiscal watch or in fiscal emergency (with the exception of 2016 - 2019) every year since 2003, was officially released from its current fiscal emergency on 1/27. 

Go Dragons!   

Unfortunately, at nearby Youngstown State University, which despite quite reasonable tuition rates (comparatively speaking at least), enrollment is so far down this year (I can't imagine why) some academic programs and staff have both been cut. Fortunately, the budget for the athletics program was increased by $885,000.

Go Penguins! 

The condition of the campus sidewalks after our recent blizzard made the local news. One freshperson was quoted as saying, “The roads and the sidewalks were disgusting...and it was definitely a slipping hazard for some of the people that have disabilities on campus.”

I know what you're thinking, gentlereaders, why didn't they pass out snow shovels to the students with athletic scholarships and tell them to have at it? I'll betcha a box-a-donuts it's against union rules.

{Feelin' folksy this week, Homer? I know for a fact you came up on the mean streets of Pittsburgh, and Sister Mary Mcgillicuddy taught you not to drop letters when pronouncing words.}  

   

Dang straight. I call it muh Dan Rather, pre-packaged folksy quips strategery. He's got FU-level wealth and he's still workin' at 90 in spite of the Killian controversy. I need a new columnist's chair, and I don't know how much longer my ol' space heater is gonna' hold up.   

{Do you smell smoke?}

Which brings us to Duuude, Dude's little brother and one of the Stickies that reside here at Casa dé Chaos.   

Duuude, who only a few months ago was a tiny kid with a big heart (that he wore on his sleeve), is now a broad-shouldered young man with a topknot and a big heart (that he wears on his sleeve) who once tried out for the middle school football team but was defeated by a combination of 90° weather and a mild case of asthma. 

Now in high school, while lifting weights in an afterschool program he was recruited to play football next season for Hooterville High by the coach. 

A lot of kids young men who have been on the team since ninth grade are graduating this year and there's a dearth of volunteers clamoring to replace them. Nowadays, all sorts of parents would prefer that schools switch to playing flag football, even in Hooterville. 

So the coach is doing what a high school coach has gotta do, find replacements wherever he/she/they can. Duuude is training hard four days a week after school and loving it. He's also discovered what his mom uses Epsom salts for. 

The morning after we got six feet of snow, and before the dramatic temperature drop the next night, Duuuude and a buddy were out shoveling sidewalks and getting all the work they could handle. I thought it was only for the money but I later found it was homework assigned by the coach. 

It seems he also acts as a life coach who has taken it upon himself to instruct his charges in the sort of old-fashioned values and virtues, like community service, that I thought would get him censored by the teachers union or the school district.

"He's an older guy, like you, Poppa." 

It would seem that our tiny high school could teach our local mid-sized college some big lessons. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

P.S.1 As I put the finishing touches on this missive a new winter weather advisory is in effect. As my cursor hovers over the publish button there's an additional three feet of snow on Hooterville's sidewalks.

P.S.2 Apropos of nothing above, recently some world-class economists released a meta-study, a study of studies, that concludes that lockdowns didn't do much to stop the spread of Wuflu, but did cause a great deal of collateral damage. 

This story has received almost no coverage by our (alleged) news media. 

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The State of the Zeitgeist (2)

If you're new here, this is a weekly column consisting of letters written to my grandchildren (who exist) and my great-grandchildren (who aren't here yet) -- the Stickies -- to haunt them after they become grups and/or I'm dead.

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Irregularly Appearing Imaginary Guest Stars

Marie-Louise -- My beautiful muse (right shoulder) and back scratcher 

Iggy -- Designated Sticky

Dana -- Designated gentlereader (left shoulder)

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-grandstickies,

Zeitgeist: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era (Miriam-Webster).

Interesting word, zeitgeist. I'm a word lover (you best get out of Dodge, word lover! we don't want yer kind 'round here!) and there are many words I like, zeitgeist for example, just because of their sound and irregardless of their meaning.

Irregardless is another, which, according to the word police, isn't even a word. The word regardless, which means without regard, does not require the prefix, ir-, because it's redundant. Prefixes aren't supposed to be redundant.

For the record, I obtained this information from a website called GrammerBook.com. While I'm willing to concede that they may be technically correct, I have a valid poetic license and I'm not afraid to use it.

Anyway, they also maintain that sneaked is technically correct (as opposed to snuck), so, grain of salt. I sneaked some candy from the Stickies Easter baskets? Seriously? Obviously, snuck is the proper choice.

And we're back. I confess I'm slightly uncomfortable with the way I have used/ am about to use the Z word. Merriam-Webster uses the word era and this implies a large, dusty tome with many black and white photographs and voluminous footnotes.

I'm offering up a snapshot from a smartphone (with a decent camera) that probably will never generate a hard copy. Which is my way of saying that I acknowledge that defining a period of history as a particular era, while one is living in it, may be a fool's errand.

A sudden, dramatic, world class development, like WW3, because the chubby charmer currently enslaving North Korea wakes up in a bad mood because he failed to launch his missile the night before in spite of the best efforts of a drop dead gorgeous bed warmer/slave (I've heard rumors) and initiates a complicated series of events beginning with all of the sushi restaurants in Hawaii being contaminated with radioactive fish and ends in our next world war (hey, it could happen) and snap! we're living in an entirely different era than the one we woke up to this morning.

However, I maintain that my poetic license permits me to use zeitgeist because we're living in an, well, era, that at least to those of us who are attempting to cope with it, is marked by daily floods of dizzinformation and an ever increasing velocity in the pace of our lives. In fact, a never-ending sprint would seem to be the default pace, even for those of us who are trying to drag our feet.

So, it doesn't feel like we're living in the _______ era (that's like, so yesterday, but please feel free to insert the word of your choice) because we're moving so fast that we not only don't have time to catch our breath, we must maintain a heads-up posture at all times so as not to be flattened by some new technology that's about to disrupt our lives.

In other words, it feels like we live in a succession of mini-eras (an era of eras?) because things, the zeitgeist, can change so rapidly and dramatically.

In other words, I plan on regularly writing state of the zeitgeist columns and everything above explains why, and justifies the fact, that I plan on using the word zeitgeist instead of using a boring word like snapshot.


And now, grandstickies and gentlereaders, a zeitgeistian observation based on a news story I recently stumbled on that completely coincidentally continues the theme of my last column, How to Build a Snowflake.

[Waitwaitwait, this will just take a sec', and after all, I AM the Flyoverland Crank and this IS the "wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer. (Garrulous: given to prosy, rambling, or tedious loquacity; pointlessly or annoyingly talkative -- Miriam-Webster). 

If you google the word zeitgeistian, not only will no dictionary defend its legitimacy, Google will ask you, Did you mean: zeitgeist? However, there are several entries that use the word AND an "images for zeitgeistian" entry that will provide you with hundreds, perhaps thousands of pictures.  
Therefore, I, the future King of America, declare zeitgeistian to be a word.]

Last week's column, How to Build a Snowflake, was about a trend in some colleges and universities to emphasize social justice and protecting the delicate sensibilities of their students. This new development is quite different from the fearless pursuit of truth and the development of the intellectual tools needed to discover it as practiced by old school schools.

On the delicate sensibilities front, it just so happens that the students at Youngstown State University are in midst of taking finals.

Youngstown, Ohio, is a formerly vibrant rust belt town that is still bleeding population 40 years after the steel mills started disappearing. To their credit, many locals who don't plan on leaving refuse to accept the status quo and are trying to create a renaissance. Some who left, and achieved success elsewhere, have returned and joined the struggle.

This is a not uncommon phenomenon in Flyoverland, which is why I find the following, which made the news this past week, depressing.

In order to help the students cope with finals, which is apparently, for Millennials at least, the equivalent of trying to swim across the Mediterranean to escape the carnage in Syria, puppies and kitties -- via a sort of pop-up petting zoo -- and massage therapists are being provided to help the delicate flowers through this difficult period. Can finals cause PTSD?

I wonder if this class, whose "final projects -- which includes history boxes, interpretive dance, poster presentations, video presentations and more -- ..." also included a stressful final.   

My parents, who had to deal with the Great Depression and the Second World War, thought they had it tough. Poppa loves you.

Have an OK day.


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©2017 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

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