When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth

Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, an auditory hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"Ward..." (pause) "Don't you think you're being a bit hard on the Beaver?" 

                                                                                  -June Cleaver     

                                                   

Dear Gentlereaders, 

Reminiscences (say that word six times fast) of a garrulous geezer.  

My first memory. It's late August 1953 and I'm a newborn in Mercy Hospital's nursery surrounded by other newborns. I have no sense of myself other than being a point of awareness surrounded by other points of awareness. I remember thinking that the lights were too bright. 

{Somehow I doubt that.}

Me too, Dana, but although vague and fuzzy, the memory persists.

WW2 had ended only eight years previously but as I grew up, from my perspective and that of my peers, the deadliest war in human history had occurred in a far distant past. My old man was in the service but never saw combat. I had uncles who did, but I never heard them talk about it.

We're now aware that many combat veterans came home with PTSD. Being members of the Greatest Generation most just "walked it off" as best they could and set about playing their part in the unprecedented economic boom my fellow Boomers and I grew up taking for granted.

Many Boomers still do, and are oblivious/indifferent to the current economic plight of the many, perhaps most, of the three generations that have followed them

The Korean War ended the month before I was born and although I'm certain I heard about it before I saw the movie that came out in 1970, that's the first time I can remember being really aware of it.

I was very aware of a war that the US had gotten itself entangled in, the one in Vietnam that had been going on long before we got there (officially at least). This was because I was in high school at the time and facing the possibility I might be drafted after graduating.

In fact, the possibility of being killed or crippled in Vietnam — which from what I could tell at the time, and have since confirmed, was a well-meaning, deadly blunder of a war on America's part — crossed my mind quite often.

For the record, the military draft effectively ended in 1971, the year I graduated; I dodged the bullet, so to speak. Roughly 200,000 of "my fellow Americans" did not. According to statista.com 58,220 were killed, and 153,303 were wounded.

My big brother, Eddie then, Ed now, wasn't there (officially at least) in the early sixties.

Lessons (I eventually) learned:

Never underestimate the power of dumb luck.

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." -not Leon Trotsky

{I don't think you're allowed to use the word crippled nowadays.}

Obviously you've never heard of the Grumpy Cripple.

I was brought home from Mercy Hospital, which is still there and has roots reaching back to 1843 to my first home (that I have no memory of, on Marion Street) in the Pittsburgh neighborhood we shared, which according to Wikipedia is called Uptown. This neighborhood wasn't, and isn't, up-scale, and has a number of AKAs: da Bluff, Soho, and Boyd's Hill.  

Da (Pittsburghese for the) Bluff is the only name I was aware of as a kid. This was the first of the four houses I lived in within Pittsburgh's city limits by the time I was 16 at which point we moved to the 'burbs. 

The Wikipedia article titled Uptown Pittsburgh (linked to above) contains the following passage, "...a residential community that was once flourishing during the first half of the 20th century." This is not quite accurate. 

{Mistakes in Wikipedia!?!} 

Along with most of Pittsburgh — with some notable exceptions like the Hill District next door to da Bluff which was flourishing in its own way till an urban renewal scheme destroyed it in order to save it from itself — was "flourishing" till the late '70s when the steel industry collapsed and the poop hit the fan.

Nowadays I'm prone to say the excrement hit the air conditioner, or the climate control system. Back then, I didn't personally know of anyone who had an air conditioner, or even a color TV come to think of it. But I don't wish to give a false impression, we didn't live in a ghetto of some sort.  

We had electric fans, and I knew of several people who had their "good" furniture in their "front room" sealed in hot, noisy but effective plastic slipcovers. Some people bought a cheap, tri-colored plastic screen that you could stick on your black and white TV and pretend it was a color TV.    

{Four different houses?}

Ed, Reda (no, that's not a misspelling), and their seven kids had to occasionally engage in some... um...creative geographic/financial maneuvering to keep the family fed, clothed, and sheltered. There had been other houses before I came along.  

My second home, which was literally perched on the edge of da Bluff, was on the Boulevard of the Allies (near Marion Street) and overlooked the Monongahela River.   

{Right. I think your poetic license should be revoked.}

Well, the house is no longer there, in fact, the entire block of homes has been erased and replaced by an expanded Mercy Hospital, but the rest — Boulevard of the Allies, Monongahela River — can be easily verified by a bit-o'-googlin'.

In retrospect, I had a very cool life till we moved across the semi-mighty Monongahela to the Sou'sidah Pittsburgh the summer before third grade. Not that it suddenly turned awful. Things just got a, um, little more real? A prelude to life in the real world?

I had no idea how lucky I was back then but I do now. In my defense, me and mine were subject to periodic outbreaks of Day Late Dollar Short Syndrome which often prevented me from living the life I thought I was entitled to. Yet somehow, I survived with a minimum of psychological damage.  

While I didn't resent my parents for this state of affairs, still don't, I had absolutely no appreciation of how hard they worked to give their kids the best possible life under the circumstances, I took it for granted, completely oblivious to what I now realize they must have gone through.

I have no memory of either one ever pointing out that compared to living through the Great Depression or WW2 we had it made. I thought it was fun when we had fried potatoes and sunny-side-up eggs for dinner the night before payday. I thought that being assigned toaster duty and making piles of toast with a cheap two-slice toaster, out of bread that was more air than bread for egg yolk dipping, was also fun.     

I took it for granted, and didn't really appreciate till decades later, that although at our peak there were nine of us at home my mom kept our extremely humble abodes clean and organized with minimal help from her husband or sons. 

Sorry, mum. While I'm at it, permit me to apologize to my three sisters, who were also expected to do their share of "woman's work."

In my defense again, if there were meetings of a secret society of toxic men, I was never invited, I suspect that for most men, and women, this was just the way things were at the time, the result of multiple millennia of H. sapiens lives happening to them while they were dreaming dreams and making other plans.

Well, I'm exceeding the word limit and...

{Wait-wait-wait! I've got questions, Sparky. First, what's with the warm and fuzzy Illustration up top there? Second, what's with the h at the end of Pittsburgh? Finally, what was so "cool" about being a working-class kid living on da Bluff in the 1950s in a household where there was often not quite enough money?}  

I'll answer the first two questions, but I'm saving the last one for next time, stay tuned.

The watercolor illustration above immediately made me think of my grade school textbooks when I came across it. 

I was lucky enough to be a child at the tail end of an era when it was possible to be a kid in an America that still believed in itself, and believed that kids should be sheltered from the real world as much as possible and for as long as possible.

Details next time, sta...

{Yeah, yeah, stay tuned.} 

Suffice it to say that even as a kid I would've found the pictured parents unrealistic, they're not even smoking. They don't have bags under their eyes, and they remind me of Ward and June Cleaver. But I would've been certain that someone's parents looked like that in the morning, and that someday, me and my beautiful wife would look like that in the morning. 

As for the h, pure serendipity. I remember being taught that while there was more than one Pittsburg in America, the one that I lived in was the only one spelled with an h at the end, which to this day, pleases me for no logically defensible reason. It turns out this is not technically true, but it's my truth, and I'm stickin' with it.     

Speaking of truth, urbanDICTIONARY.com defines my truth, an oft-used phrase nowadays, thusly: "Bullshit, a 'Lie.' Often associated with people who are not telling the truth, when they have no defense to back themselves up. Often the choice of words when a horrible liar is confronted with their own stupidity."

Technically, I couldn't agree more.   

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024 Mark Mehlmauer All rights reserved.      

  

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

 

Image by kalhh from Pixabay

Letters from Flyoverland featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change." -Thomas Hardy 

Dear Gentlereaders,

Yes, some of the "boilerplate" that formerly preceded my greeting is gone.  

"There are five parts of a friendly letter, and one optional part. The five include a heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature. There's also an optional postscript a writer may decide to include." -Sister Mary McGillicuddy

Yes, Virginia, in the distant past H. sapiens had to compose letters on sheets of unformatted paper, sometimes called stationary, and apply a format they had learned in grade school.

{So it's true, you've disinherited the Stickies!}

Nah, but they're all over 18 now and two have moved out so they've all been promoted to gentlereaders. None have left Canada's version of the Deep South yet (Northern Ohio) and our lives remain closely intertwined. Duuude moved to Tennessee to launch his life now that school's finally behind him but returned two minutes later, burned by some extended family members. 

I say finally because to him, as it did to his beloved grandfather, being done with mandatory schooling feels like having completed a prison sentence imposed on an innocent man. 

Fortunately, he's an easy-going, well-adjusted young man who doesn't hold grudges (unlike his beloved grandfather who often does despite his best efforts to the contrary) who plans on trying again once he can afford to do so without "help" from anybody.

Like me, he would prefer to live south of the Mason-Dixon line. Unlike me, he doesn't mind hot and humid weather as much as I do.    

There's a bit of drama in my life right now (some good, some bad), and given that I've recently obtained Cosmic Geezer perspective, I thought it would be a good time to make some changes. Not just in my column, but in other aspects of my life that I won't bore you with. Now that I've been blessed with CGP much has become clear.

And of course, we all gotta do what we need to do to maintain the illusion of control. 

{The illusion of control?}

The subject of a future column, stay tuned. Now, if you're still here, and still awake...

{Wait-wait-wait. What's with the title? What's this got to do with David Bowie?}

Nothing, the title is just clickbait. 

{You're gonna make people mad!}

People who are only interested in reading about Mr. Bowie will flee in short order. People who are interested in reading about Mr. Bowie but who are also naturally intelligent, inquisitive sorts who like to read the work of clever columnists will keep reading, at least for a bit. 

Perhaps I'll pick up a new fan. Hopefully, no one will try and track me down and kill me. I wouldn't mind an attempted cancelation, all publicity is good publicity if you spin it properly. The Information Age is also the All Show Biz all the Time Age. 

{Hmmm... You may be smarter than you look.}      

Good thing, right?

The classics never get old. For those of you reading this via the dead trees format: BA DUM TSSS!

{Hi-LAR-ious. Can we hope for some meat on this sandwich?}

The Wall Street Journal, as my millions of regular readers know, is my personal paper of record. 

Although the news division now is forced to demean itself by drifting slightly leftwards... 

And featuring slightly more in the way of celebrity/fashion/self-help/sensationalist/doom-mongering shtuff that many H. sapiens can't seem to ever get enough of to maintain circulation numbers (or at least I hope that's why they're doing it),

They still also publish the sort of high-quality journalism they're famous for, including stories that are not widely reported on elsewhere but should be.  

For example, the Emperor's minions, lackeys, and sneaky students are stealing our chips.

{Frito Lay products are as popular and widely distributed in China as they are here. Personally, I can't get enough Roasted Fish, why do they need to steal our chips?}

I'm talkin' computer chips, specifically Nvidia AI chips. "Nvidia’s chips are highly coveted for their ability to handle the massive computations needed to train AI systems that are critical to China-U.S. tech rivalry." -Raffaele Huang/WSJ 

{Just a sec', I'll be right back... Hey, I enjoy reading lengthy articles about the technology sector as much as the next guy person. Still, I think you'd be doing your gentlereaders a public service by providing a summary.}

Easy Peasy, here's another quote from the article. 

"The student is part of a barely concealed [widely known, easily accessible] network of buyers, sellers and couriers bypassing the Biden administration’s restrictions aimed at denying China access to Nvidia’s advanced AI chips..."

{Student, what student?}

The article begins by describing how a Chinese student studying in Singapore brought home a half dozen Nvidia AI chips when he flew home to China for a vacation for which he was paid $100 each by a Chinese middlemanperson. 

Depending on the particular chip, they will be resold for roughly 20 to 30k — each. 

"The Commerce Department, which oversees enforcement of the U.S. restrictions, didn’t respond to requests for comment." 

Given that we're fighting Cold War Two, even if The Fedrl Gummit doesn't like to acknowledge it — we shouldn't needlessly risk offending a country that supplies slave labor (and lots of customers) to build us cool sneakers and smartphones — you'd think we'd be all over this. 

{Hey, If you would stop ignoring the artificial intelligence built into your spell checker you would know that you should have written you would think that we would be all over this. You'd and we'd are some pretty ugly lookin' contractions...just sayin'.}

On an unrelated note, I'm officially endorsing Camalla Harris and Pete Buttigieg for president and vice president (respectively) this year. 

Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, vote for them and we'll all win big! I'm on a fixed income so I wrote a slogan in lieu of a donation.

{AI wants you to write instead of in lieu of in lieu of.} 

She's a woman, of a couple of different colors, and he belongs to the LGBT+ club. Between them, that's three (or four, depending on how you count) different historically marginalized minorities. Most importantly, there's no trace of Satan's inadvertent minions, straight white males. 

Being a straight white male myself, this is my way of apologizing for being responsible for everything that's wrong with the world. 

{Pete who?}

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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I Hope I Die Before I Get Old, Part Two

Image by Ralf Designs from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal." -Ray Bradbury (from Fahrenheit 451) 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

In part one, I declared that there's bad old and that there's good old. I explained bad old thusly:

"I don't ever want to be so old that maintaining my personal financial and ideological status quo is the primary reason I keep getting out of bed in the morning -- the pursuit of purpose and meaning, and fun, be damned. 

I know/have known/know of a lot of people who are younger than me but who are actually much older than I am. I'd rather be dead than be that sort of old."

{I know that I still think quoting yourself as often as you do is a bit creepy.}

Now, as to good old...permit me to begin with a disclaimer. 

Not that it's going to stop me, but unless/until/if you're good old you're not going to fully understand what I'm on about. Also, like many, perhaps most complex/subtle things, it can be pointed to or hinted at with mere words but must be experienced to be truly understood. 

Placing things in their proper perspective are words to live by, particularly nowadays. The seemingly ever-increasing speed of daily life + the never-ending information tsunami + the time-honored media (old and new versions) strategery called If it Bleeds it Leads = a seriously skewed perspective. 

{So we're skewed?}

Not necessarily, Dana. We can (try) to live like a stoic philosopher, or a recovering drunk/druggie, and change what we can while making the best of the rest. 

Big BUT, never forget that nirvana/heaven/utopia is ALWAYS going to be just around the next corner so (try) to relax, and make the best of the ride. It's going to be over much sooner than you think. 

If you're fortunate enough to become good old, which doesn't necessarily (but commonly does) have anything to do with being physically old, you will be blessed with Cosmic Geezer(ette) Perspective (CGP). 

"Memento mori (Latin for 'remember that you have to die') is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death." -Wikipedia

I first encountered the term when I bumped into it somewhere and read something about medieval monks keeping a skull in their cell to serve as a memory aid. Remember dude, heaven or hell is waiting for us all, best not wander off Straight&Narrow Blvd.

However (the Wikipedia article provides a broad overview), this "symbolic trope" is common all over the globe in widely varying cultures, has been for thousands of years, and doesn't necessarily refer to following all the Rules&Regs of a given ideology to obtain paradise forever and ever, amen. 

For many H. sapiens, including me, it serves as a reminder that no matter what comes next, or doesn't, you will eventually be deleted. 

{Not once H. sapiens figure out how to upload themselves to the cloud!}

Let's hope so, who wouldn't want to spend eternity as a ghost in a machine? Get away from that plug! Achieving CGP means — that no matter what's next, or isn't — acceptance. You now know in your very bones, so to speak, that you're gonna die, and you can live with that.   

For the uninitiated, looking death in the eye, can, and often does, bring on a panic attack. Holy shyte! I could wake up dead tomorrow... I could drop dead any second! I should do something! 

If you're one of those demented people who think H. sapiens are to "Gaia" as terminal cancer is to normal H. sapiens you'll be thrilled, right?

If you're one of those fortunate people (more or less) confident that heaven awaits, you'll double down on following the Rules&Regs as best you can and hope God is a forgiving sort with a sense of humor. 

If you're an atheist or an agnostic and have a panic attack you'll be able to easily reason yourself out of it, right? If not, medical science has developed a plethora of specialists and medications to assist you in living with this and any number of similar problems.   

CGP, on the other hand, is sorta/kinda enlightenment for the masses. The Sanskrit word nirvana literally translates to "blowing out." You know how when some really intense experience (good or bad) ends and you experience a deep, heartfelt sigh, PHEW! (for lack of a better word)?  

It's like that...combined with acceptance and a new perspective. The bad news is that it will come and go. The good news is that it keeps reasserting itself like an alarm clock with a snooze function that can't be disabled. I think that if it becomes permanent you will be enlightened, or close enough.      

If you were born with Must Be Used By _______ stamped on your bum how would you spend your time? 

{Say what?}

If you achieve CGP you won't know what your use-by date is but you will know you have one, it's inevitable, and that it might be any time now. It will feel, um...really real, as opposed to vague, abstract, and waiting for you somewhere beyond a distant horizon.

The good news is that there's no bad news. 

You may be in no hurry to die, but you won't be particularly upset that you're going to. All of the passions, fears, goals, duties, dreams, etc. will still be there, but the pot will be simmering, not boiling. 

Clarity. You will know what you still have to do, what you really want to do, and will balance them as best you can fully aware that life is what happens to you while you're making other plans so there's no point in getting upset about it, although you still will from time to time. 

"Good" implies "bad" and vice versa. Together they constitute an inseparable whole and there's just no way around it. All that you can do really is all that you can do. 

Deep inhale, blow out, laugh at yourself.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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"I Hope I Die Before I Get Old" - Part One

    

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"An actuary is someone who can put a number on something that's not certain." -Karthick Balaji 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I think I've previously mentioned that I'm now old, but being old, I can't remember in what column. 

I can do a search and find out exactly where and when, but if a bunch of hits are returned (which is, I confess, what just happened) I don't have the patience to pursue the matter further. A lot of old men are like that. 

Besides, being old, I've no idea how much time I've got left and I don't want to drop dead while looking for an old column just so I can link to it. Links are fine for connecting to something a given writer thinks may actually be helpful to a given reader. 

However, a lot of links are provided under the oft-mistaken notion that readers are champing at the bit to read more of a particular writer's output. If they actually are, it's easy enough to find without bothering people who aren't.

{Wait-wait-wait. Is it champing or chomping at the bit?}

Here's a helpful link. Apparently either will do, but as best I can tell gramandos seem to favor champing.  

I was 39 for 38 years and although it could've been better, that was long enough for me to repeatedly learn that it could've been worse, much worse. Intuitively speaking, I've known for several years that at some point after I turned 70 I would officially be old. 

{Officially?}

Officially in my universe, not necessarily by any official definition as promulgated by The Fedrl Gummit or even the Society of Actuaries. 

I was right, I'll be 71 in a few months, and I'm now old. 

{Wait a second, there's a club for actuaries?} 

Absabalutely, in fact, there's more than one but the SOA is "...the largest professional society for actuaries in the world." I discovered this in passing while researching how much longer I can reasonably hope to keep on dancing while avoiding doing the mortal coil shuffle.  

 {So, how much time do you have left?}

According to the Northwestern Mutual Lifespan Calculator, I'll wake up dead when I'm 82. As it turns out, there are multiple lifespan calculators you can access via the Worldwide Web of Conflicting Knowledge.

I went with Northwestern Mutual's conclusion because their very name sounds like they know what they're doing, not to mention the neat little box in the upper right-hand corner of the screen with a projected age estimate that goes up (and down) as you answer a series of questions. 

Also, I'd much prefer to not live past the age of about 80, so 82 sounds about right. 

While investigating how much time I have left I discovered there's an algorithm loose in the world called life2vec developed by Danish researchers that's allegedly 11% more accurate at predicting when you'll buy the farm than more traditional methods. 

It's still in development but you'll be excited to know that the people involved claim it."...was able to make predictions about certain aspects of people’s lives, including how they might think, feel and behave..." 

Cool, right? I can't wait. 

{You know not everyone finds sarcasm to be an attractive personality trait. Hey...given that you hope to die before you get old, have concluded that you are old, but expect (hope?) to see 80, what are...?}

Well, Dana, there's good old, and then there's bad old. 

{Oh, okay, now I get it.} 

Recently coming across that famous line (that I've turned into a title) from that famous song was what motivated me to go a-googlin' to find out how much time I might have left in the first place, and to discover what Pete Townshend was thinking when he wrote the song, My Generation. 

For those of you too young, or too old...

Bad old, as I suspected and confirmed, is what the song is about

According to Wikipedia Mr. Townshend said in an interview in 1989 that when he wrote the song, old, to him, meant very rich. Personally, I wouldn't mind being obscenely rich, but I think I know where he was coming from. 

I don't ever want to be so old that maintaining my personal financial and ideological status quo is the primary reason I keep getting out of bed in the morning — the pursuit of purpose and meaning, and fun, be damned. 

I know/have known/know of a lot of people who are younger than me but who are actually much older than I am. I, and Pete Townshend, would rather be dead than be that sort of old. 

{So what's good old?}

A concept that requires its own column, which is why there will be a part two. Stay tuned. 

{I don't think they say stay tuned anymore, Pops.}

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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My Sister of Charity

This nun was fun

Sr. Mary Clifford Soisson, SC

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"For a Catholic kid in parochial school, the only way to survive the beatings-by classmates, not the nuns-was to be the funny guy." -George A. Romero

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Au Revoir France, I'm outta here. It's time to go home.   

Six of my first eight teachers were members of a Roman Catholic religious community that has roots extending back to 1809, the Sisters of Charity.

Sister Mary McGillicuddy changed my life, Miss Crabtree, not so much.

{Um, don't you mean Ms. Crabtree?}

No, Dana, I do not. I'm so old that Ms. Magazine wasn't born till the year after I graduated high school which, according to Wikipedia, is when that particular honorific caught on.

Now that name tags read, "Hello, my name is _______ and my personal pronouns are _______  " Ms. sounds/seems almost quaint.

{Oh, that's right! We're supposed to use Mx. now... I think.}

Sister Mary and Miss Crabtree are composite creations. S'ter Mary McGillicuddy represents the six nuns mentioned above. Miss Crabtree stands in for the two lay teachers I had in Catholic grade school. To a lesser extent, she represents the handful of female teachers I had in public high school. 

The word handful is a hint at how ancient I am and an indicator of my impending deletion.

{Chill, dude, 71 is hardly ancient.}

Thanks, Dana, but the speed at which so many radical changes have occurred (and continue) in my lifetime makes it seem like it.

The majority of my teachers in my public high school(s) were male but nowadays, nationwide, it's roughly 60% women, and 40% men. The principal and vice-principal of the two high schools I attended were both also members of the toxic sex, particularly the vice-principals (readers of a certain age smile/cringe knowingly).

However, this column is about a real Sister Mary, Sister Mary Clifford (Soisson is news to me) who was my teacher in seventh grade and whom I recently discovered died in 2010 at the age of 89.

She was my first and only "cool" nun. She was the first and only nun I liked. She was one of only two nuns I wasn't afraid of. She taught me, at the age of 12 — without meaning to — that nuns were just H. sapiens in peculiar clothes, not members of a separate, parallel species.

Sisters of Charity, New York -1965

Eileen Soisson  ("She was a faithful Steelers fan and had a great sense of humor.") was born on the 17th of July, 1920 in the Borough of Bellevue which borders and is butt up against, by gum by golly (sorry...) Pittsburgh. Like me, she attended Catholic grade school (hers still exists) and a public high school. She received a scholarship to Seton Hill (not Hall) College which was founded by the Sisters of Charity and she took her vows in January of 1942.

She was not only my seventh-grade teacher but also the school's principal. St. John the Evangelist was located on the Sou'Sidah Pittsburgh, across the street from the 12th Street playground.

For some reason, I was one of her pets. To this day I don't know why.


Being a pet of the principal meant that at least once a week I got out of class to accompany her when she borrowed one of the parish priest's cars to take care of some sort of business, usually grocery shopping for the convent that was right next to the school.

It was never just me — there was always at least one of the other boys, sometimes two depending on our mission — but it almost always included me. In retrospect, I know why it was always more than one boy but at the time neither I nor any of my classmates (that I'm aware of) noticed or cared.

Different era...

But, why me?

There was this girl, Eileen(?) Somebody, who from year to year was always a teacher's pet, but that made sense. She had a beautiful voice and the nuns were always finding excuses to get her to sing.

I didn't give it much thought at the time, just enjoyed it, rolled with it, took it for granted. Somehow, even the other boys in my class didn't razz me about it and normally this was a group that called each other out for everything


I have no idea what she saw in me, but I do know why I liked her so much. She was genuinely nice. She kept at least one foot in the real world at all times. She wore her vocation like a corsage, not a crown of thorns.

She told us she loved to drive and when we were out and about with her she behaved more like a kindly aunt than a schoolteaching nun. She'd answer our questions about parish politics, other nuns, her life, etc., questions we'd never think of asking in class (it just wasn't done) as honestly as she could.

But always diplomatically, always taking the high road, never stooping to gossip or backstab. Keeping the faith, as it were. Perhaps this was why I caught no crap from my peers — everyone liked her. She ran a tight ship but possessed not a trace of Crazy Nun Syndrome (CNS.

Please note: If you've ever been exposed to CNS, which was a common malady at the time, no explanation is required. If you haven't, no explanation I can provide will come close to describing it properly. 

Before Sister Mary Clifford, I had six teachers.

Four other Sisters of Charity, all afflicted with CNS; one lay teacher who was about 150 years old and another lay teacher, for second grade, who taught us how to curse (rather genteelly by today's standards) by conscientiously explaining which words we were not permitted to use under any circumstances.

Eighth grade: different school, radically different community (the 'burbs), unremarkable Ursuline nun. But I wasn't afraid of her thanks to Sister Mary Clifford's unintentional life lessons. I'm ashamed to admit I don't remember her name as she did an excellent job preparing us for Catholic high school knowing that intellectually speaking, things were about to get a lot more intense.

I do remember that she had tears in her eyes when she discovered I wouldn't be attending a Catholic high school. Callowyute that I was at the time, this baffled me. I think I get it now. Fortunately/unfortunately (it's complicated) my parents couldn't afford the increased tuition and transportation costs, so I was off to a public high school.

For the record, the nun who ran that school scared the hell outta me, as she would any right-thinking person. Crazy Nun Syndrome on steroids. But thanks to Sister Mary Clifford, as my faith slipped away, I knew that nuns were just people, sometimes very special people. Look at her eyes.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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I Accidentally Pulled the Trigger

Image by Christian Dorn from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's" -Mark Twain

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I'm still in France, but not for long. I'll be returning to the U.S. with my new friend and his family the week after next. He's got his people trying to contact Bruce "I've never actually been a blue-collar anything" Springsteen's people and arrange a meet up down the shore.

This column was originally published in 2018, but once again I've done a bit a lot of rewriting and updating. Wouldn't it be cool if you could rewrite your life? Gotta run, Collette and I are going to our favorite French McDonalds for a farewell feast of snail nuggets and pommes frites. 

She's going to stay with her maman for a while as my impending departure has hit us both harder than we ever expected it would. C'est la vie. 

When I was but a wee lad...in fact, till I was at least in my late twenties, it was possible to engage in heated political discussions, as much for the fun of it as anything else, without feeling that civil war was inevitable.

Not that it was possible to do so with everyone. There's a reason people say don't discuss politics or religion at the dinner table.

I encountered this advice later than many I suspect. When I was a kid, one of seven siblings, everything was freely discussed at the dinner table except for sex, as my fellow Boomers hadn't invented it yet. 

But this was so long ago that supper was at five p.m., attendance was mandatory, and Uncle Walter told us everything that we needed to know about national/international news at six. 

A few years later, when I was old enough to know everything, late-night debates with a bunch of people I didn't go to college with were a thing. Lines were drawn and (mostly) observed and it was the intellectual equivalent of a (mostly) friendly sports rivalry. No need to take it particularly seriously (mostly).     

Fast forward to the Eighties: The most intense year or so of my life (so far) culminated in the spring of 1985. I was managing a fleet of someone's ice cream trucks in Austin, Texas (hello Tom and Miss Kitty, wherever you are) when I hired the woman, now deceased, who would in short order become my wife, to drive one of the trucks.  

She and her nine-year-old daughter, the mother of two of my four and a half grandkids -- it's very complicated, I've been married only once and have never reproduced -- with whom I currently share my house...

{How come she says you share her house?} 

Anyway, they lured me to Canada's deep South (Northern Ohio) to "meet the family" and I've been stuck here ever since.  

As to my sojourn in Texas, there was much in the way of partying and little in the way of intellectual debate, but once married the endless party ended. My bride had come pre-equipped with a kid and marriage, partying, and kids don't mix very well in my semi-humble opinion.

Late-night passionate debates never made a comeback in my life. I married a sick chick, physically sick, but a veritable force of nature. Betwixt helping to keep her alive, the three of us fed, and my gift for working my ass off while avoiding the burdens of financial success I usually went to bed early.

{OK, Roy, what's all this got to do with Trigger?}

I clicked my heels three times and I was a widower and a grandfather. One evening I found myself having dinner with a friend and a couple in their mid-twenties early on in the new millennium.

This was my first encounter with triggering someone and triggering at least its current version, wasn't even a thing yet. I thought I was a man ahead of my time but it turns out that the phenomenon has been recognized as far back as WW1. 

Interestingly, dictionary.com includes the word triggered in its slang dictionary, which is where I learned about the fact it's been around for over a century. 

Even more interestingly, Wikipedia has a relevant entry and if you scroll to the end you'll discover that  "Although the subject has generated political controversy, research suggests that trigger warnings are neither harmful nor especially helpful." 

Anyways... After dinner, over coffee and pie, a debate broke out over I remember not what. Although there's a slight chance that I may not be entirely correct, I have a vivid memory of intellectually dominating. 

It was me v. my friend and the male half of the young couple. I confess I neglected to monitor the emotional weather manifesting on the face of his lovely wife. 

Hooge mistake.


At some point, while I was not paying attention — I, a man who had been successfully married for 21 years and who had learned many lessons the hard way — there was a metaphorical explosion. My dining companions and I were riddled with psychic shrapnel.

"She leaped to her feet and stormed out of the restaurant in a huff." 

That's not a quote from a romance novel, that's exactly what happened. Really.

Although he was young and, relatively speaking, they had not been married very long, he knew the rules. 

"He leaped to his feet and followed her out to the parking lot."

"I think you just pissed her off," said my remaining companion, reacting no doubt to the baffled look on my face.

"Did we just get stuck with the check?" I replied.


My young friends returned to the table as my older friend and I were in the process of splitting the check, calculating the tip, and discussing which one of us was going to act as a collection agent to recover the cost of their food.

She, said nothing. Although the storm had apparently passed, ominous dark clouds lingered.

{I thought there had been an explosion?} 

He, politely and diplomatically...well, long story short, it was explained to me that she passionately disagreed with me. 

Although she lacked the social and or rhetorical skills — and most importantly in my semi-humble opinion a command of the relevant facts to contest whatever it was I had been on about — she knew she was right, and she knew I was a bully, case closed.

That's not exactly how he put it but that's exactly what he said.

Although I confess my heart wasn't in it, I apologized for being a boor and fled the scene of the crime ASAP. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Comments? I post links to my columns (and other stuff) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or call to have me canceled or be publicly flogged.