WELCOME

Welcome to my blog. It is called Eaves-droppings because many of my short pieces arise from comments I overhear in public places. These comments trigger ideas, thoughts, recollections and even stories. Some are pure stimulus-response, stream of concsiousness reactions.

Cellphones have made my field of observation much richer.

I hope you will enjoy my wandering through public places.

Contact me at ronp70000@aol.com with your comments and observations.
Ron

Thursday, April 22, 2010

It Felt Smooth in My Hand

As I picked up the item, I noticed how good it felt in my hand. The weight was substantial, the surface was smooth and the material was clearer than crystal. And I put it in the trash container – it had served it’s intended purpose and now it was following it’s planned life cycle. It was a food container that had held a fresh fruit salad and had a life cycle of a few days.
I remembered the conversation from “The Graduate.”
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?
That may have been one of the exchanges that led to the derision and ridicule of plastics. I’m not interested in the utility or the ubiquity of plastics or of our dependency on the extremely wide forms in which they are a part of our daily lives. ( If you have ever been to a museum that displayed products made of Bakelite, or if you are fortunate enough to be old enough to have used those products, you can gain an inkling of life before plastics.)
Somehow, while I wasn’t paying attention, plastics have emerged as an art form, but an art form in daily use. The first inkling that I had missed this transition came as I unpacked a new electronic device. The feel of the connector cords has changed; no longer are they cold, hard and black they are soft, supple, warm and with a surface that is almost silky, a truly wonderful tactile sensation. How can I relive that, expand that sensation.
Then I began to pay attention to other plastic items. Some of the best reds in the visual universe are found in plastics. It is the red of rubies, but lighter and more vivid. There is a fire that is only to be found in the most expensive and most rare jewels. The same is true of greens. The purity and transparency seem to be plucked from a rainbow. The blues are rich, pure and deep, better than the Blue Grotto except on a truly miraculous day. And the clears are pristine, the facets reflect with perfection approaching that of a diamond and they can be made to hold any surface from brilliant through matte to opaque.
For me, discovering a new source of beauty is a rich and wonderful experience. When I look at the ground in an urban environment and see a small shard of plastic, I see it with contempt and feel cheated that it is not a precious jewel, perhaps I can change that.

The Symphony Hall and the Grasshopper

A symphony hall is a wonderful place. Entering through the portals, being admitted by an usher, and seeing the expanse of seats and the grand brightly lit stage are an important part of the musical experience – sort of getting into the mood for some serious music. Then the orchestra enters in their tuxes and long dresses with rich wooden instruments, bright brasses, and shiny drums. The concert master signals for tuning and the oboe plays an A and the tumult begins as all of the instruments play several notes to make sure they are perfectly in tune. Then the conductor enters and the audience explodes into applause, even though he hasn’t done anything yet. It happens this way in countless concert halls all over the world several times a week as it has for centuries. That’s what makes it classical!
The first half of the program continues to the intermission and everyone gets up for a break, including the orchestra. Then after the bells and the lights signal the second half of the program is about to begin, everyone, including the orchestra, parades back into the auditorium and the music begins again.
That’s the way it is and that’s the way it is supposed to be. What isn’t supposed to happen is for a grasshopper to join the orchestra. No, this grasshopper doesn’t take a seat with the woodwinds or the strings or even the percussion. This grasshopper enters after the first few notes have been played and it rises up from the basses, the very large stringed instruments. It first flies up to about 15 feet, hovers and finally settles on the curtain in back of the orchestra. Then, it flies again into the middle of the stage area over the heads of the violas and flutes and it hovers for awhile, you know how grasshoppers fly, not too steadily and they make a lot of thrashing noise – they are better at hopping than flying, but they can fly when they need to, and this grasshopper really needed to fly, but not too far. And then he was back on the curtain. Did he know the music? Did he adjust his flight to keep the rhythm or the tempo? Did he like Beethoven? I don’t think so, but it seemed like it watching from the audience. I know I should have been so mesmerized by the wonderful music that I didn’t pay any attention to the grasshopper, but I couldn’t take my gaze away. After all, he could have flown into a bassoon, or dropped into the bell of a horn, or alighted on the slide of a trombone, the targets were limitless, and any one of them would have stopped the entire orchestra at once. He flew back to the curtain, higher this time and he seemed to be much more fatigued than before. After all, grasshoppers are certainly not long range flyers, and they don’t have enough energy to hover for a long time.
The grasshopper could have flown into the audience, we were downhill from his perch and he could have reached us easily, but he didn’t. The last I saw of the musical grasshopper was his ultimate flight up and over the curtains in back of the orchestra and into the dark at the end of the stage. Back he went to he outside of the auditorium – to a place much more hospitable for grasshoppers than an orchestra. But he did have some great tales to tell his friends as they sat on a limb and chewed the leaves and spat their tobacco juice and chatted like old friends do.

The Retirees

It was 10 AM in the coffee shop. The baked goods were excellent and the menu for the rest of the day looked great, healthy and tasty. We were there for a late breakfast before driving up Oak Creek Canyon. I overheard “The iPad has pretty good specs.” I watched the three old men as we enjoyed our snack. They were in animated and wide ranging conversation not focusing on anything. Who were they and how did they get here? Sedona is a strange place now. It used to be beautiful – striking, but how it is a haven for pink jeeps, crystals, and strange beliefs. They drown out the background noise of normalcy.
I fantasized that the men came here following retirement – in large part as a result of pressure from their wives. It seemed like a great idea; hunting, fishing, golf, and a chance to write and paint - things they had intended to do since college. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Now they were here drinking coffee in the middle of the morning with two other guys who were equally bored. Their life here started out much as they had imagined. Then, soon, things started to change. There wasn’t time to write, and no one paid any attention to the few things they tried. Painting classes were populated mostly by old women who did decorative things with flowers and soft subjects. And, they discovered that it was impossible to portray the meaning they felt, without a lot more skill development than they felt they had time for. Hunting was hard to get to and the area was much more barren than they had expected. Fishing was good after a stocking, except that the time without tourists had shrunken to a couple of weeks in the spring and autumn. Golf was okay, but the cost was high, and the handicap was stubborn and rising.
Now, at least one day each week they had to make the two and a half hour drive to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. The retirement they had imagined had been startlingly short, suddenly they were old and sitting here in the middle of the morning drinking coffee with other guys who were in the same situation. It would be downhill from here on out to the end; the end that science would push out well into an uncomfortable future.

Monday, April 19, 2010

The End of the Story.

I watched the situation develop. Dolores, a longtime friend of ours was introduced to the other dinner guests as a practitioner of Reflexology – a technique for massaging special areas on the bottom of the feet that are supposed to have a specific healing effect; I suppose there is a connection to acupuncture of acupressure. Andy, who is a great raconteur and has an engaging and very outgoing Type A personality, started to tell a story about a cruise experience he had had. Since he accurately specify the date, I could tell what the reference was going to be. I watched Delores react- she was clearly guarded, her body language was quiet reserved, she was somewhat defensive and closed. Andy described the pleasure of the foot massage, and then he said the reflexologist asked him if he had heart problems, he said no. The massage proceeded. Dolores became more guarded and intensely watched Andy, her body language became louder. A little later the masseur again asked him if he had any heart problems, Andy became a bit indignant. Dolores glared! Near the end of massage the man again brought up the subject of a heart condition. Dolores became agitated, hardly able to stay seated! Andy described his annoyance in some detail. As she listened to the evolving story, Delores became more tense excited and more guarded. She had heard this before, pseudo-science her husband labeled it and so had a lot of other people. She knew what to expect – the “diagnosis by the masseuse was balderdash!” and she was ready to counter his demeaning and derogatory comments with her own experience. Then, Andy continued his story, he told us about the appointment with his doctor that was scheduled for a month or so after the cruise. The doctor initiated a series of tests and found blocked arteries – he was hospitalized and had a quadruple bypass. The Reflexologist was prescient; perhaps there was something to this arcane massage form after all. Dolores didn’t say a thing but her body language again spoke volumes as she relaxed and cooled. I didn’t watch to see if she looked at Dan, her husband, but I’m certain she must have. What a delight to be able to watch the emotions evolve, especially since I knew the end of the story. Two days later I saw a book titled Reflexology for Dummies in the checkout line at the supermarket – perhaps I should have bought it!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Spending Time

Click hiss – time for the perfume to be automatically dispensed. It is right above my head, and as it settles down I can almost feel the sweet, undistinguished fragrance as it gently surrounds me. I wonder what it is hiding? However, the result of this dispenser, another in each room and in the halls, and the other steps they take keep the smell of death and excrement out of our sensitive nostrils.
For the past couple of days, I have been wasting away in a nursing home, make that an extended care facility in “newspeak.” Fortunately I’m a visitor, waiting for my wife whose father is entombed here. So I get to leave, get to eat elsewhere, and get to sit and observe what is happening.
Why are so many of the “care givers” so fat? Is it that the work they do is so repetitive and boring? Is the work low in energy consumption? Do they control the patients to such an extent that they have no need or concern with controlling or caring for themselves? Do they use food to compensate for their lack of stimulation? Are they consummate actors in their dealings with patients, and can therefore delude themselves about their own unhealthy habits? How can they not see then impact of obesity on vitality and physical wellbeing in the lives of their patients? Few of the patients are obese – the obese have weeded themselves out of this population by dying. Is it the norm? Do they see so many other fat nurses around that it gives them permission to be like the others? It is mostly the older ones who have become slovenly, it takes some time to acquire the distorted bodies that are covered by the tight uniforms. For the older patients the concept of a rumple seat emerges from the distant past. The younger ones wouldn’t know the term. Another one just waddled down the hall, short legs moving slowly, pushing the meds cart, really leaning on the cart and letting it carry her bulk along minimizing the burning rate of her extreme caloric intake.
Nurses in other settings seem to have made considerable improvements lately. For a number of years they were rapidly degrading into a team or gang or tribe of distended bodies, fat, slow moving, ponderous in their actions and seemingly thinking – paranoid and defensive in their attitude, but lately, in part because of some incentive programs, the nursing community seems (based on limited observation) to have become more healthy. I hope that is true.
This is a highly rated facility, it is clean and the air is fresh. The staff seems to be competent and caring – or at least not overtly hostile. They are the custodians of what is essentially a storage warehouse for aging bodies. It is hard to see where the pleasure of living comes from. Getting out of bed every morning is a chore that requires a firm and controlling person to achieve. It would be easier to stay in bed, it is warm, and soft, and no muscles need to be made to work. The pain of the joints and tendons is less in bed. Gravity is minimized - the constant need to fight against the pull, the stretching of the skin, the weight of the body, the pressure of fabric on tender and sensitive skin. Let me out of here!
The realization is there, a cure isn’t going to happen. There is no magic potion, no doctor who has the answer, not even an improvement. The best that can be hoped for is a lessening of the pain and irritation, a dulling of the boredom, an occasional relief from the tedium. A visit to a doctor is an uncomfortable and exhausting outing, but it is a break from the routine too. But there is nothing new, he will not have any answers not even any new questions.
Sunday is Easter. The entry area is filled with old ladies in wheel chairs. There are seventeen at first, and some more arrive later. There is one man. The leader, I suppose he is a minister, but he could be a lay practitioner, has a strong and loud voice; loud enough to penetrate the deafness that seems to be everywhere. As he sings in his clear and booming voice, familiar songs and hymns, a few thin and quivering voices join in for a word or a phrase. Some of the faces are blank, two of the ladies drift off to sleep and nearly fall slowly from their wheelchairs. They stop when they are horizontal, but they don’t make any noise, sitting up slowly only to repeat the cycle like the toy birds sitting on the edge of a glass dipping into the water and returning to upright that were fascinating to watch. One grows agitated and loudly says “No!” when the lady next to her touches her lightly. The preacher goes on, he needs little response or encouragement to satisfy himself. He knows that the reactions will be muted or nonexistent and he seems to delight in this. His sermon is strong, simple and aimed at his audience. The certainty of death is replaced by the certainty of resurrection. At times he is certainly talking only to himself, gesturing strongly, his theology intact and clear. I think they are listening; those who are awake and alert. At the end he greets each of the ladies individually and wishes them a Happy Easter. Some of them he will never see again, it is hard to tell them apart.
04/07/2010

Truth in Advertising

Amazing! There are a couple of recent TV ads that use the extraordinary concept of truth! Domino’s Pizza has run a campaign recently focused on redoing their pizza from the crust up! “We listened to your complaints; the crust tastes like cardboard, we developed a new crust, the sauce tastes like catsup, we developed a new sauce, and if you go to their web site, you will see “The Pizza Turnaround” Documentary! I may even try it!
Burger King has a new ad that shows the creepy plastic King sneaking into the McDonald’s recipe storage vault and steeling the recipe for the Egg McMuffin! WOW - four off the shelf items require a secret recipe and one that must be stolen? It must be that they are really saying that you can now get an egg McMuffin at Burger King. Okay,
Then there is a radio ad where a guy says “I found that I was 1,000,000 in debt. I figured that the same skill that got me into debt could get me out of debt . . .” Think Paris Hilton . . . No, the skills that get you into debt are the opposite of the skills that can get you out. So I’ll pass on your how to become a millionaire scheme, thank you very much!
4/12/2010

My Favorite Innovation

My favorite innovation of the early 21st Century may come as something of a shock. It isn’t the iPad, and it doesn’t even have an electric chord attached. Certainly the high tech wonders all around us are amazing and have a great impact on our daily lives, but for me, the greatest innovation is curved shower curtain rods in hotels! How wonderful it is to be able to take a shower without touching the shower curtain, the curtain that countless other guest’s naked bodies have touched before, and that can’t be cleaned daily. Now, all of the hotels I have stayed at recently have a shower curtain rod that bows outward; the shower curtain is 6 inches further away than it used to be, and doesn’t touch the person in the shower. My guess is that the concept was invented by a woman, but I may be wrong, it just seems like the kind of idea that a woman would have come up with – if not the idea, the aversion to touching such a common surface. She should be nominated for a Nobel Prize.
April 7, 2010