Armchair Travel
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Jimmy and Me Went to School
When you first wrote, "Jimmy and me went to school," the teacher said it should be "Jimmy and I went to school." Okay. So far so good.
Then you wrote, "The teacher erudicated Jimmy and I." Nope. It should be, "Jimmy and me." The way to figure it out is to leave Jimmy out of it. Which pronoun would you use? "I went to school." "The teacher erudicated me."
If that happens, by the way, you should definitely report the teacher. Anyway the pronoun has two forms, the subjective case and the objective case, in Latin the nominative and the accusative, and people call them all kinds of other things.
In Latin and Greek and related languages, nouns all have different endings depending on their use in the sentence, whether it's the subject or the object or a possessive, or the object of a preposition. In English the nouns don't change but the pronouns do.
"The teacher gave salacious materials to Jimmy and I." Again, you should report the teacher, but here the noun 'Jimmy' (which doesn't change cases) and the pronoun 'me' are both objects of the preposition 'to.'
"The teacher gave salacious materials to Jimmy and me."
Okay, so now you write "He is taller than me." It looks like 'than' is a preposition and 'me' is its object, which would be correct, but actually 'than' is a conjunction like 'and,' 'but,' 'for,' or 'so,' (or because, when, if, until, etc.) so it introduces a clause (with a subject and a verb) instead of taking an object (a noun) the way a preposition does.
Not only that, but the clause is an elliptical construction, meaning something is left out because it's understood.
"He is taller than I (am)."
Same with as: "He is as rambunctious as I (am)."
I've done a lot of subbing, and once I told some students about elliptical constructions, and I heard they had some fun later with their regular teacher when she told them their sentences were incomplete. They just said, "Oh, no. That's just an elliptical construction." ¶ 8:50 PM 1 comments
Then you wrote, "The teacher erudicated Jimmy and I." Nope. It should be, "Jimmy and me." The way to figure it out is to leave Jimmy out of it. Which pronoun would you use? "I went to school." "The teacher erudicated me."
If that happens, by the way, you should definitely report the teacher. Anyway the pronoun has two forms, the subjective case and the objective case, in Latin the nominative and the accusative, and people call them all kinds of other things.
In Latin and Greek and related languages, nouns all have different endings depending on their use in the sentence, whether it's the subject or the object or a possessive, or the object of a preposition. In English the nouns don't change but the pronouns do.
"The teacher gave salacious materials to Jimmy and I." Again, you should report the teacher, but here the noun 'Jimmy' (which doesn't change cases) and the pronoun 'me' are both objects of the preposition 'to.'
"The teacher gave salacious materials to Jimmy and me."
Okay, so now you write "He is taller than me." It looks like 'than' is a preposition and 'me' is its object, which would be correct, but actually 'than' is a conjunction like 'and,' 'but,' 'for,' or 'so,' (or because, when, if, until, etc.) so it introduces a clause (with a subject and a verb) instead of taking an object (a noun) the way a preposition does.
Not only that, but the clause is an elliptical construction, meaning something is left out because it's understood.
"He is taller than I (am)."
Same with as: "He is as rambunctious as I (am)."
I've done a lot of subbing, and once I told some students about elliptical constructions, and I heard they had some fun later with their regular teacher when she told them their sentences were incomplete. They just said, "Oh, no. That's just an elliptical construction." ¶ 8:50 PM 1 comments
Saturday, July 25, 2009
A Tribute to the Predicate Nominative
Some scholars believe the sole purpose of the predicate nominative is to confuse and confound students of grammar. It's a holdover from Latin, and I think it's on its way out.
The verb 'to be' - like other linking verbs - does not take an object, so the pronoun following it does not change from I to me or she to her or he to him or they to them.
"What's he to Hecuba? Or Hecuba to him?"
So if you knock on a door and someone says, "Who is it?" You should technically say, "It is I." But people don't. They say, "It's me" even if they know about the predicate nominative. Why? They don't want to sound like pedants.
But here's a tribute to the predicate nominative by my favorite poet, Arthur T. Nash.
Why Is It Not I?
By Arthur T. Nash
Why is it not I?
Married to Lanique Luxton,
Soaring over Dexter
Waving to the chumps below?
Why is it not I?
Schusshing through deep powder,
And, at day's end,
Retiring to the warm embrace
Of Silence?
Why is it not I? ¶ 10:42 PM 1 comments
The verb 'to be' - like other linking verbs - does not take an object, so the pronoun following it does not change from I to me or she to her or he to him or they to them.
"What's he to Hecuba? Or Hecuba to him?"
So if you knock on a door and someone says, "Who is it?" You should technically say, "It is I." But people don't. They say, "It's me" even if they know about the predicate nominative. Why? They don't want to sound like pedants.
But here's a tribute to the predicate nominative by my favorite poet, Arthur T. Nash.
Why Is It Not I?
By Arthur T. Nash
Why is it not I?
Married to Lanique Luxton,
Soaring over Dexter
Waving to the chumps below?
Why is it not I?
Schusshing through deep powder,
And, at day's end,
Retiring to the warm embrace
Of Silence?
Why is it not I? ¶ 10:42 PM 1 comments
Thursday, July 23, 2009
The Bishop of America
When I was a kid I got an American Revolution chess set for my birthday, which I left at my parents for rainy summer vacation days, but it sat there unopened in the game cupboard for thirty years.
Since we just found nursing home placements for our parents, my brothers and I were going through mountains of old stuff and there it was. Last night I actually got it out and played a game with my roommate.
If I ever meet Ben Franklin in the hereafter, and I dearly hope I do, I have a good joke for him. George Washington is the king, of course, although he's famous for not wanting to be king, Martha's the queen, a teeny Paul Revere is the knight, the Liberty Bell is the rook and Ben, of all people, is the bishop!
I'm sure he's going to get a kick out of that, given his views on religion.
"I have ever let others enjoy their religious Sentiments, without reflecting on them for those that appeared to me unsupportable or even absurd," he wrote to Yale College president Ezra Stiles.
"All Sects here, and we have a great Variety, have experienced my good will in assisting them with Subscriptions for building their new Places of Worship; and, as I have never opposed any of their Doctrines, I hope to go out of the World in Peace with them all."
¶ 2:57 PM 1 comments
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Towns Are Like People
When I worked in newspapers I covered a lot of town governments around New England. One of my first beats was a bunch of towns in New Hampshire and Vermont where I would keep track of the selectmen and the school board and the sewer district and everything else.
Lots and lots of meetings.
It was a good opportunity to learn about local government up close and personal -- democracy in action. Town Meeting Day was a real challenge with six or eight towns to cover, but there, for anyone interested in New England towns, was the real show.
Towns have character; they're a lot like people.
I remember one guy, I believe his name was John Lyman, who had been chairman of the board of selectmen in Bradford, Vermont for twenty years or so, and he was explaining why the town had to shell out $60,000 for a new grader.
The old one kept breaking down, he said, and fixing it again would be a waste of money. He said when you put a in a new part it wears down the old parts around it. It sounded to me like he had worked on this machine a time or two himself.
Here's a guy the town has been electing for 20 years, and he's obviously giving them good advice, but of course they voted down that warrant article.
Warrant articles -- they're called other things in different states -- are expenditures that are not included in the selectmen's budget and are voted on separately.
So people vote the budget up or down, usually up, because if they vote it down there would have to be an expensive special election, and it being a special election, people involved in the schools and in town government would have a big advantage and they might wind up with a bigger budget than before. I seen it happen.
So having approved several hundred thousand dollars of their hard-earned money in the regular budget, largely non-discretionary items (meaning items voters can't do anything about), they turn to the warrant articles and debate them all day long.
I remember one article -- two or three thousand dollars for new mats in the gymnasium in Enfield, New Hampshire, the very gym where the meeting was held.
There was a popular member of the board of selectmen who was a martial arts instructor and he had his arm in a sling. When he got up to speak on the warrant article, and someone asked him why his arm was in a sling, he said he was injured on a mat just like the ones hanging on a wall. That article passed.
I remember people complaining at a school board meeting that they kept seeing this school bus go by their house with only one student on it. How could the town waste money that way. The superintendent had to patiently explain that school busses drop off students one by one or in small groups, so at the end of their route...
Sometimes back then -- not very often these days -- the school board or the board of selectmen got a majority that said yes too often and taxes would go up too much and there'd be a taxpayer uprising and the pendulum would swing a bit one way or the other each year. To me, that's democracy.
The problem with tax limitation statutes is that they prevent the pendulum from swinging back. Once schools and services and town employee contracts have been ravaged, they can't be restored. It's a ratchet effect that can easily destroy the character of a town.
And once that's gone, it's like Humpty Dumpty. ¶ 7:59 PM 0 comments
Lots and lots of meetings.
It was a good opportunity to learn about local government up close and personal -- democracy in action. Town Meeting Day was a real challenge with six or eight towns to cover, but there, for anyone interested in New England towns, was the real show.
Towns have character; they're a lot like people.
I remember one guy, I believe his name was John Lyman, who had been chairman of the board of selectmen in Bradford, Vermont for twenty years or so, and he was explaining why the town had to shell out $60,000 for a new grader.
The old one kept breaking down, he said, and fixing it again would be a waste of money. He said when you put a in a new part it wears down the old parts around it. It sounded to me like he had worked on this machine a time or two himself.
Here's a guy the town has been electing for 20 years, and he's obviously giving them good advice, but of course they voted down that warrant article.
Warrant articles -- they're called other things in different states -- are expenditures that are not included in the selectmen's budget and are voted on separately.
So people vote the budget up or down, usually up, because if they vote it down there would have to be an expensive special election, and it being a special election, people involved in the schools and in town government would have a big advantage and they might wind up with a bigger budget than before. I seen it happen.
So having approved several hundred thousand dollars of their hard-earned money in the regular budget, largely non-discretionary items (meaning items voters can't do anything about), they turn to the warrant articles and debate them all day long.
I remember one article -- two or three thousand dollars for new mats in the gymnasium in Enfield, New Hampshire, the very gym where the meeting was held.
There was a popular member of the board of selectmen who was a martial arts instructor and he had his arm in a sling. When he got up to speak on the warrant article, and someone asked him why his arm was in a sling, he said he was injured on a mat just like the ones hanging on a wall. That article passed.
I remember people complaining at a school board meeting that they kept seeing this school bus go by their house with only one student on it. How could the town waste money that way. The superintendent had to patiently explain that school busses drop off students one by one or in small groups, so at the end of their route...
Sometimes back then -- not very often these days -- the school board or the board of selectmen got a majority that said yes too often and taxes would go up too much and there'd be a taxpayer uprising and the pendulum would swing a bit one way or the other each year. To me, that's democracy.
The problem with tax limitation statutes is that they prevent the pendulum from swinging back. Once schools and services and town employee contracts have been ravaged, they can't be restored. It's a ratchet effect that can easily destroy the character of a town.
And once that's gone, it's like Humpty Dumpty. ¶ 7:59 PM 0 comments
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Make the Government Pay
We just had a referendum in our town about whether we wanted good schools, whether we wanted to pay our teachers a living wage, whether we wanted curbside trach pick-up. Of course the vote was a resounding No.
We saw all these hand-painted signs up in town, "Vote Yes" two months ago, when they scheduled the referendum. These were people who went to school board and selectmen's meetings and understood how much money the town needed to go on being a town.
Then, in the last two weeks, a lot of handpainted Vote No signs started popping up, saying the override would mean a 21.8 percent increase in taxes. That a fact. We elected the selectmen and the school board, and this is what they believed was needed to keep the town going, given the disastrous condition of the national economy.
But the opposition consisted of people who had never once been to a school board or selectman's meeting, people who are saying they can't afford a 21.8 percent tax hike because they need the money for whatever. Some of them are elderly people and family farms, but the town can give these groups tax breaks if people are really concerned about it.
And the election is fixed, really, because the override needs a two-thirds majorityto pass.
That's the way the big landowners set it up when they passed Proposition Two and a Half in Massachusetts, the equivalent of Prop 13 in California. Both are public laws to limit the amount wealthy people and businesses have to pay.
Any savings for any individual homeowner, and this is true from the guy with the triple-decker in Jamaica Plain to the guy with the split-level on North Silver Lane in Sunderland, is utterly eclipsed by the amount of money you've saved for the banks and business owners and wealthy landowners.
By defeating the override, you're beating your chest and announcing your determination to be a chump.
What you've done is limit the tax liability of the biggest landowners in town, people who don't give a rat's ass about the class size in the elementary school or the rate of pay of a town worker. The miniscule amount you save this year on your taxes will be utterly and completely wiped out by the amount you've save them. And the bill will come due in the end.
Maybe the town will go into receivership and the state will take over the schools and your children will get the message: they don't matter; we're too greedy. And you know what? Your taxes will go up a hell of a lot more than 21.8 percent and your property values will go down, making the percentage go up even more.
A lot of taxpayers think that if they gather together and wave their fists in the air they can avoid paying the increase in medical coverage for town employees or the increase in worker's compensation.
I'm thinking of introducing a citizen resolution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts calling for the repeal of all taxes and for a government payment of $10,000 to every citizen. No, make that $100,000. Are you with me? Isn't it time we left the taxpayers alone and made the government pay? ¶ 11:18 PM 1 comments
We saw all these hand-painted signs up in town, "Vote Yes" two months ago, when they scheduled the referendum. These were people who went to school board and selectmen's meetings and understood how much money the town needed to go on being a town.
Then, in the last two weeks, a lot of handpainted Vote No signs started popping up, saying the override would mean a 21.8 percent increase in taxes. That a fact. We elected the selectmen and the school board, and this is what they believed was needed to keep the town going, given the disastrous condition of the national economy.
But the opposition consisted of people who had never once been to a school board or selectman's meeting, people who are saying they can't afford a 21.8 percent tax hike because they need the money for whatever. Some of them are elderly people and family farms, but the town can give these groups tax breaks if people are really concerned about it.
And the election is fixed, really, because the override needs a two-thirds majorityto pass.
That's the way the big landowners set it up when they passed Proposition Two and a Half in Massachusetts, the equivalent of Prop 13 in California. Both are public laws to limit the amount wealthy people and businesses have to pay.
Any savings for any individual homeowner, and this is true from the guy with the triple-decker in Jamaica Plain to the guy with the split-level on North Silver Lane in Sunderland, is utterly eclipsed by the amount of money you've saved for the banks and business owners and wealthy landowners.
By defeating the override, you're beating your chest and announcing your determination to be a chump.
What you've done is limit the tax liability of the biggest landowners in town, people who don't give a rat's ass about the class size in the elementary school or the rate of pay of a town worker. The miniscule amount you save this year on your taxes will be utterly and completely wiped out by the amount you've save them. And the bill will come due in the end.
Maybe the town will go into receivership and the state will take over the schools and your children will get the message: they don't matter; we're too greedy. And you know what? Your taxes will go up a hell of a lot more than 21.8 percent and your property values will go down, making the percentage go up even more.
A lot of taxpayers think that if they gather together and wave their fists in the air they can avoid paying the increase in medical coverage for town employees or the increase in worker's compensation.
I'm thinking of introducing a citizen resolution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts calling for the repeal of all taxes and for a government payment of $10,000 to every citizen. No, make that $100,000. Are you with me? Isn't it time we left the taxpayers alone and made the government pay? ¶ 11:18 PM 1 comments
Friday, July 17, 2009
Way to Go Zach!
As much as any other arugula-chomping, NPR-listening, left-leaning liberal, I'm savoring the sexual indiscretions of the right-wing bible-thumpers, but I think it's important to savor only the hypocrisy of it all.
That is, here's a guy who said someone else should resign because they had an affair, but he had an affair, or visited a prostitute, and he's not resigning. That should be denounced as hypocrisy, but that's as far as it should go.
It's a lot like the chicken hawks who avoided active duty in their day but then started a war. The fact that Cheney and Bush and so many others avoided service in Vietnam but were enthusiastic about sending others to die shows that they are vile hypocrites.
But you can't keep going and say that everyone who did not serve in Vietnam is an unpatriotic coward. That would be an insult to heros like Mohammed Ali, who traded his luxury hotel rooms for a narrow jail call in one of the century's greatest acts of courage.
"No. I will not go ten thousand miles to kill innocent people."
That's the kind of courage that makes a better world.
So it's the hypocrisy we should be focusing on. Not the indiscretions. Otherwise we join the national chorus of tut-tutting, this Kenneth Starr-style fixation with other people's peccadillos.
We have a (historically) weird system of marriage with a success rate under 50 percent, and we shudder at any other arrangements as abnormal and immoral.
If some right-wing South Carolina bible-thumper finds his soul mate in Argentina, I could care less. Does it diminish his abilities as a statesman? Well they can't get any worse. I don't think it makes any difference what he does with his wee-wee and frankly I'm tired of hearing about it.
My friend Rick talks to the spirits in the next world and he says one of the things they find funniest about humans is their weird sexual inhibitions. He says over there they think people could give one another a lot more pleasure.
Years ago I ran into my hometown buddy Zach. His mom had told my mom that he found a great new girlfriend and that was really good news because Zach, one of the nicest people I ever met in my life, had married this horrible harridan. It happens.
But then at last they got divorced. "So Zach," I say, "I hear you have a great new girlfriend."
Yeah, he says, and not only that, there's this cute little twenty-something down the block who puts on her running suit in the morning and runs down the street and jumps in the sack with him.
"Am I supposed to say no?" he asked.
I sure don't think so. Way to go, Zach! ¶ 8:34 PM 0 comments
That is, here's a guy who said someone else should resign because they had an affair, but he had an affair, or visited a prostitute, and he's not resigning. That should be denounced as hypocrisy, but that's as far as it should go.
It's a lot like the chicken hawks who avoided active duty in their day but then started a war. The fact that Cheney and Bush and so many others avoided service in Vietnam but were enthusiastic about sending others to die shows that they are vile hypocrites.
But you can't keep going and say that everyone who did not serve in Vietnam is an unpatriotic coward. That would be an insult to heros like Mohammed Ali, who traded his luxury hotel rooms for a narrow jail call in one of the century's greatest acts of courage.
"No. I will not go ten thousand miles to kill innocent people."
That's the kind of courage that makes a better world.
So it's the hypocrisy we should be focusing on. Not the indiscretions. Otherwise we join the national chorus of tut-tutting, this Kenneth Starr-style fixation with other people's peccadillos.
We have a (historically) weird system of marriage with a success rate under 50 percent, and we shudder at any other arrangements as abnormal and immoral.
If some right-wing South Carolina bible-thumper finds his soul mate in Argentina, I could care less. Does it diminish his abilities as a statesman? Well they can't get any worse. I don't think it makes any difference what he does with his wee-wee and frankly I'm tired of hearing about it.
My friend Rick talks to the spirits in the next world and he says one of the things they find funniest about humans is their weird sexual inhibitions. He says over there they think people could give one another a lot more pleasure.
Years ago I ran into my hometown buddy Zach. His mom had told my mom that he found a great new girlfriend and that was really good news because Zach, one of the nicest people I ever met in my life, had married this horrible harridan. It happens.
But then at last they got divorced. "So Zach," I say, "I hear you have a great new girlfriend."
Yeah, he says, and not only that, there's this cute little twenty-something down the block who puts on her running suit in the morning and runs down the street and jumps in the sack with him.
"Am I supposed to say no?" he asked.
I sure don't think so. Way to go, Zach! ¶ 8:34 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Preppy Loafers For a Dime
I went up to the Deerfield Academy tag sale a couple of weeks ago to get me some preppie shoes, and sure enough I found a pair of really cool loafers that someone wore in the snow and they got wet and there was road salt all over them.
So I got them for a dime and shined them up and then all the rest of the salt came out, so then I shined them up again and sure enough I got me a genuine pair of preppy loafers for a dime.
These are different from the ones we wore back in the day; there's no place to put a penny. But they're made of really nice leather -- Corinthian, maybe! -- and the soles are cleverly reinforced with rubber. Everything about them says, "expensive."
So I'm sure you're saying, "Steve, you spent decades getting past the whole preppy white power elite thing. Are you reverting to type in your old age?"
Naw... It doesn't count if you get them for a dime.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Using the Entire Fleet
My friends Nancy and Brian Bailey drove me to work for three weeks, which I will never forget, and they gave me the number of a guy named Amir at Reliance Auto. When I met Amir, he was wearing slippers, so I decided to trust him. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.
I figured, if you never trust anybody, you wind up worse off than if you trusted somebody and they ripped you off. I don't know if that holds up logically, but I think it holds water if you factor in the aggravation factor.
I told him I really wanted a standard shift and manual windows and door locks. I hate having to turn on the car to close a window. I do miss lowering the two back windows on a hot day on the highway, but hey, you pick your problems. Like this other terrible problem: when you open the door, the overhead light doesn't go on. You have to turn it on. What a hardship!
Amir gave me a great 97 Honda Civic for six grand, worth at least ten, but because it had a salvage title -- the computer had been stolen and replaced -- my credit union wouldn't give me a loan. This bank in Ware didn't know me, but they knew Amir, and he helped me get a loan from them.
I paid it off three years ago and it's still running great. And my daughter's car that we bought there is still running great too.
I used all three vehicles in the fleet today. The Civic, Claire de Lune, I drove over to Florence to have brunch with my daughter at Miss Flo's Diner and then down to Agawam to visit my mom, who is in a really excellent nursing home for Old Timer's patients.
I'd take the scooter, but it would be an hour each way.
Then I rode about 18 miles on my bicycle, Bullwinkle, over mighty Mt. Warner, which, in any town except Hadley, would be designated a mole hill.
But whenever I see Lance Armstrong tackling the Pyrenees, I go conquer Mt. Warner. Then down into Amherst, across UMass and up into Cushman for the final descent down to Puffer's Pond where I took a delicious dip.
Then I biked home four more miles and rode my scooter Camilla over to the Harp for a Guinness.
¶ 8:24 PM 1 comments
Back in 2004 I was in the market for a used car, so I went out shopping. I know nothing about cars, and I was talking about how hard it was with my buddies at Yankee Candle. And they were guys who knew all about cars and they said it was hard for them, too, which made me feel better.
My friends Nancy and Brian Bailey drove me to work for three weeks, which I will never forget, and they gave me the number of a guy named Amir at Reliance Auto. When I met Amir, he was wearing slippers, so I decided to trust him. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.
I figured, if you never trust anybody, you wind up worse off than if you trusted somebody and they ripped you off. I don't know if that holds up logically, but I think it holds water if you factor in the aggravation factor.
I told him I really wanted a standard shift and manual windows and door locks. I hate having to turn on the car to close a window. I do miss lowering the two back windows on a hot day on the highway, but hey, you pick your problems. Like this other terrible problem: when you open the door, the overhead light doesn't go on. You have to turn it on. What a hardship!
Amir gave me a great 97 Honda Civic for six grand, worth at least ten, but because it had a salvage title -- the computer had been stolen and replaced -- my credit union wouldn't give me a loan. This bank in Ware didn't know me, but they knew Amir, and he helped me get a loan from them.
I paid it off three years ago and it's still running great. And my daughter's car that we bought there is still running great too.
I used all three vehicles in the fleet today. The Civic, Claire de Lune, I drove over to Florence to have brunch with my daughter at Miss Flo's Diner and then down to Agawam to visit my mom, who is in a really excellent nursing home for Old Timer's patients.
I'd take the scooter, but it would be an hour each way.
Then I rode about 18 miles on my bicycle, Bullwinkle, over mighty Mt. Warner, which, in any town except Hadley, would be designated a mole hill.
But whenever I see Lance Armstrong tackling the Pyrenees, I go conquer Mt. Warner. Then down into Amherst, across UMass and up into Cushman for the final descent down to Puffer's Pond where I took a delicious dip.
Then I biked home four more miles and rode my scooter Camilla over to the Harp for a Guinness.
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Handmade Blade, The Child's Balloon
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon...
(Bob Dylan - "It's Alright Ma")
I don't know about you, but for me, that's pretty punchy poetry. Martin Scorsese asked Bob Dylan where that came from, and Dylan said he didn't know.
I always laugh when I hear about all these people who say they were influenced by Bob Dylan. The celebritiy tributes are downright embarassing. Johnny Winter leaves out two verses of Highway 61 (God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son."/ Abe said, "Man, you must be putting me on.") and plays another verse twice.
It is an incontrovertible fact that the only people who really understood Bob Dylan at the time were Vernon and Ian and me. So since Ian has passed away, that leaves Vernon and me. The rest of these people, Springsteen included, had absolutely no clue what he was talking about.
But we'll let those nutcakes have their fun. Me and Vernon, we know. "They're selling postcards of the hanging..."
Here's some more Dylan that's been stuck in my head for thirty years, from "Desolation Row":
"Cinderella, she seems so easy.
'It takes one to know one,' she sighs,
Then puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style.
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning,
'You belong to me, I believe.'
And someone says, 'You're in the wrong place, my friend.
You'd better leave.'
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go,
Is Cinderella, sweeping up, on Desolation Row."
One more, from "Visions of Johanna":
"And Madonna, she still has not showed.
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once it flowed.
The fiddler, he now steps to the road.
He writes 'Everything's been returned which was owed.'
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes."
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
The Pudgy Guy on the Vespa
When I was a young and callow fellow, my great friend Ian had a house in Tinkerville, New Hampshire. Ian was, as you might say, rich (and handsome and funny) for all the good it did him.
The property was dubbed Uncle Veeny's Farm, named for Uncle Veeny's Road in Hyannis, Massachusetts, where Ian and I once found ourselves on one of our quests.
We would oftentimes sit on the front porch at Uncle Veeny's just up the road from Downtown Tnkerville, and regular as clockwork, we would see what we called the drag race, a souped-up pickup truck tearing up the road followed closely by a late-model sedan and then, five or six minutes later, a pudgy guy on a Vespa.
These must have been three young guys off to some teenage destination. Surely they weren't racing, given the disparity in horsepower, but you never know.
Now, forty years later, I'm the pudgy guy on the Vespa, but in a weird way, I'm a vision of the future.
I just rolled over 1,000 miles on my Sym Taiwanese scooter Camilla, at 100 miles per gallon, saving umpteen bazillion gallons of gas, even though it has rained almost every day this month.
And far from being a sacrifice, it has been a real pleasure, even in the rain. I can't see why anyone would choose to ride in an enclosed vehicle when they have the option of scooting.
I commute to work in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, and in South Deerfield, as in many communities in America, when people purchase a new vehicle, they calculate the horsepower needed to transport the weight of the people and the cargo they normally carry, and then they multiply by 320,000, just to be on the safe side.
Comparatively tiny people clamber up ladders to get into their giant pickup trucks.
But scooting is clearly the wave of the future. I can tell because so many people wave at me.
I'm sure a lot of people think, "Gee I could get to work on a scooter, but what if it rains?" Then I putter by in my yellow rainsuit with a big smile on my face. Camilla and I are indomitable.
We're the wave of the future. ¶ 8:58 PM 0 comments
The property was dubbed Uncle Veeny's Farm, named for Uncle Veeny's Road in Hyannis, Massachusetts, where Ian and I once found ourselves on one of our quests.
We would oftentimes sit on the front porch at Uncle Veeny's just up the road from Downtown Tnkerville, and regular as clockwork, we would see what we called the drag race, a souped-up pickup truck tearing up the road followed closely by a late-model sedan and then, five or six minutes later, a pudgy guy on a Vespa.
These must have been three young guys off to some teenage destination. Surely they weren't racing, given the disparity in horsepower, but you never know.
Now, forty years later, I'm the pudgy guy on the Vespa, but in a weird way, I'm a vision of the future.
I just rolled over 1,000 miles on my Sym Taiwanese scooter Camilla, at 100 miles per gallon, saving umpteen bazillion gallons of gas, even though it has rained almost every day this month.
And far from being a sacrifice, it has been a real pleasure, even in the rain. I can't see why anyone would choose to ride in an enclosed vehicle when they have the option of scooting.
I commute to work in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, and in South Deerfield, as in many communities in America, when people purchase a new vehicle, they calculate the horsepower needed to transport the weight of the people and the cargo they normally carry, and then they multiply by 320,000, just to be on the safe side.
Comparatively tiny people clamber up ladders to get into their giant pickup trucks.
But scooting is clearly the wave of the future. I can tell because so many people wave at me.
I'm sure a lot of people think, "Gee I could get to work on a scooter, but what if it rains?" Then I putter by in my yellow rainsuit with a big smile on my face. Camilla and I are indomitable.
We're the wave of the future. ¶ 8:58 PM 0 comments
Monday, July 06, 2009
Now to Get Down
This little guy was getting picked on by the other baby goats -- kids can be mean sometimes. So he clambered up on this wooden spool.
This is the kind of thing I see when I ride my scooter.
¶ 3:37 PM 2 comments
This little guy was getting picked on by the other baby goats -- kids can be mean sometimes. So he clambered up on this wooden spool.This is the kind of thing I see when I ride my scooter.
¶ 3:37 PM 2 comments
