Pictures from our trip to Maine

Since my family members are curious about why we always go to Maine, and since none of them use that facetube thingy, I thought I’d put them up here so they can see them. I know, that’s not very exciting, but I’ll try to make it worth your while.

We stayed with our friend Beth Duncan in a house her parents built almost 30 years ago. It’s located near Naskeag Point in Brooklin. During lobster fishing season, about 3,000 people live in Brooklin, and in the winter, the population drops to 800. This is what the beach looks like when the tide is halfway out, (or is that in?) and the fog is in. It’ll drop another 3 feet or so, and the sea weed on the shore was blown in during a storm the night before. The landscape changes right before your eyes.

This is what passes for “sand” on the beach. It’s really pebbles. If you see the reddish granite near the upper right, that’s actually what the local stone is, and not to far up the beach, there’s a rock out cropping that’s entirely made up of this. The rest? It’s been pushed into the ocean by the glaciers that once covered the area. The rest of the land forms are hills and monadnocks with lots of morain. Think of a glacier as a bulldozer. Bulldozers can’t push over everything. The large land forms left behind are monadnocks. Morain is the debris that the bulldozer pushes in front of its blade. The “sand” is the morain that gets left in the fjord, then it gets thrown around by the ocean’s waves. Yes, it can hurt to walk on it.

Here’s a view of the port at Castine. Many of the homes date back to the 1700s. It’s also where the Maine Maritime Academy is located. If I were to pan to the right, you’d see their fleet of training vessels, which includes a ship called the “State of Maine,” a tugboat, and an assortment of launches that are used like high school football coaches used Pontiacs to teach us to drive. I took this photo from a restaurant and they were having “drivers ed” classes with two launches and the tugboat. I had no idea you could study these sorts of things when I went to college, but you could. This is one of those schools where one learns to be a harbor pilot, ship captain, shipping logistics expert, etc.

This is Stonington, Maine. If I lived here, I’d open up a “Museum of No Whining!” It’s a fascinating history to this town. There’s a granite quarry here as the stone was once used for just about everything we use concrete for now. Prior to the granite, it was a fishing harbor, and it still is, but the prize catch is now lobster. The building blocks the view of the lobster dock. Do you see that fishing boat in the background?

Here’s the up-close view of the lobster fishing vessel. Towards the stern of the boat, you see the yellow buoys. That’s what the fisherman uses to mark his lobster traps. If you look at the antenna mounted on the roof of the boat, you’ll see a bouy matches the yellow buoys. That’s a law. Lobster fishing vessels must display a their colors that match their buoys. I guess it helps keep the fishermen honest. It’s hard work though, and the fishermen go out in all kinds of weather. Rain, fog, cold, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t fish, you don’t get paid. NO WHINING or you’ll go work in the quarry.

What, you don’t want to fish or work in the quarry? Then you can haul granite blocks. Like these. SHUT THE HELL UP AND EAT YOUR DAMN CRAB ROLL!

We also visited the Blue Hill Fair, in Blue Hill, Maine. You’ve read about this fair in the book “Charlotte’s Web,” although it was not identified as the “Blue Hill Fair.” Author E.B. White lived in a farmhouse in Blue Hill, and the house is still there. I did not take a picture of it, even though we’ve driven past the house a zillion times. Blue Hill is also the site of a reversing tidal falls, and it’s one of Maine’s most scenic landmarks.

We also visited the suspension bridge that spans the Penobscot River in Ellsworth. In one of the towers of the bridge, they built an observatory, so you can ride the elevator up and look at the mountains, both near and far, along with an abandoned paper pull processing plant on the Penobscot, and Fort Knox.

Yes, that’s right, there are two Fort Knox forts in the United States, both named after Gen. Henry Knox, but  this one is not even remotely interesting to Auric Goldfinger, Pussy Galore, James Bond, or anybody else, real or fictional. No, it was not even interesting to Margaret, Beth or Norris, who is Beth’s boyfriend. Well, it might be interesting to Norris, but he kept his mouth shut. I wanted to go see how they had set the joint up for firing red hot cannonballs at British and Spanish ships that had never sailed up the Penobscot River.

After we ascended the bridge and peered out the observatory, I said, “That was fun, let’s go see the fort.” Beth and Margaret both made the sort of facial expression I’d expect to see if I’d served them Jell-o salad with dill pickles in it, instead of canned peaches.

“We don’t want to go see that smelly old fort,” Margaret said without saying a word. Beth said, “Well, since Margaret is pretty, smart and popular, and she wants blueberry ice cream, that’s where we’re going.”

And that’s when I said, “You don’t want to do that. You’ll spoil your dinner.” Margaret gave me one of those looks that said, “Get in the car and shut up or your not going to get any ice cream.”

Anyway, after stopping to by tomatoes and corn from some guy at the side of the road, we stopped at three ice cream places and Margaret turned up her nose at all three of them. So she didn’t get any ice cream either.

Anyway, I’ll go back to the fort next time. It’s been there since 1847. I don’t think it’s going anywhere since it’s made out of granite.

If you can read this, thank a teacher…Gary O’Malley to be specific.

Mr. O’Malley, as seen in the Churchill Junior High yearbook, circa 1974.

Sometimes, the lessons you might have learned a long time ago seem like they just happened yesterday. Mr. O’Malley’s eighth grade English class provides the classic example. Of course, we studied sentence structure, and in retrospect, I recognize that was the first time somebody explained “the rules of the game,” regardless of what game was being played, and I actually understood them. Subject and verb agreement? Check. Subject + verb + direct object? Check.

These concepts seemed intuitive to me, but Mr. O’Malley successfully explained how this, and more, all worked together. He really sent me and my fellow classmates on the path to success, and not only for writing, but for learning foreign languages. Of course, we had to want to do all of that and more, but for the next two years, I studied Latin in Mrs. Goff’s classes and she was also one of the my best teachers. As for the writing, it was because of Mr. O’Malley that I learned that I enjoy something that many find arduous.

But that one really wasn’t the “Big Whammy!” from Mr. O’Malley’s class. One day, he brought in the album “Desperado” by the Eagles. The unit he was teaching us was about “what makes a good story.” In the process though, he also taught us how to listen to contemporary music.

For those of you who don’t recall this album, it is a bit peculiar by “rock” standards. It’s sort of a cowboy-shoot-’em-up rock opera. Mr. O’Malley took us through the album, track-by-track, explaining the character development, significance of each track to the story, and some of the musical themes that foreshadow plot elements. He really put it all together, and I’ll tell you what. Those of us who were eighth grade boys were a tough audience. I still have my copy of that album. I think it is the band’s best. (subject & verb agreement question…”eagles” while it’s the plural of eagle, is one thing. but “the Eagles” itself is a band, which is singular. Hey Teach! Do you see what you did there. Stuff like this keeps me up at night so I wrote around it.)

I could tell then, Mr. O’Malley really liked a good story. So if you’ve gotten this far, perhaps you wonder, “How’d the story turn out?” He’s now Dr. O’Malley, superintendent of schools in Mount Vernon, IA. It’s an extremely charming town that’s convenient to both Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. His constituent families are among the brightest in the Midwest. According to Facebook, yesterday was his birthday, and it was great that at least one other of my classmates was equally motivated by that young educator.

Thank you Dr. O’Malley. Mount Vernon is marked on my map of “Places to Visit.” One of these days, hopefully sooner than later, I plan to motor through and hopefully if you don’t have a line of highly educated helicopter parents waiting to see you, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. I’ll warn you first. I have at least two good stories about being a middle school PTA president in New Jersey. Plus, there’s the B-side of the “Bring in a song that’s a story” from my house. My parents weren’t exactly pleased with my “homework” which included the lyrics “I’ll just get juiced on Mateus and just hang loose.” Seems tame by today’s standards, and I wonder if you could even issue such an assignment today.

We were a lot more clever than the credit they gave us.

I think it’s time to give our generation some credit. After seeing my two boys graduate in the 21st Century, I’ve noticed there are some valuable skills they did not have to develop. One is “organizing people.” Sure, it’s common to say, “Oh, these kids know how to organize things. Look at how they use social media!” And yes, I have seen how high school students and other poeple use “social media” to anonymously taunt other students or people who may have different political beliefs. My son calls this “Passive Aggressive” behavior. I call it a cheap shot.

Somehow, previous generations managed to accomplish a lot of things in high school without “social media” and modern conveniences of technology. Consider the campaigns for class president. Yes, we all knew then what we know now. This was a campaign for “Most popular.” And the Vice President? “Definitely popular, but not the most.” And “Secretary” was actually “reasonably popular” and “treasurer” was “kind of popular, runs with a good crowd and not likely to blow the car wash money on a kegger.”

Somehow, our previous generations voted for homecoming kings and queens, marching band majors, student council officers, and class superlatives without Tweeting their preferences, hosting a Facebook page, or making their campaign speeches via Snapchat or outputting posters at Staples. Not only that, the homecoming court at Chamberlain High School learned the “Dance of the Green Corn” without seeing it on YouTube.

This brings us to the not-so-collective but ever commendable Second Great Achievement. That would be “Asking a Girl to Prom.” As a guy, you did this face-to-face. But the best part of it is when a girl asked her friend if she knew someone who knew that guy in her history class, if she knew if he’d asked someone to prom. In other words, girls working together, without the guys knowing it, to get that one guy to ask that one girl. Yet the guys knew it, and that was part of it. No text messages made that happen.

But the Greatest Achievement of the Middle Aged Expanding Waistline Generation is in fact, “Senior Skip Day.” I fondly recall that day in the Spring of 1979 when a convoy of Chevys, Fords, Toyotas, Datsuns and an AMC Gremlin rolled out of the school parking lot, and headed for River Country, the now abandoned water park in Disney’s realm. Nobody got lost. Nobody got left behind. No waivers were signed. Somehow or another, word got out with face-to-face contact and phone calls.

I think that in the context of the 21st century, with tweets, snapchats, and Facebook updates, we really accomplished something. And that’s how everything important gets done. The face-to-face contact still matters, otherwise, the airlines would have gone out of  business. So yes, My Generation. Take a bow. Let’s reconnect when and where we can, and celebrate that moment. I hope to see you at the reunion for Chamberlain High School Classes of ’78-’79-’80-’81, On Saturday, Oct. 24, 6 pm. at Bayside Banquets in St. Pete Beach.

Two “Pro Tips!” for personal security that you might not have thought of…

So there I was last night, around 8 p.m. when Wells Fargo called to alert me that someone had just attempted to use my debit card for a $2,700 purchase. Earlier in the day, they used the same debit card number to buy $27 in fast food. We’ll assume the stolen account user’s name is Jared, based on his choice in restaurants.

This is the first time this happened to me. I’ve been using ATM cards since college.

Fortunately, it appears that’s the only two charges on my now cancelled debit card, and Jared is stuck somewhere, wondering how he’s going to explain to his friends that the $2,700 in whatever it was he was attempting to buy is not going to be available.

So how’d my debit card number get picked up? I can’t say for sure. Nearly all my online transactions are through PayPal. There are a couple that aren’t, and after sharing my tale with a friend, we found we both have the same vendor, and he’s had to change two credit cards in the last year! So they’ll be getting paid by check in the future.

Anyway, it did get me looking around. I’ve gotten a LOT of telephone solicitations in the last month, at the rate of three per day. So I dove into my phone log and low and behold it was the same five solicitors. One wants to sell me solar panels. I don’t know who the rest are, but given that I’m a Verizon FIOS customer, I’m able to block them. No, I don’t think my card and phone solicitors are connected. So there’s Pro Tip #1. Dive into your phone logs, so which solicitors are calling you, and block them.

And what’s “Pro Tip #2?” Well, if you studied a foreign language, but live in the U.S., maybe you might want to use your foreign language vocabulary to create your new passwords. For instance, if you know some German, maybe you might try using variations of the word “versicherung” for your insurance account.

I’m really sorry about your birthday month. Too bad it’s not March.

March is the best month to have a birthday for many extremely obvious reasons that are obviously not that obvious to most Americans. And when I write “most Americans,” I mean “every poor bastard who doesn’t have a birthday in March.”

How many months have a slogan? As near as I can recall, only March. “It comes in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.” What great accomplishment can you state about the other months? “Well, if there’s an “r” in it, I can eat oysters.” Really, that’s all your month has? March has all that and more.

Some months are known for their significant holidays. Take July 4th. Now, that’s an important holiday, but it’s not really “July Fourth” It’s “Independence Day” which really isn’t about July at all. It’s just the day that they finished writing the Declaration of Independence. If they’d had their shit together, they could have finished it by June 30th. So July would have been just another month with 31 days in it.

Yet March is the only month where a calendar day is a command. That’s March Fourth. That’s a real black eye on July, isn’t it.

Then there’s December and Christmas. Well, we all know that the early Christians moved Christmas so that it could be celebrated during Saturnalia. The Romans wouldn’t notice the big party because they were too busy puking at their own really big parties. And you know what month it was probably moved from, right?

How about May? Well, they have that celebration of Spring called “May Day,” which is exactly the same thing you shout into a radio microphone when your plane is engulfed in flames and spiraling into a volcano. Screw May.

And which month gets to claim Labor Day Weekend. It seems that August and September can fight over that one. March, however, is the only month that commits Birthday Hegemony. Think of all those people, born on February 29. When can they legally celebrate their birthdays? Why, that would be March 1.

So that leaves January. Bleak. Cold. Named after a Roman god with two faces, but spelled “Janus.” Don’t tell me I need to spell out for you why that’s a bad month. Then there’s April, when we pay taxes. And June, which isn’t too bad, but it doesn’t have an “R” in it. Then there’s August, which is the eighth month with the October identity crisis, which means those two months can go fly a kite. And what’s the month to do that? Well, that’s March. So that leaves November, which is when the leaves have left and there you are, staring at four drab months until things start to look green again. Which is March.

Outsmarting the smartphone trap. Part 2.

Bear with me for a second while I attempt to use some logic. What is your cellphone carrier selling you when you buy their smartphone with a data plan? They’re selling you a status symbol and convenience. The status part is obvious as it’s the newest phone. But the convenience? Do you really need the data plan when you’re driving? Do you really need the data plan when you’re at the grocery store? What about the rest of your life? There’s probably a wi-fi signal running through your skull right now, and if you had a wi-fi chip in your head, you could use it.

There’s a wi-fi signal just about every where I go anymore. So what the heck do I need a data plan for? I know, you might be thinking, “But what if I really need data?” I’ll get back to that. That being said, in my household, we still need phone and text, and we still need coverage. So for our situation, we figured out that we need to be under Verizon’s umbrella. But that’s the beauty of the smartphone. It uses wi-fi too.

Now for the next part. The carrier is the primary determiner in the cellphone choice. The next hard decision you, the smartphone consumer have to make is whether you’re going to be Apple’s bitch, or Google’s bitch. Yes, it’s that bad. Phones are computers, and computers require operating systems. Those operating systems are now tethered to networks, which are tethered to marketing efforts. This means that you will be required to give up personal information in exchange for use of the intellectual property known as a cellphone operating system. For Apple, it’s called iOS. For Google, it’s Android.

Here’s the shocker. I’ve been an avid Apple user since 1988. And now, I’m an Android.

How to not blow a ton of cash on a smartphone, and still have a smartphone

My first smartphone was an iPhone. I think I had it about five years ago and got it when iPhones were shackled to the AT&T network. I still have it, but use it as an iPod. The fact of the matter was that I really didn’t need the data plan. So when it contract was up, we switched from AT&T, back to Verizon with basic phones for talk & text,and our lives improved simply because AT&T’s cellular coverage is terrible for the places we live and frequently visit.

So now things are different. If you’re a customer of Verizon or AT&T, you’ve noticed that the “feature phones,” from AT&T, Verizon, etc., which is marketing speak for “lousy and expensive phones for customers who are too cheap to use a smartphone with a data plan for $100 per month,” are in fact designed to make you want to upgrade to a smartphone.

So here’s the first way to save a shedload of cash on a smartphone. Get your boss to pay for it. Now, there are two problems with that. The first is obvious. Your boss could instead give you the money, but you’d be taxed on that as income. The second is less obvious. You could be given a Blackberry smartphone. That’s what my wife has. It’s sort of useful for e-mail, but that’s about it. If you had it in your car, and accidentally drove off a bridge, you might be able to use it to break the window and escape from the sinking car. I wouldn’t bet on that though.

So that takes us to the next obvious question. How can you get a smartphone, and still sock away some cash for retirement? I think I’ve figured that out…

Antarctic glacier melt to cause Global Flooding? Finally, some GREAT news

If there’s two “news” items you heard about this week, one had to be global flooding. The other? An “heroic” cat. Let’s go with the flooding and why that’s the best news I’ve heard since Africanized Bees. We’re talking about an increase of sea level by about 8 feet in the next 100 years, according to some guys in California.

I can’t wait. When I think of corruption, the places I immediately think of happen to be coastal. In New Jersey, this includes much of Hudson and Essex Counties. Add in New Orleans. For decades, law enforcement officials have been carting handcuffed politicians  out of office in these places. Nothing seems to work. So we might as well flood these places, permanently, and try something else.

Large bee torments 1970s comedians for our benefit.

But wait, there’s more. You do remember “Killer Bees,” right? No, not the standup comic of the very late 1990s with a homophonic name. I’m talking about the hybrid honey bees that were supposed to propagate throughout the South, starting way back when Saturday Night Live was still funny, partly because John Belushi knew how to wear a bee costume. Well, by my calculations, the global flooding that’s supposed to hit will not only flood out much of the killer bees, but also eliminate these other exotic species, particularly in Florida. This includes, but is not limited to:

-Walking catfish which should be in Georgia by now with the Killer bees.

– Cane toads/bufo toads which were supposed to spread from Tampa down Interstate 4 to Orlando and beyond.

– Burmese pythons and nutria, which are all over the Everglades but nobody knows exactly how they got there.

– Indian snakehead fish, which an infestation in Maryland seemed to be all over the news not-so-long ago.

– An assortment of non-native, non-salt tolerant plants that I studied in a college biology class that focused on Florida’s fascinating eco-diversity.

And here’s another upside to global flooding. It’s going to create a LOT of habitat for fish and sea life. Really, the only downside I can see to this “problem” is that if more of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, then that should 1) reflect energy back into space and 2) reduce Earth’s temperature because water conducts heat, which converts to water vapor which means more clouds, rain and snow.

I could be wrong though. Unlike medical research, which requires reproducible results and large quantities of reproducible statistical data to be considered valid, we’ve got some guys living in California working on this, using 40 years of data. Meanwhile, there’s a couple of guys in Washington state who say their favorite glacier could melt in somewhere between 200 and 800 years.

Frankly, I can’t wait 200 years to flood out corruption and exotic species. I want it now.

Has your customer service call been sent offshore? Try this!

I just experienced one of those unpleasant moments when my call for customer service was sent some 10 hours into the future. The call went like this.

“Thank you for cawlink USAir. My name is Sophie may I help you?”

Now, I’ve been around the block at least once, and can tell you, there aren’t that many women in Southern Asia named “Sophie.” I “cawl-ed” to express my displeasure with the confusing design of date selection on their web site. But unfortunately, “Sophie’s” attitude came across as condescending. This annoyed me, and I told her that next time, rather than fly USAir, I’ll just walk home from Alabama.

So on one of my trips around the block, I used to work with a LOT of guys from India. And fortunately for me, I had absolutely no problem learning how to pronounce their names.

So next time my customer disservice call gets routed to India, it’s pretty likely that when “Sophie” answers, I’ll say, “Hi. And my name is Balishek Subramanian.” Do you think she’ll believe my Midwestern accent? Let me know if this works for you.

This “Map of the Week” meme is malarky…just like the last one!

By now, you’ve probably seen this week’s “Map Meme” on your Facegoggle page. It’s the map that divides the U.S. into 11 nations, with descriptions of each nation that try to explain, or justify, the behavior and belief systems of people who might actually live in one of those “11 Nations.” Just in case you missed it, I present it to you, just as everyone else saw it. 

And if you’re like me, you laughed out loud at the implications of moral superiority in the descriptions of the “nations” that might be perceived as “liberal.” 

You know the truth. There’s really only TWO American nations, fused together to make one United States. And you know it’s not one nation of “Liberals Against 16oz Cokes” or “Conservatives for 100-round Drum Magazines.”

It’s much simpler than that and rather than having to put on your “cheeters” and then squint at one map on your iPad, all you have to do is go to look in your toilet. Is the water blue? Or is it clear? 

As Americans, we all have to make this conscious decision every time we go to the grocery store. “Is my water still blue?” or “Is it time to make my water blue?” or “I am very satisfied with the clear status of the water in my toilet.” Best of all, there are no implications of “moral superiority” in making this decision. Either you do, or you don’t. 

However, if you want to piss away your time with the idea that Southern Illinois is really Great Appalachia, be my guest. I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear from you!