A toddler, a cracker, a lawn chair and an unexpected encounter at a baseball game

OK, so last week you got Curmudgeon the outraged father, demanding that all schools of education be closed, railing not just against schools of education generally, but in particular railing against the poor, benighted education department at South Janesville College, the fake name I made up for the very real school that Youngest Son attends.

I got very little work done Thursday or Friday as I talked frequently to my son, wrote carefully worded letters to his coach and to the financial aid department, and generally tried to keep Long Suffering Spouse from going up there and raising holy heck with Youngest Son's professors.

We had to go up there on Saturday anyway.

Youngest Son was pitching.

Given the weather we've been having, Saturday wasn't entirely terrible: Crisp but sunny, easily 55 degrees. There was a breeze that wasn't quite a wind chill. In full sunlight it felt almost not-cold. Almost.

I wore my down coat, of course, over a wool sweater and a flannel shirt, with scarf and gloves and a hat with ear flaps. Long Suffering Spouse wore the lighter of her two winter coats (but we brought the heavier one just in case) with scarf and stocking hat. She brought blankets, too. And we always bring lawn chairs.

At South Janesville college there are a set of bleachers on the home side of the dugout; we've never sat there. We set up our chairs on the other side of the dugout, past the adjacent bullpen. If I actually sat in the chair, I'd not be able to see the players from the shoulders on up; there's a big found yellow guard that runs atop the chain-link fence. This prevents a clear view of the field, but it's great for leaning on, if you pace to the fence, and away from it, and back and forth as the game situation and pitch count dictates. The kid may be doing all the work out on the mound, but I'm fretting enough for both of us.

For you younger parents, or those who never had a kid in sports, trust me when I tell you, it was ever thus. I can go with you to a park of your own choosing, anywhere in the United States where a baseball game is being played, and I can spot the pitchers' parents. They're the ones who are writhing in pain or pacing fitfully or wringing their hands. As parents, we want our kid to do well -- but there's not one darned thing we can do to help when he's out on the mound. So we worry.

That's one reason why we don't sit in the bleachers with the other parents and girlfriends and other fans.

Another reason is that the stands are too close to the umpires.

Now -- again for you younger parents -- you will never help your kid by screaming at the umpire, even when his strike zone is consistently inconsistent.

And coaches will bench a kid sometimes just because the kid's parents get on the umpire's case. It can hurt the team to get the ump mad.

So I never, ever yell at the ump. But sometimes I can't help an involuntary sharp intake of air, or a sigh, or even a moan when a good pitch isn't called for a strike. Umpires have rabbit ears; they can hear stuff like that if you're too close to the plate. And they won't like it. So I like being down the line a bit.

If you could promise me that the kid would do well, maybe I could sit with the others. But if he struggled and if, heaven forbid, someone should get on him a bit, I might have difficulty in not responding. I would never yell at another kid on our team -- but if someone made a bonehead play or dropped an easy fly ball or uncorked a wild throw in the infield I might have that sharp intake of breath, or sigh, or moan -- all involuntarily -- and that kid's parents wouldn't like that either. And I don't blame them.

So that's why Long Suffering Spouse and I keep to ourselves at the games.

Actually, Youngest Son has had a very good spring. He came into Saturday's game with an ERA under 2.0 and a winning record. He's established himself as the number two starting pitcher on the staff. That's pretty good for a junior.

But Youngest Son also had a horrible week. His graduation plans were dashed, the education department pulled a surprise evaluation on him, and he's running a class of pledges at his fraternity and the initiation is almost upon him. The kid had to keep his cool with his professors and keep his outraged parents under control.

I was a little concerned about how he might fare. Could he shut out all these distractions and focus on his game?

He got into some trouble in the first, giving up three runs -- more in that inning than he'd given up all year so far. When he came out for the second I mentioned to Long Suffering Spouse that, if he didn't have a shutdown inning, he was going to have a tough afternoon. Long Suffering Spouse was talking by then with Youngest Son's girlfriend. She came over from the bleachers to say hello. That's pretty brave, don't you think?

If Youngest Son was in any way concerned about his girlfriend socializing with his parents he did not show it. He had his shutdown inning. He had righted the ship. He'd pushed the stress of the week outside the lines.

People wander around at these games. Parents, kids, students, neighborhood people. The women's softball game was going on the next field over and there'd been a lacrosse game over on the football field earlier. So I don't mean to say that Long Suffering Spouse and I were entirely alone. There was another man in a folding chair a little further down the left field line. He looked pretty young for a player's dad, but I think he was.

So, anyway, it was no surprise that, at some point, a toddler wandered over, clutching a cracker, now dropping it, now picking it up and sticking it right back in her mouth.

Her anxious father was close behind. He was a young man, bearded, perhaps the age of Older Daughter. My grandfather instincts kicked right in. As the little girl picked up the cracker I called over to the father, "It probably tastes better that way."

"It's an organic cracker," the father responded. "Now it's a little more so."

The little girl reminded Long Suffering Spouse and me of our own granddaughter -- she was a little thinner, perhaps, but nearly as a tall. She was a month or two older than our granddaughter and so had a couple of actual words down pat. "No," for example.

Somehow that's just about the first real word kids learn. Mama, perhaps Dada, and then "no!"

The toddler thought our lawn chairs were the most interesting things she'd ever seen. One was a table for her cracker first. Then she decided she'd like to sit in it. The father was apologetic, but we egged the kid on. Made a fuss. Cooed at her. Made faces. She was interested in our sunglasses; her father wasn't wearing any.

Both benches were lively during the game. When the other pitcher was having trouble finding the strike zone (even the umpire didn't know where it was for most of the afternoon, truth be told) our bench whooped and hollered. Their bench whooped and hollered right back when Youngest Son went back on the hill. "You see?" the father told his daughter. "Boys are crazy. Stay away from them."

Well, of course Long Suffering Spouse and I played along with that, too.

But I had to watch the game, too, and occasionally have those sharp intakes of breath, or sighs, or moans. The father asked which one of the boys was ours. The pitcher, I told him. "Oh," said the toddler's father, "he's one of my students." He stuck out his hand to introduce himself more formally.

Yes, you guessed it. This nice young man with the cute toddler was one of the education professors who turned down my son's petition to student teach in the fall.

I took his hand, of course, and tried not to blanch visibly. My wife and I had one of those moments of telepathic contact that sometimes occur with long-married couples: We somehow both resolved not to bring up our son's issues right then and there. I wanted to -- I wanted to haul off and belt the guy once I knew who he was -- but I just couldn't justify that after the amiable manner in which we'd been conversing to that point.

Our conversation continued, but we were wary now. He realized that my wife was grading papers (she's always grading papers) and asked if she also taught high school. "Elementary," my wife said, after just the briefest pause. She didn't want to say that she taught at a Catholic school in case this professor was anti-Catholic as so many at the very secular South Janesville College seem to be. And she didn't want to say junior high either, lest it trigger a discussion of the education department's sua sponte consideration -- and rejection -- of a proposal to let Youngest Son student teach in junior high next fall instead of high school.

Youngest Son looked over at us at some point and saw with whom we were speaking. "I almost lost it right there," he told us later. I promise, I told him, we did not talk business. This professor must still grade Youngest Son; Youngest Son was concerned that we might say something sufficient to goad the professor into dropping his grade. But we stayed mum. Honest.

In the end, it was the toddler that brought us together; it was the toddler who decided it was time to part. She had tired of the chair. She wanted new excitement elsewhere. Her father had no choice but to comply. We were relieved to see him go.

Seriously, though. What else could we have done? Should we have raised our issues? I could have tried to be polite -- I can be, at least for short spurts when it's really, really important. Or were we wise to not inject those issues into what had been a relaxed social encounter?

The good news is that South Janesville came back to win the game; Youngest Son went eight innings and got the win. But, for now at least, he still must expect to do his student teaching in his ninth college semester.

*Sigh*

All "schools" of education should be closed -- immediately and permanently

My wife is a Spanish teacher, and a good one. Her students go on to success in high school, which surely is the only true measure of success for a junior high teacher, isn't it? Many of her students place out of Spanish I in high school; the ones who don't routinely report that they cruise through the introductory high school Spanish course, almost all getting A's. In other words, they were well-prepared.

Youngest Son wants to be a teacher. He's playing baseball at South Janesville College (the name I made up for his actual school) and majoring in history and education. He is one course shy of completing his history major. He wants to student teach in the fall of his senior year.

After he started school -- after he took C's in a couple of introductory education courses -- the education department at SJC decided to impose a 3.0 GPA requirement for student teaching. Youngest Son is a few tenths of a point short, although he has better than a B average in his history major. He was not grandfathered in. Yesterday, the education department allegedly considered his petition to student teach next fall -- as a senior. They turned him down. On the most bogus pretext, too: He "has a ways to go" he was told "in disciplinary content." Really? He's already passed the certification content exam for history and (remember?) he has exactly one course left to complete his history degree. And the kid is still a junior.

Now I will grant you that Youngest Son is no Einstein. He's a kid, like most kids, meaning that, when he's interested and engaged he does fine and when things are dull and boring he tunes out. He was apparently indifferent (that's a polite word, isn't it?) in several of his classes freshman year. He passed everything -- that much I know, since he was invited back. But, of course, thanks to Federal privacy laws I haven't seen one of his report cards -- ever. He's the fifth of our brood to go to college; I've never seen one report card from any of them. I got tired of asking the kids -- they'd tell me this grade was posted, or that one, but nothing beyond that. And I could never actually get to the site where the grades were allegedly posted. I needed a password that the kids always neglected to give me. Privacy, you know. Somehow, though, privacy laws do not extend to tuition bills. Colleges send those to me.

Among the courses in which Younger Son floundered as a freshman were his introductory education courses. He was very discouraged. "Education classes are terrible," my wife -- the good teacher -- agreed. "They're pointless. But you have to get through them to get to the methods classes. That's when you find out whether you're cut out for teaching."

For those who may not know, "methods" classes involve getting up in front of a class and presenting lessons. Some folks have a knack for it -- my wife does, for example, and, judging by the glowing responses he's gotten so far, Youngest Son may have the knack as well.

And Youngest Son has grown up some in college, just like he's supposed to. He has his eyes on the future now, and he wants to graduate on time.

But "education" departments don't let kids graduate on time.

I'm not talking just about South Janesville College. Middle Son and Younger Daughter went to different schools in the Chicago area, both of these traditional teachers' colleges. Neither of them is a teacher -- Younger Daughter flirted with the idea for a semester until she took an introductory education course and was so repulsed she abandoned the notion -- but both of them have many friends who did pursue teaching degrees.

And they all got saddled with an extra semester. A ninth semester. Education majors 'walk' with their classmates at graduation -- but a lot of them don't get their diplomas until they return to student teach. Because education departments don't let many of their majors student teach until after they are supposed to have graduated.

And, of course, student teachers aren't really on campus -- and certainly not frequently. They teach in schools and their colleges get extra tuition.

This is a scam, a sin, a crime and a shame.

And -- pardon me -- but there are too many lazy, incompetent, stupid teachers out there for any education department at any school to claim that it is doing a good job.

Think of your own education. How many truly good, memorable teachers did you have? One? Two? I was lucky -- I can think of a half dozen without stretching -- including one teacher who saw promise in a tall, skinny kid who absolutely deserved the D he received in his introductory high school science class. That teacher decided I was bored, not stupid, and recommended me for the honors course in Chemistry and Physics (yes, I was the D student). Wonder of wonders, the teacher's recommendation was accepted and I started getting A's and B's. In the honors courses.

How about your kids? How many really good teachers have they had? How many times have your kids come back to you and said something like, "Thank goodness for Mrs. Smith! Without the foundation she provided, I never would have passed Trigonometry!"

We spend boatloads of money on public schools -- many of which are terrible, so terrible that responsible parents sacrifice their futures to send their kids to private schools. That are somewhat better. Sort of. Sometimes. (The 'best' schools in Chicago right now are probably a handful of public high schools -- e.g., North Side College Prep, Walter Payton College Prep, Jones College Prep, Whitney Young Magnet School -- but it's easier to bring explosives into the White House than it is to gain admission to one of these schools. They are that competitive.) But, on average, for normal people, people without über-clout, private schools are better in the City of Chicago -- and many Chicago suburbs -- than the publicly funded ones.

There are societal reasons that explain why so many schools fail, of course: Hunger, poverty, drugs, crime. But the poverty-stricken drug addicts of today were yesterday's public school students. Parents, or the lack thereof, may be the single most important factor in shaping the next generation (I think so, certainly) but teachers contribute to the success and failure of our offspring as well.

Meanwhile, American test scores are in free fall (professional educators' "solution"? eliminate testing!). American kids place well down the lists of achievement in math and science. In Europe, kids speak two and three languages without working up a sweat. But our kids are getting dumber here at home.

Years ago, my parents gave me a reprinted set of McGuffey Readers -- stuff they used to use to teach little kids. Compare these to the watered-down pap given to our little kids today. It's embarrassing.

No -- the problem with schools is not money. Money is being spent, but not wisely.

Let's get smart.

To begin with, let's close all the education departments and schools of education.

If someone wants to teach math, let him or her first become a mathematician. Then let him or her apprentice to a math teacher for a term -- a semester, perhaps. If he or she likes teaching, and if the kids prosper, and the senior teacher agrees -- voila! he or she is a math teacher. Oh sure, there will be many slugs and parasites that will have to age out of the school system; we can't fire them all. But even observing slugs and parasites has value: One learns what not to do. Maybe we'd need two or three terms, apprenticed to different senior teachers, to fairly evaluate a candidate's potential. But these apprentices should be paid -- not at a full teacher's pay, perhaps, but maybe half-pay. Because teaching is a knack, a skill -- a talent -- not a set of equations or theorems that can be reduced to writing and taught to any stiff off the street.

Long Suffering Spouse is encouraging Youngest Son to stick it out and suck it up and get certified. His baseball coach gave him the same advice. Get past these parasites and get the credential so you can get a job. I hope he will. I think he will. But no thanks at all to the 'education' department.

Tear it down.

Tear them all down.

How Warren Buffett proved that time travel will not exist for the foreseeable future

Mr. Buffett

Even those who don't follow sports will recall that Warren Buffett teamed with Quicken Loans to offer a billion dollars (that's billion with a "b") to anyone who could accurately predict the outcome of each and every game in this year's NCAA tournament.

Oh, sure, most people have office pools -- the winners in these may have two or three of the Final Four pegged accurately -- but Mr. Buffet's contest required entrants to correctly forecast the outcome of every game -- predict every single upset -- and identify all the winners. Mathematicians calculated odds of anywhere from 1 in a billion to something like 9.2 quintillion to 1 against -- and you had better believe all those smarty-pants mathematicians heaved a sigh of relief when the last perfect bracket was eliminated just days after the tournament began (Mercer's upset of Duke wiped out most entries).

But what does this have to do with time travel?

Think about it. Here's this immensely rich guy who made arrangements to have a billion dollars available (no, he wasn't really going to write a personal check -- you don't get to be the Oracle of Omaha by doing stupid stuff). Actually, Buffett was going to use one of his insurance companies to insure the billion and he probably had Quicken Loans, his co-sponsor, pay the premium, estimated by some at $15 million. You can probably guarantee Buffett made a profit on this deal. That's how you get to be an Oracle. Or Wizard. I hear tell he's been called both.

Anyway, Buffett's announcement makes huge news -- the Intertubes are ablaze with the billion dollar bet -- it's a PR stunt that will long be remembered... you know, well into the future?

And yet, not one of my great-great-great grandkids showed up with a cheat sheet for me to use as an entry.

In fact, nobody's did. Because if somebody's great-great-great grandson or daughter showed up with the perfect bracket, Buffett and his fellow investors would, at this point, be getting just a wee bit concerned about having to make good on the bet.

And you can imagine our little time traveler passing out investment advice after the billion is paid out, too, feathering his or her nest for a very comfortable future.

Now, this doesn't prove that time travel is impossible any more than travel into outer space proves there's no Heaven. Warren Buffett, for all his wealth and fame now, will presumably be largely forgotten in time -- it may take centuries before he is unfamiliar to historians specializing in 21st Century America, but it probably will will happen. Therefore, what this proves is that time travel will not be invented while this March Madness bet is still remembered. Time travel might be invented after Warren Buffett has faded from the footnotes of history so that no one knows what a golden opportunity the inventors of the time machine missed by not looking up their old ancestors.

Alternatively, I suppose, it could indicate that, in the future, our descendants won't care so much about money.

But that seems about as likely as correctly predicting the outcome of each and every NCAA tournament game.

I wonder if serfdom got started in sort of the same way

Younger Daughter and her husband Olaf are still living with us, but they just took another step toward what we now think of as "independence" this weekend.

They bought a car.

Olaf has been driving a car that belonged to his father, a Japanese car that wound up with something like 170,000 miles on it in the end. You could always tell when he was leaving for work. Somewhere around 5:45 a.m. there would be this enormous noise -- not a rocket taking off exactly, or a jet plane coming in for a landing, but some sort of an engine whine. A loud engine whine.

Now I'm generally not outside to see Olaf leave in the pre-dawn darkness, but I have been round the car when he's returned, or when the kids have gone out on weekends. The air around the car would be heavily perfumed with gasoline smells. Pungent. Heavy. Unmistakeable.

And the car died several times during this terrible winter, a winter which may now, finally, be loosening its grip on our collective throats.

So it was time for the car to be retired.

The kids bought another Japanese car, a Subaru, one allegedly made in Indiana.

I'm old and I don't understand these things. But my kids assure me that Japanese cars are often more American-made than cars with American name-plates. "My Ford Fusion was built in Mexico," Middle Son assured me, when I raised the apparently quaint and outmoded notion that buying foreign cars puts Americans out of work.

Younger Daughter and her husband were able to put down a fair down payment on the car (as opposed to Middle Son who bought his car on a smile and a promise that he was about to start a long-delayed job). As a result, Younger Daughter and Olaf have fairly favorable finance terms, at very low interest.

But there will be payments. Hefty payments.

In our confused world, this is apparently a good thing. Indeed, Olaf -- with his good job and decent income -- is deemed to have worse credit than my daughter who has picked up a couple of freelance projects here and there but mostly stays at home with my granddaughter. But she has large debt -- college loans, in particular -- and a high FICO score while Olaf, who got scholarships to pay for nearly all of his college tuition, has no significant debt and a lower FICO score.

Huh?

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we can now explain how the Great Recession happened: Bankers are out of their ever-loving minds if they think that my essentially unemployed daughter is a better credit risk than her salaried husband.

The really good news from this weekend's car purchase is that Olaf and my daughter did not have to raid their savings account in order to come up with the down payment on the car. So they are still able to save for their own house -- which will, of course, come with an enormous mortgage and huge monthly obligations.

It occurred to me, thinking about this, that each milestone of maturity and adulthood these days seems to carry with it a greater and greater voluntary assumption of financial peril.

No one goes out and buys a car. They put down something -- and take on debt. No one goes out and buys a house either -- there's a down payment, and a mortgage, and a Sword of Damocles that is suspended over the new homeowners' heads. You say it was ever thus -- but I'm not so sure. Incomes were considerably lower 50 or 100 years ago, but houses and farms and vehicles and education were cheaper, too -- and the costs of these necessities have risen far faster than our incomes.

Now there are a few people -- bankers, presumably -- who can pay cash. Maybe drug dealers. Some professional athletes or entertainers. Are we seeing a new 'nobility' coalescing before us? Are the rest of us doomed to continually lower our expectations, staggered over by an increased debt burden? Are we seeing the rise of a modern serfdom here -- with most of us totally dependent on a wealthy few who dole out chattels and services for which the rest of us can never fully pay?

I tried to congratulate Olaf on his new purchase. I did. It looks like a nice car. But independence? It's starting to look like we're becoming increasingly resigned to permanent dependence.

Hello, neglected blog

Yes, I know it's been awhile since I visited. I'm sorry.

I haven't abandoned the online world. Actually, I've posted at least 100 posts since anything last appeared here -- but these were on my real-world blogs, under my own name.

I'd explain, but the explanation would give away my secret identity and, of course, we can't have that now, can we?

I miss this blog, but the world intervenes.

Indeed, I've just finished printing up a bunch of cases for me to read on the train tonight -- if I can find a seat (by no means certain) -- so I can work on an appellate brief I've promised... and abandoned... and promised again... while I was busy working on the real life blogs.

It's a funny thing. I don't get paid to blog, but there's some psychic satisfaction in the act of writing. I'm supposed to make my living from the practice of law -- but I too seldom get paid. And almost never without a struggle. Meanwhile, people -- some of them Important People -- tell me they like my real-life blog. I can't buy groceries with compliments, of course, but it provides satisfaction in a way that a check doesn't. Especially when I've had to beg and scrape and whimper and plead and yell and scream and beg some more to finally, eventually, at long last get that check.

Thank goodness for family to keep one's priorities in order. Not only do they spend the money I bring home much faster than I can bring it home -- thereby reminding me to keep begging and whining, etc. -- they resolutely refuse to see any value or utility in my real-life blog, even when I showed them a recent email from one of the aforementioned Important People thanking me for my efforts. "That's nice," Younger Daughter said, handing it back to me, "but where is the remote for the TV?" "That's nice," said Long Suffering Spouse, "but can he get you a job that pays money?"

Cassandra, I say. A prophet is always without honor in his own country, I say. They are unimpressed.

But I should be able to visit more often soon.

That way, you can soon be unimpressed again, too.

A guest post from the Baby to Named Later: Getting down to really basic stuff

I found another note from my granddaughter, this one tucked in the pocket of my winter coat. My granddaughter's printing remains a challenge, but I have endeavored to faithfully transcribe what she wrote.

Well, Grampy, this is the first note I've been able to leave you in quite a while. It's not because I have writer's block. I'm just trying not to bust your secret blog wide open. Ever since I learned to walk reliably I am almost always being followed. I sure can't leave anything beneath the high chair anymore; Mom would smoke that out in a second. (She got wise to my storing food under the chair for later consumption, too.)

I'm 16 months old now and, I have to tell you, getting old is tough.

When does this teething stuff end?

The other day Mom asked you that very question. I wasn't thrilled with your answer. "In her case," you said, indicating me, "it may never end. After all her regular teeth come in, she may start on a second row."

You were kidding, Grampy. Right?

I'm not always sure.

I am becoming increasingly sure that you're going to get saddled with 'Grampy' as your new name. It's kind of a contraction of Grandpa and Grumpy. Somehow, it seems to fit.

But you're right not to blame me for this handle.

Oh, Mom and Grandma (Grammy?) are promoting the idea that I started it because, sometimes, when you come home, I say g-g-g-g-g-g. (My ability to express myself vocally has a ways to go to catch up with my writing ability.)

They told you that I was trying to say Grampy but you said it might be that I'm just imitating the noise you make when you down your first vodka in the evening. Your explanation certainly fits the facts.

One of the problems of constant teething is that, sometimes, the pain gets to me. I get, shall we say, a little irritable. [A little irritable? She gets rigid like a board and screams like a banshee -- Ed.] Sometimes ice chips help. Sometimes I just need to bite things. Spoons. Keys. But, when all else fails, Mom has to give me medicine. That stops the pain, or at least numbs it, but it also stops other, er, processes that Mom seems to think are really important.

As a result, Mom has given me enough prune juice to flood a small city. It gets tiresome after a while.

And then, when things finally do get moving again, and I go wandering off for a little private time, one of you is always following me.

Just because I get into things you say I shouldn't. The pantry, for instance. Mom -- that traitor -- took a picture of me after I pulled down the Rice Krispies box out of the pantry and dumped it all over the floor. Then she sent you the picture. Look, I was hungry, OK? And I know you don't want me messing with your computer, but I've figured out how to take it out of 'sleep mode' and I've pretty much puzzled out how a mouse works. Soon I'll be able to get my own Elmo videos and not have to wait for you grownups to figure out what I require. Of course, Mom had to take a picture of me fiddling with the computer, too. Busted again.

But we were talking about something else. Eventually, whoever's following me -- you, Daddy, Mom, Grammy -- figures out that I need a little time alone -- but, by that time, too often, the opportunity has passed. And nothing else. (Who wants an audience for that sort of thing?)

I've tried dragging a book with me when I head into the living room for a little alone time. You always seem to have a book or magazine with you when you do you-know-what. I frankly don't see why. It doesn't make anything happen faster. I thought you might do it so everyone else knows not to follow you. But they don't follow you around the house the same way they follow me, do they?

Sometimes I like to be followed. Chased, even. I run around a loop through the old den and the new den and the kitchen and the dining room and I want someone to follow me. (And you'd better, because I'll empty the recycling if you don't hide it, or look for food in the garbage if you don't put the can behind the gate going to the basement, or empty one of the cabinets of pots and pans if you don't.)

Of course, you've got this game all figured out. You catch me -- you block me with one hand when I try and run past your recliner and you pull and tug and I laugh and giggle until I start to get aggravated and then you let me go. "Oh!" you say, "She got away again!" But I know you let me go on purpose. And then Mom or Dad chases me. You stay in your chair, watching TV, until I come around again. "Not this time," you say -- but you know, and I know, that you'll let me go again in a few seconds. And off Mom or Dad will go again. I think that's pretty sneaky, Grampy. Were you always like that?

Paper still has a place in the world

I like my tablet and I've reached a rapprochement with my smart phone. I've been blogging, off and on, for almost a decade (this is, after all, my Second Effort). So I'm not totally tech-averse. I'm not a doctrinaire Luddite, whatever my kids may tell you.

Still, my desk at the Undisclosed Location is choked with paper. Stacked high. I still find I read better on paper than I do on the screen. I read newspapers. I read books. No one steals a newspaper or book from you on the el going home; iPhone users have to be aware of "Apple pickers."

Perhaps that explains why I really laughed out loud when I saw this commercial online this morning. Perhaps no explanation is really needed.

Irrational exuberance in getting from Point A to Point B

A major problem with a real winter like this one -- over and above survival, I mean -- is that we who are experiencing it first-hand are taking pride in accomplishing the things we'd do every single day regardless of the weather. Like showing up to work, I mean.

Take this morning, for example. We had a half foot of lake effect snow that slammed us last night, just as Polar Vortex II was settling over the Chicago area. (The sequels are never as good as the originals, are they? This morning it was a comparatively balmy 2̊ F, not the nearly -20̊ like we had on January 6.)

And we had a full foot of snow on the night of January 4-5, to go along with the foot we picked up for New Year's, so six inches of partly cloudy looks like nothing at all.

The difference is that, on the 5th, before the real cold set in, we had pretty much all day to shovel. This morning, we were shoveling in the cold.

But, anyway, here I am at the Undisclosed Location; the proof is before you on your screen.

And I feel like I've done my day's work already.

I don't think I'm the only one who feels like this.

Indeed, I've seen a number of reports from people who are lamenting the harshness of this winter and pining for spring. In my mind, I want to shout at all of them, Get a grip! It's still January, people! (The Blizzard of '67 was at the end of January, you'll recall. And Snowpocalypse hit on Groundhog's Day 2011.) But the rest of me kind of agrees with my whiny neighbors.

Scientists, of course, are blaming all this on global warming.

And -- my documented skepticism about the degree to which humans impact climate change except on a local level notwithstanding -- I'm inclined to agree with them.

We've had well over 40" of snow in Chicago this year so far. That's already above our normal average of 38" for the entire Fall, Winter and Spring season from October to May. Yes, it can snow in Chicago in May; a trace of snow has been recorded here as late as June. (That was in 1910, however. It's only 'recent' if you figure it as an event occurring after the Cubs last won the World Series....)

Last year at this time, according to the news last night, we'd had less than an inch and a half of snow officially (February and March did their best to pick up the slack, as I recall). On the other hand, although a trace fell in October 2012, there was no snow of an inch or more in Chicago for over 319 days last year.

A body could get used to that. I did get used to that and, judging by the wailing and gnashing of teeth hereabouts, a lot of folks did, too.

Our weather this winter is not unprecedented; it's well within the range of normal in my lifetime. But because it hasn't happened recently, for many people it's as if this is all new.

It isn't.

Global warming?

Maybe.

I don't mean that global warming is causing it to snow or not snow. I can't prove that one way or the other. But all this talk of global warming has made wimps of us all. I can prove that, just by my smug satisfaction at merely making it into the office....

Updated for your convenience

The good news about my blogging for over eight years now is that, no matter how long you've been reading Second Effort, you probably haven't seen everything I've put on offer. (While that may actually be a good thing, we'll defer taking up that question to a different day.) Anyway, if click over here and there's nothing new, there's no reason to go away mad or stop your subscription or delete your bookmark. Pick a month and a year in the archives and, hopefully, you'll soon find something not entirely stale which you'd not read previously and which you might actually enjoy.

For the last couple of years, I've always kept a list of posts up in the Sidebar that visitors might find interesting. (I'm ever hopeful.) Until this morning, I had a list of Christmas-themed posts.

It is, of course, time to take down the Christmas decorations. It's really too soon to put up my list of baseball posts. I could put my football posts back up, I suppose (it is NFL playoff season), but instead I made this list -- a potpourri, as it were -- of essays on work and family and some larger topics. I hope one or more of these may be to your liking. Meanwhile, I have to get some actual work done today.

• Speaking ill of the living: business development in the modern age (November 2008)
• Mr. Language Curmudgeon defines “martyr” (August 2010)
• For $1,000, Curmudgeon gets a free lunch (October 2012)
• What is America? (December 2010)
• Landlords always take out the garbage and other tall tales I have learned (November 2007)
• My first oral argument (April 2007)
• Why the iPad so terrifies Curmudgeon (April 2010)
• Curmudgeon has a grand time getting the family van repaired (May 2011)
• There's a mouse in the house (September 2011)
• On mushrooms, White Castle, and other dodges (March 2011)
• Curmudgeon on insurance coverage litigation (April 2012)
• Lincoln, circuit riding, civility... and sanctions (August 2009)
• Walter – or how I almost lost my first legal job before I started (November 2006)
• Toolmaking ability and the perils of modern law practice (November 2006)
• Oldest Son’s interview brings back memories – really, really bad ones (October 2006)
• From the archives, a cautionary tale: (December 2005)
• Father’s Day at the Curmudgeon Manse (June 2013)

The Three Kings have come and gone and we still haven't sent out any Christmas cards

The 12 Days of Christmas are over. It was Greek Christmas this past Tuesday. By any standard you can articulate, the Christmas season has come and gone.

Not only did we not take a family Christmas picture this year, we didn't even send out one card. I didn't open anyone else's Christmas card myself either; a couple were opened by others and called to my attention, but I don't like to look at other people's Christmas cards until I've sent my own. So this year I just didn't look.

*Sigh* We'll just have to do better next year.

Part of it, I suppose, is that with the baby in the house, we spend a more of our evenings defending our territory than in any productive pursuit.

That grandbaby is a one-toddler engine of destruction. Of course, Long Suffering Spouse and I didn't move to our present house until Youngest Son was already three. We never child-proofed the "new" house (Youngest Son will turn 21 next month) because we didn't have to. And in those days we didn't have cords for charging phones and tablets either. We had a desktop computer, but that was just one thing to defend.

One of our five kids took pinking shears to a bedspread at some point, and another liked to raid the bathroom cabinet and make mountains out of bath powder. In the hallway. But these things took place at the old house.

The Baby to Be Named Later has discovered bathrooms herself and, in particular, toilet paper. Unrolling toilet paper is one of her favorite things in the whole world. And she's figured out that no one can hear her when she does it. Except when she squeals with unrestrained delight at her achievement, of course.

By then it's too late.

And the baby knows that smartphones and tablets show Elmo and Big Bird videos. All she has to do is ask (she thinks) and, whenever she sees a smartphone or tablet, she does ask. Loudly. Insistently.

This has caused some modifications in our usual behavior.

In other houses it might seem strange to see a 20-year old wrapped in a blanket and surreptitiously glancing down and fingering something within. (It might seem a little creepy, too, come to think of it.) But at our house the other night, for example, Youngest Son was just trying to text constantly like any other self-respecting college student -- without his niece realizing that he was on a phone.

I have DVDs on one shelf in the den and CDs on another. The baby thinks these are great for rearranging. She has liberated us from the stifling concept of storing things in mere alphabetical order.

Well, sure, you say, put things up. Put them out of the baby's reach.

But this is a big baby and she's got a big reach. And you can't put everything up. We have blocked some shelves. We've blocked some cabinets and locked others -- but some are left unlocked because the baby has to play with something, right?

I mean, if we closed off all the kitchen cabinets -- denying her access to the pots and pans and plastic storage containers -- she might be stuck playing with her million and one toys. Why, that would be barbarous!

So, unless your foot is no longer than about five inches, walking anywhere in the house can be interesting. I've had five kids; I've been pretty good at negotiating the minefield. Of course I was more agile when I was younger.

And then there's eating.

We've never been a sit-at-the-dining-room table sort of family, or even a sit-at-the-kitchen-table sort of family (at least, we haven't since our own kids were little). Even way back then, I generally did not eat with the family because I got home so late from work. (The kids grew up never knowing that their father was a picky eater. Long Suffering Spouse was -- and is -- a genius. And Oldest Son's finicky palate? That's conclusive proof of nature over nurture. My wife should win the Nobel Prize for that one alone.)

Anyway, as school and jobs and outside interests took over, the kids ate at odd hours, too.

So, in these later days, we are accustomed to eating whenever, and generally in front of the TV in the den.

This has provided a goldmine of opportunity for the Baby to Be Named Later. She's noticed, when we babysit her aunt and uncle's dogs, that the animals beg for table scraps. She's now the most insistent beggar there is. I can be eating tuna fish casserole and minding my own business when all of a sudden someone is demanding my peas, please. I always ask Younger Daughter whether I should comply with these demands, and to what extent, and I do pretty much as she says. She's the mom, after all. But, when she says no, you'd think I had a tablet in my lap and was refusing to watch The Elmo Song for the nine millionth time.

Once I made the mistake of trying to eat dinner while reading on a tablet.

Never, ever again.

I suppose this sounds like a litany of complaints. In print, on your screen, it may seem like a grouchy old guy carping and not affectionate at all.

But that's not my intent.

Last night Younger Daughter and Olaf had to make an emergency grocery run. Younger Daughter was apologetic about it -- indeed, she could have gone and returned in the time she spent apologizing. But there was nothing to apologize for.

Younger Daughter and Olaf had attended to the Level 1 Hazmat cleanup of the baby, and changed her clothes (she's still teething, you know) and, although she was worried that Vesuvius might erupt again, it really wasn't going to make any difference... even if the there was another toxic spill I was pretty sure we could contain the damage until the baby's parents returned. Just as long as they finally got going.

Eventually, Younger Daughter corralled the kid and brought her into the den. I was in my recliner. I'd just finished eating (I can wolf it down when I have to). Younger Daughter plopped the kid on my lap and the baby simply snuggled in for the whole 45 minutes or so that her parents were gone. She didn't try to escape more than a couple of times, and then only half-heartedly. Long Suffering Spouse, nodding off in her chair, tossed me one of the baby's blankets and the child was content. As Long Suffering Spouse faded out, the baby settled in.

"She's very comfortable with us," Long Suffering Spouse observed.

"She is," I agreed as I started Play With Me Sesame on the TV's On-Demand menu. (Sure it's cheating, but, hey, we're grandparents. We need that little extra edge.)

"Maybe there's something to be said for multi-generational households," my wife said sleepily.

"I would never have guessed it a few years ago," I said.

Cookie Monster sang C is for Cookie, That's Good Enough for Me.

The baby squealed with happiness.

But this post was about how we didn't send out Christmas cards this year. Well, things have been kind of busy. With a 15-month old toddler in the house, even if I'm only the grandpa, how could it be otherwise?

No self-esteem problems here

This is the English language business card of Chinese multimillionaire Chen Guangbiao, who recently tried (and failed) to buy the New York Times.

Chen is not a man afflicted with the sin of false modesty, not where his business card touts him as China's most influential person and most prominent philanthropist -- and a moral leader besides. And so forth and so on....

The Yahoo! News article, by Mike Krumboltz, from which I grabbed the accompanying image, cites a Business Insider report estimating Chen's wealth at $740 million.

With that kind of money, Krumboltz writes, Chen can print any kind of business card he likes. Actually, the last time I printed up business cards (black and white, no picture), it cost about $70. I suppose cards like these would cost a little more -- but not millions. Therefore, you too can probably afford a business card just as loud and proud as Chen Guangbiao's.

But could you ever imagine giving it to anyone?

Me neither.

Curmudgeon swirling in the Polar Vortex with mixed opinions

The Chicago Public Schools are closed again today, for a second day in a row, because of the killer cold snap that's gripping the Midwest and much of the rest of the country besides.

All the Archdiocesan grammar schools were closed in Cook and Lake Counties yesterday, and most of the high schools as well. Local colleges and universities canceled classes. Most local museums were closed. The Lincoln Park Zoo was open, but planned to close early; Brookfield Zoo was closed entirely. (The polar bears and American bison can stand these temperatures, a zoo official explained, but most of the rest of the animals could not.) Most local officials were encouraging people to stay home yesterday. Except for those angling for face time on the local newscasts, many public servants stayed home yesterday, too.

Long Suffering Spouse was supposed to start school yesterday -- but, as noted, school was closed. No 8th grader was more giddy than my bride at the prospect of extending Christmas break another day.

"It's a mistake," I harrumphed.

"Why?" my wife asked.

"They're all closing down for the wrong reason," I said. We haven't had this kind of really cold weather here in Chicago for a long time -- but it is not unprecedented. As I told the kids, Long Suffering Spouse and I had been out at the bar on January 10, 1982, when the temperature sank to -26̊ F. The radio was on at the bar, as I recall, and when the announcer recited the temperature all of us stupid enough to be out started cheering like we'd accomplished some great feat. Of course, I was 32 years younger then. I continued explaining things to my wife. "If they're going to close everything just because it's too cold, they'll have to do it again tomorrow."

"Why? The temperature is supposed to get above zero on Tuesday."

"But it won't start there. It'll be ten below again, at least, when the kids are supposed to be going to school. If it's too cold for them to venture out today, why will tomorrow morning be different?"

Sure enough, darn near everything that was closed yesterday is closed again this morning. They'd kind of painted themselves into a corner on this.

And it's not the dumbest idea to close down in these extreme conditions, especially in the modern world when we can do (or allegedly do) so much from home. Road salt doesn't work so well when the temperature gets down below 10̊ F. Brave, but ignorant souls who started to drive to work this morning spun out in sufficient numbers on bridges and ramps to thoroughly clog our expressway system despite the reduced volume of cars.

But not everything was closed, even yesterday. I had court yesterday morning. Courts were open. (The Cook County Sheriff decided it was too cold to bring prisoners to court, but that wouldn't affect the operation of the civil courts where I practice.)

I was supposed to be out in the suburbs yesterday so I had to drive. I gave the family van a long time to warm up before forcing it into action. It still wasn't very pleased with me. The thermometer inside the car said the temperature outside was as cold as -18̊ -- and never warmer than -14̊ F. Still, the Tollway was passable. Even with the strong breezes yesterday there were at least ruts of pavement showing in every lane. Of course, one did have to get to the Tollway. The ramps were treacherous. And every stop sign, every stop light on the way to and from the Tollway was an adventure: The van wanted to fishtail every time I started or stopped, but I kept it largely under control.

Perhaps surprisingly, everyone who was supposed to be at court on my matters yesterday was present and accounted for. Like the much younger Curmudgeon in the bar in 1982, I felt like I'd accomplished something, just by getting there too.

The reason that driving was (and remains) so challenging (and, in particular, the reason that I am so concerned about the melting properties of road salt) was that, in addition to the cold, we were still digging out from two feet of snow that fell in the Chicago area since Tuesday afternoon. The first foot fell Tuesday and Wednesday; the other foot dropped Saturday evening and Sunday.

If I'd been made philosopher king for the day, I might have canceled everything on Monday -- but Monday only -- because of the snow clean-up. A foot of snow, particularly if it comes at rush hour, can shut Chicago down. The clean-up of this latest snowfall, even though it fell on the weekend, would understandably take longer because of the extreme cold that followed the snow, and it has, as the drivers spinning out this morning can attest.

But this business of shutting down schools and some businesses and government offices but not the courts and a lot of other businesses is just plain aggravating. I finished my business in court yesterday and went home for lunch; I didn't bother trying to go downtown after that. I figured I could work from home. I retrieved my phone calls and even connected -- eventually -- with most of the people who'd called and emailed me during the day.

But I missed the one call I really needed to get. He called around 4:00 p.m. I probably last checked my office voice mail about five minutes before he called. I was still working my cell phone, though, returning the calls I'd already retrieved. At 5:00 p.m., I was, I thought, the good man, at rest at last from his labors. It was around this time, also, that the call finally came for my wife advising (as I knew would have to be the case, given the pretext offered Monday) that school would not be open tomorrow either. Again, she was giddy. I'm happy for her -- but the courts are open again today, too.

I was not a happy camper weighed down by my Zero King this morning. But I made it to court on time this morning and, thereafter, to the Undisclosed Location. I spoke -- too late! -- with the man who called at 4:00 p.m. I'll be screwing around the rest of the day trying to straighten that out. But the Holidaze, two feet of snow and temperatures of nearly 20 below can undermine even well-formed plans.

You may not be what you eat, but you think what you drink!

Reid Wilson reports, in the December 31 Washington Post, that what you like to drink says a lot about who you'll vote for, and how regularly you'll go to the polls. The article, entitled What your favorite drink says about your politics, in one chart," provides a fascinating graphic which I have borrowed for the occasion and reproduce above. (Reid's article credits the graphic to Jennifer Dube, National Media Research Planning and Placement LLC.)

Both Democratic and Republican wine drinkers are more likely to turn out at the polls than consumers of stronger spirits (perhaps because it's easier to get out of bed on Election Day if you've had nothing stronger than a glass of wine the night before).

What caught my attention, though, was that the brands I favor fall on both sides of the Great Divide, and bunch up right in the middle besides: I really do have a thirst for bipartisanism. How about you?

Aren't we doing New Year's all wrong?

Despite Fred and Ginger gracing this post, I'm not lamenting the decline of white tie and tails as evening wear and the very elegant and sophisticated nightclub scene that exists now only in Fred and Ginger's old movies.

I've probably groused about that before.

Today, however, it occurs to me that we're doing this New Year's thing all wrong: For a country allegedly founded upon (and infatuated with) the Protestant work ethic (even American Catholics, Muslims, Jews and atheists are expected to have a good PWE) why is it that we have tomorrow off?

I mean... shouldn't we start the new year hitting the ground running at full speed ahead? Isn't taking New Year's Day off sort of setting a bad example for the rest of the year?

I'll be thinking about this tomorrow. But I still won't come into the office.

Then again, I probably have a bad attitude....

Duck Dynasty: Why is anyone surprised that a weird character on a "reality" TV show has politically incorrect opinions?

I've never watched Duck Dynasty and nothing I've seen or heard or read in the last day or two suggests that I would ever want to.

But let me ask this: Why is anyone surprised? Why is anyone outraged? A&E (which used to provide actually watchable TV programming, several years ago) found a weird-looking family that makes duck calls in the swampy backwoods of Louisiana and created a "reality" TV show about their weird lives, hunting, fishing and making duck calls. Phil Robertson, the gentleman pictured here, is the 67-year old "patriarch" of the clan. Have I gotten anything wrong so far?

Now take just one more glance at Mr. Robertson. Why would anyone think that Mr. Robertson's views would be compatible with those of the persons employed by the New York ad agencies who buy time on reality TV shows?

Each can hardly believe the other is a citizen of the same country.

Now another question: What would GQ, a magazine that purports to cater to men interested in style and fashion, want from an interview with the Duck Dynasty clan?

Isn't that one an easy one to answer? Drew Magery's article for the January issue of GQ, titled (at least online), "What the Duck?," may not have been intended as a hatchet job, but it was at least intended to give the smart, well-dressed metrosexual readers of GQ something to laugh at and people to make fun of. Men who buy a magazine that features articles like "Women are Judging Your Nails" are not interested in duck hunting or backwoods philosophy per se.

Mr. Magery addressed the controversy in a Wednesday post on Deadspin. He wrote, in part, "[W]henever I go deep into the heart of 'MERICA * * * I'm always careful not to be the sneering LIBRUL who ventures into red-state territory just to rip on all the people there. That would be unfair, predictable, and dickish." No, sir. Mr. Magery just writes what he sees -- and his audience does the ripping for him.

Mind you, I'm not defending Mr. Robertson. Granted, he has a right to his views, even though I may disagree with some or all of them. However, I completely understand and agree that the folks who run A&E have a right to "suspend" Mr. Robertson for offending the New Yorkers who buy ad time -- it's their network and they are privileged to do with it as they wish. Even if they daily make TV a far worse, far more vast wasteland than Newton Minow's worst nightmare prediction. I'm not even criticizing GQ. They came up with a scheme to get some free publicity and sell some magazines. That's the American way, right? And Mr. Magery got paid to write a story. Good for him.

No.

The only one I think is open to criticism here is the the PR genius who told the Robertson family that doing this GQ story would be a good idea. He or she would best be advised to get out of town quickly: Don't those Robertsons all have guns and crossbows and such?

Curmudgeon a Grinch, Scrooge, or just a grouch? I report -- you decide

"It's that time of year," the song goes, "when the world falls in love. Every song you hear seems to say, 'Merry Christmas,' may your New Year's dreams come true."

But I'm not waltzing through the Christmas season.

Oh, I like the lights and the carols well enough.

But my Long Suffering Spouse and I are going to have to go shopping tomorrow.

I am not looking forward to spending money we don't have, on people we don't particularly like, to buy things they won't need and don't want.

"What can we do about it?" my wife tries to reason with me. "They're family."

I have suggested that we buy everyone -- including our own kids, for that matter -- an orange and a pair of socks. That's traditional, isn't it? And we won't significantly increase our credit card debt in the process.

I have, in fact, suggested this once too often, at least, for my own good. Recently, as my wife brought up the subject of Christmas shopping, I had just opened my mouth when she told me to knock it off.

Do not get me wrong.

My wife is the exact opposite of a spendthrift.

We live frugally, as we must, and Long Suffering Spouse gamely muddles along with practical restrictions I don't think either of our daughters would possibly accept.

It's just that, at Christmas, my wife feels the need to buy stuff for her sister Josephine and her sister's kids and even her sister's still fairly-new husband, Ferdinand. "We didn't buy any birthday presents," she reminds me, "or graduation gifts" (two of Josephine's kids graduated this year, one from college, the other from grammar school). "And they'll buy us stuff," she says, playing her best card last.

"We could agree not to buy each other anything, you know," I pointed out -- but Long Suffering Spouse would actually have to speak with her sister to negotiate such an arrangement. She doesn't want to do that. "Besides," she said, "Abuela wouldn't like it."

Game, set, and match to Long Suffering Spouse.

Still I find myself agreeing with Sir Michael Caine, who portrayed Ebeneezer Scrooge in The Muppet Christmas Carol (one of my wife's favorite holiday movies). Caine snarls at Bob Cratchit (Kermit), "Christmas is a very busy time for us, Mr. Cratchit. People preparing feasts, giving parties, spending the mortgage money on frivolities. One might say that December is the foreclosure season. Harvest time for the money-lenders."

Just because ol' Ebeneezer is a bad guy doesn't mean he's wrong, does it?

And what's wrong with an orange and a pair of socks anyway? Our TV died last month. We had to replace it. The DVD/VCR died two nights ago. That's something we'll presumably come home with tomorrow. We'll have buckets out in the den to catch the leaks from the roof tonight (we're having a bit of a thaw at the moment here in Chicago -- good news, mostly, except for the leaky roof). I'd love to replace the computer in the den -- it's eight years old now and the CD drive stopped working six months ago (there's still one viable URL port). Our kitchen is falling apart -- in fact, we've deferred so much maintenance for so long (it was suggested that we replace the furnace when we moved in -- 17 years ago -- and we never have), that it's hard to say where we should start to fix things. If we could start.

My law practice stinks -- it takes a lot of time and returns little. I will make more than my Catholic school teacher wife this year -- I think -- but not much more. Things are actually better now than they've been for awhile. I just moved a huge balance from one credit card to another, taking advantage of an interest free offer -- saving myself $250 a month just in interest payments on that one account.

I have reason to hope things will continue to get better.

But why do I have to have this annual reminder of just how far I've fallen -- and how far I must climb to get back up?

I don't think that makes me the Grinch. I don't think it even makes me Scrooge -- the three demons that torture my dreams aren't the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future but rather MasterCard, Visa and American Express.

But, you know, it's hard not to say "Bah Humbug."

I will adjust my attitude, I hope, before heading out on the morrow with Long Suffering Spouse.

But, seriously, what is wrong with an orange and a pair of socks?

On the passing of Larry Lujack

The passing of a radio DJ is seldom national news, and I was thinking that Larry Lujack's death yesterday from cancer at 73 probably wouldn't be.

But it is. No less than überblogger Ken Levine mourns the passage of the one, the only Superjock this morning.

I picked up my youngest son from college yesterday -- before the news of Lujack's death -- and somehow we got to talking about the passage of time. I think it was a sign advertising places in the high school class of 2018 (next fall's freshmen, believe it or not) that got Youngest Son going. "Can you believe it?" he asked. "2018 already?"

This coming year, I told him, 2014, marks 40 years since I graduated high school. "How do you think I feel?" I asked.

As bad as I felt at that moment, I felt much worse when Robert Feder broke the news about ol' Uncle Lar.

Uncle Lar was still Suprejock -- WCFL, the Voice of Labor, recast itself as "SuperCFL" in honor of their most valuable property -- when I was in high school. Superjock on WCFL and Bob Sirott on WLS were, if I recall correctly, the voices of afternoon drive 40 years ago and every new driver knew how to push the buttons on the AM radio to switch between 890 and 1000 without taking their eyes off the road. Button pushing might be prompted by a bad song -- there were some truly awful songs in heavy rotation on both stations 40 years ago -- or by "zit cream" commercials. But the "bits" between the songs were the really good stuff.

Sirott was the enfant terrible, the challenger. Lujack was the grizzled, bitter, burned-out veteran. His deep, deliberate, laconic delivery was unique, and seemingly entirely inappropriate to rock 'n' roll (Levine explains it better in his piece than I can but, then, he's a former DJ as well as a better writer). But whatever Lujack was doing, it worked for him.

A couple of years after I graduated high school, WCFL changed formats, going from Top 40 to elevator music. The station didn't fire Lujack, however, and he wouldn't quit. Here is how he announced the format switch.



Lujack would go back to WLS later -- his "Animal Stories" with "Little Snot-Nosed Tommy" Edwards are being remembered a lot this morning. I tuned in for them, too, even after I'd otherwise grown out of the Top 40 format.

All too soon, however, in 1987, Lujack retired, moving out west eventually. Except for a six month stint on FM and a reunion with Edwards that lasted a few years on what wasn't much more than a 10-watt AM station in the early 2000s, Lujack stayed retired. But he stayed with us, too.

Nine or 10 years ago, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of our parish, I was asked to do the voiceover for the commemorative video. The parish hired a real filmmaker and everything -- her brother has directed several popular Disney features -- and she booked some studio time for me to come in and read the script.

Well.

This was the first time I'd been in a real studio, with a professional microphone and headphones and all the knobs and dials I was told not to touch on pain of death. But when we were doing sound checks, I did my best Larry Lujack imitation. It was, presumably, an awful imitation. But imitation, even awful imitation, is the most sincere form of flattery.

R.I.P. Mr. Lujack. I hope today you have a whole lot more of Jesus... and all the rock 'n' roll you may want.

(Chicagoans will catch the reference; the rest of you... well....)

I seem to have forgotten my Blogiversary....

This blog first appeared on December 7, 2005... so this would be (would have been) my 8th Blogiversary.

I've never been a big one for anniversaries.

Money seems to know how to make itself scarce when Big Days loom on the calendar -- birthdays, anniversaries... Christmas. But I can't say I forgot my Blogiversary because I didn't want to buy myself a present, can I?

One doesn't give presents for blogiversaries anyway. Not as far as I know.

Still, 8 years. A milestone, surely. A lot of words from my keyboard. Many of them -- most of them, really -- mine (OK, can't say quite the same thing about the illustrations... I've stolen most of those).

I just updated the blog Sidebar to reflect past Christmas posts. The list is by no means exhaustive. Exhausting, perhaps. I'd prefer to think that you might find at least some of them entertaining however.

My real-world blog takes up most of my blogging time these days. I get more traffic there. But I'm not nearly as funny there.

At least, not intentionally.

I think I'd better stop now....

Just in time for holiday daydreaming: Kim Jong-Un executes his uncle

The AP is reporting that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has executed his once-powerful uncle Jang Song-thaek.

The linked AP article quotes liberally from the North Korean press announcement, which is written in that breathless, inimitable North Korean style:

"Against the backdrop of these shouts rocking the country [demanding that stern judgment be "meted out to the anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional elements"], a special military tribunal of the DPRK Ministry of State Security was held on December 12 against traitor for all ages Jang Song Thaek."

Jang was accused of possessing "...a wild ambition to grab the supreme power of our party and state." He was found to be "...despicable human scum .... [who] worse than a dog, perpetrated thrice-cursed acts of treachery in betrayal of such profound trust and warmest paternal love shown by the party and the leader for him.

Kim and his family presumably don't celebrate Christmas. It's probably just as well. In the present circumstances, this could be pretty awkward. Can you imagine the rather forced small talk during dinner? Unless, of course, Kim's aunt really disliked her husband.

I'm pretty sure that I've never wanted to execute any of my relatives. I only had two uncles; I liked both of them. I suppose if we broaden the net out to include in-laws and their spouses, there are a few of whom I'm not terribly fond. Take Josephine's current husband Ferdinand, for instance. I prefer to drink heavily before having any interaction with him whatsoever, but (as Long Suffering Spouse warns me every Christmas Eve) it's a fine line between comfortably numb and in vino veritas. The stress of Nochebuena dinner can be enormous.

Still, I don't suppose I'd want Ferdinand executed. Banished, maybe.

I suppose I might get more bloody-minded were I suddenly given absolute power. Lord Acton's old saw about absolute power corrupting absolutely seems to have been proved over and over again. Thus, if I ever became Dear Leader, one of my ex-law partners would be best advised to leave town in a hurry. But that's only one out of a great many.

I wonder what ol' Uncle Jang did to so offend his nephew.

Then again, I wonder whether any of my extended family would want me to suffer the same fate as ol' Uncle Jang were any of them to become Dear Leader. It's a sobering thought....

The Big Red "A" is for Atheist

Perhaps this story has made the national news. At the east end of the Daley Center Plaza, wedged in between the skyscraping Hanukkah Menorah and the giant Nativity Scene is a festive Big Red "A," with a sign in front wishing passersby a Happy Winter Solstice.

A group of atheists thought they would be clever and obtain the permits necessary to put up this display and thereby thumb their snooty noses at all of us superstitious inferiors who still profess belief in a power greater than man.

Far be it from me to complain that the atheists don't have a right to believe in Nothing. But it seems to me that, with their Big Red "A," the atheists are doubly represented at the Daley Center.

I mean, at the Daley Center these days, the Jews have only the Menorah. Christians have only the Stable. (The giant Christmas tree on the south end of the plaza is not a religious symbol.) But all the empty space in between -- all the Nothing -- is that not the sign and symbol of the true atheist? Now the atheists also also have a Big Red "A." Seems to me that's two representations for the anti-religionists, but only one each for each religious group.

I said as much to Long Suffering Spouse when the story aired on the news here a week or so ago. Some smug professional atheist was interviewed, overjoyed that this rather pathetic ploy for attention was being taken seriously, at least by the TV reporter. You might not think that being an atheist would be incompatible with missionary zeal. But this guy sure acted like a True Believer, even if he believes only in Nothing.

"Is that what the 'A' stands for?" she asked. "Atheist?"

I assured her that this was the case.

"Hmmm," she said. "I would have guessed it stood for something else."

Frivolous Friday, biker bar edition

Bizarro Comic by Dan Piraro, obtained from Chicago Tribune Comics Kingdom.

Obtained from the Chicago Tribune, even though the comic itself runs in the Chicago Sun-Times. Ah, well.

You should be getting a full-fledged rant this morning about the latest outbreak of chaos in the Curmudgeon home, and how the unplanned activities of yesterday evening prevented me from getting to any of the things I was supposed to do last night. I also have a good post in mind about Long Suffering Spouse grading papers until 2:30 Thursday morning and identifying a number of really, really feeble attempts at plagiarism. That ought to be amusing.

And that's what you should be getting here.

Except that I didn't do any of the things I was supposed to do last night. So I have to do them now. And there are other things that must be done this morning as well because I won't be here this afternoon either. That might (or might not) turn into a post on this blog.

Have I whetted your appetite yet?

No?

I was afraid of that.

Lost barbecue tools, a dangerous drawer, and an untimely phone call -- business as usual at the Curmudgeon home

People who think writing is easy -- as I do, sometimes -- find out differently when they try and tell a story that isn't exactly linear. Real stories aren't that linear. But writers, unlike audio engineers, can't work with multitrack tapes: The words on the page, or the screen, are a single track only and every clashing action must be integrated into the single stream of words. And if one thus brings order to chaos, has one actually described it -- or has it only been watered down?

The thing you have to understand here is that the kitchen in the Curmudgeon Manse was probably updated shortly before we bought the place in 1996. Updated on the cheap. The sellers were preparing the house for sale and every effort was made to maximize appearance and minimize expense.

Thus the cabinets in the kitchen had a nice label but were the cheapest model offered by that manufacturer.

For the most part they have served us well.

But there is a large drawer, in the cabinet left of the stove, that came off the tracks once a few years back. After considerable lifting and straining and pushing and bending and cussing and swearing (the cussing and swearing mostly from me) Long Suffering Spouse and I got the drawer back on the track and closed. She removed everything she was likely to need from that drawer before we closed it up, like a Pharaoh's Tomb, with solemn vows never to open it -- and certainly never to try and fully open it -- ever again. The children were likewise instructed. We moved on.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

We jump now to last Saturday afternoon. It was not exactly warm, but it was nicer than it's been, and Long Suffering Spouse decided to barbecue.

Ever since my insides were removed, I don't much care for barbecue, but there was leftover pizza for me to eat. And we needed to free up some freezer space. We are heading into cookie season, you know.

Just the other day Abuela generously sent us two boxes of large QVC hamburgers -- chock full of onions -- and I went down to the basement to wrestle the box from the bottom corner of the freezer.

The electric company is always after homeowners to get rid of their obsolete basement refrigerators. And you should realize that an old aging hippie like me would not have an energy-hogging frig eating up energy in the basement: Oh, no, the ancient refrigerator died a natural death many years ago and we promptly replaced it with a newer, more efficient model. With five kids -- and all of them went through adolescence in that house -- we needed the second frig. And in cookie season we need the freezer section even more.

You would think that removing a box from a freezer would free up space therein. That's how the laws of physics are written.

But the laws of physics do not take into account bags of frozen Costco chicken wings and chicken breasts which expand to fill any space made available. Younger Daughter and her husband are responsible for the wings. I'm not sure they sealed up the wings bag properly because it promptly discharged contents all over the freezer when I removed the box of burgers. In trying to close that I somehow spilled chicken breasts. And my wife keeps foil packages of frozen meat for tacos or sloppy joes or Chinese food in that freezer, too. In theory these should be stackable; in practice, however....

It took awhile, but I eventually got everything back in it's proper bag and everything stuffed back in the freezer. It looked more crowded than ever, but at least I had my box of burgers. Chock full of onions. I couldn't eat onions when I had insides.

Long Suffering Spouse set up the grill and I headed off to the Jewel for hamburger buns and, as long as I was there, for some liquid refreshment for my own personal use.

When I got back, Long Suffering Spouse asked me where the barbecue tools had gone.

The barbecue tools are kept in the front hall, in season. I think in the winter they are supposed to be consigned to the garage, but I can't say for sure.

I could say for sure that they weren't in the front hall because the bench there had been cleared off in favor of candy for Trick or Treaters.  And Long Suffering Spouse had already determined they weren't in the garage.  I might have said that I didn't have the foggiest notion where the barbecue tools might be, because I didn't, but I would have been instructed to look for them anyway.  I gamely accepted my charge.

I went in the house and hollered for Younger Daughter. You may think that cheating. But I knew I could have wandered around the house as long as Moses wandered in the desert and never have gotten so much as a clue about the whereabouts of those barbecue tools: They are too big to hide in plain sight, which meant they must be truly hidden, and I didn't hide them. Younger Daughter might have.

And, as it turns out, she had.

She came into the kitchen with her daughter on her shoulder -- she'd just finished changing the baby -- explaining en route that she'd hid the tools in (cue scary music) The Forbidden Drawer.

I had barely begun reminding her that the drawer was never to be opened -- ever -- when Younger Daughter pulled at it with her one free hand.

There was a crashing noise. The drawer stopped moving after about only four inches, tilting ominously upward.

I hollered. Younger Daughter started to explain that she'd used The Forbidden Drawer lots of times in the last few years without incident -- and the baby -- who was sure that they'd come into the kitchen because it was time to feed her -- began crying. Younger Daughter removed the baby to her high chair, leaving me to work with the wreckage.

I opened the cabinet beneath The Forbidden Drawer and pushed upwards. I still couldn't slide it along the track of course; the drawer had completely jumped that. But holding up the bottom of the drawer with one hand, trying to make it as level as possible, I could feel inside The Forbidden Drawer with the other. The giant barbecue tongs had gotten wedged in; I had to work them free. With that I was able to open The Forbidden Drawer just enough more to extract the tools.

Then I tried to close the drawer. Of course it would only go so far and no further. I picked up the tools and headed for the front door. (Long Suffering Spouse sets the grill up on the driveway.)

"I've got good news and bad news," I told her, cautiously, as I handed her the tools. "The good news is that we found the barbecue tools."

"What's the bad news?"

I told her.

She started hollering at me.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

As soon as she got the hamburgers inside, we went to work on drawer repair. Task one was to get the drawer out. Long Suffering Spouse got underneath and pushed; I stayed upright and pulled. And tugged. Eventually we got the drawer about halfway out, to the point where it was pretty much blocking the whole kitchen (it's a narrow room). The baby was still carrying on because she wasn't getting fed; Younger Daughter was trying to explain to her mother why she thought it a good idea to use The Forbidden Drawer and Long Suffering Spouse was telling me that, whatever I was doing up there, I was doing it wrong.

At that moment, the phone rang.

Still gripping the partially open drawer and trying to wiggle it free I yelled out, "Hello, Older Daughter."

"It can't be her; she's at a football game with Hank this afternoon," protested Younger Daughter. (Older Daughter and her husband are both proud alums of the University of Illinois. Their Illini were playing at the University of Indiana Saturday; the game was still early in the second half at this point.)

"You know it's her," said Long Suffering Spouse, head buried in the pots and pans stored below The Forbidden Drawer, pushing up on it all the while trying to set it free.

"Call from Wireless Caller," said the telephone. Younger Daughter and Olaf had gotten us these talking telephones last Christmas. A computerized female voice announces each new call, with sometimes hilariously unintelligible pronunciations. Still holding the drawer I turned around to look at the phone's caller ID.

Sure enough.

"Well, pick it up," my wife told me, and I did as I was told. "Are you OK?" I asked, brusquely perhaps. "Why are you calling? Aren't you at a football game?"

Well, yes, she said, but without seat backs on the stadium's bleacher seats, her back had begun to hurt and she went back to the car to sit for awhile and, as long as she was sitting, she said, she thought she might call and chat --

I cut her off.

"You're OK, then?"

"Yes...."

"Fine. We'll talk to you later. We've got a situation here. Go watch your game."

I learned later that she soon thereafter texted her sister, apparently in tears, because I hung up on her. Younger Daughter had to explain why I was so curt.

"Oh," said Older Daughter, according to her sister's later account. "I guess my timing was bad."

But her timing wasn't bad. It was amazing. She has a talent -- a true gift, really -- for calling at the exact wrong moment.

At the moment, however, I had to return my attention to The Forbidden Drawer. I resumed grabbing and pulling and wiggling. Long Suffering Spouse kept pushing and jiggling. Eventually, we got the thing out.

I cleared off a spot for it on the kitchen table and set it down.

"We are not leaving this here forever," Long Suffering Spouse warned me.

"Well, maybe you can eat first," I suggested. The hamburgers weren't getting any warmer.

"No," she said, "I know you. I eat now and you disappear and the next thing I know we're trying to work around this drawer on Thanksgiving Day."

It was at this point that Olaf showed up. He'd worked another full day on Saturday (putting him on salary turned out to be a great cost-saving move for his employer). He innocently inquired what was going on.

"You're in manufacturing," I said, "you can figure out how to get this fixed."

To my pleasant surprise, he started looking at the problem, marching back and forth between the cabinet and the table where I'd set the drawer down, interrogating my wife about the availability of various tools.

The phone rang again. "It can't be Older Daughter," I said, "not so soon."

It wasn't. It was Middle Son.

"Talk to your son," Long Suffering Spouse commanded.

I took the phone and walked into the den, turning on the Illinois-Indiana game as I settled into my chair. Long Suffering Spouse stayed behind to supervise her son-in-law.

I explained all this to Middle Son.

"I've called at a bad time, then," he said.

"Nonsense," I said. "Your sister called at a bad time. Olaf has taken over my spot in the kitchen; we can't all be in there at once.  There's not enough room."

Middle Son was actually calling about his big sister. Hank is turning 30 this week and Older Daughter has been talking about having a party, or maybe two parties, on either Friday or Saturday, or Friday and Saturday this coming weekend. Older Daughter wanted everyone to come down to Indianapolis for the occasion.  Oldest Son and Abby had an iron-clad excuse; they were going to a wedding at which Abby was to be a bridesmaid. That eliminated Friday and Saturday for them. Youngest Son has no car and couldn't get away from South Janesville College anyway. Olaf and Younger Daughter didn't want to go because it would be too hard to bring the baby -- and then Younger Daughter committed to sitting for her brother's dog, Rodent, 'forgetting' that this was the same weekend of the proposed party or parties in Indianapolis. Middle Son didn't want to be the only one to go, but he'd heard that Long Suffering Spouse and I were going to go, and he was hoping we had more information than he did.

"You saw the Facebook invite, didn't you Dad?" Middle Son asked.

I had. We knew that a party was proposed for next Saturday. Although no location was specified, we were given to understand that the party would be at Hank and Older Daughter's home. But the invite did not specify any time for the party.

"Well, do you know what time they're thinking about?" asked Middle Son.

"Who knows?"

"Maybe I should call her. Since she's just sitting in her car instead of watching the football game."

I advised against that. "She's got to talk to her husband about this -- and right now they're fighting over which one of them has to clean the house for the party. There may not even be a party."

"Well, when are we going to find out?" Middle Son asked.

"Hopefully before next Saturday, that's all I can say."

We agreed that we'd let each other know if we got any information at all.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Olaf did get the drawer in  (he apparently really does know this manufacturing stuff).  Nevertheless, I will break the arm of anybody that tries to open it again.  Also, as of today, in case you're wondering, the party appears to be set for Saturday afternoon. But Older Daughter is still thinking of cancelling because Hank won't take a day off work to clean....  Meanwhile, Long Suffering Spouse and I are arguing over whether -- because the party is in the afternoon -- we can make the trip there and back in a single day.

Do Illinois Republicans have anyone to take on Sen. Durbin?

Sen. Richard J. Durbin

Illinois' Senior Senator Richard J. Durbin is up for reelection this cycle and his reelection appears, at this point, to be a lock-cinch certainty.

State Sen. Jim Oberweis (25th Dist.) seems to be the only announced Republican challenger.

Really? Really?

Durbin surely is vulnerable. As Senate Majority Whip, Durbin has had to align himself with all sorts of national priorities and programs -- the kind of thing that opens one up to charges that a senator has stopped paying attention to the feelings of the folks back home. And Illinoisans have terminated the Senate careers of prior aspirants to the Democratic leadership. Sen. J. Hamilton Lewis was Democratic Whip from 1913 to 1919 when he also lost a reelection bid. (Lewis, however, actually did come back to the Senate, and into the Senate leadership, in the 1930s, eventually dying in office). Sen. Scott W. Lucas was Democratic Whip from 1947-1949, when he became Majority Leader -- only to lose reelection in 1950 to Everett McKinley Dirksen.

So there is precedent.

And just this week Durbin was caught in a whopper of a fib: Although he was not in attendance, Durbin regaled his Facebook audience with the tale of a meeting between Republican House leaders and the President and White House staff during the recent (stupid) government shutdown. Durbin quoted an unnamed GOP leader as saying to the President, "I cannot even stand to look at you."

Well of course the story went viral.

The True Blue Left thought that was just the sort of disrespectful thing that one of those crazy Tea Party bomb-throwers would say to the duly elected President of these United States. And, sadly, I'm sure that too many on the Red Meat Right thought so too (perhaps adding "right on!" if they retold the tale).

In this morning's Chicago Sun-Times, Lynn Sweet quotes White House Press Secretary Jay Carney as flatly contradicting Durbin's story: It "did not happen," Carney said.

Getting caught in a silly, needless lie like that would be fatal to many politicians. And it still may be harmful to Senator Durbin.

But only if there is a credible Republican opponent. Perennial candidate Oberweis will not fit the bill.

Durbin is a careerist who embraces whatever position seems to propel him forward. When he was a Downstate Member of Congress, then-Rep. Durbin, a professed Catholic, was moderately pro-life. To reach the Senate, however, Durbin embraced radical pro-abortion views. And there he remains. He is out front, loud and proud, in favor of gay marriage -- but, as noted yesterday, completely ineffective in influencing his fellow Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly to follow his lead. (Best of both worlds for him that way.)

Almost anyone -- besides Jim Oberweis -- that the Republicans put up would be a strong candidate against Durbin. Heck, I'd be a stronger Republican candidate against Durbin than Oberweis and I'm not only anonymous, I've never voted in a Republican primary in my life. (No lawyer from Chicago should ever vote in a Republican primary -- it's tantamount giving up your right to vote for the judges who decide your cases, since the Republicans don't even bother to field judicial candidates in Cook County races except in a far northwest suburban enclave called the 13th Judicial Subcircuit.)

But the Republicans are the Stupid Party. And Senator Durbin's nearly certain reelection will provide further proof.