Category: Life

A recruiter reaches out to me, a software quality assurance professional with almost twenty years of experience in IT with an offer I could not pass up:

I could not pass up the chance to mock it.

Jeepers, mister, I could make that much working the counter at a gas station. And I would not have to relocate for that fifteen dollars an hour.

An opportunity this good can only be a scam of some sort.

Our AC has an issue.

On Saturday night, it was temperate enough to eat outside, and when we did, I heard our condenser outside wheezing a bit. It sounded like the fan was out of alignment perhaps. I worried about it a bit. The air conditioner this year has not cooled the house entirely; the upstairs has tended to be warm and the downstairs freezing (the house was built in the 1980s before zoned heating and cooling was a thing).

Saturday night was… warm. I awakened in the night with the blankets and sheets all kicked from me, and I was not cool at all.

On Sunday afternoon, I went into the little utility room that houses our furnace and our water softener and, more importantly to me at that time, the mop bucket I use to mop our cat litter/storage room. I discovered water around the furnace which generally means some problem with the a-coil. So I turned the air conditioning off at Nogglestead and toweled up the floor as best I could–the house is designed to maximize the living space, which really cramps access to a lot of the furnace and whatnot.

So we’re waiting for a new air conditioning company to come (the reason we’re going with a new company instead of the one that has serviced Nogglestead for the first decade is another story).

But the “roughing it” experience of a night without air conditioning in Missouri led me down memory lane. So, gentle reader, if you’re still reading, take my sweaty hand and come with me back to the 80s. The 1980s, not the temperature. Continue reading ““At least it’s not a hot day,” I said as the thermometer pegged 90 degrees.” →

Homeless man lived in empty Florida stadium for weeks: cops:

A homeless man in Florida made a luxury suite in an empty stadium his home for two weeks while helping himself to food, drinks and team merchandise, police said.

You know, when I read From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, I too had that sort of fantasy. As a matter of fact, I have even written the first paragraphs in a novel with a similar conceit.

Which I won’t finish now. Why bother? It’s all been done before.

Also, I couldn’t drive myself through the first couple of pages twenty-five years ago when the idea was fresh, so it would require a lot more self-discipline to complete it now.

My Facebook feed is full of ads for masks and news of people who are making masks. My mother-in-law has ordered a pile of masks for my beautiful wife and children. Springfield has a mask ordinance until October 15; Nixa and Republic do not, so Nixa and Republic get a lot more of my business these days.

Although some masks are tempting…

I refuse to buy a permanent mask. Whenever I need to go to something in Springfield, I have a single workshop dust mask hanging from one of the shifters in my truck. I slap that on at the doors of the places where I must go that require masks. I refuse to put it on in the car, and I don’t want to own a couple dozen little bits of fabric in 2021.

Because this is only temporary, ainna? Or will the proliferation of masks make it easier to make the current measures of dubious necessity and efficacy permanent?

Well, all right, I must admit I did buy a mask to coordinate with my outfit for one of my required bi-weekly trips into Springfield.

This is the Internet. You are free to believe that I do not, in fact, wear a balaclava to my martial arts school. Or you can believe that I do because although the city of Springfield might have mandated that I look silly, it did not limit the amount of silly I will look.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Borepatch.

Saturday, I went fishing with my boys. They, or at least the younger one, have/has been eager to go fishing again as it’s not our native thing, but the youngest really likes the thought of catching a fish and eating it.

They’ve gone a couple times with their school classes to ponds and had some luck there, and we went a couple years ago on a guided fishing trip that my beautiful wife got me/us for Christmas. With a professional guide, we caught fish all day–the first bite came before the guide had baited the second hook. We only caught a single bluegill that was large enough to keep–all the bass were the wrong size to take home–and we threw the bluegill back because one bluegill does not an appetizer make.

But they’ve had some high expectations to what fishing is. In their minds, fishing is mostly catching fish. The video game representations of the same task are equally rewarding. Continue reading “What I Did This Weekend” →

Which is none, by the way, as I am not yet over fifty, but when confronted with an Internet ad like this, I have to say that the answer, currently, is not a dating site on the Internet. I mean, people a couple years older than I am probably did not find their beautiful wife (erm, spouse) on the Internet (a USENET newsgroup, remember, twenty-some years ago) and were not natively born to computers as some of us in the latter Generation X were. They say that millennials and Generation Z don’t remember a time without computers and the Internet, but I do. They’ve been on the Internet their entire lives, but (as I tell my children), I’ve been on the Web its entire life.

So amongst the people I know over fifty who’ve found love (or at least married), where have they found “love”?

• Church.
• Work.
• Widows/widowers marrying widows/widowers amongst their friends. Who knew their lost spouses.

Sometimes two of the three, actually.

I don’t know; maybe the generation above me or older members of my generation are clicking those links. I’d hate to think so, though–by this point in your life, you should have a good social network and be able to work it if you’re looking.

But, as I said, my experience is flawed.

1. I am NOT YET FIFTY, THANKS, INTERNET.
2. I am currently married to a beautiful woman whom I currently love (so when I am over fifty, too soon, I will find that love nearby most of the time).
3. I go to church which introduces me to a different set of people than those who don’t go to church.
4. I tend to hang out with a crowd that’s younger than I am.

So, basically, I have no clue what I’m talking about, but this is the Internet, so I get to say it as loudly as people who do have a clue. Also, experts. Which doesn’t necessarily overlap too much with “people who have a clue.” However, I am jaundiced enough to think that maybe Internet ads that merge my location with their text probably fall into that “don’t have a clue” segment.

Kirkwood, Webster Groves residents walk the streets — every single one of them — in their towns:

Gabriella Ramirez, 16, and her mom, Deanna, set out to walk every single street in their town of Webster Groves. They completed their 160-mile journey in mid-June.

You know, when I lived in Old Trees, I had a baby who liked to ride in the stroller. So from the middle of 2006 to the middle of 2008, we roamed all over Old Trees for hours a day. The baby got up at 5am or so, and I’d feed him and take him for a two hour or so walk, and put him down for his morning nap. He’d wake up, have something to eat, and we’d go for our mid-day walk for a couple of hours, and then we would come home for his afternoon nap. He’d awaken somewhere in the mid-afternoon, and we would go out again for an hour or so. And maybe a little walk after dinner. We did this pretty much year-round, including 100 degree days in the summer and cold days in the winter where I’d put socks over his mittens. So we covered a lot of Old Trees, but not all of it.

We covered all of Tuxedo Park, Old Orchard, Webster Park, and Old Webster many times, but we were light on Sherwood, North Webster, and the other spots north of Lockwood (and the train tracks). Mostly because they were the most distant. A bit because some of the streets lacked sidewalks. Some, too, because North Webster is predominately black, and I have a policy of avoiding being the only one of anything anywhere (sure, some will call it RACISM, but I would feel the same about a predominately Serbian neighborhood like you find in south St. Louis).

In those days, before the iPhone and before smartphones took off, you didn’t have the ability to track the streets and your walks on an app; perhaps if I had gamified it, I would have made the effort toward completeness. And maybe got a book deal out of it. You know, the things I do, I don’t think about writing a book about. Maybe I should if I ever want to be a Real Writer.

Our walking days pretty much ended in the middle of 2008 when the youngest came along. He had an internal timer for 20 minutes, and if he was in a car seat or a stroller for longer, he would begin to wail inconsolably until he was out. This limited our walking excursions and car trips for the most part, but in Old Trees, you weren’t twenty minutes away from most things you’d need–church, shopping, and even my sainted mother’s house was just a touch over twenty minutes away. So we got by, and he got less ornery before we moved to the country.

As to walking all the local roads, well, I have not walked them as the block across the street is 4.1 miles around (4.2 on the bike), and the block we live in is 8.2 miles around by bike (or so I mapped; I haven’t done it because one side of the block is a two-lane farm road with no shoulder, no visibility, and lots of curves and hills that my beautiful wife doesn’t like to drive on, much less run or bike). So I have run on some of the major roads around, but not all of the cul-de-sacs and certainly not the private drives that abound in the neighborhood.

Still, good on these kids in Old Trees and More Old Trees on their adventures.

The Kimble Group emails me from time-to-time with interesting “career opportunities.”

Like this one I received this week:

Assistant professor and health sciences librarian at Gozanga University’s Spokane, MO, campus. Since I live within 25 miles of Spokane, Missouri, I am a hot prospect for this job because, well, no one else in their database lives within 25 miles of Spokane, Missouri.

Word to the wise, kid: Gozanga is in Spokane, Washington.

Which removes my only qualification for this opportunity.

A while back (five years ago?), my youngest son’s class collected as many homophones as they could, so my son took a lot of pleasure running through his vocabulary and ours to discover ones that his classmates had not.

However, I was remiss at that time in not including tocsin, an alarm bell, and toxin, a poison generally of plant or animal origin.

You would think I would have been better prepared for that pairing as a reader of suspense novels, but Alistair MacLean novels are more full of klaxons of the alarums.

(The word tocsin brought to the forefront of my mind via this Bookworm Room post.)

A meme on Facebook.

As I mentioned in 2016, I took my boys too the old neighborhoods where I lived in Jefferson County:

So we hit St. Louis late in the morning, five hours ahead of our hotel check-in time, so I took the long way in, through Jefferson County where I could show the boys a couple places where I lived. The house in the valley in House Springs looked pretty dilapidated; the garage door had been replaced with a worn piece of plywood. Sometime around the time I left, the gravel road had been paved, but it doesn’t look as though it had been maintained at all, which is worse than having never been paved at all. I showed the boys where the mobile home I’d lived in for four years had sat, but Siesta Manor Mobile Home Park had rearranged the layout of the pads over time, so there wasn’t a 106 Quintana any more. After taking some flowers to my mother’s plot in the cemetery at Jefferson Barracks, we drove slowly by the house in Old Trees–the only house I’m sad to have left–and saw the lilies I planted ten years ago are six feet tall. We stopped at Blackburn Park, where the oldest played when he was one year old, and were the only people in the park on a Friday afternoon.

Then we headed north. We drove by the house in Casinoport, which looked much the same as it had or better. Most of the time we lived there, it was white asbestos shingle, but we had siding put on right before we left, so it looked better as we left than most of the time we lived there. We got to St. Charles, and I showed the boys a house where I lived with my aunt and uncle–who I grew up thinking were well-to-do but it turns out they were just doing better than we were. We checked into the hotel and had dinner at the Cracker Barrel nearby, which was good as the area around the St. Charles Convention Center was all torn up.

I drove past my aunt’s old house where we lived in her guest room and basement for a year and a half. Several times, actually, in the course of my travels to St. Louis.

Pretty much every time we go to St. Louis, though, I do drive by the house in Old Trees. As I mentioned, that’s the only place I’m a bit sad I left. It’s right off of Interstate 44, the road from Springfield to St. Louis, so it’s not far off of the path from where I’m going if I’m going to something in St. Louis County (it is not on the way to St. Charles, though, so I didn’t drive by it every time I was in the area last year).

However, other places I lived, I’m not sure I’m comfortable driving through.

The house I lived in when I lived with my mother in Lemay is in a sketchy area. It was sketchy then, but I was young and a bit angry-looking (albeit a skinny angry). I might drive past it, but I really haven’t the times I’ve been in the area to visit my mother’s grave at Jefferson Barracks.

The places I lived in Milwaukee. Well. I would certainly not drive by my house in the projects at night, and I haven’t really felt the need to go by it in the daytime when I’ve been in Milwaukee, either. The neighborhood where my father lived, and I lived in his basement during college, probably has not transitioned too badly, but the house where we lived the last month in Milwaukee before decamping for Missouri–the lease on our apartment in the projects ended before the school year, so we stayed with one of my mother’s friends until school ended and we moved (and my mother did not tell my father where we were for that month as a bit of a dirty trick–their marriage did not end amicably to say the least), well, that neighborhood has been in transition ever since, so I might drive by it, or I might not.

You know, the last couple of times I’ve been to Milwaukee have been transitional–we’re driving through it on the way to Wisconsin Dells, or we stayed in Germantown to visit my grandmother who lives outside the Milwaukee suburbs. Even when I was visiting Milwaukee in the 1990s and early part of the 2000s, I was staying downtown and did not get to the northwest side very often.

Do I get a sense of nostalgia when I do? You know, not really–I get more from my memory than the places themselves since they’ve changed enought that I only sort of recognize them. Or I’ve changed that much. Although given how I hang onto physical things for memories’ sake, perhaps it is more that the things have changed than me in this case.

A black man has been spotted on consumer packaging!

One wonders why the change came at the big national brands like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s Rice before the smaller brands which don’t have brand equity or the brand diversity (that is, large corporations having lots of consumer brands, so smaller sales at one would not imperil the company’s survival).

Is it because the larger companies have more room in them for “enlightened” people in leadership roles instead of the family that started the product? Greater visibility, especially on the Twitmedia, which can amplify the voices upset with the branding or the brands hopefully will amplify their sigil of virtue?

Heaven only knows.

Jeez, I hope nobody comes for Stubb because I posted this.

So I mentioned that I subscribed to four papers recently. Previously, I’ve been taking a couple of local weeklies, and I’ve let my oldest read them after I finished. He’s been a little unimpressed with them.

But he likes The Wall Street Journal. A lot. And I can see why: It’s a national paper with national and international news, business reports, and feature writing every day instead of a couple pages of news stories including little informal columns covering small towns and churches and perhaps a column to read every week (Jim Hamilton or Larry Dablemont). So he gets the paper off of the driveway and reads it before I do most days.

And it has inspired him to start his own paper.

He’s starting high school this fall. By this age, I had worked for two middle school papers and had put out at least on dot-matrix-printed newspaper, the fan letter for the official Cricket Fan Club that I mentioned here (with other Cricket pictures and memories here and here).

I already have the first copy of the South Street Journal on my desk. It has stories about Mixer, Microsoft’s game streaming service, closing down as well as some recycled jokes. Not a lot of news, though, as Nogglestead is pretty quiet of late. So it’s more of a Reader’s Digest than a Wall Street Journal.

And it’s better than spending all of his day on video games and YouTube compilations of YouTube videos. Although I am pretty sure some of the time he spends on the laptop working on his articles he’s really cruising Instagram. Just like a real journalist. Except I guess they use Twitter.

Really, I did; this morning, when emptying the dishwasher, I did the cutlery first (as always). In my haste, though, I started closing the drawer before the last fork fell into place, which meant that the drawer hit the bottom of the fork. As the fork was still in a non-horizontal position, its tines were caught my finger and rammed my finger into the counter above the drawer, and I ended up with a couple tines a couple millimeters in my left forefinger.

I tossed the fork in the sink and headed for the first aid, leaving a bloody trail behind me.

But I got it stopped all right–puncture wounds are easy!–and went back to the kitchen, where I found that the fork had gone into the sink and down into the garbage disposal, almost making the morning a two-fer of folly.

Although “Stabbing a man with a fork” was not really on my bucket list, I’ve done it. And you can bet I’ll use it to start conversations.

With strangers.

Because one thing on my bucket list is to get a reputation befitting Glen from Stan Makita’s Doughnuts.

So far, so good.

So they tell me that print is dead. However, over the last couple of weeks, I have subscribed to four newspapers.

As you might know, gentle reader, I have been taking the weekly Greene County Commonwealth since it was the Republic Monitor, before that young Squibb fellow bought it. I’ve also started subscriptions to the Marshfield Mail after learning that the new Missouri poet laureate is the editor and The Current Local out of Van Buren since last fall, when I stopped on the way back from Poplar Bluff where I helped my brother tear off his roof and discovered that Van Buren has a little paper (named after the Current River).

Well, friends, for my oldest son’s birthday this year, we started a brokerage account and seeded him a little money for investing in equities. So I’ve re-subscribed to the Wall Street Journal so he can review the stock section and maybe get an idea about what he’d like to invest in. So far, I’m a week into receiving the paper, and I have kept up with it–I’ve mentioned at least once that I’ve been known to let the unread papers accumulate for weeks or months. Although some days I’m the third person to read it, as my son goes and gets it in the morning and then my wife might browse it in the afternoon before I can sit down with it in the evening. But, still. I am doing well so far (but this is subject to change, and in a month I will no doubt have a stack of them).

I also re-subscribed to the Tri Lakes News out of Branson, now called the Branson Tri Lakes News. I had a subscription for a couple of years after one of our trips down there, but I have it up in a moment of cost-cutting at some point. It’s $100 annually for a bi-weekly, which means, what, a buck a paper? It seemed like a lot when I wanted to trim at the edges of our budget. However, when we went down this summer, I felt a little underinformed about the state of Branson and the shows that were open, so I resubscribed.

On our way back from Poplar Bluff this month I stopped in Mansfield (home of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Rocky Ridge Farm) hoping to find a local paper. Instead, I found two: the Douglas County Herald and the WC [Wright County] Journal. So I subscribed to both of them as well.

So, if you’re keeping track, I now take one daily, one bi-weekly, and four weeklies.

Next up: The Licking News. As I mentioned, I got one misdelivered in the mail a couple years ago and from time to time think to subscribe to the paper, but I haven’t found a form or rate for the subscription. I’ll probably break down and email them for what to put on my check now that I’ve seen that they hosted a book signing for Larry Dablemont, whose Ain’t No Such Animal I just read. So clearly this is a sign that now is the time. Also, Larry Dablemont has a new book out which I will have to get.

At any rate, not depicted: the Springfield News-Leader. I get to page through it when I go to the dentist, and basically it’s a couple of pages written by twenty-three-year-olds and pieces from USA Today. So, nah, brah. They can’t run enough Steve Pokin to justify the expense.

The boys and I have taken a couple weeks (a month) off of continuing education, but I’ve added some schoolish work back into their day by introducing them to one of the greatest books in the history of writingkind:

When I was in high school, I took a college composition class (which offered three hours of college credit for taking it). The class used this as a text book, probably the third edition, and I probably still have the copy I used in that class.

As I have mentioned previously (here, here, and here), if I see it in a book sale, I’ll pick it up and give the copy to someone. I once bought copies for everyone in the company back when I was an Executive in a small interactive marketing agency. So I’m a fan.

The boys, on the other hand, are more, erm, reluctant devotees as our short lessons on this short book interrupt the time they’d rather spend playing video games, fighting, or complaining about being bored. Which, as I remember, was what I did on summer vacations when I lived down the gravel road and had nowhere to go.

When I stayed in room 311 at the top of the stairs this weekend, I noticed a little sign that I don’t remember from my trip in the fall (where I did not stay in the same room, admittedly):

The sign says, “Do Not Hang Items from Sprinkler Head/This Will Cause Flooding.”

The sign lead me to speculate:

• Did that happen a lot or if it only once but was on the top floor and caused catastrophic damage all the way down?
• Did it happen at this Hampton Inn or somewhere else, which led to the sign’s posting nation wide?

Clearly, I’m still speculating.

Yesterday, I drove across the state to celebrate Independence Day with my brother and his family (ha, ha, the old man is a grandparent, whereas I am still young and have school-aged children). We stayed at a Hampton Inn off the business loop, and they gave me 311.

Last September, I noted when I stayed in a Tru by Hilton, 311 is my favorite room number because of a song by the band Hiroshima.

So I got this room again, so I must ask you, Did someone see that post and put a note on my Hilton Honors file?

I mean, in years past, one could easily dismiss that as not being likely as the technology was not robust enough. In this world of AI and big data, where servers somewhere suck up every digital smudge you make, who knows? The fairies and devils of the middle ages have nothing on The Cloud.

Also in years past, you could maybe accept Japanese-American jazz fusion. But now we’re in a world of traditional Japanese music-metal fusion. So anything is possible.

And so much of the anything that is possible originates in Japan.

But remember, regardless of Sean Hannity using it as bumper music back in the day, this is not a song celebrating Independence Day.

I am sure I’ve told this story before, but when my sainted mother got the dog that would outlive her, a black lab mix (eventually I would say “mixed with a lot of table scraps”), she was looking for a name for her (the dog). As my beautiful wife and I tend to give our pets literary names, I was excited when my mother proposed Snowball because that’s a character in Animal Farm (my mother just thought it would be an ironic name for a black dog). However, my aunt proposed “Freedom” based on the song, and that’s what my mother went with. “You know that’s a song about a woman killing her husband?” She had not. Some country fan she was.

On the other hand, Independence Day is about this:

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

An aspirational document to be sure. I’d like to think we’re getting closer to its lofty ideals, but lately I am not so sure.

But let us celebrate what we have and the ideals this document and this country espoused.

As you know, gentle reader, I’m a touch off center, and one of the things that kind of trips my circuit is which side of the faucet the soft soap dispenser is in our home. We have four sinks with soap dispensers, and the soap dispenser must be on the left.

I don’t care where it is elsewhere, such as when I am out. But at home, it must be on the left.

From time to time, someone cleans the bathrooms, he or she (my son or my beautiful wife) puts the soap on the right side of the faucet. And it weirds me out.

I have to move it to the correct side of the faucet immediately.

I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the influence of Time Out Of Joint by Philip K. Dick, where a simple incongruity makes a fabricated reality collapse around the man at the center of it. I read that book, what, in high school, when I bought it inexpensively at a drug store? Or is that what THEY want me to remember?