Musings from Brian J. Noggle

In 2008, I lamented how the cost of lighting was going up as the backed-into ban on incandescent bulbs meant you could not buy a light bulb for twenty-five cents as all the energy-efficient others cost $4 each.

Each of them, though, touted you would save seventy cents a year in power costs [citation needed] over the twenty years that the bulbs would last [citation needed].

Well, gentle reader, as you know, Nogglestead didn’t have many regular light bulb sockets when we moved in. I have since replaced the kitchen light fixtures, which previously took a finicky circular fluorescent light bulb, with fixtures that use regular bulbs.

But, you know what? The touted energy-saving light bulbs are not lasting as long as advertised.

I am replacing the LED, CFL, and halogen lights about as fast as the incandescents. So the cost savings promised has not materialized, and the more expensive bulbs with their precious metals and toxic compounds, are more expensive to make and buy than the simple piece of hot wire in the incandescents.

Oh, but we will do better once we’re back to candles.

As I mentioned in passing, on Thursday, we went to the Air and Military Museum of the Ozarks (and ABC Books, but we will get to that later).

I had taken my boys to the AMMO (get it?) during the summer after my youngest’s first grade year. I had another gap in contracts at that time, so I took them all over the Springfield area to all sorts of places, including this little military museum up on Kearney. I wrote this up for another one of my defunct blogs defunct blogs, the Missouri Insight, and I later imported those posts here when I defuncted that blog. To sum up, AMMO is a storefront in a strip mall with artifacts from people’s personal collections, and it takes about an hour to go through, including the garage in the back with the helicopter, the jeeps, and the jet trainer.

A volunteer that was showing us around told us a little about each piece; the boys were not as eager to sit in each as they are now teen and pre-teen and not elementary school children (although the Airman First Class in the Air Force JROTC did sit in the jet trainer). The volunteer also pointed out the skeleton of a World War II glider trainer that they had on the ceiling. I asked how big actual trainers were because I’d heard they were used in Operation Market Garden (which I just heard about in the History’s Great Military Blunders audio course.

He got a far away look in his eye and said that his father had participated in Operation Market Garden and was scheduled for D-Day but had acute appendicitis and was held back for a couple of days. This fellow himself was wearing a Navy cap, which probably meant that he was Vietnam or after. Which is odd because he was the age that World War II vets were when I was a kid, and going to this museum made me feel like a kid. And a bit unworthy, actually–knowing a bit about Operation Market Garden and mentioning that I would have preferred helicopters to flying airplanes. Because I chose college instead, I am not in the fraternity of those who served. And when I’m around a bunch of veterans, it just seems unseemly to know anything about anything.

At any rate, yesterday I had a call in the early afternoon, so we didn’t go anywhere in the morning. In the afternoon, I took them for frozen custard.

Okay, now the double-effect narrator is kicking in. This might be the last time we do this. The summer opens up–but the summer closes. With band camp and JROTC activities, the oldest will be very busy. Not to mention if he gets a job, which he likely will, if not this summer, then next. And then he’s gone.

At any rate, a good week, a glorious week. Better than being tied to my computer all day while they play video games and fight.

Spring break: Yesterday, we went to the Dickerson Park Zoo, the Springfield Parks zoo.

You know, I might have only taken my boys to the zoo three times: Once in Saint Louis, with my brother and his wife and his son when my oldest was two. I have pictures of only the oldest, so I don’t know if the youngest, who would have been one, stayed home or was in a stroller and therefore not in many pictures. I remember the boy in the pictures and short videos, though, saying “There he is! There he is! There he is!” when spotting the black rhino for the first time and bending in half at one point while walking to lick the pavement–perhaps the paint looked like candy or frosting to him then.

I took them a couple years back (a couple being, let me do the math, six) when I had more free time in my schedule, again. Few photos exist of that excursion, as the number of photos we take of the boys has diminished over time. Which is odd, because now we carry the equivalent of a camera anywhere. I just don’t like to take out my phone in situations, perhaps, where I would not have minded pulling out a dedicated camera.

After we parked and as we crossed the parking log, the oldest said, “Aren’t you going to say ‘1, 2, 3, to the zoo?'” As I mentioned, I used to say this when they were younger when it was time for us to go somewhere–it’s the title of an Eric Carle counting book.

The boys were old enough now to go romp on their own, and they did, moving more quickly than my beautiful wife and I did among the elephants. The single Asian elephant at the zoo–it is a big zoo for a small city, but it’s a relatively small zoo–started out at the far end of its enclosure, but my wife talked to it and it slowly, nonchalantly approached us, taking a step, eating a couple snootfuls of some of the emerging greenery, and then taking another step, until it took a close look at us, posed for a picture, and then moved quickly away.

The boys, moving faster than we did, moved quickly through the exhibits and rejoined us for our last continent, Africa. They fed the giraffes, and we got to the enclosure of the Black and White Colobus (Colobi? Colubuses?).

C’mon, man. The zoo has Squirrel Monkeys and a Spider Monkey (no spider monkey puppy, though), but the fact that these creatures are called black and white colobusesi and not skunk monkeys is proof that they were named by scientists and not explorers or conquistadores.

At any rate, the zoo has a whole troop of them. They started inside their little enclosure, but a couple of them came out, and when the alpha male spotted my oldest, who was dressed in black and white, he (the skunk monkey male) came out, showed his genitals to my son, and then sat right in front of him, baring his teeth (but not his boy parts) because, I guess, he thought my oldest was another skunk monkey looking for a ready-made harem.

At any rate, or at least the rate we’ve been going, this is probably the last trip to the zoo we will take as a family. Until grandkids, maybe. On the plus side, I did not let the double-effect narrator, the part of me that knows this is the last time to overwhelm the day.

Light posting this week; it’s Spring Break for my boys, and since my schedule is more self-determined this year than in the previous three years of consulting on contracts with strict hours, I am spending most of the days with my boys.

We’ve gone fishing, and we’ve gone to the Springfield Nature Center so far. You know, ever since they could walk, we’ve been going to the Nature Center. A couple of times a year in the old days. I think we’ve skipped some years, but we went last summer and again this year. There’s a bench on the Fox Bluff trail that I insist they sit on every time, so I have a series of pictures that shows them growing up. Aside from that, the only pictures I tend to get are when I drop behind them and catch them as they walk.

You start out carrying them.
Then you ‘walk’ them by pushing them in wheeled conveyances.
The you walk with them, ever faster.
Eventually, they want to walk on their own, a little ahead or a little behind you, because they’re big enough to do that now, but still close.
Then, if you succeed as a parent, they walk away.

I wonder if there’s a poem in that, or if it’s too true for poetry.