First things first

I was casually scrolling on my iPhone this morning through the "Life & Style" section of the headines of the Marietta (Georgia) Daily Journal when three of them stopped me in my tracks jolted me from my Sunday morning reverie:

West Cobb Senior Center to have Cell Phone Tricks & Tips on Oct. 5

West Cobb Senior Center to have Scarf Tying Workshop on Oct. 12

West Cobb Senior Center to have Women's Self Defense on Oct. 22

It struck me as both amusing and sad that the first thing someone figured the older citizens of the western portion of Cobb County need is cell phone tricks and tips, followed by a workshop on scarf tying. Then and only then, after the more important topics have been covered, a course teaching women how to defend themselves.

I know it was probably only an accident of scheduling and availability, but it struck me as very odd and very telling in the annals of this 21st century of ours.

I now return you to your Labor Day Picnic planning or your Sabbath keeping, unless you are either Jewish or Seventh-Day Adventist, in which case the latter ended yesterday at sundown.

If your activities today include neither Labor Day Picnic planning nor Sabbath keeping, you are left to your own devices.

Quirky is good

Mrs. RWP and I haven't been to the movies in years, nor have we ever watched some of the apparently very popular stuff presented on the boob tube like Game Of Thrones and House Of Cards and The Walking Dead, not a single episode of any of them. Call us crazy, but neither of us is interested in reading, watching, or spending one red cent on stuff like The Hunger Games or The Handmaid's Tale.

I suppose that we are quirky, although quirky is in the eye of the beholder.

I like quirky things, though.

Here are some movies that I like:

Purple Rose Of Cairo
Big Fish
Field Of Dreams
Harold And Maude
Raising Arizona

and here are some television series that I like (or, to be more accurate, that I liked):

Thirtysomething
My So-Called Life
Six Feet Under
Twin Peaks
Northern Exposure
Quantum Leap
Star Trek, The Next Generation

I am definitely quirky, but it's all right.

I like quirky. Fantasy quirky, not violent or dystopian quirky.

There is a Latin phrase that applies here: De gustibus non est disputandum (In matters of taste, there can be no disputes).

Moving right along....

Around the end of April we made some new old friends, Paul and Mary Louise Storey. Paul is 94 and Mary Louise is 92, and they have been married for 72 years. One of their daughters is 70 and another died in her early sixties. Mary Louise is fine both mentally and physically but Paul was beginning to show some signs of Alzheimers. He loved to tell us about his many years with the Lockheed Corporation and his several trips to the Ukraine. A quiet, sweet, unassuming couple, they began attending our church last winter and started coming to the small "People Group" we belong to (the church now has 12 such groups) that meets in someone's home every other Sunday afternoon from 4:30 to 6:30 for a potluck dinner. Mary Louise always brought a congealed whipped creamy orange-flavored salad or dessert (it could be either) that everyone raved about. The people groups were suspended for the summer but started up again for the fall last weekend. Our new friends Paul and Mary Louise were not there because both of them tested positive for Covid-19 in late August and were quarantining themselves. Paul's condition became serious enough that Mary Louise called an ambulance on the Saturday night before our first small-group get-together of the season and Paul was admitted into the hospital. Mary Louise was not allowed to enter because of the hospital's pandemic rules. Paul, without Mary Louise there to oversee things, kept pulling out his IV lines and oxygen tubes. Mary Louise was desperate to get him out of there or at least be able to be with him. On Wednesday Paul's condition improved somewhat and he seemed to be rallying, but on Thursday two things happened. Mary Louise fell at home and broke her ankle and Paul's condition worsened to the point that the doctor recommended moving him into hospice. On Friday, Mary Louise was able to spend the entire day with Paul at the hospice with the help of their grandaughter.

This morning we have received word that Paul died during the night. Although we didn't know him long, I will miss him.

One thing I know. Paul and Mary Louise Storey are not quirky. They are the salt of the earth.

Thoughts from out of nowhere

"Far away the noise of strife upon my ear is falling" is the first line of an old hymn called "Dwelling In Beulah Land".

"Master, the tempest is raging, the billows are tossing high" is the first line of an old hymn called "Peace! Be Still".

If you find those two facts interesting, you probably need to get out more.

Both of those hymns were playing on my mental radio early this morning, put there by (excuse the expression) that great disc jockey in the sky.

On this day in the year 1946 in the town of Seekonk, Massachusetts, my mother married the man I thought for many years was my father, but he was actually my stepfather. It is odd to think of him in that way. The word does not roll trippingly off the tongue. Not from mine, anyway. He has always been my dad, for better or worse, even though he wasn't.

Somehow it seems oddly fitting in a weird sort of way that thinking of my parents' wedding anniversary was juxtaposed in my brain today with thoughts of the noise of strife and the raging tempest. There were many such moments in our house. There was very little peace or stillness over the years. We were definitely not dwelling in Beulah Land.

This post is short. I'm sorry that it isn't also sweet.

View on December 8, 2017, from our front door

I know today is August 31st. But don't you feel cooler now?

More minutiae of my life you can't live without

I don't live in the city, but I don't live in the country either, although a city dweller might say that I do. Nor am I a suburbanite. I live where the outer fringes of suburbia morph into what some call exurbia and some call semi-rural (as opposed to full-blown rural which to me, having grown up in Texas, means huge ranches, wide open spaces with people few and far between, farms with big herds of swine or sheep or cattle. That is not where I live). Using the latest figures, our county has 421 square miles of land (water doesn't count) and 266,000 human residents. The human residents, if spread evenly over the land mass (they aren't, of course), equal a population density of 631 persons per square mile. By way of comparison, the population density of the city of London, England, is 7,700 persons per square mile. The population density of the island of Manhattan in the state of New York (that is, New York City without the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island) is 74,309 persons per square mile. Compared to those places, I suppose where I live might be considered the wide, open spaces, proving once again that everything is relative.

I have written previously that the eastern part of beautiful Cherokee County, Georgia, where I live is like the hem of the high priest's garment in ancient Israel. If you went around the hem of the high priest's garment in ancient Israel you would have seen a bell and a pomegranite, a bell and a pomegranite, a bell and a pomegranite. If you go around the eastern part of beautiful Cherokee County, Georgia, where I live you will see a farm and a subdivision, a farm and a subdivision, a farm and a subdivision. Semi-rural, like I said. Lots of houses, but also lots of horses.

We also have little clumps of commercial enterprises every few miles so that we don't have to drive all the way into the city or even the suburbs for the necessities of life. These clumps were once little country crossroads that have metastasized into pseudo-mini-suburbs.

Five miles to the north of us the clump includes a Kroger supermarket (groceries, household goods, and pharmacy), three gasoline stations, a dental office that was once a bank, an Ace hardware store, a Subway sandwich shop, a veterinarian's office, a Mexican restaurant, a dry cleaner's, a pizza place, a Taco Bell, a Chinese food take-out, an automobile parts store, an Anytime Fitness Center, a funeral home and crematorium, a McDonald's, a Waffle House, a fire station, an elementary school, and, as Andy Griffith used to say, I don't know what all.

Five miles to the south of us the clump consists of two supermarkets (Kroger and Publix), two stand-alone drugstores/pharmacies (Walgreens and CVS), a library, two banks, an urgent-care facility, an assisted-living and memory care facility, a dental office, an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, a car wash, a cemetery, a Wendy's, a Waffle House, a McDonald's, a Burger King, a Bojangles, a Taco Bell, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a Zaxby's, a Chick-fil-A, a fire station, a barbecue restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, a pizza place, two automobile parts stores, two gasoline stations, another Anytime Fitness Center, even a Dunkin Donut. Everything one's heart could desire.

Hardly.

What don't we have? A lot of things. A hospital (though a large regional one is about 10 miles west of us). A post office. Clothing stores. Shoe stores. Jewelry stores. Department stores. Florists. Theaters. Music stores. Art galleries. Museums. Bike paths. Sidewalks.

Our subdivision does have sidewalks, but the only place they go is to other parts of our subdivision.

Our county grew 24% between 2010 and 2020, from 214,000 human beings to 266,000 human beings. Several more traffic signals have been added and there are even a couple of roundabouts now.

I forgot where I was going with this post. I'm almost sure I intended to make some sort of point, but it's too late to worry about that now. If I think of it, I will certainly let you know.

Until then, and as everyone says and nobody really knows why, so long* for now.

*To find out more about the phrase "so long", read this very interesting article written in 2018 by etymologist Anatoly Liberman. You'll be glad you did.

Things Berlitz probably won’t tell you

If you tend to fly off the handle easily and say things you later regret, there are some words you probably ought never to say to anyone. On the other hand, if you don't mind the occasional fist coming in contact with your nose and you happen to find yourself in Germany, either accidentally or on purpose, here is an excellent article from Mental Floss that you may find useful:

"30 Hilarious German Insults You Should Start Using Immediately" .

You'll have to look them up yourself because I'm not going to list them for you like I did a couple of posts back with the 10 words The Simpsons made famous. I will tell you that schweinehund is in there but dummkopf, a particular favorite of my father, is not.

Okay, you twisted my arm. I will list them for you:

1. Arschgeige
2. Bananenbieger
3. Erbsenzähler (also ameisentätowierer)
4. Lustmolch
5. Arsch mit ohren
6. Evolutionsbremse
7. Einzeller
8. Hosenscheißer
9. Dünnbrettbohrer
10. Spargeltarzan
11. Kotzbrocken
12. Heißluftgebläse (also labertasche)
13. Gehirnverweigerer
14. Teletubbyzurückwinker
15. Schluckspecht
16. Stinkstiefel
17. Tratschtante
18. Rotzlöffel
19. Speichellecker
20. Lackaffe
21. Schweinehund
22. Trantüte
23. Backpfeifengesicht
24. Blockflötengesicht
25. Socken-in-sandalen-träger (also sockenschläfer and sockenfalter)
26. Weichei
27. Warmduscher
28. Jeansbügler
29. Tee-trinker
30. Schattenparker

but to find out what they mean, you're simply going to have to click on the link.

I have lost 45 pounds (more than three stones) since 2019, so I am no longer a trantüte but at certain times of year I am guilty of being a sockenschläfer. There might even be one or two others that could be applied to me, but I'm not going to help you with finding those.

I do have it on good authority (himself) that Tasker Dunham is not only a jeansbügler, but he is proud of it.

More fluff

When I told you in the previous post that the 1970s television series Rhoda was the first spin-off from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I meant to tell you that two other series also had their origin in The Mary Tyler Moore Show. One was a comedy and one was a drama. Can tou name them?

One character in Mary's world who didn't get a series of her own was Sue Ann Nivens, the star of "The Happy Homemaker" program on the fictional WJM-TV in Minnapolis. Sue Ann was played by Betty White, who will be 99 years old on January 17, 2022 (Note. I had to look that fact up because I don't carry celebrities' birthdays around in my head; I just knew she was very old). Betty White went on to play Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls and Elke Ostrovsky on Hot in Cleveland.

Folks, that knowledge and four or five dollars American will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks, where they call Small Tall, Medium Grande, Large Venti, and Extra Large Trenta. For your information, venti and trenta mean 20 and 30, respectively, in Italian, and they are the number of ounces of liquid refreshment your money can buy at Starbucks.

I maintain that this blog is not mere fluff; it is educational.

Today's Fun Fact: Back in the 1980s the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila in the Philippnes, whose name was Jaime Sin, was elevated by the Pope to a higher position in the church's ecclesiastical structure and became Cardinal Sin.

It's true.

It's time to close as I can't top that one.