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A bird watcher’s lament

(Beginning music by the great Spike Jones and his City Slickers via YouTube.)

Ah, spring! When every young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love. 

Old men like me start thinking about pollen, mowing and weeding and sneezing and wheezing. And here in Texas that means I’m in for at least seven months of it. Except that I usually throw in the towel and give up about mid-August. That’s when the heat keeps me indoors most of the time knowing that my efforts to keep everything green and colorful are futile anyway. The lawn will turn brown eventually no matter what I do.
It’s Texas.
 
Last year I found a new distraction that I fancied might become a serious hobby. I started birdwatching. I don’t mean to offend anyone but in my mind nothing says “old man” louder than trying to differentiate between a common and a great tail grackle. Not that it matters. Grackles are all annoying trash birds that scare away the ones I really want to see: cardinals and orioles, golden finch and a rainbow of hummingbirds.
 
We bought bird feeders last year and placed them where we could see them from our family room. That was fun at first but the more involved I got the more frustrated I became in trying to stop the sparrows from beating up a delicate little tufted titmouse or a delightful red breasted nuthatch.
 
Sparrows are mean. They’re bullies, did you know that? They are. Theyve been known to throw eggs our of the nests of other species and steal their homes.
 
And another thing: birds are messy. They throw more seeds on the ground than they eat and they eat a ton of them. It gets expensive. The bird seed takes root in the lawn and weeds are growing everywhere when I had none before. What worse — the dogs eat the seeds off the ground and leave us little, crumbling piles of seedy poop.
 
I don’t know what to do. Should I resume the madness and go broke again having truckloads of premium seeds delivered from Amazon or should I just let them fend for themselves.
 
The thrill is gone and I’m glad I escaped the grip of addiction before it could pull me down to rock bottom. I am now and shall always be a recovering bird watcher.

Blossoms of spring, promise of cobbler

Spring has sprung in North Texas.

Dormant lawns are greening before we can get our mowers tuned. Perennials are yawning awake. We’re thanking last year’s spent annuals while replacing them with a new generation of color and sweetness.

Our peach tree is budding with gorgeous pink flowers and promise of delicious homemade cobblers in the coming summer.

I smoke meats and cook dinners but peach cobbler is the only from-scratch dessert in my baking repertoire. It’s easy to make and nothing is better after any summer evening meal, especially when topped off with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream. Blue Bell please, if you have it.

My blogging friend Gabriana took note of her own peach tree blossoms the other day and like me, she’s pretty excited about it. (See her Nosy Parker Blog here.)

As much as I love the dark cold days and long, narcotic nights of winter, this time of year I’m forced to admit with observational comic Robert Orben:

Spring is God’s way of saying, ‘One more time!’

Season of storms and Bluebonnets

Near Covington TX, March 17, 2018 Photo bu Jeff Stephens, The Backroads of Texas Facebook group.

This is not a tornado but it might have turned into one if conditions had been just slightly different yesterday. The photo is pure Texas in the spring.

Here’s another one taken yesterday near Lampasas. This is called a supercell. You don’t see these everywhere, mainly in tornado alley. You really don’t want to see one up close and personal. But again, this is not a tornado, though it can give them birth.

Near Lampasas, TX, March 17-2018 Photo by Jessica Price – Backroads of Texas Facebook Group

When you live in Texas you learn more about weather than you need to know in California.  Spring and fall are severe storm seasons. They can throw softball size hailstones at us, spawn terrifying tornadoes and create brief straight-line winds up to 100 mph on what was a hot, sunny day just a few minutes earlier.

Most Texans don’t seem terribly concerned by any of this. Here in Tornado Alley there are darned few storm shelters and nobody has a basement or cellar. Crazy, right? There’s just something inherently Texan about being a cockeyed optimist and at the same time shrugging off fate.

If your time is up, it’s up.

Photo by Abby Gordon,
https://www.facebook.com/texasbluebonnetsightings/

But spring in Texas is also time of dazzling natural beauty, when the prairies bloom into a heavenly landscape of wildflowers. Chief among them is the Blue Bonnet, the state flower of Texas.

I don’t know anyone here that would give up either extreme.

The essence of Texas is a sense of wonder built of challenges overcome.

“You didn’t come with instructions.”

Researchers have warned that the prospect of leaving home has left ill-prepared millennials feeling anxious and panicked.

A recent study of 2,000 young people about to enter college has concluded that millennials are unprepared for the realities of life in the real world. More than half don’t know how to pay a bill or how much they should expect to spend on rent.

61% of these young people are scared to leave their parents. 58% have trouble sleeping. 27% have panic attacks when they think about moving away from home.

These blossoming adults go off to college nervously in need of “trigger warnings” for their studies and “safe spaces” in which to live their lives. Many don’t want to learn how to drive a car.

Some expect to get a trophy for merely participating in life.

Recently on our Dallas morning radio show on KLIF my partner, Amy Chodroff, and I talked about this study and tried to figure out how young Americans went from being excited about inheriting their own lives, as we were at their age, to being seemingly terrified by the prospect of growing up and leaving the nest.

Amy, a Gen-Xer with two well-parented and supremely prepared and confident children of her own, decided her generation is to blame for coddling these kids.

We talked about so-called helicopter parents and the everyone-gets-a trophy entitlement era of today’s society. It made sense to us and we left the blame there, on the Gen-X parents of Millenials.

Something about the discussion nagged at me and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized what it was:

Amy’s generation of helicopter parents are my generation’s free-range kids.

We Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, were the beatniks of the 1950s and the hippies of the 60s. We worshiped at the altar of Do Your Own Thing in the Church of What’s Happening Now.

We had a wonderfully carefree childhood during a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity and yet we rejected every notion of our own parents’ culture from the Hit Parade music they loved to our haircuts and the clothes they wanted us to wear.

We even rejected the uniquely American idea that liberty came with a price worth paying, though that’s easy to understand if you consider our perspective.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall – Washington, D.C.

Politicians of the 60s sent us to a war of their making. 50,000 of us died in Vietnamese rice paddies ten thousand miles from home.

I frequently think of my high school buddies who had their lives blown away before they were old enough to grow a beard or fall in love for the first time.

Those of us who dodged the draft warned each other to never trust anyone over thirty and shouted, “Make love, not war!”

Now we’re in our sixties and seventies wondering why our grandkids are so nervous and we blame their parents, our children.

Just look at the society we Boomers left in the wake of our cultural revolution.

In some ways our kids are more traditional than we were at their age. Growing up as the children of free-range parenting they’re over-correcting our mistakes by inventing their own, insisting that every spare minute of their children’s lives be scheduled, structured and under constant supervision and  by insisting that the road to happiness begins at birth with eyes fixed on the prize: a scholarship to Harvard or Stanford.

Our children’s children are leaving home, entering those schools confused and scared. And who can blame them? They were never taught that they would be challenged and sometimes they would fail. Nobody ever explained that they aren’t really bulletproof, bound for glory or as exceptional as they were constantly assured.

Nobody ever explained they’ll be paying off those student loans for the next twenty years.

We love our children. We don’t want them to ever be scared or disappointed. And yet we know they have to suffer to succeed.

Or did we forget to tell them that part?

Sometimes parents make mistakes. We can’t avoid them. We can only try to minimize them and try to make them teachable moments for ourselves and our kids.

As my Carolann likes to remind her Gen-X son: “You didn’t come with instructions.”

 

*Source of quoted material: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-4666794/Millennials-aren-t-ready-reality-life.html

 

Those beautiful Swedes

I have a friend who does consulting work around the world; he has clients in the U.S., all through Europe, New Zealand, Central and South America. Occasionally he passes through Dallas and we catch up over a meal.

He told me one thing that he’s noticed in his travels is that the Swedes are the most physically and facially beautiful people in the world. He said when he first started doing business in Sweden he caught himself staring at people because they were just unnaturally attractive.

Swedish actors Peter Johansson, Anna Sahlin and Måns Zelmerlöw. Photo: Maja Suslin/TT

One evening while out to dinner with a group of his clients in Sweden he had drank just enough wine to ask the question that had been nagging at him for awhile.

“Do you people realize how beautiful you are?” he asked. “There are no ugly people in your country.”

They laughed and told him immodestly yes, they do know that. Whenever they travel outside their national borders, they said, they find other people in the world a little unsettling.
Isn’t that hilarious?

Daylight Saving Time

I don’t really care. I’m the least busy person I know.
 
Everybody still says we’ll all lose an hour’s sleep Saturday night. Not me. I go to bed when I’m tired on Saturday and wake up Sunday morning when I’m finished sleeping. The clock says whatever it says, I don’t care.
 
If you do have to awaken at a particular time on Sunday and you’re afraid losing an hour’s sleep will kick your butt I have two suggestions: go to bed earlier or change your plans.
 
Seriously, why is this a big deal?
 
It’s exactly the same as when you fly into a different time zone that’s one hour ahead. Does that wreak havoc in your life for as much as five days as they keep telling us in the news? I don’t think so.
 
Lately we’ve been treated to sensationalized news stories telling us how changing the clocks one hour leads to more highway deaths for sleepy drivers and more heart attacks and strokes for people who have trouble adjusting their bodies to the arbitrary numbers we call time.
 
Oh, puh-leeze!
 
I don’t mean to be a jerk but if you have a heart attack because of Daylight Saving Time I’m guessing that your heart was in critical distress before you changed the clock.
 
But here’s the good news: if we insist on maintaining this silly tradition we’re darned close to living in a world where all clocks change themselves. Your computers, tablets and phones already do this. Watches, clocks on stoves and in cars can’t be far behind.
 
And you know what that means?  Nothing. Blessedly, nothing.
 
We’ll never notice anything except that it suddenly stays light an hour longer.
 
“Hmm. I guess the time changed last night.”
 
That’s all we’ll say.
 
If TV and radio stop beating us over the head with stuff to worry about we’ll all be fine.

The Age of Irrelevance

Getting older is like getting fatter. You don’t notice because it happens gradually.

One thing you do notice is suddenly being ignored. You notice because it seems to happen overnight. One day you’re a vital part of society and respected leader in your industry, the next day people merely nod at you with a perfunctory smile as if you were a greeter at Walmart.

This only happens with people who didn’t know you when you were young. Unfortunately, over time that seems to be most people.

Several years ago I mentioned this to my son’s mother-in-law, Gloria, a dear friend who is a bit older and very wise. I told her I was frustrated because my experience and knowledge of my business had always been sought by my colleagues but suddenly nobody seems to have any interest in what I think.

“You’ve reached the age of irrelevance,” she explained matter-of-factly.

I had to let that sink in for a moment.

The age of irrelevance.

Gloria could see I was stunned.  “It happens to all of us,” she said gently. “I used to be the person my managers turned to for ideas. Then one day they weren’t interested in any of my observations or suggestions.”

I didn’t know what to say. It made no sense and yet this is exactly what I was experiencing.

“It’s like when your kids are growing up,” Gloria continued. “They rely on you for everything and then one day they suddenly don’t need you at all. You’re irrelevant.”

Nobody ever warned me this would happen. I don’t like it but I’ve come to accept it philosophically, if not quite emotionally. It still hurts a bit. I feel kind of useless.

Irrelevant.

It’s been a few years since Gloria explained to me this particularly jarring bump on the road of life. I’m getting used to it and so will you.

I just thought someone should give you a heads up.

Clutter

I just read a news article quoting new research that determined clutter is stressful.

Really? How much time and money did you spend figuring that out?

While my blogging partner, Anita, is trying to figure out what lifetime memories she should keep and what to do with the rest, I’m still trying to understand how I manage to collect so much stuff in the first place.

I feel a little like the kid named Pigpen from the Peanuts comics. He’s the dirty kid with a perpetual cloud of dust surrounding him. Wherever I go I seem to be in a pile of stuff, especially paper.

Paper collects on my desks at home and work. They gather on the floor and under the seats in my car. They boil out of the glove box: years of expired tire warranties and Taco Bell napkins.

I can’t even bring myself to sit down at my desk at home surrounded as I am by notes, receipts and stacks of paid bills I haven’t had the energy to file.

All around me are boxes of pictures I intend to scan and keep, just like Anita was talking about. That sounds easy enough except that I have  sixty-some years worth and that doesn’t even count the thousands of pointless pictures I’ve taken since my phone became my camera.

I have little boxes here and there filled with stuff I don’t know what to do with. Some of it is unidentifiable – all the stuff I have no use for but am afraid to throw away.

And now we have the research confiming — clutter is stressful.

I’m going to add that article to the shredder pile I’m slowly collecting. It’s not big enough to deal with yet.

Happy New Day!

 

I don’t get it.

Don’t misunderstand. I enjoy a good party like most people. I have spent New Year’s Eves past dressed up at fancy hotels and private homes, eating, drinking and wearing silly hats like everyone else.

I just don’t get it.

I wasn’t going to mention it because most of my friends think my attitude is a bit odd. Some think I’m just a grumpy old fart but I have no problem with people ringing in the new year. And, my inability to embrace the concept is nothing new. I’ve always thought it was weird.

“Sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

First of all, it’s symbolic which means its romanticizing something that’s not a big deal if you think about it. Seriously, we celebrate something that happens every 24 hours: midnight. A new day. Woo-hoo! Let’s have another drink and start kissing total strangers.

Sorry — I promised myself I wouldn’t get sarcastic.?

The other thing I notice every year is all the people who say, “Let’s hope next year is better.” As a generalization, what was wrong with the last year? I mean, if you had a terrible personal tragedy I understand and certainly sympathize with the wish that next year will be better. In the bigger picture, though, I’m willing to stick my neck out and say the world will pretty much be the same on Monday as it was Sunday.

Sorry — I promised myself I wouldn’t get sarcastic.

We don’t even use paper calendars anymore, so we can’t use the old movie graphics of the days and months blowing away in the winds of old man time.

And that’s another thing: old man time and baby new year. Those human depictions of a human construct is part of the problem.

Okay, it’s not really a problem. I wish you a happy new year, a better year, I really do. And if you want to party like it’s 1999 I would never discourage you. Have fun. Just be safe and mind your manners.

If you need a sitter, give me a call.

Happy New Day.

 

Bottled Water

About thirty years ago I was working with a guy named Bob Nathan. He told me one morning that he had just invested some money in a new company that was going to sell drinking water in plastic bottles. I thought he was kidding. When I found out he wasn’t, I thought he was crazy.

No, this is not a scene from a sci-fi movie about cloning geeky teens. It’s an actual tanning bed.

Who would ever pay for bottled water?

Bob retired years ago. I’m still working for the man.

About the same time another friend bought a tanning salon, where people would spend ridiculous amounts of money  to bake themselves to a turkey skin crisp. And mind you, this was in California where the sun is always shining for free.

Have you heard about oxygen bars? Yes, it’s true. People make dating reservations to sit down and plug hoses into their noses so they can pay to breathe.

And by the way, don’t think it didn’t occur to me to wonder why someone who could buy a cattle ranch needed to sell useless dead wood.

.I may be slow but I’m not entirely stupid. After thirty years I have an idea of my own. I’m going to charge people money to be nice to them. For a dollar a day I’ll be pleasant whenever our paths cross. Or, wait…how about this? For two dollars a day I’ll stay out of your life completely.