Life Advice – Page 4 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

The Biker

We had taken a room in a Bed & Breakfast place in this small Southern California mountain town. There were a few shops but only one restaurant and we needed dinner. Not a free table, the maitre d’hotel assured us. There are two places left at the bar however, he said, next to that gentleman there, in the back.

We took one look at that “gentleman” and the saliva in our mouth went dry. What we saw was a man of sturdy build, scrubby hair, full beard, and a biker’s helmet in front of him on the counter. Hell’s Angels, we both thought. No way will we sit there. But we were hungry. I looked at my wife; she looked at me. Forward then. Mustering my most nonchalant self I pulled up our two bar stools, smiled at the bearded gentleman and gave him a friendly “Good Evening, Neighbor”. He responded in the most welcoming way and I could tell right away from the way he used the English language that he was a highly educated man masquerading as a rough biker. Not only that but he and his charming wife, he explained, had biked in from Big Bear to celebrate her birthday, which made us all break out laughing because it so happened that we had driven in from Newport Beach to do the same thing, it being my wife’s birthday too. Never was ice faster broken.

Needless to say, the conversation soon turned to motorcycles. Our new friend and his better half each rode their own machines. I forget what make or models they had but we did talk a lot about the merits, advantages and disadvantages of various brand names and of bike riding in general. At that point I just had to inform the gentleman that I hailed from Germany and that, when I was still an infant, my father not only had a motorcycle but that it had been an American make, an Indian. At the mention of that fact a new burst of excitement broke out in our corner of the restaurant. Our table neighbor was particularly fond of that old type of bike. He pronounced the name “Indian” as if it were something holy, something that stirred memories in his mind.

He and his wife had already finished their dinner when we arrived. When our food was brought they were ready to leave. We all got up, shook hands all around, told each other what a pleasure it had been, and parted in high spirits.

How wrong you can be, we thought, when you rely on appearances. You just can’t judge a gentleman by his helmet . How could we have mistaken a professor — at least we thought that is what he was — how could we have taken him for a Hell’s Angel? We still had a revelation coming upon leaving. A gentleman, the cashier said, had already paid our tab.

Sitka, AK

A hundred and fifty years ago this town was called Novo Arkhangelsk. It was the capital of Tsarist Russia’s Alaska. The United States had not much to do with Russia in those days. Nothing sinister, at least. On the contrary: Secretary of State Seward was smart enough to buy all of Russian America for a lump sum when it came on the market in 1867 or thereabouts.

The Russians, consequently, are gone but they left their religion behind. That is why there are still enough orthodox faithful in Sitka, and why there is still a beautifully furnished and decorated Russian orthodox cathedral in the middle of town, presided over by a real bishop.

I stopped by last week to see this living museum of a time gone by. A lady was collecting the small entrance fee at the door. I greeted her with a cheerful ZDRUUFFTS-vooyete — how-do-you-do — which drew a blank. I tried the more folksy kak-DYELLO — what’s cooking — but made no contact. So I guess the Russians really did leave.

This out-of-the-way city, once known as the Paris of the West Coast, is quite pretty. It rains a lot, hence everything looks clean and the front yards are full of flowers. It is an orderly city, too. When I asked some one if there is a grocery store anywhere I got clear instruction: over there, on Baranoff street behind that yellow house! And sure enough, at the corner of Lincoln and Baranoff streets there were two large arrow shaped signs on a lamp post. One said BISHOP’S HOUSE, the other one, same size, same type face said GROCERY STORE. No way to get lost in Sitka.

The city is clean on the inside as well. There are only seven bars, I was told, but twenty-seven churches. And healthy food matters to the locals. I know that because the tour guide could not suppress a derogatory remark when the bus passed a MacDonald’s. She thought the big sign next to the hamburger joint, pointing in the other direction, was quite à propos. It said EMERGENCY.

Is Useless Useless?

I do not play tennis. I could not hit the soft spot even if I tried. But from time to time I watch the professional “Opens”. The skill and the strength of these athletes is fascinating and I cannot help but watch the ritual in awe. Lately, though, I have been thinking: here is a little white rubber ball, a toy essentially. And down on the court are two grownups in their best years which they waste on scheming how best to lob that toy over a net, back and forth, back and forth. That’s their profession, their job. A job that produces absolutely nothing, except an income. That’s all they do, 24/7. And then I watch the spectators on the other side of the court. Eight hundred noses turning left, eight hundred noses turning right. For hours on end. In the glaring sun. “Lord, what fools these mortals be”, I would have liked to say but Puck beat me to it.

I would have even harsher words for certain European soccer fans who have actually attacked and killed opposing team fans over the if or how a ball had been kicked across a stretch of innocent lawn. It goes beyond uselessness when something as intrinsically useless as a soccer game turns into insanity.

Hiking in the mountains was always a passion of mine, though, until I got too old for the strain. It was always hard for me, very hard. Breath after breath, slow step after slow step. Up and up and still up. Another switchback. And another. Pant, pant. Oh God, how many more? Nobody there to see you. You could quit and turn around. But no, you force yourself. You just stare at the ground and plod along until you practically stumble out onto the plateau at the top of the mountain, the end of the trail. And then, Ah! The exhilarating feeling of having made it all the way up. The sky, the clouds, the view of the valley below are your well earned rewards. Others don’t see it that way, necessarily. Clambering up a mountain only to come right down again strikes them as a useless exercise. Touché.

But to tell the truth, when I was a boy I also often misunderstood, even rebelled at having to do useless chores such as cleaning my room. “But I just did it yesterday”, I would object, confusing ‘useless’ with ‘onerous’. She was right, of course, my mother. I still remember the pithy way she used to counter that argument: “You also have just eaten yesterday, no?”

Fighting Fire with Fire

It would make me nervous to watch a fire fighter starting a small fire to reduce a big fire. But it is being done. The idea is to create a burned out area, an area without fuel, in the path of the big fire. This must be risky given unexpected winds, speed and intensity of the advancing fire, and other unforeseeables.

It would also make me nervous to rely on homeopathic remedies for some sickness that plagues me. It would be somewhat analogous to the ‘fire with fire’ idea: fighting the big sickness with a smaller version of the same sickness. I believe it makes other people nervous, too. That may be why we do not hear much about homeopathic physicians. I am sure there is a reasonable explanation for the practice. It just sounds absurd to me, a layman.

Recently I came upon another such homeopathic solution for a different disorder. Caused by competition from online commerce many retail companies are forced to close down an increasing number of their physical brick and mortar facilities. At the same time a certain online company, for delivery efficiency reasons, is buying up and opening more physical facilities. To me this sounds suspiciously like fighting the decline of retail stores by adding more of them.

On the other hand, what if it works? I mean, the whole idea of fighting like with like, fighting a condition with that which caused the condition. When I try to get on to the freeway and the traffic is so heavy and fast that it seems there is barely an opening for one more car, what do I do? I don’t slow down or stop, do I? No, on the contrary. I cure speed with more speed and gently merge into the stream. The more I think of it the better the idea sounds to me. I should conduct a test. Maybe I will. My cardiologist, for example, does not want me to drink red wine although he admits that there have been studies that show that a little red wine with dinner could actually be helpful for my condition. My problem is the gap between his and my notion of what constitutes ‘little’. So for dinner tonight I will pour myself a regular glass of wine. And then, when I have sipped my puny allowance, I will pour myself another of the same poison. Let’s see if I will not feel just a little healthier.

Picture credit: Crossfit Azusa

The Why of Tourism

“Why do you go away so often?” my dogs ask me with their sad eyes. “Why did you fly to Paris not once or twice but four times so far and leave us at home in care of a pet sitter?” they ask. Well, for one thing Paris is more interesting then, say, Pittsburgh. But dogs do not buy this argument and I have human friends, too, who find London or Berlin more interesting than Paris. People, I conclude, travel for a variety of reasons.

Many a traveller will look forward to his or her trip to Florence because of the marvellous opportunities to find fine leather goods in elegant, inspiring shopping surroundings, unequalled at home. Our Wallmarts and Malls do not have quite the cachet as the via Tornabuoni. No need, of course, to travel abroad for brands like Gucci, Prada, or Ferragama. But how about some of the less known brands? There may be surprises waiting, labels like Jaeger, Herve Leger, Marchesa, Malandrino, Cavalli, Loewe, Da Milano, and Ferretti. That plus the ambience, the street life. Ah Firenze, la vita è bella!

Fascinating as fashion can be, window shopping is not everybody’s thing. In fact, most tourists will want to stop at least for one or two of the highlights of Florentine renaissance art, and if it only be Michelangelo’s David at the Galleria dell’ Accademia. Others get lost all day in the Galleria degli Uffizi or the Palazzo Pitti among a thousand famous paintings by artists whose names do not easily roll off non-Italian tongues.
Paris is not that bad a place to visit either. The City of Light! Romantic strolls on the banks of the Seine. Kissing couples on the Pont Alexandre, the bridge with the golden angels. Lunch at a little bistro not far from the Basilica of Sacre Coeur in an obscure street of the 18th District where nobody speaks English. Dinner at the Train Bleu near the Gare de l’Est railway station where everybody speaks English. Un café at the Deux Magots, the Two Monkeys of Existentialist fame, on Blvd. Saint Germain on the Left Bank.

But you can also skip all that and consider Paris to be one big history lesson, beginning with the story of Joan of Arc and leading to, but not ending with, the birth of the United States of America at no. 56 rue Jacob where Ben Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Franklin was very popular in Paris at that time. Apparently he still is for they gave him a charming statue just across the river from the Eiffel Tower. Half a block away one also meets George Washington in bronze, on horseback on a huge plinth in the center of Place Iena, with the traffic swirling around him. Not far is a statue of Lafayette. Not to forget two or three statues of Thomas Jefferson, erstwhile Ambassador to the Court of France. There is also a monument honoring the American volontiers of 1914 and numerous other buildings and monuments that demonstrate how French and American history and culture are linked.

Lighthearted frivolity, art appreciation, the study of history — they are all equally valuable ways of spending tourist dollars. All of us have our preferences. But I am willing to bet that few if any of us would want to “do”, say Florence today, Venice tomorrow, Paris the day after, and then fly home again. And yet I knew a woman who tried to do just that. She wanted to see the cities that she believed had been the homes of some of her ancestors. Her adventure began with the idea that a sleeper cabin on an overnight train was far cheaper than a night at a hotel. Her plan was to visit Vienna, then sleep on the train while travelling to Geneva; visit Geneva, Bern, and Luzern that day, sleep on the train again and travel back to Vienna; and then fly home. Here is a brief summary of the ensuing whirlwind sequence of activities.

Day 1. Landed in Vienna. Of course she had heard about the Praterrad, the giant Ferris Wheel, “Third Man” and all that. So she went to see. Fell in with a couple who spoke English and lectured her on musical history, particularly the story of Beethoven. They suggested a visit to his former residence in Heiligenstadt, now a small museum. After lunch she stopped at the Dome of Saint Stephen where Josef Haydn was once a choirboy, then visited the house of Sigmund Freud who never was anybody’s choir boy. Stopped at the Cafe Am Dom where, to her surprise, dogs are admitted. They quietly stay out of sight under the tables. Then off to the Hofburg, trooping past fountains and statues, through castle wings, courtyards, halls, staircases, corridors, and apartments, including those of “Sisi”, a.k.a. Elizabeth, Empress of Austria.

Day 2. Arrived in Geneva by night train from Vienna. Stopped briefly down by the water to inspect the bronze marker on the spot where Sisi, the Empress whose apartments she had just inspected, was murdered. Went to see the Celestial Sphere. Didn’t know what to make of it. Other tourists didn’t either. Impressed by the huge fountain in the harbor, Geneva’s artificial answer to Yellowstone’s natural Old Faithful geyser. Loved the majestic Mont Blanc mountain range in the distance. After lunch by local train to Bern, a truly medieval town where they keep bears in a pit and where the chief tourist attraction is a massive clock tower, built about the year 1500. then to nearby Luzern and a cruise on Lake Luzern, the Vierwaldstaetter See as the natives call it. Saw the Wounded Lion carved into the bedrock in memory of the Swiss Guards who defended the French king’s castle during the French Revolution.

Day 3. Back in Vienna. There was so much left to see: the huge Karlskirche fronted by two columns that look like Muslim minarets, the Opera House, and the “Musikverein” building, made popular by annual New Year’s concerts on TV. Went for a piece of “Torte” at pricey Cafe Mozart across from the Spanish Riding School. Took the streetcar and passed the Johann Strauss monument. There are two composers by that name. Not sure which one was sculpted there. Did not matter, it seems. There was still the Secession museum to go to, and the Belvedere Palace of Prince Eugene, famous for its art collection. There were other things she could have gone to see but her head was bursting and her feet were killing her.

Needless to say, she came home with a brain packed full of impressions and tales. Nobody dared to correct her when she described in glowing colors such wonders of the world as the Zeitglockenturm of Luzern, the glorious interior of the Stephansdom where Beethoven once was a choir boy, the lions in the pit of Bern, the Wounded Bear of Vienna, and the wonderful time she had visiting the Schoenbrunn Palace on the shores of Lake Geneva. And would it have mattered? Pshaw! Dull facts. It’s the memories we cherish, “the memories of yesterday’s pleasures”, to steal a phrase from John Donne, the preacher.

If I remember it correctly, her greatest pleasure was to have saved five hundred dollars in hotel bills.

Playing With Our Food

Food has always been a popular topic. The Bible reports that even in the days of Solomon food was already something a king would pray for. “Feed me with food convenient for me”, as the translator of the English Bible of 1611 put it (Proverbs 30:8), anticipating the age of convenience foods by 3000 years.

We all, of course, want food that is convenient. We want good food (it tastes good), but it should also be healthy (good for us).

There are essentially three pathways to nutritional happiness. There is traditional food: a plain cookie, for example, or Kelloggs Raisin Bran. But consumers are so skeptical nowadays that the manufacturers of the cereal thought it wise to add the phrase “With Pure Fruit” to the label, referring no doubt to the raisins and implying at the same time that other cereal makers use impure raisins. Or, god forbid, raisin flavor; or even more heinously, natural raisin flavor.

Then there is takeout food, i.e. food that has something taken out, like cookies baked without salt and/or sugar. Or milk for example. Milk leads in the take out category. You can have it with fat and all, or else without any of the fat or with some of it, by percentage points. Most other dairy products are also available without fat or with low fat content. The latter kind are sometimes called “lite” which means that even the orthography was taken out. The choices here are either taste or health. You cannot have both at the same time. I am prepared to do without the fat, but I draw the line when it comes to fat free half and half. I see this as a logical dilemma.

And then there is food that has something added, perhaps stewed tomatoes with added garlic, thyme, basil, oregano, basil and oregano, pineapple, or papaya, the variations are endless. I think the prize in this category goes to coffee. Some coffee may still taste like coffee, but beware the Mad Mixer. He is the playful gnome that lives behind the roasting pans, thinking up new flavors. If you don’t pay close attention to labels your coffee may taste of vanilla, cinnamon, mocha, buttery caramel, almond, banana, blueberry, chocolate, chocolate mint, coconut, hazelnut, or peanut butter, to name a few varieties.

We must not forget the extreme convenience foods. There is, for example, a certain kind of salad dressing. The 355 ml bottle, the label indicates, is free of calories, sugar, fat, carbohydrates, gluten, and cholesterol. There is nothing left in it, it seems. If you now just remove the lettuce as well you needn’t even wash the salad bowl. How convenient is that!

Or Maple Grove Farms’ “Low Calorie Syrup with Butter Flavor”, a substance that has nothing whatsoever to do with butter, or with maples for that matter. But it is sugar free. According to the label it consists of water, sorbitol, natural and artificial flavors, cellulose gum, salt, caramel color, sucralose, phosphoric acid, sodium benzoate, acesulfame potassium, aspartame, potassium sorbate, citric acid, phenylketonurics, and a little phenylalanine.

God may have made the Leviathan for the sport of it (KJV, Psalm 104), but surely he would not have played with Solomon’s syrup for the sport of it. Even the Old Testament God who could be pretty inscrutable on occasion would not have sent him butter-flavored artificial manna with sugar free syrup for the “hellth” of it, would he?

No, God knows better but Mr. Wilton is less concerned with the details of what you eat: Wilton’s chocolate sprinkles, for example, contain sugar, cornstarch, cottonseed oil, cocoa processed with alkali, soy lecithin, dextrin, glaze, natural flavor, artificial flavor, and carnauba wax, a substance that is also used on cars and floors in addition to chocolate sprinkles. But don’t let me stop you. They are delicious on vanilla ice cream.

Which in turn may contain guar gum, locust bean gum, carrageenan, xanthan gum, polysorbate 80, mono- and diglycerides, and possibly artificial vanilla flavor and gelatin. If we are what we eat I am surprised we have not all turned purple yet, or something.

Picture credit medicalnewstoday.com

Street Talk: The Ghosts of Rue du Bac

Street Talk: The Ghosts of Rue du Bac is the title of an article I wrote for the Paris magazine FRANCE REVISITED. You will find it if you google for “france revisited ghosts”.

(picture credit: parisadele.com)

Pinched Pennies

The safest way to keep your purse filled with money is to not spend any. A penny saved is a penny earned, can’t argue with that. Yet one must eat and pay rent and give alms. That is where your grocers, utilities, and retailers come in. They have developed ingenious methods to make you feel better while spending.

The Gas Company, for example, will allow you to spread your bills evenly throughout the year. Pay a little more in summer, and a little less in winter. This improves your cash flow, but it is a deception. It does not save you a penny. It just makes you feel better in winter.

My supermarket, on the other hand, really does save me money. They have formed a “club”. If I scan my club card before paying I get a discount, and so I continue to shop there. Which is, of course, what the store wants to happen. They also bundle certain things. If you buy six of the same item the price-per-item drops a little. Cheaper by the dozen, as the saying goes.

Another way to transfer money from your pocket to the cash register is the “save by spending” gambit. ”Sale!” the sign will announce. “Only $8 each, buy one get one free. You save 8 dollars”. By spending 8 dollars, that is. But don’t knock it: the trick works. People love to be took.

Retailers large and small, without exception I believe, also practice a simple form of price deception. They have discovered that merchandize priced at $4.00 a piece will not sell as long as the store across the street offers the same thing for $3.99. There is even a chain named the “99 Cent Store” where everything is packaged so that the unit price comes to no more than a dollar, which in retail language means 99 cents because the word “dollar” is a dirty word, a no no. Any store that tries to sell merchandise in terms of full dollars is sure to go broke very fast. Such is the quaint psychology of the consumer. Shoppers know, of course, that the difference between 30 dollars and $29.99 is only a penny but they love to be duped. Obviously, or why else do price tags everywhere end in .99?

There is an even less rational type of consumer: the fuel consuming driver. If you try to sell him or her a gallon of gas for $2.99 you will be out of luck as long as the gas station a block away sells the gallon for $2.98 and 9/10. This absurd little bit of softheadedness is repeated in cities, hamlets, and truck stops all over the country. We are dealing with a difference of one tenth of a penny. You would have to buy 10 gallons to save 1 penny. And spend a nickel to drive to the cheaper station. We all understand that a tenth of a penny in a retail sale is essentially nothing. But we are creatures of habit, and so we continue the foolishness. Our Chihuahua with a brain the size of a walnut, on the other hand, stops licking the bowl when it is empty. I don’t think she would knock herself out for 1/10 of a crumb the way we carry on for fractions of pennies.

I take that back. She probably would. But then she is only a dog.

Picture credit: morguefile.com

No Bull

I remember the acrid smell produced by the coal fired power plant which I, then aged 16, was under orders by my (German) government to defend, should the Allies decide one day to attack it. They never did and I wasted a year practising at the vertical controls of my 88mm gun. I now think that the Allies decided not to bomb the power plant because it was more efficient to let it continue to poison the neighborhood, a sort of reverse chemical warfare.

When the war ended and I was no longer an enemy I found it very easy to become a friend of the United States. I moved to California in the Fifties, only to be choked by the pervasive and equally acrid smell of Los Angeles smog.

So I do know something about air pollution, and also how miserable it was to drive my employer’s, the Gas Company’s, truck day by day all across Los Angeles County, wedged in by big rig stinky Diesels. Back “in those days” we just worried about our lungs. In the meantime we have found out that it is more of a global problem, that it is not just the smell, but perhaps the ozone layer and hard to reverse global climate change that should concern us. We now know about hydrofluorocarbons, diesel exhaust, black carbon, and tons of methane from dairy farms and feed lots.

When I say “we” of course I don’t mean everybody. There is a solid body of citizens and politicians who deny that all this is real, that it may be just fake news, or as some say outright, that it is all “bull”.

Well, I have it from good authority: the Regulators at the Air Resources Board are recommending that we target, specifically, methane emissions from cow manure. I always suspected that the bulls were getting a bad rap.

Under the Slab

Strange things come into my field of vision, often in strange surroundings. The Church of St. Mary’s in the old Hanseatic city of Rostock in Germany, for example. I noticed that there were, all around the nave, small chapel-like alcoves. “The elaborate graves and memorials of the more wealthy families of their day”, the altar guild lady explained. The church is paved in stone that looks old and worn, having been trod upon for more than 500 years now. The entire floor of the huge church has been partitioned into small slabs, each bearing names hewn into the stone in an old script. “The graves of the less wealthy”, the altar guild lady observed. “Somebody is buried under each of these slabs”.
I visited Rostock in the month of July yet the floor was ice cold. Not much going on under those slabs, I thought. Five hundred year old memories. Macabre maybe, but nothing to provoke a shudder any more.
Unlike my kitchen floor. Now this did produce a shudder, only a week ago. I am positive: no relatives are buried under that ceramic floor, “less wealthy” or otherwise. There was nevertheless one spot that was warm, cosily warm. “Oh, oh”, my wife said. “There is something going on under this slab!”

A priest would have been of little use in this case, so we called the magician, our plumber. Like Julius Caesar he came, he saw, and he conquered the situation within minutes: we had a hot water leak under the kitchen floor, was his diagnosis. “The pipes must be repaired before water seeps up into the drywall”, the man said. The jack hammer was one option. “No!”, we said. “Not on our expensive Italian tiles”. Another method involves inserting a thinner pipe into the existing leaky pipe. Struck us as a Micky Mouse procedure inviting the jack hammer, should another leak occur under the same slab later. While waiting for a second opinion we anxiously examined the walls. By luck, no seepage had occurred. The last option, and our choice, was a complete re-routing of the pipes over the attic that would certainly give us better access during the next crisis.

We have hot water again and we are grateful. More than that: we now can’t help thinking of the old cathedral with the slabs. We can see them now, in our minds’ eyes, the good citizens of medieval Rostock as they kneel down after each slab burial, praying for mercy, glancing up to heaven in supplication.

We, too, now live in a mild state of paranoia as we furtively glance every so often at the kitchen ceiling above, hoping for the best and keeping our fingers crossed.