Interrupted Conversation

So we had this dinner with friends on Saturday night, as we did on Friday and Sunday as well, but each group was different. On Saturday the conversation seemed to morph as the wine was more consumed, and the last conversation I remember before I left the dinner table, not to return, went sort of like this:

“You know we have the earth, and we have the moon”.

Me- “uh huh…”

“ Guys go up there, and they piss and shit and eat and everything else just like we do”

Me-“ uh huh….”

“ And I have to pay taxes, and I can’t just go sit on my roof and look up and not pay taxes”

Me- “uh huh….”

“Well, why is that?”

Me- “what?...”

“You know, why do I pay taxes on this. It’s not mine at all”

Another speaker:
“Right, in this country we can’t ever own our property. It’s not fair. In the states you have property rights and we should have them!”

“Right, why do I have to pay taxes when they can go to the moon and not pay?”

Me- “uh huh…”

The Montserrat College of Art phone call

Last evening I received a call from a young lady who started with, “Hi, I’m ________, a student at the Montserrat College of Art, and I’m calling to thank you for your support. I’m not selling anything! I am just calling to thank you!” I just started to laugh! I knew she was being sincere, but she was reading that which she was asked to read, and it sounded just like those fake sales calls one often gets that are so annoying.

I just laughed. I apologized to her and assured her she was doing fine, it was just the non-sales pitch that had gotten to me. She than read a prepared statement that was well done but clearly you knew that she was reading. I laughed more! I apologized again, as I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, she was sweet.

She told me she was a transferred freshman and this was the first time she had called and I was the first person she had reached who was home. I explained that I was the former President of the College from 1989 until 1993. She said (not rehearsed) that she wasn’t even born at that time. I roared!

Fearing that she would think I was just a weirdo who made this stuff up, I told her that many of the folks still there were old friends of mine and I listed a few. Thankfully, some of them were still alive and she at least knew their names. I was vindicated.

We parted friends, and I enjoyed the rest of the evening, and I hope she did too. I know I’ll get called or asked for money again anyway, because if you give once, everyone expects you to give again, and besides, we do the same kind of thing, as do all charities.

A Story From George Parrino

The painting on the left is a portrait of George done by one of his more recent students. The painting on the right is hismost recent work.

The late George Parrino was my friend.

He was an artist, a teacher, and an administrator I had known for many years. He read this blog and sent me a number of long and interesting stories as part of an autobiography he was never to finish. He passed away early this year, and we had been in touch often in what turned out to be his last days.

This is one of his stories lifted from his first hand account of life:

Sometimes the institute would host trips.  Now this was not so much to raise money, but was more of an opportunity to socialize with potential donors.  So in 1982, we arranged a trip to Washington D.C. to visit the “In Search of Alexander” exhibition at the East Wing of the National Gallery, and to see Elizabeth Taylor on stage at the Kennedy Center in Little Foxes.  And as one of our trustees was a close confident of the senior George Bush, she arranged for the group to have a reception with Barbara Bush at the Vice President’s residence on Embassy Row. 

After we arrived at our hotel in the nation’s capital, and got unpacked, we boarded a chartered bus out to the Naval Observatory.  On the way we began to hear a symphony of sirens, and immediately suspected something unusual must be happening.  And after we were cleared through gatehouse security, and finally arrived at the front door of the Vice Presidential home, Mrs. Bush appeared at the front door.  Then to our utter surprise and amazement, with a somber face she announced, “I am very sorry, but I have some very bad news.  The President has just been shot.” 

It was Monday the 29^th of March in 1982, just moments ago six gunshots rang out.  Ronald Reagan and his press secretary James Brady had both tragically been caught by a would-be assassin’s bullets.  None-the-less the consummate gracious hostess, Mrs. Bush invited thirty-seven of us in to an otherwise very pleasant afternoon tea.  Meanwhile the phone kept ringing, and she kept leaving the drawing room for what we all guessed were the latest news, and Secret Service briefings.  She would quickly return dutifully keeping us all informed, but for God’s sake, in some ways it was like being with Ladybird Johnson immediately after J.F.K. had been shot.  And I can tell you for sure that Barbara Bush was nothing less than pure aristocratic “Grace under fire.”

A Second Letter from Hong Kong

This is a wall charger for an ereader.

 

This is a different letter from Hong Kong. Yesterday’s letter was sweet, this one is also. I have never had such trouble before, but this is a first. These are from two different vendors. I always have had immediate sucedsss from eBay vendors. The m,ail does get tricky.

BTW, after yesterday’s posted letter, the original merchandise arrived within 24 hours and I had to tell the company. I will now follow steps two or three on their letter of instructions, as shown in the previous post. I will either reject it or pay for it, I will decide when it gets here.

The new letter (different merchandise) says:

Dear?

Really, sorry for that.

we have sent the goods to your PayPal address on 8.23. International transit time is long, and maybe something wrong on the road.

Anyway, we refund to you first, ok? If you receive goods in the future, please pay it back. After refund? if you still want item, we can resend for free to you.

I appreciate your understanding, and still leave positive feedback for us, as you
as you know, it is important for us. Please believe us, we are good seller.

So do you want refund?

Waiting for reply, thanks. Thanks.

---Helen

A Letter from Hong Kong

This is a email  received by me yesterday in regards to a small item, a seven slot powered hub, I ordered through eBay and has not been received.  The email is so special, I could not help but publish it for everyone to see. I ordered another one, of course: Hi Arthur, Thanks for your enquiry. I am ________________ , customer service officer of your order.   Please DON'T worry. GOD BLESS THE HONESTY. We must follow your case as quickly as we can. Please be informed that we got your order at September 15, 5:20AM, PDT (i.e. September 15, 8:20PM, HONG KONG TIME, Hong Kong Time is 15 hours ahead of PDT) and your ordered package was already mailed out at September 16, 10:55AM (HONG KONG TIME). It was shortly after we got your order. Oh! My God! If you still do not get your parcel, it seems that the parcel may be lost during shipment.   Please DON'T worry. Please be informed that we are HONEST and RESPONSIBLE seller, we take full responsibility of being lost during shipment. We have a special proposal as below: (1) We mail you another parcel in REGISTERED airmail, we bear the product cost and postage of this 2nd shipment by ourselves, you do not need to pay for it; (2) If you finally get both parcels, i.e. the 1st and the 2nd shipment, and you would like to keep only one parcel, please mark on the 2nd parcel BIG WORDS 'REJECTED' or 'RETURN to SENDER'. Then give this to post office or postman. This 2nd parcel will then be returned to us. You do not need to pay any postage if you return the parcel in this way; (3) If you finally get both parcels and you would like to keep both parcels, would you please send us US$3.99 which is special price offered by us for 2nd set. (4) If you finally got only one parcel, you and we can certainly regard our deal as completed (5) there is no risk of being lost again in 2nd shipment as it is in REGISTERED airmail We think that this arrangement is fair and good to both you and us. ### Would you please let us know whether you are ok with this special proposal so that we can arrange for the 2nd shipment as quickly as we can? We apologize for all the inconvenience caused. SORRY! Have a nice day. Best Regards,   ____________

Les's Story Told

This is Les's public piece honoring Nikloa Tesla, at Niagara Falls, Canada.

My friend, Sculptor Les Drysdale, sent this to me as an email and he put it on his Facebook page. I am just copying his story because I love it and hope you will too:

Les said, "If I had a blog I'd write this".

Regarding a meeting I had in Niagara Falls, Canada this weekend. I love my GPS, but I'm guilty of blind faith in the power of technology everything else is human error.

So I did the total bonehead move of expecting the Holiday Inn that I punched into the GPS was indeed the correct one. The second time I passed the exit for Stanley Ave. I began to doubt my faith. I was confronted with and committed to huge line ups to cross the Queenston Lewiston Bridge to the US.

There were huge signs saying No U-turn. I had wished for punctuation in the sign preferring No, U-Turn. I was committed. I asked the guy directing traffic what to do. He said you'll have to sort it out with US customs. So armed with only a driver’s licence I had to enter the US. Fortunately, the officer guy believed me that I was an idiot. And asked only if I had relatives in the US then gave me the directions I needed to take back to Canada. I rolled up to Canada customs and handed the officer my driver’s licence. She responded with 'do you have any other proof of citizenship?’, I said no. She asked what was my profession and where was I going. I said sculptor, Holiday Inn. She responded ' cool' what are you doing at the Holiday Inn? I said meeting a guy about doing a sculpture. Looking at my driver’s licence and doing her computer thing she said' you're the guy that did the monument by the Falls', I said yes. She said you've satisfied me you are a citizen you can go. So I made the meeting 1/2 hr late and all went well.

Thank God for Public Art!

Abandonment Issues

My oldest daughter, when she was a kid, went to art classes at North Mount Pleasant Art Centre in Calgary. The classes were an hour or so long, and she took a number of them over the years. However, as good as it was, she had always been afraid that I would leave her (abandonment issues) and she refused to let me leave.

All I ever wanted to do was go out and get a coffee and read the paper as I waited. This did happen after a few years and lots of assurance that I would never leave her. We had never left her alone anywhere and never did have an idea how this malady had occurred.

She did not, thank God, need me to sit in the classroom and watch (I would have refused as would the teacher, I hope) but she needed me to be within sight if needed.

Outside of the large first floor classroom was a large, vinyl or leather like sofa, and if I sat there, when she felt abandoned, she could peek out of the door to make sure I was there. I did that and over time the problem faded and I was allowed to go and get coffee from a local coffee shop.

I have known of this syndrome happening with adults and it seems to be serious mental illness. There was a man when I was a kid, who demanded his wife sit in her car outside of his office building all day, so he was able to work and able to see her whenever he felt abandoned. There are probably many cases; however, this behaviour was extinguished quickly, after a year or two.

I clearly remember the first experience when I put her in the children’s section of the library, told her I was going to go over to the adult books, about 12 feet away, and after a few minutes she started to scream, causing a huge glut of running librarians to come forth to her rescue. Her father was lost. I was standing 12 feet away and watching!

With all this build up, the result of this story is that she lives in Montreal, is happy not to come home, and would rather not go anywhere with her father most of the time.

Now I have abandonment issues!

The Fan

My Aunt and Uncle had lots of money compared to us, and my uncle drove a Cadillac. That was the sign of those times. I have a Cadillac today probably because my uncle had one. However, I loved these people and they were very lovely to me and my family.

In the mid 50’s, they had the Cadillac of big, honking window or floor fans, a mahogany Curtis Mathis Cooler. It was a real Texas classic (that’s where it was made). It had a wooden front grill with wooden fins and cost somewhere near $100 in the early 50’s!

I guess when they got air conditioners; they gave their fan to us. It was the pride of my parents, especially my father, to have this big, wooden fan, put up next to a window at night and it would allow the air to be drawn in our open windows and make us all cool. It had wooden legs so you did not have to install it, just move it around from day use (right on you) to night use by a window.

After my parents moved in 1967, they had air conditioning and somewhere later on the fan came to me. We had it in our house and it would not be a story because I had no idea where it went. However, in 1978 we moved to Michigan, into an air conditioned house and would have had no reason to move a large fan 500 miles.

As it turns out, much to my surprise, my old friend Alan Forman took the fan when he moved to New York. He says it worked for a couple of years for him and was tossed out somewhere in the early 80’s.

The legs had been removed by me at some point, and this fan had worked continuously (except for the winters) from the early 50’s when my uncle probably got it, to 1955 when we got it until 1980 when Alan got rid of it!

That fan worked for at least 30 years!

Smoked Turkey

With my wife and daughter being away for a few days looking at a university for her (younger daughter), I had some time to devote to a cooking project. This being Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, turkeys were on sale. We don’t have those great US giveaways for thanksgiving with $.29 a pound, but we did have a reasonable $.99 a pound turkey waiting for me when I got to the store on Thursday. I took the smallest I could find, a little over 16 pounds, and I put it in the fridge to thaw. The next day it went into the sink filled with cold water to complete the thawing process. It was covered in a plastic shell so no water got in.

I had Saturday to cook, and we were planning to have a turkey dinner at our neighbours anyway on Monday, so I could try anything.

I knew better that to try a deep fried turkey, because besides having to buy the fryer, my wife would kill me and then not even eat the turkey. So, my decision was to smoke it.

I woke up on Saturday morning, came downstairs, lit the right side of the barbeque and found my aluminum pan with wood chips, soaked some more chips for later, and started the chips in the pan on the hot right side. The center and the left side were cold, and that was where the turkey would go.

I washed out the turkey, put the giblets and the neck in the freezer and quickly salted and peppered the bird, squeezed lemon juice over it, put the lemon and an onion inside the carcass, put olive oil on the bird and covered it with paprika.

I put aluminum foil in the bottom of a roasting pan, sprayed it with Pam, and put in the turkey. I put the pan on the left side of the grill. The temperature with just the right side on full, would reach and stay at about 275 degrees Fahrenheit, a perfect temperature to use for a slow oven, and that would call for half an hour a pound.

Every hour to an hour and a half, I added wet wood chips to the aluminum pan over the heat, and smoke continued to be generated.
At 4:00 p.m., 8 hours later, the thermometer said, when I inserted it in the deepest part of the breast, 180 degrees, the perfect temperature for poultry.

The smoked turkey was done to perfection, the pan was full to the edge with juices that I was able to pour off and turn into gravy, and at about 4:15 p.m. my wife and daughter arrived home.

It was a perfectly lovely day and a great turkey.

The Eye in the Sky

My wife and I went to the supermarket a week and a half ago and among the items we purchased was a carton of humus. This was in a branch of our favourite market, but a sort of “inner city” version of our suburban market. When we got home and looked at the slip, we had been charged twice for the hummus.

Given that driving back was worth more than the $4 we would recoup, we decided to wait until my wife was in the neighbourhood. Yesterday she was back and went in to see the management about the $4. If it had been in our neighbourhood market we assumed we would just be given the $4. Here, however, the customer is not always right. They checked the date stamp of the slip and turned to the video for the time and the aisle we were in, and they watched the clerk charge us twice for the hummus and they apologised for the error and gave my wife the $4.

This was a wakeup call! This may exist in our supermarket as well, and it is scary! We are not stealing things per sea, but my wife put me on notice not to eat from the bulk foods anymore!

There is an eye in the sky!

Fantasy Box of Goodies

In the 80’s my wife and I were in San Diego and stumbled upon an Antique Mall, on the second floor of a downtown building. It was huge, rambling and a bit strange. We wandered about this cavern of discarded wonders, when we came upon a table full of unusual South Pacific items for sale. While none of it was identified, it was obvious to me, no expert on the subject, that this was real nice folk art type of stuff, and certainly would be great additions to our growing, rambling folk art collection.

We purchased four items, I believe; a very tightly wound basket with a broken handle but quite beautiful, a cowrie shell purse, a monkey skull hat (maybe a monkey) and a coconut shell bowl (or a skull top bowl). There could have been more but these are the ones I still have. I believe we paid $35 for them as the owner of the booth was not there and the dealer in charge took the deal I offered.

They were out on shelves for a bit in some of the places we’ve lived and basically been in a box since the late 80’s.

My wife and I have been trying to clean out our “treasures” for a while now and this box has surfaced. I decided to try and find out what these things were and in my searching, I discovered the bowl was a very special New Guinea tribal bowl made out of a coconut shell. In about a day (a few emails) I have sold it for a very nice price, although the dealer I sold it to will do very well and the piece will travel back to California, having been to Detroit, Boston, Calgary and back here in Southern Ontario.

The cowrie shell purse is definitely a souvenir item from New Guinea, the basket and the hat are not identified. However, the hat scared my children for years and would do well to scare anyone else. I believe the hat and the basket are fine items worth tons of money (of course) if only I could identify them.

If you have an idea, let me know. They will go to eBay eventually, as they’re not a Kijiji item in my way of thinking.

Editors note: I found an expert who says :

The monkey skull is an Ifugao headdress from the Philippines. I am not sure of the basket but it does appear to be from Southeast Asia.