Killing the Rat

OK, I gave it the worst title to get your attention. The story plays out better than it seems.

We lived in Beverly, Massachusetts from 1989 until1994. We lived in a wonderful 1917 house that looked out on a park, playground and beach. We actually looked out at the water, except for the fact that there was a street in front of our house, so we had to cross the street to get to the beach.

Our house was both a year round home and our place at the beach without having to have two properties.

One day, early in our tenure there in Beverly, I went to the garage to get something and I heard a bad noise! I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t make me happy. In a large trash can there was a large water rat! He was stuck at the bottom of the can and was running around trying to find a way out.

I was dumbstruck, and had no answer to solve his problem or mine! I wanted him dead (or gone)!

I thought about all the logical answers to this never before experienced problem, which included calling an exterminator, but I than thought that it would cost a bunch of money to exterminate the rat, and I should be able to do this myself!

I looked around the garage for a sharp instrument of death, and found some sort of gardening thing with a long handle and a sharp point. If I hit the mark, he would be dead. If I missed, he would climb up and attack me! I could end up with rabies, and be scared to death besides! This was not a smart move.

I thought and I thought what should I do?

The answer was as clear as the nose on my face (and the rats nose as well).

I kicked over the can, the rat ran away, and I didn’t have the smell of death clinging to me…….

A Canadian Tire credit card...

It’s an ugly business! Credit card companies try and tell us that we can save the environment by using ebills and they don’t have to pay postage and use paper. This will. of course, save the world for our kids!

I wish it were so! But it doesn’t always work that way.

I have a Canadian Tire credit card with a very low percentage rate, and I will admit to not paying it off every 30 days, and dealing with the monthly fees. However, when they asked me to use ebill I ponyed up to it and tried to save the world. It was fine for a while because I paid them some money when I could and I paid it no mind, and always paid enough not to call my credit into question. A month ago I received the notice of my ebill telling me I was overdue in payment. I called and complained and they assured me I must have done something wrong.

I paid them some money and they went away. Sure enough, on Friday they wrote and said my ebill was ready and when I went there they would not show me what I owed them. They demanded an immediate payment! I went ballistic!

I called and we had a heart to heart conversation where they assured me nothing was wrong as long as I made a payment (which I did) and gave me a phone number for ebill. I was supposed to tell them they were wrong and were not sending my ebills on time, which was true.

I called and spoke to a guy who looked up my phone number, my login name, my credit card number and finally told me he had never heard of me, and I was not in their system!

He said the credit card company was wrong. I asked how come I was receiving emails about ebills if I wasn’t in their system and he said it must have been through some other bank other than the major Canadian banks. What in the hell was wrong was that they are all idiots! Everyone points at the other guy and no one fixes the system.

I logged on to my on line account and moved myself (I hope) back to snail mail billing, regardless of the environmental impact I create. My credit rating is more important than the piece of paper I create.

This is the last chance. If this does not work I will pay off the card and dump it! I have more than enough credit cards in my arsenal already.

Teachers Meeting - 1968

A bunch of teachers gathered at the end of the year at the home of one of our colleagues for our annual barbeque, party and drink fest, to celebrate the end of another year at the Junior High School. We normally did this every year at a nearby home, as we were “hot to trot” for beer and chips at the end of a long day.

That year the new principal decided to evaluate us all on the last day, a normally annual event, but his decisions were made after his first year. He did these without the “benefit” of looking at the previous year’s reviews. He felt, and understandingly so, that he could make his decisions based on his own review and not be affected by previous years occurrences. We all had a blank slate on which to start.

This was a noble exercise, and one that should have been rewarded or rewarding. However, as these noble experiments have the possibility of backfiring, this one “took the cake”.

It was the last day, a very bad move because people had no time to respond. Secondly, he told us all we didn’t have to agree with his review, but before we left we had to sign that we had seen it, a nerve racking experience only done in prison camps etc.

He hadn’t counted on most of us gathering immediately afterwards; angry, together and drinking, to plot his demise.

The events rolled out and escalated from general anger to death threats, to action. At least cooler heads prevailed and between us, with many unhappy senior teachers available, and the addition of a Supervisor, also a bit drunk, we called the superintendent who was willing to see us. Thankfully he agreed for a later time and not in our current drunken mood. (He didn't say that, I did.) Even the superintendent was wise enough to recognise a situation he could easily diffuse by putting it off for a weekend.

The next week he met with representative teachers, the principal, and it was cleared up the following fall. A noticeably quieter principal redid all the forms to correspond more directly to the former teacher evaluations we all had received in the past.

He was probably correct to do what he thought was best, but he did get his comeuppance on this one, He was well meaning, just not very practical.

Zinc Burger

I know it’s another story I think I’ve written before but can’t find on this site, so if I did I’ll do it again! If not, or if you don’t remember, it’s fine!

In 1981 I was invited to Miami, Florida to adjudicate a University project with the University of Florida at Miami‘s Architecture Department. This project was sponsored by the Zinc Institute of America, and their local consultant in Detroit knew me and invited me to participate.

I was Dean of the then Center for Creative Studies, College of Art and Design. While I was an unpaid member of the team, I was invited and the Institute paid my expenses, which was as good as cash given a free December Miami trip.

The other members of the adjudication team were representatives of the zinc industry as I remember, and the Zinc Institute seemed to regularly sponsor a large, post secondary design event using zinc.

In this case, the students were designing buildings using zinc as an accent element in the design and construction. I remember little of the event itself, but I remember having a fun time.

The story is less about the event, as with any field trip, the thing the kids (or me) remember most was the bus breaking down, or anything that didn’t work out just right.

In my case it was the arrival at the first night “meet and greet”.

I knew no one but the consultant, and we came to Miami on separate flights as he had to be there early working with the students on their presentations. He was a Detroit area art teacher and was an unlikely candidate to get me a trip to Florida, but I loved his style! I had no idea who I would be meeting, what the scope of the project was to be, and where we were to meet.

When I arrived at the appointed hotel, I just had time to get to my room, put down my bags and get ready to go to the event. I went to the desk and asked if there was a message for me and there wasn’t. In these days before all the instant communication, messages were few and far between. I asked if the Zinc Institute meeting was scheduled in a specific room, and while they had no idea, they said the meeting rooms were down a corridor and all I had to do was go and look for my meeting. Of course, I had no idea what I was looking for!

Down the hall I strolled, and I walked into a wondrous party in progress. There was a large ballroom, with hundreds of people in attendance, all dressed nicely, many with name tags and all having drinks and hors d'oeuvres. I was in heaven. At best it was an all University thing with lots of funders and development opportunities, and at worst I’d get a drink and something to eat as I was promised this by mail.

I got a drink, took a plate and some food and began to wander around looking for some familiar face or type, none of which appeared. I finally asked someone if they knew who the Zinc Institute representative was and he looked at me with wonder. He had no idea what I was talking about, and clearly I was lost.

What I had wandered in to was the Miami based Burger King new franchises cocktail party. The food and drinks were fine, and I took them with me. I wandered much further down the hall and lo and behold, in a small meeting room, I found a congenial group of Zinc Industry guys and my friend from Detroit plus a couple of the University Faculty members. The evening was fine, and I enjoyed the next few days, but I may have missed my big chance to become a Burger King franchisee.

and then my pants fell off…..

Starting with the punch line is a difficult way to write but it catches your attention right up front.

On May 16 I wrote “I’m putting my foot down” and if you read this you’ll understand about the large pieces of concrete I now have. If you also read the April 19 post about my being “Clumsy”, plus “Clumsy, Part 2”, you’ll know about my weak right arm.

Put these two together and here’s what happened on Monday.

Monday was a holiday in Canada, Victoria Day. We celebrate a dead Queen’s birthday by not working, a good policy! I had some large mounds of concrete to get rid of and I had a perfect dumpster lined up to dump it in. All I had to do was transfer the concrete to my car and get it to the dumpster.

I opened the rear hatch of my car, which was parked in the driveway. It was, of course, a quiet day with some traffic coming by but not bad. I went through the garage to the side yard where the concrete was lying in a wheel barrow, but because the tire was flat on the wheel barrow because of the weight of the concrete, I was going to carry the pieces. I placed an old cardboard box in the car so the concrete would not leave me residue. Being weak in the right hand, I lifted the largest piece in my left hand, a less weighty piece in my right and hurried with short choppy steps toward the open car hatch. These were very heavy and I didn’t want to lose them on the way, so I rushed, knowing the problem was at hand, as I could feel it coming!

I made it to the hatch and deposited the concrete in the box while simultaneously; my pants fell down around my ankles!

The traffic, though slower than usual, kept coming, and I could hardly stop laughing long enough to grab my pants and pull the up. And yes mother, I was wearing clean underwear!

Dinner from a bygone era.......

The Restaurant from the Holiday inn, Carbondale.

I was watching Robert Irvine’s Show, “Restaurant Impossible”, in which he attempts to save America’s most desperate restaurants from impending failure in just two days with a budget of $10,000. One of the facts that became clear after watching a number of these shows was that the “good old days” are not good, just old. Clearly, customers and chefs alike hate the trappings of the past. Old fashioned ideas and dishes are clearly not often available in successful restaurants nor not often desired.


I know as well as anyone that food trends change, and today’s popular places are gone as soon as something new comes along. They make fun of styles that look like the 70’s or 80’s even though for some of us who were adults in those times, the food or service was what we got used to and can, in fact, sometimes miss.

The most glaring example for my wife and I was the disparaging way they treated chateaubriand (for two) and Caesar salad made at the table, declaring that a waste of time for the server and the diner.

I was reminded of a time many years ago (sometime in the 90’s), when I went with my old friend John Slorp, the then President of either the Memphis College of Art or the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, depending on when we were there together on an accreditation visit to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, IL. I was either the Dean of CCS or President of one of the schools, but I do know we were together at SIU and it was a NASAD accreditation visit.

We stayed in an old hotel, my first guess was that it was a Hilton, but I checked and they have a Holiday Inn Conference Center so that must have been it.

After the visit had ended, and we were finished our work, we decided to have dinner together in the hotel restaurant. It was dated, it was quiet and we were among a few diners that evening. The waiters were tuxedoed, a far from “normal” thing, but it was a bit of faded elegance they were trying to achieve.

John and I, while kidding around before dinner and having drinks, decided to have everything they could make at our table for dinner. The menu therefore was spelled out in simple terms. We had a Caesar salad, Steak Diane and Cherries Jubilee!

The waiters were delighted, as they got to show off their best server qualities, and they all participated as these three dishes tool the expertise of all the staff. As well, we were big diners who left a large tip because of the beautiful service we received.

Dinner was great, the salad fresh and garlicky, the steak was tender and delicious and the dessert was “over the top”!

Yes, it was a one time display of gluttony, but it harkened back to a bygone era of elegant service and charming meals.

I know Robert Irvine attempts to save America’s most desperate restaurants from impending failure by bringing them out of the past, but sometimes a look at the past is a wonderful thing.

The Big Important Lunch

I learned a lot from so many people in my life, not all of which was good stuff. I may have passed this one on before, but I can’t find it so I may assume it’s never surfaced. It’s a learning experience but I’m not sure what the lessons was, or if I care to even ponder it. But the exception to this is that the stereotype is often quite close to the reality.


I had a lunch arranged with a very important man. He was the International Vice President of a major corporation. There were a bunch of people going to this lunch, in Detroit, in about 1980.

A reporter from the Detroit News business section called me and begged a spot at lunch so he could get to interview this important gentleman. This was the “big leagues”.

His driver brought him, and he was quite “nattily attired”. I seem to remember a very high stiff starched collar on his shirt and quite an expensive tie to boot. The rest of us seemed like peons, but we had business to attend to, and money was at the root of this event.

This particular restaurant had a salad bar (this was the 80’s) and the guest of honor would have no part of such a proletariat action, so he had the waitress prepare his salad. I was next to him at lunch so I watched the action.

The waitresses in those days were dolled up in short skirt costumes with frilly bodices to match. As he explained his salad order to her, he grabbed her ass! I was stunned! She quickly moved away from his grasp and continued taking orders having had such an experience, I guess, before.

The rest of the lunch and the conversation is a blur. The staying power is this story. How this was possible is beyond me, but I was, as usual, a “babe in the woods”.