Awaiting the invention of the laser plow

NOTE: I wrote this humor column in 1990 and it appeared in 12/5/90 issue of a now defunct weekly newspaper in North Conway, New Hampshire. It was on my website, the METAPHORatorium for many years as well in several locations. It seems seasonal so here it is again.  I've changed the uncle's name several times also. Originally it was Henry. The graph about my father is true.

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My Uncle Henry reported having an incredible dream this week. It was a revelation so simple, so ingenious, he said, that once somebody invented it, the world would change. And nobody would ever go to Florida for the winter again.

My Aunt May had a different opinion. "What you had was indigestion , you old fool," she said. Aunt May, after 37 years of marriage, says that Uncle Henry is a mostly good man of few words, except when he's been drinking brandy and then he is a man of a few too many words.

My uncle affected a hurt pose for second, rolling his brown eyes pitifully. After a moment he cleared his throat .

"As I was sayin' - I was awakened in the snow by a heavenly blue light,'' he said quietly. "The snow kept comin' down all around and the light got brighter and brighter." He paused with a faraway look in his eye, then glanced at me sideways to see how I was taking all this.

"Is this a Christmas story or a flying saucer story," I asked suspiciously.

"No it ain't. Now listen. That blue light kept coming closer and closer and I knew in my deepest heart it was going to roll right over me - right through me even. And it began making a fearful noise roaring like the great god-awful fires of hell. That's sorta like DeSoto engine all outa oil and damn near throwin' a rod," he explained. "When that light was almost on topa me, suddenly a horn was blastin' and I heard a voice and the voice was saying HENRY! HENRY, GET OUT OF THE WAY!"

By now he was breathless, his voice rising. Uncle Henry was possessed. He was pure unsalted ham baking at around 450 degrees. "As it rolled over me in my dream, I saw the snow was melting away before that blue light and at that very moment I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS. It was a laser snow plow..." he concluded in hushed tones still obviously amazed by his own idea.

Well, Buck Rogers move on over. "No rocksalt needed, no knockin down mail boxes, no diggin up the tar, no knickin the trees, no filing' down the blade. I figure a smaller model could replace snow shovels for about $24.99. It'd be kinda like a weed wacker only with light beams."

Uncle Henry comes from a long line of nutty inventors - Yankee ingenuity carried to its final insane extreme. My father suffered from these same fits of madness all his life but he was especially obsessed with the little everyday problems - like birds that hog the birdfeeder. You know the ones I mean. Like blue jays - they sit and eat and eat until a whole line of chickadees backs up on the clothes line behind them waiting patiently for dinner.

My father couldn't stand that sort of injustice. Once morning during breakfast, just after he filled the bird feeder, he called me over to the window. A purple finch was hogging the perch. When pop figured its time was about up - he pressed a little red button. All of a sudden an arm came up and swept out over the perch pushing the startled bird in to the air. "I call it a 'Bird-get-off' he announced with a triumphant grin.

I'm afraid there hasn't been much market for this invention. The laser snow plow might do a lot better, Henry says. On a straightaway you could melt a mile of snow at once. Of course, tulips by the road side might bloom out of season and wild animals might wander in front of the plow to their deaths just trying to get warm.

Mere glitches Henry says.

In honor of the eclipse: Moon Madness Strikes

In honor of the eclipse: This column appeared years and years ago in the Ridgefield Press, back when I was a reporter there .

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Moon Madness Strikes Reporter

by Mar Walker

Some Ridgfielders had a perfect view of last Sunday's lunar eclipse.

``Did you watch the eclipse?'' I kept asking friends expectantly.

``Too cold.''

``Too late at night.''

``Saw one last year.''

Like many other disinterested parties around town,  I've always figured the stars and the planets could carry on perfectly well without me. And what I had planned for this particular event was to skip the whole thing and stay in bed.

Fortunately I was awake at midnight. On impulse, I put on some shoes and threw a coat over my pajamas. I was curious I guess, and it seems I've been cheating myself all these years. It's like the Grand Canyon was right off the porch and I'd never even looked.

Out the back door I went at a little past midnight. There was a bite out of the full moon already, just a little nibble really. It was a perfect night, utterly clear. The bright moon washed the night sky to medium grey and crisscrossed the yard with shadows. Bare trees swayed in parallel. Black limbs juggled stars in leafless hands like fussy husbands rearranging Christmas lights.

And of course there was music - the brook out back, full from the day's rain, murmured on its way to the Norwalk River. Over the scuttling of leaves and over the wistful sweetness of wind chimes on the back porch, ever so slowly, the round silhouette of Earth stretched over the moon.

As moonlight dimmed, starlight and darkness heightened. I felt cold and alive, shifting weight from one foot to the other, craning my neck like some fat bird in a courtship dance as I stared straight up.

My cat wailed at the backdoor to come out and as I turned, momentarily facing further North, I saw two bright shooting stars, one right after the other. The very long, very bright trails streaked down and I imagined I could hear the sizzle of air as they fell.

A little numb now, I ran into the kitchen and put on water for tea. I wrapped a scarf around my neck and rummaged around for a pair of binoculars. Leaving the tea to steep I went back outside.

What a revelation - with the binoculars I could make out the dark spots on the crescent of moon still showing. I studied a pale smudge to the lower right of the moon and found a cluster of stars. I focused on stars and found where I thought I saw one or two, there were entire flocks of stars drowned out by ambient light.

Alone under such surprising immensity, many thoughts came. About the fear this ancient sky-dance had once inspired. Once, before there were electric lights and television, it must have been a natural thing for men and woman to study the night sky, feeling its beauty, dwarfed by its enormity.

Now we hold nightly vigils before the TV's glitzy banality - consumer culture flashing across an 22 inch screen. What a contrast in pacing and depth when compared to an eclipse.   Our attention span is jaded by 30 second commercials. Our awe is reserved for special effects.

Instead of stepping outside and experiencing nature firsthand, we watch the highlights, rebroadcast to us as we sit on comfortable couches in warm living rooms. I know that I myself am like that. Most people I know are too.

A sudden noise caught my attention as a bright light appeared moving quickly along from the direction of New York. In the binoculars, red and white lights flanked the slender shadow of a jet. As it drew closer, low in the sky, I could see the glow of its engines spewing eerie white smoke, twin rockets in the dark. The sky is amazing and despite our drawbacks, we and our technologies are amazing too.

At one thirty a.m., when the moon had dimmed to a glimmer, and my hands had grown numb holding the metal glasses, I went in and drank my mint tea and rubbed my neck. I found if I lay flat on the floor beneath the kitchen window, body stretched under the table, I could see the moon easily without having to twist my neck. Lying on linoleum, bathed in the emerging moon, I fell asleep.

Standards, formats, codes - how do new solutions arise..

this is a column I wrote for a newspaper in another state (it's long since closed), appeared in a 1990 edition of that paper. The editor then used to yell out that he had a hole on the editorial page, how large the hole was and how much time I had to write a column to fill it.. What a rush... 

Codes,  jingles and new solutions

Drive anywhere in the continental United States and the radio jingles sound just like the ones at home. It's the same with building codes.

"What? Who's building radio codes? The Government?" asks my Uncle Henry who has placed the 20-odd parts of an old electric fan motor on a clean cardboard on the floor in front of him. They're arranged in meticulous arching rows, like a movie audience with Henry perched on a concrete block in the middle, all knees and elbows pointing a square can of three-in-oil at them like a gun.

"The government gets into everything these days, except balancing its budget," he says, polishing a bearing ring on his green coveralls, and re-adjusting his orange cap askew.

Radio jingles are kind of like building codes, I repeat. Henry squints at me quizzically.

I tell him it's the format. Format radio: they only place certain songs over and over again -- only cuts from proven hit-makers. The station guarantees the play list; the advertisers guarantee the money. They buy their little jingles on tap -- same notes different call letters all over the country.

The only problem is that new or off-beat music doesn't get played because it doesn't fit the format. It's only heard on college stations or on PBS or maybe on WMWV which has its own tossed salad format. (Or did back in 1990)

"Uncle Henry," I say, "Did you ever stop and consider that tucked away inside walls all over the country, are two-by-four studs, and they're all exactly the same distance apart wherever you go?"
My uncle scratches his chin, looking gravely concerned. He's not one for offbeat music, but he read this statement about two-by-fours to me out of a newspaper a while back, and he considers it his side of the argument.

One of his favorite themes is how the government, the world at large and TV in particular are trying to make us all the same. Not in a big way, but by tellings us what to do in a million little ways -- sneaky-like, they conspire to drain that spark of creativity right out of us.

I guess I 've been listening to Uncle Henry too long. Yes, there's plenty to be said for standardization, cheap goods, mix and match replacement parts. It makes things easier and often safer. There's even the comfit of that familiar jingle 1,000 miles from homes.

But when one way of doing things becomes an accepted standardm or even worse, a legal code, what happens to innovators? Innovators are a valuable natural resource, like lake shores or national forests.

Town codes are important and they may protect Uncle Henry from himself, but the may also deprive the world of some outstanding or novel or just place cheap and serviceable building technique that he might have invented. Maybe it's unlikey but who knows?

Hey, even the town of Conway plants its feet and refuses to follow some standards handed down from "above." We don't take state bridge money, according to the town engineer because if we did, we'd have to overbuild our bridges in a very expensive way.

He didn't just accept a given. He looked at the facts and really thought about them.

It's codified engineering, as opposed to creative engineering, that says tertiary level sewage treatment has to cost a lot when Ken Kimball of the AMC suggests letting silage corn do the nutrient removal for free. No technological wonders, no fancy chemicals. Just some plants growing in the sun. I like it.  It's not in the engineering books, but it makes sense.

What about those people in Colorado who've been building houses from old tires? And the guy in Arizona who used empty glass bottles filled with sand instead of bricks to build his home. When the dessert wind blows over the mouths of the bottles, the whole house must howl softly - a jug band lullaby.
You might not want that, but it's a sample of the marvelous diversity and imagination of our kind. He hasn't got a neighbor for miles, so he's a little nuts - so why not?

If an unconventional structure meets setback requirements, is screened from the neighbors and has an engineering calculation or two to prove it won't collapse on its owner (and isn't to godawful noisy) why shouldn't a man be able to build it?

Now don't misunderstand me. Much as it pains Henry to hear me say it, there's a long-range benefit in all these codes - but FLEXIBILITY is the thing that can keep them useful -- and keep open the possibility of new solutions.

We are a foolish lot, we humans. We clear cut and dig up and mow down and dam up everything in sight. We even built a strip in North Conway in the lap of some of the prettiest mountains anywhere.
But the Zone Board of Adjustment is asking the Planning Board for changes  to non-conforming zoning rules that will give it some flexibility.

Can that same kind of consideration go into building codes so we can make allowances for Yankee eccentrics and innovators and for poverty that sometimes mandates a shortcut or two?

Building codes like three-acre zoning can be used as a form of social engineering to exclude the poor. In Connecticut I heard of a family whose home was condemned and they had to move out because it didn't have plumbing. It didn't matter that they had nowhere else to go or that they had to go on welfare once they were separated from their garden and ther chickens.

Maybe that's not likely to happen in Conway, but it's important to know it does happen. I guess that's why the planning department fights so hard about the wording of its regulations.

Uncle Henry takes off his hat and shakes his saggy head. "You got to fight it," he says.  He gets out his trusty Stanley measuring tape - the kind that disappears with a clatter when you press the button on the side. "measure those," says my ornery uncle pointing to the studs inside the garage wall.

Well, the rest of the world may building 16 includes on center, but needless to say Uncles Henry is a little off, by exactly the same small measure every time on purpose. That's the way he is...

resolution resale - recycling human nature

This column of mine appeared in 1/2/91 issue of The Reporter, a now defunct weekly newspaper in North Conway, New Hampshire.


So it's Jan 2, 1991. (Well it was when I wrote this.) Resolutions already broken?
Don't throw them away. My Uncle Jake has a friend who's in the recycling business. "Fred's Old Age Home and Recycling Center for Broken New Year's Resolutions, Dreams and High Hopes." Every January 1st, the sandwich sign at the end of the driveway says "Big Sale today: two for one."

Uncle Jake and I rode out to see Fred last week, to see what the specials were for 1991. Now, I have personal statute of limitations on New Year's resolutions, Once their year is up, it's up. I never make the same resolution two years in a row. Why spin your tires on sheet ice?

Fred's place is a long, rangy one-story shack with lots of little rooms added on one at a time, probably without asking the planning board. The stove pipes all stick out sideways and the shingles are falling off.

Old Fred looked pretty scruffy and sad when he came out to meet us. I guess it's pretty depressing work cleaning up after all those broken resolutions. "What can I git yah this year?" he asked, slapping Jake hard on the back as they ducked through the low doorway of the shop.

"Well, I'm not so sure," Jake said. "What you got that's cheap?" Fred ushered us over to a dusty table with heaps of old papers with fancy letters. Resolve: No more drinkin' cussin' or lyin.' Resolve: To invite your crabby mother over for dinner once a month and treat her nice no matter how bad she acts. Resolve: To be a better neighbor and to paint the kitchen for Molly. Resolve: To save $10 every week and mend my own socks. Each scroll was tattered and had strips of crinkled, yellowed scotch tape where Fred had mended it.
"So - did you bring a trade-in?" he asked. Yep. Last year I resolved to show how I felt toward people more, try to let the soft heart show instead of always playing the wicked cynic. I had some mixed results there. (I guess I really am a wicked cynic.)

Old Fred said he had a wide selection of barely used, mostly broken resolutions that could replace it. He highly recommended that I swap for a "No more negative attitude" resolution. Fred says that resolution is out of favor now, because with the declining economy, negativism is in, and he'll sell that one cheap. No surprise there.

Uncle Jake couldn't decide between a "Not talking so much when I drink," and a "Keeping the cellar clean," which I must say he would break in half an hour taking some Christmas present apart to see how it worked. (He'd break the other one too.) To trade,  Jake  brought along a "Not to pinch my wife in public," resolution which he broke at 12:07 a.m. on on January 1, while he was still at a New Year's eve party at the neighbors house. (Fred is very fond of Jake because he often has something unusual to trade...)

Uncle Jake suggested I might want to get a diet resolution because he was worried about the springs in his truck. "Mind your own business," I snapped. "I don't need one of those right now." Besides without a "self discipline" resolution, there's no sense to it.

I hope your resolutions last longer than mine. I won't tell you what I finally swapped for at Fred's. I'll probably break it anyway. Happy New Year.

LIFE itself is reason and meaning enough for anyone

A version of this column of mine appeared in January of 1994 in the Ridgefield Press.

There is a strange nocturnal tendency at the end of the year. The whirl of Christmas celebrations complete, children in bed, we sit exhausted amid holiday debris. We catch our breath, count our toes and our debts. By the tree’s schmaltzy twinkle, we measure the weight of the passing year and ponder the meaning of our lives.


Apparently weighty matters ripen more rapidly after dark. Only a few moments ago, with eyes clamped determinedly shut, mind still in the spin cycle, I restlessly stretched out my right arm, As I did so an odd intruding thought crowded out the annual clamor of self-assessment.

How smooth, that movement of arm; how incredible and improbable the sensations of each muscle moving, perfectly coordinated and alive... I sat straight up in bed. How strange, how amazing, I thought every human being over all the Earth, whatever language, religion or economic reality, every one of them partakes in this same phenomenon - life.

We have life; we are life; yet we spend life arguing about what life is. We are alive yet we can’t agree on life’s cause or goal.

Over centuries, humanity has fermented a primordial sea of argument. Ideas and needs that simmer like soup, boiling over often into political and personal violence. Despite the beauty of  each season, despite the sincerity of our endeavors, despite our common aliveness, we have never once agreed on the scheme of things. But we carry on anyway. Each year people fall in love. Children are born. New projects begin. The status quo decays. Revolutions are launched. Ideas take hold. Countries are founded, technologies invented, branches of knowledge expanded, fallacies debunked, empire disassembled. New fallacies, new empires arise.

Apparently life itself, full of vigor and promise, is enough to work with, this life which contains its own wordless philosophies, which is astonishing - both to philosophers who ponder it and scientists who study its mecahnisms.

And being alive is like tasting good soup. No amount of probing the roster of ingredients, no amount of pleading with an imagined chef or  picturing vegetables being chopped, no amount of accurate measurement, timing, skimming or stirring -- none of these will convey the wonder of savoring a single spoonful.

Whatever life’s cause - each moment is precious, complex, intricate. This is true whether there is one loving god, an army of indifferent gods or no god at all. It is true whether there are angels and archangels, a living gaia, a sentient universe or only DNA struggling for survival in chaotic cycles of energy and time. None of these concepts alters the immediate reality of my arm. Or your arm. Or my brain or your brain. Or the cacophony of our conscious minds swirling with divergent and conflicting thought every hour of the night and day.

As an experiment, observe yourself inwardly for a moment. Mentally slip thought the side door. Stand just out side your stream of thought and watch the flow. Listen to your heart beating, to the steady rhythm of your breathing. Notice the faint odors of familiar things without labeling them or thinking about them, simply be them all. You are them all already. It sounds simple, inane even. But this process of simply observing reveals the rich texture of our existence.

Perhaps, as life is what we have in common, we might in the new year contemplate and celebrate the life inherent in our competing arguments. this network of vigorous, argumentative (letter-to-the-editor-writing) life -- over all the Earth and anywhere else it night be found -- this life itself is reason and meaning enough for a thousand philosophers.

So live every day of this new year. Remember the soup. Some days may be nourishing and hearty. Some may be watery and bitter. Whatever life’s taste, savor every second.

XMAS - The whirl, the blur, the pause, the peace

by M. M. Walker
(This Christmas column of mine ran in two small newspaper quite a few years ago. It's also been posted on my website.)

The Christmas holiday comes in so many subtle flavors. What does Christmastime mean to you?

Snow, twinkle lights, the scent of pine boughs, mistletoe, mulled cider, spiced eggnog, apple wood on the fire... Family caring, togetherness, visitors, carols, candlelight services, Christmas parades, children's smiles, warm fuzzy feelings about goodness in the world, hope... Tree chopping, trimming, broken ornaments crunching underfoot, getting the lights right, the tinsel straight, the cat/dog/baby tipping the tree... Shopping, fretting, having no money, worrying they won't like it, that it's not good enough, wrapping, scotch tape stuck on your shoes, on the cat...

Rushing, children's demands, store after store after store, wrapping, wishing it were over, charging it with regrets, refusing to admit to the kids/neighbors/ in-laws/your mother that we can't afford it, and paying for it next year at 18 and a half percent... Crowded grocery stores chopping vegetables, raw cookie dough and lumpy gravy, eating too much, or not having enough to eat, not having enough to give, getting a handout and hating it... Loneliness, wishing you had somewhere to go or someone special, wishing you didn't have to go, wishing the company would just go home... Desperately missing people who are not around -- who moved, stayed behind, who deserted or simply died, who linger in vivid memory of past Christmas...

House cleaning -- before and after, irrelevant preparations, celebrations followed by aching weariness and stomach pains because you're in debt... Wishing just once he'd wash dishes instead of buying cologne, self-pity, reminiscing, reverie, foolhardiness, cheer, remorse... The make-it or break-it retail season, profits or maybe losses, precarious prosperity vs chapter 11, lasting til summer vs letting people go in January. Knowing you'll have to and hating it.. Bills, bickering, more bills, endless Charlie Brown specials, meaningless, fleeting, insincere budget-busting sentimentality...

WAIT JUST A MINUTE HERE!

Whoever you are, however good or bad it is for you this year, go right now, this minute, find a someone you care about and give them a hug, because that's the thing that will get you through. And if there isn't a friend or relative, or acquaintance that you care about, at least say something friendly and polite to the very next person you see. If you're home alone, call someone up and wish them well. It's a start.

And if you haven't got any gifts to give, remember that the gift-giving part of Christmas, like the evergreen tree, is just a good old pagan tradition. The Christmas part is where the diety gave something to men. If you are a christian of whatever variety, that's the real meaning of Christmas. And while you're getting glassy-eyed with religious exultation, just remember that us atheists, pagans, cynics, n'er-do-wells and even those democrats and republicans -- they, we all need hugs too.

MERRY CHRISTMAS.