Oil Pastel: Preoccupied

Like many of my works on this blog - this piece is partially physical and partially digital. The base work is an oil pastel, with some small alterations made digitally -  ie filling in around the edges with black.

The surreal state of late

Everything goes a different way than anticipated. Usually later. With all my writing about late publications, I am late too, so late in so many ways.

Hope you all had a satisfactory New Year's eve. Old acquaintences have an annual party, and this year I was thinking I would go. Looked up from working too late. I was trying to get the magazine out, and at the same time upload stuff to a new youtube channel my boss created.  This divided flipping continued long into the night.

Some notes of the evening:


• Bent Pin is going to be a week late due to software glitches, ticks and odd computer behaviors  and me. I don't charge for Bent Pin though. I am tired and am spending way more time than I want on computer woe. My brain is late.

• After midnight on Jan 1 around 2:45 or so, I heard something outside and looked out to see what it was - the DANBURY NEWS TIMES HAD ARRIVED EARLY ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE NEW YEAR!

• Had a reasonable view of the fireworks out that window earlier in the evening. Pretty colorful. Saw the little dipper between the clouds while walking the dog tonight.

• Did I make any resolutions? uhhhh. My resolutions are going to be late also. I can't figure out what to resolve. EXCEPT MAYBE THIS I resolve to do more real things and fewer unnecessary cyber things. Right now I am going to do something very real - I am going to sleep.

Watch out when business people recommend their clients

When a friend recommends someone to sell your house, tile your bathroom or pull the engine out of your antique VW, stop up your ears and run for cover. Pause, steep some tea, pour yourself a glass of sherry or amaretto. Have a beer or a latte. Sit and contemplate alternatives. Or at least ask a few questions and do some research. Sure your friend means well, but good intentions and good advice are not the same thing.

Especially beware when friends, relatives and others recommend people who are clients in their businesses. Just because the client successfully buys services or goods doesn't mean they are good at providing goods or services themselves. Many businessmen espouse the motto, "One hand washes the other." So, they try to throw a little business to their clients by recommending them. They don't necessarily know anything about their clients practices or reputation as a service provider, and are not aware of complaints or legal actions pending against them either. All they know, is they guy pays his bill or they hope he will soon...

The unmerited assumption that a business person is trustworthy can play out badly for the one doing the trusting. I know this from painful experience.

A friend recommended a real estate agent to me several years ago, quite a few years ago, THough th ending was eventually a good one with a different realtor it cost me a year of time to right it. The lesson I learned was this - don't fail to investigate and read the fine print because you think this person your friend recommended has your best interests at heart 

I recently heard another sad tale right in the family. My cousin-in-law who is a nice fellow and a very good businessman, recommended a mortgage banker to my Uncle, told the guy, the Uncle needed a fixed rate mortgage.

When the Uncle, after also asking for a fixed rate mortgage himself, reads the mortgage contract he sees that his interest rate is guaranteed for two years only. BUT INCREDIBLY HE SIGNS IT ANYWAY. After all his daughter's husband who is very smart, recommended the guy and he must know..... NOT NOT NOT! Next year his interest rate will sky-rocket because he assumed this was the best he could do since his daughter's hubby recommended him. Or in his case,  it likely has more to do with his irrational belief that the world would end before the two year initial interest rate expired....

ALWAYS investigate. May I take my own advice.....

Will the morning paper become an afternoon paper?

The News Times, which cut a bunch of staffers last summer, and which is under new ownership, seems to have a rotating deadline for its home delivery.

Once upon a time, the weekday paper was supposed to be delivered by 6 a.m. so people on their way to work could have it before they left for the day. No more. The new deadline is 8a.m. When a friend called at 8:20 this morning, the News Times answering machine bleated that if the paper hadn't be delivered by 11 p.m. to call back. 11 PM??? Perhaps the News Times is planning to return to its roots as an AFTERNOON PAPER. Or even an EVENING PAPER?

I doubt that. What is happening though, is a bit of difficulty staffing the home delivery roster. Home carriers are poorly compensated independent contractors on whom is foisted much of the true long term costs of delivery. They use their own vehicles, on which they are raking up milage, which lowers resale value. They pay for their own gas, oil, maintenance, and have higher insurance costs as well, and shovel out extra early in the snow. By contract, they must deliver the paper seven days a week, every week, every month of the year. If they want to go out of town, or have a day off, they have to pay someone else to make the deliveries while they are gone. The also have to keep books, and must "buy" their allotment of papers from the company.

Now that gas is over three bucks a gallon, I am wondering if the News Times is having difficulty finding people foolhardy enough to take the job. Enterprising boys and girls on bicycles are apparently in short supply as well. Moms think it's way too dangerous for them to be wheeling about unsupervised, at so early an hour when who knows who is lurking about.... Besides - they have to be in class before 8 a.m.!!! Wow. It's a different world.

Adults who do take the contracts soon realize after their first independent contractor's check - that they will net a pittance after their costs, to get up at 3 am. to make all their deliveries before six. These folks are getting wise to it all. As a small concession, apparently the company is hoping to make home delivery contracts more attractive by making the delivery deadline later.

Among the other staff cuts the paper has made - is the real human being who used to answer the phone when people called to say their paper hadn't arrived. All in all, some old-time subscribers are not happy. I know one who is planning go switch to the Daily News which is always in the neighbors driveway when she passes by on her 5:30 am walk. I suggested she could take a peak a Ct news online. She's considering the idea.

Ironically, readers who get home delivery are paying subscribers. Online readers, (the up and coming, thing for newspapers hoping to compete with Internet news) are supported by an expensive infrastructure, but they read between the gaudy, flashing animated ads for free.

Lessons & Carols tomorrow

• Tomorrow is Lessons and Carols. (a job not a belief). The concert is by the combined choirs of St Mary’s and the local Congregational church. Their choir has a LOT of men and they sing like vikings. TEN bases in the combined choir. I will be recording it all on my Olympus mini thing. I recorded the entire dress rehearsal which sounds pretty good. This time I placed the recorder on the shelf behind the organ with mics facing away from the singers and out towards the congregation. That resulted in a nice natural “reverb” from the vaulted ceiling!

We also have the benefit of two folks up front. The music director from the congregational church is tickling the organ keys for this one. Our director is conducting. They make a nice team! Finally, after all this churchy stuff I am heading to a solstice bonfire at a friend’s house.

Remembering the heat in the cold - my brush with heat stroke

Last night, in obscure moments of semi-sleep - I could hear what I thought was rain. This morning it was clear the sound was actually little frozen sleet-pellets hitting the roof. The walk and driveway were full of them and it was a peculiar walking experience - almost like walking on deep sand, rather than snow. Driving was tricky but by going slow, and with some skidding and sliding, things progressed. Out by the airport it was almost all white like driving in a cold cloud with hills and sky merging into white. I made it into work and back without a hitch.

Since it's 24 degrees outside my window, naturally I am thinking of hot weather.

During the one of the hottest summers on record, I made the incredible mistake of moving to burbs of Atlanta GA. Shortly after arriving, I went for a walk one day in a long lazy southern subdivision. I got lost and wondered for hours in the terrible afternoon heat. Later I learned it was 105 degrees that afternoon. I knew it was hot, as I was soaked in sweat and my mouth was parched. After an hour and half of passing houses that looked alike, my forehead was cold, and my hands were clammy. I stopped sweating altogether and imagined I would never be heard from again. About that time, I came to a school and I spied a water spigot on the foundation. First thing I stuck my whole head under the water, so it ran down my back and shoulders. Then once I was soaked, I felt a little better and I drank, thanking the fates no one had turned off the water during the summer recess. I stuck each foot and arm under the spigot too, so I was really soaked and cooled. Then I collapsed in the shade for almost an hour, getting up several times for more water. I was lucky I didn't die that day.

When I was rested, I started to walk very slowly, to float along really on my rubbery legs. Getting overheated takes a lot out of you. Finally I came to a commercial area. The first store I saw was an air-conditioned fast food joint where I ordered a large ice tea... New to the south, I had no idea how large a large drink was down there. It came in a bucket the size of bucket of fried chicken. I could have bathed in it..... But right at that moment, I just marveled and drank as much as I could for the trip home. I really had no idea where exactly I was. On a payphone, I called a friend who came in a lovely beatup air conditioned cougar to pick me up.

In praise of the Harper's Index

No, it's not a stock index, nor a fund index, nor related to maps, encyclopedias nor to a government census. Harper's Index is a page of offbeat statistics published each month in Harper's Magazine. We are talking odd and outlandish statistics that seem to flow into each other in some sort of semi-poetic stream-of-consciousness progression. A quasi organic tumble of cultural quirks - evidence from which (perhaps) deductions can be made. Need to know the percentage of Americans who claim they'd like to have a plug to the internet surgically hooked into their brains? The amount of CO2 released from opened champagne on New Year's Eve? The chances your daughter's bright red lipstick has an unsafe level of lead? You need this month's INDEX to find out...
(Note: Harper's Magazine is NOT to be confused with Harper's Bazaar which is NOT NOT NOT on my reading list.)

The Harper's Index that arrived today (on Page 15) has 39 tidy snippets of intrigue and outrage. Some of their stats hit like a sucker punch with a quick one-two rhythm. Here's an example of the one-two style. Tidbit number 29 - in the state of California 19,300 credit card disputes have been resolved since 2003. While that one fills readers with a satisfying sense of justice, it's a short-lived delusion. It's just the setup line. The punch is the next line which reveals that 94 percent were resolved in favor of the credit card company. On page 82 in a neat source box, you can discover that both these statistics were provided the Public Citizen, an organization founded by Ralph Nader

For the 37 other bits this month, including the three odd questions posed in the first paragraph - subscribe! Or go to the library! You can also wait two months and get the index online. Or if you know me, I can lend you the issue. And yes I realize I am plugging a bit of traditional media. I like it. If you are bored or in need of small talk stunners I urge you visit the Harper's Index Archive which runs all the way back to March of 1984. - regards and happy reading!