Category Archives: Society

Old Lady Monday

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Today is Old Lady Monday at Beall’s Outlets.

Beall’s operates over 500 retail stores across the Sun Belt from its headquarters in Bradenton, Florida. The company is owned by the founding family and its employees. The family apparently pronounces the name as “bells” although the belled-A in their logo has always meant we say it “BE-als.”


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The Be(A)lls store I patronize in Marathon carries branded but distress merchandise (mostly clothing) at prices that match or beat most retail sales. Their Monday Club offers 15% off all purchases, every Monday to card carrying shoppers 50 and over. I discovered I am usually the only man in the store on Mondays.Anne notes, “Excuse me, but I am not there, so it must be OLD MAN MONDAY!”

I am usually the only man in a store mobbed by women on Mondays.

Having the Old Lady card is an odd feeling. My mom suffered a minor crisis on my fortieth birthday. She was about ten years older then than I am now but she saw a 39-year old woman looking out of the mirror every morning. Pretty tough for a 39-year old woman to discover so suddenly she has a 40-year old son.

According to Channel 10 News last week, an “elderly woman” named Barbara Epstein was loading her shopping bags into the trunk of her car at the Pembroke Lakes Mall when a man with a gun came up behind her and demanded her purse. The gunman grabbed the handbag and dragged Epstein across the floor of the parking garage. The purse eventually broke, and the gunman ran to a waiting burgundy Nissan Altima.

Barbara Epstein is “in her 60s,” the Channel 10 reporter noted.

Agism is a moving target. AARP, Be(A)ll’s, and others think senior moments start at 50. Retirement communities say 55. Social Security demands you attain 62. Or 65, 66, or 67 depending on your birth certificate. I cling to middle-age and figure that older folk are at least 70 and will always be at least ten years older than I am. Ms. Epstein is less than that on both counts.

Back to Old Lady Monday.

I admit I identify more with Graham_Kerr than Jeff Smith but I am pugnaciously parsimonious. I have membership cards at pretty much every grocery store and (free) discount outlet that offers them and I don’t mind trading my birthday for a discount. After all, we really “cheap bahstids” need to stretch a buck any way we can. More so now than almost any other time in my life.

I guess I’d better pay my AARP dues now. And head for Be(A)ll’s. They have magic dryer balls on sale this week. I never knew a dryer had balls, let alone that they could be magic.

The good news is that Be(A)ll’s also has Young Whippersnapper Fridays.

Cops And Robbers

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Pirates snatched a United States-flagged Maersk Line container ship with 20 American crew members off the coast of Somalia. The crew beat off the brigands but the pirates managed to hang on to Capt. Richard Phillips who is from Underhill, Vermont, about 25 miles south of North Puffin.

The Navy arrived. The pirates threatened to kill Captain Phillips. The world watched while a lifeboat tethered 100′ behind its stern stood off the world’s most powerful navy.

The Navy passed the buck to the President to allow them to use deadly force against the hijackers. President Obama granted permission three times but “only if the captain’s life appeared to be in imminent danger.”

Darned if it didn’t appear that the captain’s life was in imminent danger. Navy SEALs did their job and there are three fewer lawbreakers adding to the genetic pool.

Other pirates in Somalia bristled and promised to kill Americans in future hijackings to avenge the deaths of their brethren under the skull and crossbones. “In the future, America will be the one mourning,” the New York Times quoted pirate Abdullahi Lami as saying. I have to wonder why the cops can’t find this guy if the New York Times can.

At first glance, the incident was a police action and the Navy handled it well. The pirates committed grand theft-ship and kidnaping. The response was exactly what any trained law enforcement officer would bring to bear in a hostage crisis.

Seizing a United States-flagged ship is not a bank robbery.

Any Navy skipper has similar responsibilities but much more authority than the average police commissioner. After all, the average police commissioner doesn’t have combat troops, 5″ cannons, more than 100 missiles, and, perhaps, nuclear weapons. The cop on the street would ask for a sergeant or a lieutenant for permission to use deadly force to resolve a hostage crisis. The cop on the street would never ask the police commissioner. And a Navy Captain is not a cop on the street.

President Obama usurped the role of a police commissioner by micro managing this hostage crisis.

That sends the wrong message to the bad guys and a bad message to the troops.

The USS Bainbridge is an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer with the right equipment and the right crew. President Obama should have sent the following message to Commander Francis X. Castellano: “Take whatever action you need to. I have your back.”

Period.

Terrorists changed the Rules of War when they first sent irregular “troops” to fight soldiers by blowing up civilians. The new Rules are simple: “if you attack a United States citizen or a United States property or a United States-flagged ship anywhere in the world, you have committed an Act of War against the United States.” We get to kill you all and let your God sort out which of you get to be Ahmed’s virgins.

Shooting at a man on horseback while riding at a gallop is man’s second hardest physical feat (hitting a major league pitch is the hardest). The Navy SEALs aboard the USS Bainbridge performed far better than their superiors on land.

Gay Ignorance

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Missy and Biff flew to South Puffin for vacation this week.

It’s a good time to be here. Unlike Michigan’s Upper Peninsula we don’t have six inches of snow on the ground. Even North Puffin is still in the throes of yack with temps in the 30s, a day full of cold rain, and ice floes on the rivers.

Missy works for the state but lives to fish and ride motorcycles. She been a little concerned of late because Vermont Governor Jim Douglas wants to cut about 10% of the nearly 8,000 state employees to help with the state budget shortfall. She wears a lot of makeup and loves her bling. I think she might believe the gold and sparkles attract fish. And, as Dolly Parton says, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”

“I’m not worried about my job any more,” she said.

Cool, I said. Why not?

“All the State Houses can talk about is gay marriage,” she said, “and the fact Jim promised to veto it tonight.”

The Vermont State Senate rejected using a statewide referendum for a gay marriage bill because they did not want the divisive debate; they passed the “Act to Protect Religious Freedom and Promote Equality in Civil Marriage” on a 26-4 vote instead. The House gave the measure final approval on a 94-52 roll call vote. They are just six votes shy of the 100 needed to override the veto.

I never liked civil unions because they take us back to the days of segregated schools and segregated washrooms and segregated water fountains. “Separate but equal” is both deceitful and untrue. There is nothing “equal” in the comparison of a civil union with a civil marriage.

Legislatures across the land are too busy with side issues like steroid use and gay marriage to spend much time on the single deciding issue of 2009: my wife on three-fifths time and my WalMart stock dropping.

2009 is not going to be “the year that Vermont fixed the state economy (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t be “the year that Vermont passed universal health care (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t even be “the year that the United States Congress returned the Dow to 14,000 (or didn’t).”

Nope. This is going to be “the year that Vermont made gay marriage the law of the land.”

Thank goodness for that. The Vermont legislature has already shown it has no clue about running a mom-and-pop grocery let alone running a state. In that, they take after their brethren, the Barney Rubble brigade inside the Beltway.

I like Jim Douglas. I’ve known him for years and I understand he would really like to get the legislature to concentrate on the problems at hand.

Jim is wrong about the focus, though.

He should indeed veto S.115 but he needs to find something else to distract the legislature pretty quickly; the legislators won’t stay busy for more than another week overriding the veto. I recommend a year-long investigation into Mickey D’s involvement in professional football. Have you seen the size of those guys? They didn’t get that big at the salad bar.

It wouldn’t hurt to convince Congress to underwrite a nationwide study of mushroom management, too. We’re already in the dark.

BROKEN NEWS

We are in serious jeopardy. Vermont Governor Jim Douglas did indeed veto the legislation as expected but six house members who had voted against the measure last week switched sides to override that veto, making Vermont the fourth state to sanction gay marriage.

The final vote was 100 to 49

I had written that the legislators wouldn’t take more than another week to override the veto. Now the Governor needs something tomorrow to keep them out of mischief.

Anybody have any spare tea bags?

A Grand and Glorious Morning

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Sort of…

It was 80 degrees and 80 percent at 8 o’clock ante meridiem with both the thermometer and the hygrometer headed for the high 80s here in Paradise. I’ve managed to avoid firing up the air conditioning although that is getting more difficult; the house temp is reasonable even during the heat of the afternoon but the humidity keeps on climbing.

It is only sort of grand and glorious because at 2 o’clock this ayem all the older clocks with Daylight Savings Time settings and all un-updated computer systems thought the Eastern Time Zone, the Central Time Zone, the Mountain Time Zone, and the Western Time Zone should lose an hour of sleep. That is exactly what my clock radio did. I could not imagine why the radio was blaring at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.

I like Daylight Savings Time.

I do not like getting blasted out of bed at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.

New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson first proposed changing the clocks forward and back to take better advantage of late afternoon sunlight in 1895. The U.S. House of Representatives considered “saving” daylight in 1909, but that initial effort died in committee. Germany wanted to conserve coal during WWI and imposed the first nationwide Daylight Savings Time in 1916. The U.S. established it in 1918 as a direct result of the Great War; Congress repealed DST just a year later but put it back in place for WWII. Peacetime DST began here in 1966.

I have now reset the clock radio.

Thanks to the U.S. Congress, I’ll have to do that four times this year instead of two and I won’t be sure which devices will set themselves correctly, which still think it is 1967 when the federal Uniform Time Act became effective. I do know the ones that don’t screw up; they’re the ones with counterweights or springs and a winding key.

I like Daylight Savings Time. It would be better if we simply stayed on it.

The Great Global Black Out

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Did you do it? Did you join The Great Global Black Out to celebrate global warming today?

The World Wildlife Federation targeted Earth Hour 2009 on more than one billion people in 1,000 cities worldwide to send a “powerful global message” to the world leaders who will attend the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagenin December. Global landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, the Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House, and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all went dark in this monument to bad science.

I hope, in turning off your lights, you remembered the lights on the VCR and the microwave oven and most assuredly the light in the refrigerator. Opening the fridge for beer would definitely break the spell. After all, the Far Green (that would be the folks who dreamed up the Great Global Black Out) also want us to believe I can burn 167 KW-Hrs per month with the little LEDs and incandescent lights I have running in North Puffin.

We are safe, though. I turned all of my lights on to avoid the Pico Ice Age caused by the sudden cessation of heat-emitting filaments.

It is worth noting that the imagery for Earth Hour includes a person holding an open flame to bring light unto the darkness.

For more facts about “Global Warming” visit the Petition Project where more than 31,000 American scientists have stated unequivocally that no convincing scientific evidence ties human activity to the disruption of the Earth’s climate. Those scientists include the past president of the National Academy of Sciences.