MERIWETHER LEWIS: AMERICAN HERO, TROUBLED MAN

There probably aren't too many Americans over the age of 45 who don't know about Lewis and Clark. I wouldn't count on the younger generations knowing much of anything.

But I admit I never did any deep reading on the pair and their expedition until lately. I just finished Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose, the author of D-Day and Band of Brothers.

I would commend the book to anyone who wants to know more about one of the key events in American history and the men who made it possible. This is a well-written, entertaining book by a history professor who doesn't write like one.

Although Ambrose lavishes much praise on William Clark and gives him his fair due, the focus of this book is Meriwether Lewis and, by extension, Thomas Jefferson. By extension, because Lewis was much more like Jefferson's son than he was a mere political compatriot and subordinate officer.

I had no idea Lewis was a manic-depressive alcoholic who committed suicide about three years after returning from his trans-American journey. No one ever told me Lewis did absolutely no work on his journals to ready them for publication. It seemed he did everything he could to avoid working on the journals. We'll never know why.

Regardless of how and when its story came to be published, this monumental journey by the Corps of Discovery, conceived and financed by Jefferson, was possibly the quintessential American act. We have always been a searching, seeking people, pushing toward the far horizon. But not a few of our historic acts of exploration were happy accidents. Columbus out looking for spices in India ends up in the West Indies. The Pilgrims heading for Virginia end up in Massachusetts.

Lewis & Clark were not headed into complete terra incognita, but it wasn't far from it. Few white men had ventured far into Louisiana Territory beyond St. Louis. A few British fur traders, some French Canadians doing the same. Jefferson was very much under the impression--some might say delusion--that an all-water route led from the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific. They knew there were some mountains between the Mississippi and the Pacific, but they were thinking in terms of the old, worn down Appalachians of the East. No one could have conceived of the size and majesty of the Rocky Mountains, or the difficulties involved in crossing them.

You'd have a hard time convincing me the Lewis & Clark Expedition was not the most momentous journey of exploration in American history. I'd think it would rank pretty high in world terms, too.

As Lewis wrote in his journal on August 18, 1805 near the Lemhi Pass in present day Montana, he marked his 31st birthday. His mood was introspective and self-effacing: 

"I reflected that I had as yet done little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended."

He need not have worried. What he and Clark accomplished left a permanent mark on this land. American would never be the same again. The real shame is there are no rivers in the West named after the intrepid pair and today's history books barely mention their bravery and accomplishments. Shame on us.

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF--ORIOLES

Truth be told, we don't have too many hills around here. Couple steep ones into and out of the Vermilion River valley, but that's about it. Just wanted to play off the The Sound of Music song because many birdsongs are just as melodious as the finest music ever written.

Out walking myself and the dog yesterday afternoon when I heard an unfamiliar birdsong. Actually, it was birdsongs, plural. I could tell exactly where the song was coming from, but try as I might, I couldn't locate its source.

I whipped out my iPhone and recorded a minute of the song, thinking I might could email it to a naturalist somewhere to find out what it was. But even though the song was loud and plain to my ears, the recorded version sounded as if the bird were way far away.

Just as I gave up and started to walk away, three birds came busting out of the trees and flew about 30 feet away into some shorter trees. I got only a partial glimpse in flight, but I did see black and orange and for some reason American redstart popped into my head, probably because I had been talking about redstarts with someone earlier in the week.

I kept walking and saw one of the birds perched in a tree and I saw the error of my ways. This birds had a bright orange breast and lower body. Aha! Baltimore oriole. When he flew across in front or me no more than 15 feet away I knew I was now right.

The male Baltimore oriole is a superb bird. There may be more stunning birds--Indigo Bunting, Painted Bunting, Scarlet Tanager--but I think the Bawlamer Oriole give them all a good run for their money.

Take a look at this picture taken by Terry Sohl of Brandon, South Dakota, in his yard. I don't think I've ever seen as stunning a picture of the bird as this one. Great work, Terry.

http://sdakotabirds.com/species_photos/photos/baltimore_oriole_1.jpg

I've always believed if you want to see the hand of God, just look at nature. Evolution and religion are only in conflict if you believe every story in the Bible is literally true.

DOGGIE DREAMS

I can hear my black Lab dreaming in the bedroom. Must be a good one because she's at least forty feet away and I can hear her clearly. Haven't looked, but I'm sure she's twitching and trying to run after some imaginary rabbit, squirrel or groundhog.

I've often wondered what her dreams are like. They say dogs are color blind, so I guess they're not Kodachrome dreams. But they must be pretty vivid, given the whimpering, twitching and running in place.

Just checked and she's awake now. She saw me and the tail starting thumping on the carpet. The dreams are over for now.

I don't know that I'd want to trade places with a dog because your free will is pretty proscribed. But I've often wondered what it would be like to go through life not knowing you're going to die one day. Guess it's not a trade-off I'd be willing to make, but it's something to ponder.

Doggie dreams...

CHANGING COLORS

Until a couple days ago, the dominant color around here was white. The last storm  dumped about a foot of snow and added to what was still on the ground from a very snowy February.

But then the sun came out and it warmed up to way above-normal daytime temps and suddenly the only white left was in small patches that looked like torn bedsheets scattered across the fields. Now there is no one dominant color, but a mosaic of olive, tan and ochre. 

The tag end of winter is an ugly, seemingly dead time. The snow might be gone, but the green shoots of spring aren't here yet. It's a time of waiting.

It's also the time when you discover that yes, your dog was busy in the yard over the last couple months and you can clearly see there was a pattern to her busyness. Looks more like a minefield out there than a yard. 

The visuals aren't the only bad thing about this time of year. It's also mud season. When the dog comes in after patrolling the property she looks like she's been in a pigsty. Real pain in the ass to have to clean her up every time she needs to go piss, but that's March and early April around here.

STARLING WARS

The last few days we've been inundated with starlings. Huge fifty, sixty bird flocks of them crawling all over our bird feeders. Reminds me of a hot dog someone dropped on the ground at a picnic, all covered with ants.

I guess it's not surprising given that we just had another foot of snow dumped on us. It's hard for any bird to find something to eat. And it's not like I'd begrudge starlings a meal--everybody's gotta eat.

No, my objection to starlings is the way they completely overwhelm the feeders so no other birds can eat and the fact they throw all the bird seed on the ground. They can empty your feeders in a matter of minutes if you let them. And that's my money they're throwing into the snow.

So now the starling wars have been joined. I dragged my brand new Red Ryder BB gun out of the basement, filled it with BBs and parked it next to the patio doors. All morning today I've been keeping an eagle eye on things and when the starlings swarm the feeders, I pop the door open and let loose a shot or two.

I'll say this for them, they're persistent as all get out. They employ a system to sneak in the moment your attention flags. Most sit in high trees a couple hundred feet from the house and watch. When the coast seems clear, they send in a handful of scouts to attack the feeders. If there's no counterattack, the entire mass of them glom onto every feeder at once. Sometimes there are three or four of them hanging from the same suet feeder simultaneously. Amazing.

Then I remember to check, open the door and either shoot at them or simply yell, and the game starts all over again.

The blue jays, cardinals and chickadees seem to grasp what's happening and some of them won't even fly away when I counterattack. Of course the starlings are smart enough to figure out that if some birds are still there, there may not be any real danger, so they're returning to the feeders more quickly than they did when I first began my maneuvers. This could get old real fast. 

On a related note, I saw some birds here today I shouldn't be seeing yet. An eastern towhee came to the feeders about 11 this morning, something that has never happened before. What a towhee is doing in this part of Ohio at this time of year is something I can't fathom. I also saw a red-wing blackbird. You could barely make out his epaulets, which won't brighten until breeding season. They're generally harbingers of spring, but the forecast here is for snow, snow and more snow.

Also saw a yellow-shafted flicker this morning, which is a first. Strange day here, but with this much snow cover it makes sense. Birds that would never come to feeders have little option.

NB: Just discovered another way to scare the starlings real well. Plugged my iPhone into the external speakers I have for it and played the call of a Cooper's hawk and a great horned owl. Seems to put some fear into them for a little while.

THE TROUBLE WITH SARAH

Watched part of Sarah Palin's speech at the Tea Party convention last night. I'll probably go back and watch all of it today.

What I did see was just okay, not much more. I really don't enjoy listening to her speak for a number of reasons. The timbre of her voice grates on my nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. She needs to work with a voice coach to lower her voice a bit and make it less tinny. It's doable if you--like a professional singer--push the air out using your diaphragm.

She also needs to learn pace and rhythm. She steps on her best lines way too often by rushing on instead of pausing to let the applause come. Not hard to learn that either. A speaker knows which lines will draw applause, so they need to let the thing breathe so the applause can fill those natural spots.

I'd say she also needs to get a first-rate speechwriter, because her grammar and construction are often awkward and difficult to follow. She's very good with one-liners, especially those aimed at Obama. When she let's those fly she always pauses for the applause. So if she's a smart enough speaker to do that, she can also learn to pause for other lines that are likely to draw an audience response.

At times last night she sounded as if she were in a hurry to finish and get out of town. Slow down, girl, let it breathe. Give people time to process the words and respond.

She also needs to re-think some of her stock phrases and stories. When she talks about how she fought the oil companies on behalf of the people of Alaska you'd almost think she was a socialist. Alaska is unique among the states because its constitution, unlike those of the other 49 states--or 56 if you're Obama--gives ownership of all its natural resources to the people of Alaska. When they pump a barrel of oil out of the North Slope, Alaskans don't just get a severance tax or a wellhead tax on that barrel--they actually own it.

The Alaska setup is very nearly socialist, but that's how they chose to do it and it really is up to each state how they handle their natural resources. But few people understand the Alaskan deal, so for her to keep using that story makes little sense.

Most of my criticism of Sarah Palin has more to do with style than with substance. Too much of her style furthers the leftist meme that she's stupid, which she is clearly not. If, for instance, Fred Thompson--clearly the greatest public speaker in America--delivered her speech, it would sound completely different and would have a completely different impact on the audience.

Now she's never going to have Fred's golden pipes or his southerner's natural storytelling ability. But she can and must work harder at her craft if she wants to have a bigger impact.

Unlike Fred, though, she does have looks. When her hair's pinned up and she's wearing her glasses, she is every teenage boy's fantasy of the mousy librarian who turns into the vivacious vamp when she lets her hair down.

On another note, the Tea Party organizers did themselves and the movement no favors by handing the podium to a birther. Makes the whole movement look like a bunch of wackos and kooks. 

The Tea Party movement is so diverse, there are only a limited number of issues upon which most people agree. They need to stick to spending, debt, taxes and economic and political liberties. Once they get into the weeds of social issues there is little consensus. There's little common ground between the libertarians or libertarian-leaning folks and the religious right on any social issues. This reality is patently obvious--or should be to anyone with a little political astuteness--so they should at all costs stay away from the issues that could easily tear the movement apart.

I don't have a particular problem with the organizers of this convention charging $550 or whatever it was to attend. It costs a lot of dough to put on an event like this and if you're not filthy rich or have the backing of a national political party to defray the costs, you have to charge people to come. The bigger question is whether the movement needs leaders or central organization. The beauty of the Tea Party movement was its lack of centralized control and leadership. Perhaps, though, it does take centralized control and leadership if you're going to take the next step from the street corner protest to the election of candidates who share your values. We shall see....

WE ALL OWE YOU A DEBT OF GRATITUDE

As I noted earlier this week, I don't make a practice out of writing about politics here. I generally save that kind of stuff for Twitter and Facebook. But as Emerson so aptly put it, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

I want to take a moment to thank the thousands of Tea Party/9-12 patriots in Massachusetts and elsewhere who worked their asses off to elect Scott Brown on Tuesday. You sent a message to both political parties and to the chattering classes who prop them up.

You showed a level of political maturity few of the pundits thought you would ever have. You threw your weight behind an imperfect candidate because the timing was right and because he at least stood for some of your first principles.

Let's not kid ourselves, Scott Brown might be a Republican, but he's from Massachusetts. Stick the same guy in Texas and he doesn't look quite so good, does he? (Although next to Kay Barely a Republican it's hard to say).

The point is, the pundits were all convinced you were only interested in running ideologically-pure candidates, perhaps on your own party ticket. They thought you were a bunch of unsophisticated rubes who only wanted to be spoilers and little else.

You showed the Inside the Beltway crowd they--as usual--didn't know what the hell they were talking about. Those folks are just as blinkered as the politicians who live in that cozy little Washington cocoon. Neither of them has a clue as to what real people in the real America are thinking.

What nobody seems to get is this really is a revolt of the middle class against the elites who control the political and economic systems and have run the country into the ditch. I suppose you could call it a populist revolt, but I hesitate to use that word because of all the negative baggage it brings with it, conjuring up images of "Sockless Jerry" Simpson, Tom Watson and William Jennings Bryan.

This is not a revolt of the "Know Nothings" like we saw 150 years ago. Not even close. Sure, there are know nothing elements there, but there are in every mass movement, including the two political parties.

This thing that has come to be called the Tea Party Movement is largely an uprising by the people who do the work, pay the taxes, raise the children and just want to get on with life without the government picking their pockets and being a nagging nanny. Their motto might well be simply "Leave us the fuck alone." (Although some would be too polite to use the F-word).

I also want to take a moment to thank all the Ohio patriots who showed up Friday in Elyria on a truly crappy day to protest against the Community Organizer-in-Chief. You knew you were gonna get wet, you knew they'd put you far away from the where the high and mighty would see you and you knew the mainstream media would largely pretend you didn't even exist.

But you put on your rain gear and brought your homemade signs and you let your voices be heard as Americans have always done when the government got too onerous. We all owe you a debt of gratitude because you spoke for the silent majority which is silent no longer.

DOWNSIDE OF THE JANUARY THAW

The thermometer has been above freezing for more than a week now and it's supposed to stay this way until at least Tuesday. Sunday it's supposed to be nearly 50º.

There is a downside to all this January thaw, however. It turns the countryside into mud. That includes all of our acreage that is the domain of a fat black Lab whose main job in life is to patrol the property every day to save us from rampaging rabbits and field mice. When there's mud, she's in it.

Last night we were taking the garbage cans up to the road about 10 and the dig decided it was time to dig for mice. By the time we discovered what she was up to she'd dug a nice trench in the mud and both front feet were caked with mire so thick she had a tough time walking. Nose was muddy, too, as was the top of her head.

Since she's an inside dog, that means extra work for somebody. Well, somebody other than moi.

Every trip outside now means a dog clean-up afterwards. Gets old very fast.

Thankfully we haven't had any hard, soaking rains, so while the top few inches of the ground is thawed and muddy, there's still freeze in it farther down. So the sump pump hasn't been running non-stop like it often does in the spring when the ground is thawing out completely. It'll kick on now and then, but not very frequently.

The respite from the snow and cold has been nice, though, so I'm not complaining.

THIS IS NOT YOUR FATHER'S OLDSMOBILE

I generally don't write too much about politics here--save that for Twitter and Facebook. But tonight's blockbuster win by Scott Brown in Massachusetts made me think about something I need to get off my chest.

I want to say something about how politics in America have changed, perhaps forever, and what that means to each of us.

This has always been a two-party political system. No one designed it that way, it just developed more or less organically. In fact, in the beginning there were no political parties. Washington didn't belong to a party because there weren't any for him to belong to (he probably wouldn't have joined in any case because he thought they were dangerous).

At any rate, as the system developed there were almost never more than two major parties at the national level. Parties were born, some died--the Whigs--and others were born out of the ashes of the dead parties--the GOP. But pretty much the only third parties that ever went anywhere were the Populists and the Bull Moosers.

The third parties sprang up whenever there were serious issues not being addressed by the two major parties, but eventually, many of their issues were co-opted by one of the big boys.

There was never a huge difference between the two parties because the American polity has always been centrist, moving slightly left or right of center as conditions changed or one party screwed things up. By in large they agreed on about 70% or so of issues and differed on the rest, but there was a comity between them that was largely honored. Nobody was out to break the other guy's rice bowl.

You can make a pretty compelling case that this all began to change with the advent of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century, but there were plenty of periods when the country became rather quiescent and ideology was largely shelved--the 50s of Eisenhower being the best example.

This is a long way of getting to my real point: that comity, that sense of shared Americanism is gone. As wacko left as George McGovern was, he was still not that far out of the mainstream. His progeny, however, are another story altogether.

The Alinskyites now in power--thanks in no small part to George Soros and his billions--do not share many traditional American values. For them it's all about power and they'll use any means necessary to get it and keep it. They want to turn us into a socialist paradise--France or Germany writ large.

There is no Democratic party like our fathers and grandfathers knew. All the moderates and conservatives are gone, replaced by far-left wackos largely from California, New York and Wisconsin. There is no comity with these people, no grand bargain to be struck. These are people with a Soros agenda who will say and do anything to fundamentally transform us into their version of Europe.

So it serves no one's purpose on the Republican side to negotiate with these people or to make nice with them. These are not nice people and hold fundamentally un-American views. We must beat them down and kick them while they're down and stomp on them like you would a poisonous snake--which is what they are.

We really do need new GOP leadership in the Senate especially. These guys have been around far too long in this most exclusive of clubs where comity once ruled the day. We don't need nice guys representing us in the Senate, we need streetfighters who know how to slash and burn. Jim DeMint gets it, Mitch McConnell does not. One has to go and the other needs to step up.

The House leadership is in much better shape. There are a lot of young Turks there who really do get it and have the intellectual firepower to make a case for our kind of government: small, limited and low-spending.

The bottom line here, folks, is you have to choose sides. There's no more sitting on the fence feigning independence. You have to make a choice: do you want to keep the American we've largely had for the last 230 years or do you want some socialist utopia? It's that simple.

We are at one of those watershed moments in history. Either we get back to our roots as a free, capitalist country with limited government or we slide into the oblivion of welfare statism.

It's your choice American. Shit or get off the pot.

DID I JUST CHEER A JETS WIN?

Yeah, I think I did. You always have to root for the underdog unless the overdog happens to be your team, but THE JETS???

I've hated the Jets since they beat the Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III, January 12, 1969. I lived about 25 miles from Baltimore--yeah, for those of you too young to know better, the Colts used to play in Baltimore before they skulked out of town in the middle of the night for Indianapolis.

The Colts were my team, as were the Orioles. The Colts were our boys, the hometown Bubbas who played there and lived there and shed blood, sweat and tears for us Baltimorons. Well, almost Baltimorons. How about Marylanders?

The Jets were led by hirsute loudmouth Joe Willie Namath--Broadway Joe--who wore girly white shoes and ran his mouth. He guaranteed a win against the Colts for his team and for the AFL, which was still a separate, independent league.

The Colts were heavy, almost prohibitive favorites. They were expected to beat the Jets even worse than the Packers had beaten the Chiefs and Raiders in Super Bowls I and II, which weren't actually called the Super Bowl at the time they were played.

Didn't happen. The Colts played like they'd taken the Jets for granted and they didn't score until the 4th quarter, when the game had already been pretty much decided.

So what was I doing rooting for the Jets today? Well, for one thing, there's not much point in holding a candle for a team that screwed its hometown and sneaked away to Indianoplace. They might as well have turned the horseshoes on their helmets upside down and let all their luck run out, because they were dead to us Baltimorons.

The Jets were also the underdogs, the Wild Card team that wasn't even supposed to be there. So unless you were from SoCal, there was no reason to root for the Chargers. Besides, I never, ever root for California teams. How can you cheer for guys who live in sunny, warm climes when we're shivering and asshole deep in snow? I'm not sure California should any longer be part of this country.

So let's all cheer for a Jets-Vikings Super Bowl. Two teams from crappy climates. Well, okay, the Vikings do play in a wimpy dome, but their fans have to slog through deep snow and bone-chilling temperatures to watch them play.

Truthfully, I don't give a rat's ass who plays in the Super Bowl. The Colts cured me of the NFL disease. The only football I'm interested in anymore is college. No matter how bad things get, they won't ever move Penn State from State College or Ohio State from Columbus.

WHAT WOULD 5TH GRADE BE LIKE TODAY?

In the autumn of 1963 I began the fifth grade at Hampstead Elementary School in Hampstead, Maryland. We'd moved to Hampstead from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a couple of months before.

It was not a move I was happy about. In fact, I was very, very unhappy. Most kids are if they're ripped away from their friends and lives when they're 10 years old. But it's never up to the kids, is it? Frankly, it shouldn't be, but no kid would ever understand that.

But I digress. The 5th grade teacher at Hampstead Elementary was the formidable Mrs. Bankert. And man, was she formidable. Built like a fireplug, about a million years old--the kind of woman who didn't suffer fools gladly. You knew if you fucked with her she'd slap you silly. We called her "Battleship" Bankert. I can't remember her real name, something like Rita or Roberta or Matilda or something equally ancient. She wore navy blue or black dresses well below the knee and heavy black shoes that I swear to God she had to button up every morning.

Mrs. Bankert was not a native Marylander. If memory serves, she was from Wisconsin. But boy did she have the zeal of the recent convert. She ate, slept and breathed Maryland. And she pounded every Maryland fact into our hard little heads. I haven't lived in Maryland for 40 years but I can still name all 23 counties thanks to Battleship.

The fifth grade is--or was then--the year when you learned your local history. So even though I was born in Pennsylvania and lived about half my life there, I know next to nothing about its history beyond Billy Penn. But boy, do I know Maryland history. I can sing the first verse of "Maryland, My Maryland," tell you more than you'd ever want to know about Charles Carroll of Carrolton and Lord Baltimore. I've visited the crypt of John Paul Jones in the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis and the home of Francis Scott Key, "Terra Rubra," outside Taneytown.

But just learning facts and figures about her beloved adopted home wasn't nearly enough for Mrs. Bankert. If you were going to be a real Marylander, you had to taste and eat it. Guess where this is going?

Every year Battleship sent her poor henpecked husband to the Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore on an errand of exquisite cruelty. Back he'd dutifully come with a bushel of oysters, still cold and briny from the Chesapeake Bay. And, yep, she made each and every student eat a raw oyster.

There was no cocktail sauce, no Saltine crackers in this little tableau. No way. This was the taste of Maryland, straight up.

As you might imagine, things often got a bit gnarly. Kids were gacking and hacking on raw oysters and there was always at least one kid--usually a girl--who would puke all over the floor in the cafeteria, where this annual Bacchanalia took place.

Can you imagine the uproar and outrage that would ensue if a 5th grade teacher made her kids eat raw oysters today? The ACLU would be on it like stink on shit. Lawsuits and protests would follow in short order. The teacher would be burned in effigy if not in person.

Truth be told, no teacher today would be dopey enough to try something like that. They know they're in the classroom to do three things: 1. Keep order  2. Keep kids from killing or maiming each other  3. Teach kids to pass proficiency tests. Today's teachers spend so much time on teaching to the tests they'd never dare take the time to actually give kids a taste of life.

Remember field trips? Not allowed anymore. Shit, Mrs. Bankert bussed us all over Maryland. We made an all-day trip to Annapolis to visit the General Assembly and the Naval Academy. I remember parts of it like it happened yesterday.

We stopped at Sandy Point so the kids and adults--more the adults--could pee. Some of us walked down to the water where a couple of old black guys were fishing. One of them got all excited when he started reeling in his line and something was pulling hard on the other end. We laughed our asses off when he pulled in a rubber boot.

I remember we went into a little shanty of a hamburger stand and there was a slot machine near the counter. Slots were all over the state in gas stations and dives--they lasted until 1968. Bobby Harriman got in trouble when he put money in it.

I remember parts of the Naval Academy, especially the crypt of John Paul Jones under the chapel and Bancroft Hall, the largest dormitory in the world. I think we walked all over the campus that day.

Then we went to the state capitol and toured that. J. Millard Tawes was the governor, but I don't recall if we met him. We did see the legislative chambers. The House of Delegates was pretty impressive, but the Senate chamber was tiny and sort of dull.

I have a theory about teachers like old Battleship Bankert. I don't know if research would validate it, but it makes sense to me. Here goes:

In the 40s, 50s and early 60s, most elementary teachers were women. And they were smart women. Many were the best and brightest of their generation. They became teachers because there were few other employment opportunities open to college-educated women. (Actually, there weren't even many college-educated women.) They were also dedicated to their craft. They didn't have teaching licenses--what's that all about?--and they didn't have to pass state tests or background checks. They just showed up every day and worked their asses off and taught us knuckleheads what we needed to know to be informed citizens. And yes, some of them whacked us when we deserved it.

Today, the dolts of nearly every university are found in the colleges of education. That has been proven statistically and I've seen the numbers. I think it's one reason why the quality of education has declined so dramatically over the last four decades. Add in way-too-powerful teachers' unions and way too many parents who don't give a shit and you end up with the current mess. I think it's really as simple as that.

I tried my hardest to fail in the fifth grade. Somehow my pretzel-logic brain figured if I did, we'd move back to Harrisburg. Yeah, wow, that's pretty twisted. Sort of like voting for Obama to teach Bush a lesson.

But Mrs. Bankert made it her mission to force me to succeed, even if it meant taking me to the woodshed once a day and calling in my folks once a week. I don't recall her every whacking me, but her tongue was so sharp I almost wish she had. She was a fierce and relentless foe of sloth and stupidity.

She's long dead now, so I'll never be able to thank her for what she did for me. Sadly, that's how it usually goes in life, doesn't it?

DO WE REALLY NEED NEWSPAPERS?

I read two papers every day: Wall Street Journal and Elyria Chronicle-Telegram.

I cancel the C-T a couple times every year when I get pissed off at them for their slavish devotion to higher taxes, Democrats and unions. Then I waver and start getting it again so I have some small idea of what's going on in the county. And I miss the comics.

Not sure what I'll do when the Journal subscription expires. It's an expensive paper, but I sure do love it's op-ed pages. It's also the best place to go if you care about business and the economy. I'll probably re-up, although I may just cancel all my newspapers.

But I was thinking last night about what life would be like without a daily newspaper. I've read one for maybe 35 years. What would I do on the crapper in the morning? Do my thing and get on with it? That ain't the guy way. Women spend as little time on the throne as they can, but guys know you have to have something to read and books just don't get it. Has to be a paper or a mag.

And don't even think about surfing the web on your iPhone. That's okay when you're out of the house, but on the crapper? No way.

So those of us who grew up with newspapers pretty much need to stick with them, even if we get most of our info from the 'Net these days. Just not the same experience. There's something about the feel of a newspaper, about the smell of the ink, the combination of comics and crosswords. Those of us of a certain age and inclination are just wedded to this ancient technology. First thing we do when we get off the plane somewhere is buy the local rag. Much of the news makes no sense to us, but that doesn't matter. When you go somewhere new you buy a paper.

Most newspapers are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy for any number of reasons, but if you learned the newspaper habit at an early age it's not something you want to give up no matter how tech-savvy you are. They may be the buggy whip makers of the 21st century, but they still serve a useful purpose. Plus, you can't wrap fish in a computer.

STARLINGS

Surviving a heart attack at 38 and a quintuple CABG on my 39th birthday altered my life in many ways. Things that had once seemed so important suddenly weren't so important anymore. Simply being alive was now something not to be taken for granted. I can't claim I've lived every day since as though it might be my last, but I do count each new day I'm given as a blessing.

I've adopted a live and let live approach to many things--not to liberals, gun-grabbers and Democrats, mind you. But if something isn't impinging directly on my life, I tend to let it go.

Living in the country has also reinforced that approach. Things are just different out here and you soon learn to drop your suburban ways. We get more weeds, more bugs--more critters of all kinds. And I'm fine with that now, except when they try to get in the house. There I draw the line.

Last summer I found a groundhog trying to get under the deck, which is a definite no-no. They want to live way out in the back or in the ditch, fine, have a ball. But you are not going to tunnel under the deck and the house.

So I sic'ed the dog on it, but she didn't see it until it was already on the move and it ran under the diesel tank behind the barn. The dog couldn't get in and it couldn't get out, which would have been fine, except that this dog is more a Labrador terrier than a Labrador retriever. She wouldn't walk away and let it be, she parked herself at one side of the tank and guarded it, which meant it wouldn't leave on its own. It squatted there hissing and spitting.

By now it was clear this Mexican standoff wasn't going to end well for one of us and I surely wasn't going to let it attack me or the dog. So I went in the house and got the wife's little .17 HMR revolver and shot it in the head.

I wasn't necessarily happy about the result, but I think the conclusion was more or less pre-ordained once I'd seen it under the deck. The dog wasn't happy with the result either. She sniffed the carcass and guarded it briefly, but she wasn't terribly interested in something that didn't run.

Which brings me to starlings. I hate starlings. They're ugly, non-native birds that always come in big flocks and drive my songbirds away from the feeders. There was a time when I'd have gotten the BB gun out to drive them off.

The starlings were here today, but I didn't bother them. There were only a handful, instead of the usual horde, so they weren't the nuisance they generally are. They were hanging on the suet feeders for a long time, but there weren't enough of them to decimate the food.

So today was a live and let live day and I'm glad it was. Starlings don't hurt me in any way and everybody has to eat, so I went on about my business and they went on about theirs. Most of the time that's the way it should be.

DON'T LOOK NOW...

There's a big yellow ball in the sky and I can actually see some blue up there. I don't want to say this too loudly, but the sun is out and the sky is partially blue.

Wow, I was afraid neither existed anymore. Might even have some snow melting today. Wouldn't that be a nice January bonus?

The forecast says it will be partly sunny tomorrow, so maybe it just came a day early. It also says the thermometer will rise above freezing starting next Wednesday. January thaw? Don't hold your breath.

But I've learned in this life to take each day for what it is. When I wake up in the morning and do a quick inventory and confirm that, yes, I am alive another day, I thank God for another blessing. Tomorrow will come, and with a little luck, I'll get to see it. But I know for certain here and now that I have been given another day.

CARDINALS IN THE SNOW

I heard a rumor today we might could see the sun on Sunday. I don't believe it for a second. It's gonna snow every day from now until April.

Don't laugh. We've had something like 12 or 13 straight days with at least some frozen precip. I'm pretty sure it has snowed every day this year.

There are some consolations, though. There may be nothing quite so visually dramatic as a male cardinal against the snow.

When the world is sunny and green, the cardinals seem to lose some of their brightness. It's probably less them than their surroundings and the light. I don't know if their feathers actually change hue during the year--perhaps they do.

When it's snowy, though, they stand out like the blinking red lights atop a television tower. You know, the ones that are supposed to let airplanes know there's danger ahead.

For much of the winter we see the cardinals at the feeder only rarely, mostly dawn and dusk. Not now. Today there have been as many as 6 pairs at the feeders at the same time. There were 4 males in a little oak tree at once and they looked like Christmas ornaments.

Beauty and joy are there, sometimes you just have to look for them.

WHY THE FIXATION WITH AIRPLANES?

This crotch bomber episode makes me wonder why Al Qaeda has such a fixation on airplanes. Okay, to give them their due, they did pull off quite a coup on 9/11 using planes as guided missiles. Sure got everybody's attention. But if they want to tie us in knots there are surely better, easier ways to do it.

The Mumbai attacks, for instance. Talk about terrorizing a population. Most people don't fly or don't fly often. Every person lives a life that includes going to work, driving, walking, eating out--all the trivialities of our daily existence. How terrorizing is it when you feel you can't do any of those things?

I understand Al Qaeda's desire to get the biggest bang for their buck, no pun intended, but I wonder if they're really more interested in PR and their image in the jihadi world than they are in truly terrorizing this country.

If I were in charge of Al Qaeda, here's what I'd be doing: attacking soft targets like malls, schools, factories, etc. You know they have sleeper cells here, as do Hamas and Hizballah. I'd activate my sleepers and send them out in small teams of one or two men to attack soft targets with automatic weapons, grenades and C-4. And I'd do it serially rather than simultaneously.

On Monday I'd hit a mall in Bangor, Maine; Tuesday a school in Salem, Oregon, etc. I'd keep the attacks up for at least a week. Then I'd sit back and laugh at the panic.

Can you imagine what this country would be like after a week of attacks on civilian targets from one end of the country to the other? I'm not sure chaos would be too strong a word.

In terms of terrorizing a population it would be an exquisite tactic. But AQ won't do it because it doesn't make a big enough splash for them in the jihadi world. We're probably lucky because they're so full of themselves and so eager to burnish their image in the wacko world.

OSAGE ORANGES & RECURRING NIGHTMARES

I was surprised to see a few Osage oranges still clinging to the trees I pass most days on my dog walk. They're all shriveled up and brown now, but they haven't fallen to the ground.

I wonder if that means they're duds, because there's no way they can scatter their seeds hanging on the tree. Or maybe it's just one of those things that happen for no apparent reason. Most of the pods drop, but some don't--or at least not until they're all dried up and useless.

I love Osage orange trees and wish I had a windbreak of them. They're exceedingly sturdy trees that can survive just about any conditions. In the old, old days--before the invention of barbed wire--farmers used to plant them for fencerows because their short, stout thorns kept cattle and horses where they were supposed to be. "Horse high, bull strong and hog tight" is how they were described. But they had to be aggressively pruned to keep the growth bushy and the thorns down where they'd do some good. Otherwise they'd grow just like any other trees and the thorns would soon be up above the heads of the animals they were supposed to deter.

Plains Indians supposedly loved them because their wood made great bows, better even than yew trees. They allegedly ate the fruit, but that's highly unlikely. The seeds are edible, but they're in the every core of the oranges and difficult to get at.

Old people say they repel spiders, but the young 'uns laugh at that. But like a lot of folk wisdom, there is a kernel of truth in it. The Osage oranges emit a chemical that spiders find disagreeable. There's at least one company that makes a spider repellant spray that contains the same chemical. It's not toxic to us or the spiders.

A couple of years ago I decided to I wanted some for the house, garage and barn, so on one of our walks I strapped on my big external frame pack and broke forty or fifty yards of trail up to where the trees are. I jammed as many as I could into the pack--forget the final count, but I think it was somewhere between thirty and forty--and headed back to the truck.

Damn things were a lot heavier than I thought they'd be and I slipped just as I was getting ready to jump a ditch and fell down. I was like Randy in A Christmas Story when he fell in the snow--I couldn't get up. Somehow I managed to get the pack off, get to my knees, then get the pack back on.

That was the longest half mile back to the truck. I was wet, muddy and sore, but I had my spider repellers.

When I walk by in the fall and see the trees covered in bright-lime balls I get the urge to take some home, but then I remember the fiasco with the backpack and just walk on by.

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Woke up this morning out of a nightmare--the TV news producer's nightmare all over again. This time I was in Kentucky, working for a woman who looked amazingly like Jane Horrocks, the English actress who starred in the BBC series The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, which I had just finished watching last week.

As in every one of my other TV news producer nightmares, I was told at the last minute that I had to produce a newscast on a day when I was not supposed to be producing. Let me tell you, producing a TV news show is nightmare enough, but getting thrown into it unsuspecting is way beyond the pale.

I haven't produced a newscast in more than twenty years, but I swear I have one of these nightmares at least a couple times a month. Other people have nightmares about tests they forgot to study for--I haven't had one of those since...well, since before I started producing newscasts in the early 80s.

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It's snowing again--hard. It's a storm this time and it's gonna dump 3-6 inches on us between now and Friday morning. Then the lake-effect snow machine is gonna fire up again and we could get another  6 inches. This isn't a nightmare, it's a daily assault.

Sucks to be us.

FORGET WHAT I SAID BEFORE

I am going to complain about this lake-effect snow business. I've had enough. No sooner do I get it cleaned off the driveway than it's dumped all over it again.

The forecast has snow in it for at least the next seven days. Yeah, that's a week. And it's snowed every day since New Year's day.

Okay, there's some places in the snowbelt that already have 3 feet on the ground, but that's their bad luck. It's the price they pay for living on the east side.

I say enough already.

ODDS 'N ENDS AND ODD THOUGHTS

The Lake Erie snow machine keeps pumping in the white stuff. You can barely tell I cleared the driveway yesterday. But I've vowed not to complain. I heard this morning they have 29 inches on the ground in Chagrin Falls, so the 6 or 8 inches we have is nothing to complain about. Could be a lot worse. God only knows what it's like in Chardon or Ashtabula.

I've just started reading Edwin Way Teale's third book on the seasons, Autumn Across America, and once again I am amazed at how astute the guy was. His observations aren't necessarily huge startling discoveries, but they are wonderful little insights into how the world works and sometimes why.

In one of the early chapters Teale puts on swim fins and mask and takes us under the shallow waters of Shinnecock Bay on Long Island to look at eelgrass. Sort of an odd choice of habitat to observe in a book about fall, but there's a method to his seeming madness, for he's interested not just in slimy seaweed, but the web of life that's connected to this seemingly unimportant plant.

Teale tells how a mysterious catastrophe brought death to the eelgrass on both sides of the Atlantic and altered life both in the water and on the shore.

In late 1930 eelgrass began dying off along the Atlantic coast. By the summer of 1931 it was dying all the way from North Carolina to Cape Cod. The following year the mysterious epidemic spread north to Canada and also devastated eelgrass beds in England, Holland and France. By 1933 less than one percent of the eelgrass along the east coast, from Labrador to Beaufort, North Carolina, was still alive.

The first casualty was the brant, whose diet once consisted almost exclusively of eelgrass. When 90% of their food disappeared, so nearly did the brant. Their numbers shrank so alarmingly the government declared a year-round closed season along the eastern seaboard.

Next came the scallops, which live largely in eelgrass beds. When they disappeared, so did a lot of the shellfish industry. Then came companies that used eelgrass for soundproofing and furniture stuffing: they went out of business because their raw material was no longer available.

The list goes on and on, but the point is the same: a seemingly mundane plant that most of us at the beach would see as more bane than boon was a key link in the chain of life. When it died off, the repercussions were felt far from the shallow bays of our eastern seaboard.

But not all of Teale's observations are so earth-shattering. The four pages he devotes to the simple scallop are just fun. Did you know scallops have eyes? Came as a shock to me, too. Do you know they can swim through the water backwards and forwards like a jet propelled flying saucer? I assumed they sat on the bottom like other clams, relatively inert. Hardly. They've even been observed migrating in great hordes when they're young.

I don't know about you, but I love picking up these little nuggets of knowledge. Do they change my life? Probably not, but I think if you have any curiosity about the world around you it's just fun to know these sorts of things.

LIVING WITH A GREAT LAKE

People who live in other parts of the country--hell, people who live in other parts of Ohio--have no notion of what our Great Lakes are really about. They have no sense of their size, scale and influence.

When you tell people in central Pennsylvania you live about 15 miles from the shore of Lake Erie, they say, oh, that's nice, and move on to other things. They hear lake and they think it's something just a bit bigger than a pond, which is, after all, the definition of a lake.

Their eyes get big when you tell them you can't see land from the middle of Lake Erie, that the Great Lakes are 20% of the world's fresh surface water, 90% of the country's. The coup de grace is when you tell 'em if we pulled the plug on the Great Lakes, the entire Lower 48 would be under nearly 10 feet of water. That kinda gets and keeps their attention.

English is the most descriptive and precise language in the world, yet it does not have a word that accurately describes the Great Lakes.

Ocean would not be appropriate because by definition it is both vast and salt water. The vast pretty much applies, but not the salt part. We do have tides--seiche--like the oceans, but they're strictly wind-driven. They can be impressive on Lake Erie under the right conditions, but we don't have any Bay of Fundy sort of rise and fall.

I'm thinking about the Great Lakes today because we're having another bout of lake-effect snow in Lorain County. It's not unheard of here, but it's far more rare than on the east side of Cleveland in Ohio's snowbelt, where lake-effect pushes the yearly snowfall total upwards of the 120" mark (for those of you at home, that's 10 feet).

Anytime the wind is out of the north or slightly NNW, we get hit. The snowbelt gets slammed from nearly any compass point from WNW to NNE. Technically, we're in the secondary snowbelt.

So that part of living next to Lake Erie kinda sucks, but there are good points. The growing season is longer here than most areas at this latitude, thanks to the lake. Drive around the southern shore of Lake Erie and you'll see numerous vineyards and fruit orchards, even a dozen miles inland.

We also get our drinking water from Lake Erie, so no drought of any length has any impact on our water supply. That's one of the reasons why these Federal laws requiring low-flow showerheads and crappy little toilets make no rational sense. Beyond the fact that the Federal government has no business meddling in these areas, there's no way we can ever run out of fresh water here so why do we have to live under the same rules as people in Arizona? If ever there were an issue that should be solely the purview of state and local government, this is one of them.

The mere existence of Lake Erie also provides us with terrific birdwatching opportunities a couple times a year. During the spring and autumn migrations, millions of birds have to cross the lake. Where most of them cross, the shortest hop is 35 miles of open water. So they pile up along the Ohio shoreline in the spring to feed and rest before making the hop over the lake.

The best place to see up to 300 species of birds is the Magee Marsh Wildlife Refuge, between Toledo and Port Clinton. The state built a boardwalk through the marsh there and if you hit it at the right time, the warblers and other birds are literally dripping from the trees. Many of them are surprisingly tame and you'll probably never get a better up close and personal look at them.

I guess you have to take the bad with the good, but when I was out clearing 5 inches of bad off the driveway today, I wasn't nearly so willing. Now that I've thought about it in the warmth of my home, I guess I can live with it.

One footnote, the Cooper's hawk was back again today, this time sitting big and bold in the oak tree above the suet feeders. Managed to get the camera on him this time, but couldn't get proper focus. I hate all this modern technology. Why do I need the camera to focus for me when I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself? I haven't even bothered to pop the memory card to check it, because I know the shots will be out of focus. I need to get the manual out again, I suppose. I never had to use a manual the size of the OED to get good pix with my 35mm SLRs.

EVERYBODY'S GOTTA EAT

The Cooper's hawk was here this morning, sitting in the maple tree above the feeders. He comes in close every few days it seems, hungrily eyeing the little birds we attract with seeds and suet.

We admire raptors from afar but are repelled when we see them kill other creatures and eat them. But like it or not, that's the order of things and everybody's gotta eat.

It's hardly the same as somebody's stupid house cat that kills songbirds just for the hell of it. The cat is well-fed in the house and has no need to kill, because most of the time it won't eat its prey anyway. A barn cat is a different story. It pretty much has to kill its dinner or starve.

I have to laugh at all the granola eaters who think nature is some benign, benevolent Eden where all creatures great and small smile at each other and get along. Nature is tooth, claw and fang, ladies and gentlemen. Eat or be eaten. Predator or prey. What the hell do you think food chains are all about?

I'm not sure which birds Mr. Cooper's hawk prefers, but I'm okay with whatever he needs to survive. I just hope he's partial to doves. We have more than enough of them around and they're some of the dumbest birds I've ever seen.