Dog tired of picking up trash in my 'hood, aka Project Litterbug

   As you might have noticed -- all three or four of you -- I haven't been updating the blog much lately.
   Laziness figures in to some extent. Busyness, too, which might seem like a contradiction in that lazy people are not, as a rule, all that overwhelmed with checking off items on their to-do list.
    But in my case, that's the situation. I have been kinda busy since my last post. Not that I wouldn't mind spending time slack-jawed on the couch watching reality TV or punching buttons on a phony guitar trying to keep up with Eddie Van Halen's solos on my daughter's Guitar Hero. But I had stuff to do.
  Stuff like planning the annual bonfire party, stringing the Christmas lights, putting the garden to bed for the winter, writing the column, trying to come up with new ways to promote our gardening book -- which, as it turns out, is not only an excellent holiday gift but is the perfect size and weight for flinging at unwanted guests, bratty kids and dogs chewing on the furniture.
   Of course, I haven't tossed the book at anyone. Just exploring the possibilities.
    And you can, too, by buying a copy for the low price of $24.95!
   However, a crowded schedule is no excuse for blog neglect. So I plan on picking up the pace in the days ahead. And one way we'll do that is by establishing a recurring feature for the next month or so.
   I'm calling it the My Neighborhood Is Not a Trash Heap Project. Or Project Litterbug, for short.
   Everybody's heard the slogan "Think Globally, Act Locally." And if, like me, you see environmentalism as something positive and not some pinko, liberal commie plot, then you know that the little things we do to protect the planet actually make a difference.
   Like recycling. Like buying fair trade coffee. Like picking up your dog's crap, as objectionable as that might be, when taking him out for a bit of exercise.
   And that's how I came up with the My Neighborhood is Not a Trash Heap Project. While out walking my growing mutt, Einstein, is recent months, I've been appalled at the amount of litter on and along the streets and sidewalks of Lenexa.
   You know that motto medical doctors supposedly live by: "First, do no harm."
   The same could be said for environmentalism. If you can't be bothered to compost your leaves or take your glass to the recycling center, then at least try not to make things worse by chucking beer cans, water bottles and cigarette packs out of your car window.
   Unfortunately, that too much for trouble for the slobs among us. Almost as bad, a lot of people won't even take the time to pick up after the slobs when that litter is in front of their own home. It's as if they're blind to it, I've decided.

   And so I started picking up the trash along my walking route. At first, it was whatever I could carry. Then I started stuffing some of it in the extra dog poop bag I often stuff in my pocket. (Conservatives are going to love this, but the bags I use are those blue ones that my copy of The New York Times comes in.)
   But last Friday, Dec. 4, I took one of those 15-gallon kitchen trash bags with me, and guess what.
   Within an hour, I'd stuffed it full of all the garbage that Einstein and I came across as we strolled the several-square-block area immediately around the Old Town Lenexa commercial district. Cigarette packs. Glass and plastic bottles. Aluminum cans. Fast food bags and more.
   I didn't even bother picking up around the bar and the stores in the business district, figuring that was a project in itself. The trash collected came strictly from the residential area, where it was obvious the mess was caused by your average litterbug rather than commercial carelessness.

   And while lugging that heavy bag toward home, I had an idea. Why not see how much trash could be collected by one person walking his dog over the course of a single month in an otherwise clean, safe, orderly suburban area.
   Trash that, when it rains, normally ends up in the storm sewers, which drain into streams that, in turn, drain into the Missouri River and makes its way to the Mississippi and on into the Gulf of Mexico.
   So that's what I'm doing. The photo shows what Einstein and I picked up during two litter collection outings in the past three days. (I forgot my bag on Saturday).
   My plan is to store the trash in the barn (thank goodness it's winter and the assorted honey mustard sauce containers, smashed french fries (there's a McDonald's six blocks to the north) and the rest won't get all funky in the heat). Periodically, I'll take inventory of the bags' contents, which I'll post occasionally.
  And at the end of 30 days, I'll share the totals here and elsewhere on the Internets, along with a full report on the implications for my neighborhood and what similar efforts would do for other neighborhoods and the planet.
   Along the way, I'll report on other local efforts to keep trash out of streams, be it on a grassroots or policy level. And I hope to address some broader environmental issues related to this in the days ahead.

     
 
   

Right wingers stir up backlash in pursuit of ratings

   I figured the bat-s--t crazies would be mounting an all-out media pogrom on Muslims after the Fort Hood shootings. I just didn't realize how blatant they'd go about it.
  Ann Coulter is on Fox claiming it's the worst form of  PC to portray peaceable Muslims as possiily being victims of violent, anti-Muslim backlashes. (Here's the column that prompted her appearance on O'Reilly.)

   Last night on the Darla Jaye Show, the host egged on callers who thought that maybe, just maybe, Muslims ought not be allowed to serve in the military because, you know, one of them might start fragging uniformed comrades at any moment.
   If you can't trust one follower of Islam, you can't trust any of them. That was Darla's view, as far as I could tell.
   And when someone pointed out that abortion bomber Eric Rudolph used Christianity to justify murder and, therefore, maybe we can't trust Christians, either, Darla did the usual when a caller turns her simplistic logic on its head. She stammered, became annoyed and quickly went to break or another caller.
   I can't remember which. as I was out walking the dog and didn't have a notebook handy.
   Similarly, a morning AM blowhard whose name I can never remember -- Sighall, Siegheil, something like that -- engaged in the same form of hatemongering today.
   Ok, I get it. Anything to keep the pot stirred so that their fringey followers will keep the ratings up.
   But at what cost?
   And sure enough, when the anti-Muslim backlash results in beatings, acts of vandalism or worse, look for the Ann Coulters, the Darla Jayes and Stickengrubers of the airwaves to deny any and all responsibility for contributing to a climate of hate in the same way that anti-abortion zealouts denied their role in forming the hateful thoughts in the head of confessed killer Scott Roeder,  charged in the murder of Dr. George Tiller. (See my post on the day of the killing.)


     This is not to deny that the Army major arrested in the Fort Hood massacre was a Muslim. Or that he is said to have adhered to an extreme Islamic ideology, or that his was an act of terrorism, as Sen. John McCain alleged.
   See, that's how the right-wing hatemongers  try to confuse the issue. If you  accuse them of demonizing Muslims, then you're denying that a Muslim extremist took it upon himself to kill and maim so many people last Thursday. Listen to their twisted logic sometime -- if you can stand it -- and you'll notice that's exactly what they do before changing the subject.
   What amazes me is that so many people seem to want to go along with stereotypes of all kinds. It's a complicated world out there, as much as some, on the left and the right,  would like to deny it..

Finals vision of the pyschic fair

Over the weekend, Roxie and I attended the Psychic Fair in that barn of an exhibit hall near I-435 and Front Street.

   We'd both been meaning to pay a visit to one of these henna-laced meetings of commerce and metaphysics. But since neither of us is psychic, we never could predict the weekends when the event was held and always found out about it two or three weeks late.

   This year, however, we both had a vision -- of the billboard advertising the 39th annual fall fair. My column about our visit is here, and here's Roxie's post.

  So you'd think that, between the two of us, we would have covered about everything you need to know about what amounts to the New Age version of the Kansas City Home and Garden Show.

   But no. My  notebook still brims with esoterica that didn't fit the space or the narrative contained in either Roxie's or my piece.

  For instance, I had to leave out my oh-so witty tired observation about the crystal balls that were on display in one of the booths.

   As in when people use the cliché “it’s not like I have a crystal ball” to explain why they can’t predict future. The reason more of us don't have them, I think, is because crystal balls are wickedly expensive. The were going for upwards of $3,600 at the psychic fair.

   “It’s smoky quartz,” a vendor said of the $2,100 model I had my eye on.

   Another observation that didn't make the column is that the crowd was predominantly female. At the risk of being branded sexist, I would never have ventured a guess as to why, but that didn't stop vendor Max Mitchell of Kingsport, Tenn., who was there charging $20 to photograph people's auras.

  "Women are into this stuff," he said.

   What kind of stuff?

   "Crystals and candles and spiritual things."

   And guys are interested in?

   "Guns," he said.

   About 12 years ago, when Mitchell started renting a booth at the psychic fair, the event was held on the same weekend and in the same venue as the annual gun and knife show. I can remember going to that gun show back in 1995, when I was writing about militia groups for the national desk. This was right after the Murrah bombing.

   Anyway, Mitchell remembers those days, too,  with fondness, because there was lots of traffic through the aisles in the '90s and early 2000s.

   "The men would go to the gun show and the women would come to the this side of the hall," he said.

   Nowadays, the same people show up at the fair. Back then "we were getting new blood," Mitchell said.

   Women who might not normally go to a psychic fair, in other words, but needed something to do while the menfolk were fondling daggers, carbines and Colt .45s.

   The way the hall is configured now, two events of that size cannot be held simultaneously, he said, though there was another event going on Saturday in a smaller room of the complex.

   A cat show, which Mitchell didn't see as much help, except in terms of synergies.

   "That attracts mostly women, too," he said.

A reporter's tale of the Taliban

   I grew up loving newspapers. My hometown paper, the Omaha World-Herald printed two editions a day. One in the morning and the bigger one in the afternoon. The one in the PM was known as the home edition.
   As a teenager, I read 'em both.
   That may not have been true of most kids in my generation (the '60s and '70s) -- and it's far from the norm now. Not even my grown kids pick up the paper their old man works for all that often.
   But that love of newspapers is shared by practically every newspaper man or woman I've ever known. Even now, when virtually the entire contents of almost every newspaper is provided free of charge every day on line (and what an insane business model that is) some of us still enjoy padding out to our driveways each morning to see what surprises await us in that day's edition of our hometown paper, which in my case is the paper that's employed me for nearly 25 years, The Kansas City Star.
   But being a news junkie, I get two papers each morning, and the other is The New York Times.
   This week, my sense of anticipation has been greater than ever thanks to Times reporter David Rohde's excellent five part series in The Times.
   "Held By The Taliban" is Rohde's first-person account of his abduction, captivity and ultimate escape from the Muslim extremists that even now, eight years after the U.S. involvement began in the region, still control  the remote tribal areas in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
   The Times and other news organizations kept Rohde's kidnapping secret during his seven-month ordeal so as not to provide Rohde's captors with a chance to spout propaganda or encourage similar abductions of journalists.

   Also, it was thought Rohde would be safer that way.
   Point is, the series provides great insight into the fanatics the United
States has been fighting for eight years now. But more than that, it's a helluva great read.  Even knowing going in that Rohde will emerge from his captivity alive, it's one of those page turners that we don't see often enough in today's world of cutback journalism.
   No, it may not win awards for great writing. But Rohde's straight-ahead retelling of his experiences dealing with duplicitous Taliban officials and his delusional guards who at times threaten to kill him is fascinating stuff.
   The fifth and final installment runs tomorrow, Thursday, and you won't find it on line today.
   As such, I can't wait for my (tax deductible) copy of The Times to arrive tomorrow land on the drive. They'd damn well better double bag it, because I think there's rain in the forecast.
    And oh, yeah,I probably should link to the series, and do so  reluctantly, starting with part one.
  But when a newspaperman writes a helluva newspaper story, it really deserves to be read on newsprint.

Lessons in survival

   A couple of lessons for today.
   One, never tell your wife when you come across a great idea for a blog post or column, especially if she's a talented writer and former reporter who has access to one or more of her own blogs.

  And two, when you buy furniture, never tear off  those floppy white tags under the cushions, as tempting as it may be.

   As to No. 1, hah, hah. Just fooling, hon. Seriously, I'm not angry with my life partner of more than 28 years for stealing my idea for a post having to do with one of the more bizarre advertisements that run on Glenn Beck's loony-toons radio show.
   In fact, I gave her permission, knowing that a) she was aching to do it and b)  would do a better job with it than I could. That is, had I ever gotten around to doing the research, which she'd already done. Plus, we needed a new post on the garden blog .now rather than next week to promote the new garden book.
   Besides, I just might write a column that pairs the doomsday Survival Seed Bank  scam concept Roxie writes about along with some other brilliant products being marketed to meet the coming apocalypse brought on by what they see as the twin disasters of voters in 2008 electing the nation's first black president and installing a clear Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.
     Another such product touted by our pal Glenn Beck is Food Insurance.

   "Just grab it and go," Glenn says reassuringly.
   Grab what and go where when? Why a two-week supply of freeze-dried goodness as you dash for the safety of the fallout shelter and/or survivalist camp in the Arkansas Ozarks or the mountains of Idaho at the very moment all hell breaks loose and Hy Vee runs out of Twinkies, beer and beef jerky.

   According to the ad copy:
   "Compact, easily stored, nutrition rich, good tasting food that's ready to be used for twenty years if, God forbid, the need arises. Its estimated that grocery stores have only a three day supply of food on hand, perhaps less if people run to the stores and start hoarding. Unlike other forms of insurance, food will get used."

    And all that for a mere $139.
   Then there's gold. Gotta have stacks bullion of it in the basement for when the world's currencies collapse simultaneously. Though the gold bugs might have an argument from the Seed Survival Bank folks, who say  we'll be trading sacks of seed corn for goods and services at some point in the near future.
   It wouldn't be the first time. After all, tulip bulbs were the currency of choice once upon a time in Holland, though maybe this is not a good time to mention the Dutch tulip market collapse of 1637.
   But all this is esoteric whatsit compared to the practical life advice provided in Lesson No. 2, .
   Never again will I tear the tags off of a piece of furniture. You know the ones I mean. The ones that say it is against the law for any person to remove them from your mattress or recliner, unless that person happens to be the owner of all that encased foam.

   Of course, there's really no good reason to tear or cut tags off your furniture. But you almost can't help yourself. The warning makes you, the owner, feel entitled to rip or snip away.

   Now here's where I tell you why to always resist that urge. One day when you're not looking, that crazyass dog of yours will become bored because you are not paying enough attention to him. He wants to play fetch. He wants to go walkies. But you have work to do. And he's already been for a walk, you tell yourself.

   It's at exactly that moment when the mutt will start digging at a couch cushion as if  there's a meat-covered soup bone inside of it. Hear it ripping?
   But before you can stop him, he's scratched an 8 inch gash in the fabric that is beyond repair and you hear your wife screaming "no!" as if she has discovered the bloody corpses of your three children lying in a heap on the carpet.
   "Look what he did!" she said.
   Naturally, it was the chaise lounge, and the cushion is shaped in such a way that you can't patch it and turn it over.
   What to do?
   I called the manufacturer to see if there was any way to get a replacement cover, or at least some fabric so we could have one made.
   The woman at the furniture company seemed hopeful at first.
   Question 1: Did I know the name of the retailer where we bought the piece back in 2001 or 2002? Why yes I did, I said, except that Benchmark is now out of business and lord knows where the business records went.
   Ok then, she said. Maybe if I had my receipt she could look it up. Except, I knew right away that the answer to that was "no." Had I needed a part for a 20 year-old  popcorn maker, or our 16-year-old vacuum cleaner or any number of other mechanical devices we'd bought since the mid-80s, my answer would have been the opposite. If not a receipt, I'd at least have the instruction manual for the models of just about every appliance or motorized piece of equipment in the house or barn.
    I have a file box stuffed full of the stuff.

   "But it never occurred to me that I'd need to keep the instruction manual for a couch," I said.

   So the only thing left to check were the tags, she said. The tags on the frame under the cushion just might have the fabric and color numbers on them. With those numbers, the woman at the furniture company could possibly help me, she said, assuming some of the fabric was still in stock.

   For a moment there, I had hope. But it melted away like butter on hot toast as I began tossing the pillows aside looking.
    There should have been three tags, she said. Instead, I found only one still attached, and it was torn. On the missing part would have been the information we needed to set things right.
   So let that be a life lesson to one and all. Neatness does not count. Keep everything. Throw nothing away. Pile receipts, cartons and instruction manuals from floor to ceiling, if you have to.
   Otherwise, you could end up living like hillbillies, with a throw blanket covering the hole that the dog dug in search of the soup bone that never was.
   Yes, I know, Einstein. It's not your fault. It's mine.

And now for a potty break

   With its shopping malls and sparkling office buildings, Saudi Arabia has the look of a modern society. But they still cut off the hands of thieves, and the desert kingdom is not alone in doing so, as this AP report from last summer would indicate:
    "In a brazen show of power in Somalia's capital, Islamist rebels punished four men convicted of stealing cell phones and other items by cutting off a hand and a foot each before hundreds of onlookers who gathered for the bloody spectacle."
   But thievery is not the only crime deserving of a severed appendage or two, according to one reader of my column in Wednesday's edition of The Kansas City Star. Another offense would be failure to wash one's hands after visiting the loo.
   "...My 13 month old son washes his hands when I change his diaper. We do that just to make the association for him so he he can carry on once he's able to use the restroom and wash hands by himself. Adults who bypass this should have their hands cut off."
   Yes, hand-washing is serious business with some folks (and so is which urinal to use when more than one person is facing the wall, as it were) as the comments following today's column  showed. And for others posting comments, it was a political matter, with some accusing me of being a lib or worse -- a closet feminist -- for bringing up the fact that observational studies show that men are less likely than women to clean their paws after doing their business in public restrooms.
   Geez, you'd have thought I made it up the way they do on the O'Reilly Factor. But, no there's data to support it.
   I cited studies from the Soap and Detergent Association, but didn't have space to address in detail what can be found here, here, and here. Note that only the 2005 and 2007 studies included data gleaned from actually looking to see whether people were washing their hands.
   Turns out that more Americans tend to report washing up than actually do head for the soap and water.
     Ok, I will admit, it would see to be a  trivial, silly gross-out issue for a column in a serious newspaper. But as Kansas City health director Dr. Rex Archer says in the following comment, which came in too late for inclusion in my piece in The Star, good hygiene is as important in fighting the regular flu and H1N1  as  the vaccines that everyone is clamoring for.
  His response, received via Facebook:
  "Absolutely, both are equally important! Washing hands, not rubbing your eyes or nose, etc. reduce the chances of getting exposed to the virus. The immunization reduces the chances that you become infected, if someone exposes you to the virus by coughing on you, because they didn't cover their cough on their sleeve at the elbow, or shakes you hand and you unconsciously rub you nose before you can wash your hands. They work in different but complimentary ways.
As an example, paying attention to your driving reduces your chances of a crash. Wearing your seat belt helps protect you if you get hit anyway."
Rub-a-dub-dub, bub.

  


 
 
    

Good luck, Joe, but I hated those Reds.

   Book signings in the Big Apple, critical acclaim, a spot on The New York Times best-seller list --it's great seeing fellow KC Star columnist (and now Sports Illustrated hotshot) Joe Posnanski get the credit he richly deserves for what I assume is a job well done on his new book, The Machine.
   "Assume?" a little voice says. "Surely, Mike, you are going to pay full price and read your colleague's book."
   Nope, haven't read it. And I'm not sure if I can bring myself to read it.
  Nothing against Poz, mind you. But even now, the bile bubbles inside me when I think of the baseball team that is the subject of Mr. Posnanski's latest tome.
   The Cincinnati Reds.
   No, strike that.
   Not all Reds teams. I don't give these current  Reds a second, third or even fifth thought. They still playing baseball in Cincy, as if someone in KC has any room to talk?
    No, the team that my buddies in Omaha and I hated a Iong time ago is the one that Posnanski writes about. The Big Red Machine that seemingly dominated the National League in the first half of the 1970s. The team of Johnny Bench, George Foster, Dave Concepcion, Joe Morgan, and, worse of all, Pete Rose.
   Charlie Hustle, he of the head-first slide and the Moe Howard haircut. Oh, how we despised Rose as we drank beers at the bar during league playoffs and nearly two dozen games in four World Series. This in the days when the legal age was 19 in Nebraska and Omaha baseball fans still had not discovered The Royals. Our only ties to a team was the fact that St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson was an Omaha native.

So we picked a league, and the Reds weren't in that one.
    I can't even remember now why we hated the Reds so much. Because we were American Leaguers all the way? Because I was an Oakland A's fan in '72? Because it was the Reds that would ruin one of baseball's greatest moments, the Carlton Fisk homerun in Game Six of the 1975 Series, by rendering it moot in Game Seven?
   Joe's focus is on that most-despised-of-all '75 team.

   Or the next year, when Rose and Co. swept the Yanks, who were just then returning to the limelight after a decade in the desert and were considered at the time (amazingly enough) underdogs?
   Probably, it was all of that. But most of all, I think it was  that smirk on Rose's face and the annoying batting stance of Foster's. He stood over the plate, arms high, and would step out of the box. And step out of the box. And step out of the box until it drove the pitcher and you, the Reds hater, crazy with rage.

   Yes, I had a passion for baseball back then, in my late teens and early 20s. I had yet to move to Kansas City where the baseball gods would give me one good year, 1985, before stomping the passion out of me.
   Anyway, good luck, Joe. Hope you sell a million books.
   But your Reds are dead to me.
    And if Rose ever gets into the Hall of Fame, well, he'd just better not.

Let the revolution begin

The work world, as we learn early on, is divided into two parts. There is "us," and there is "them."
And by "us," I mean most of us. The worker bees. We schlubs who live paycheck to paycheck and are told most of our lives by "them," members of the managerial class, that we're lucky to be collecting a pay check at all, much less getting a raise now and then, because someone else can probably be found to do our jobs a whole cheaper.
   That is the situation for most Americans. Those in the labor force, anyway. And as for those who've been kicked to the curb during the current economic distress, they remember it all too well as they try to find employment.

In spite of that, we -- and by "we" I mean "us" -- are expected to work hard on behalf of our employers. Maybe even more so during hard times. And our only motivation: fear Work hard and maybe the paychecks will keep coming. Do your best, and maybe the company will do well enough that they -- and by "they" I mean "them " -- won't cut our health and retirement benefits.
Or send the whole operation to India or China.
It's been that way for as long as I can remember, in good times and bad, and we accept it for what it is.
Still, it ticks you off to think that fear of unemployment (or pride in one's work) is not enough of a motivator to get "them" to perform their jobs to the best of their ability.
At least that's the impression you get from the financial pages these days.
Time and again, we've seen the scene repeated. In order to justify paying other members of this upper class millions of dollars in bonuses, Wall Street bigshots parade before Congressional committees and bankruptcy court judges to say that hefty payouts are needed to "incentivize" their top players.
Apparently, without bonuses to pad their already large salaries, the kings of commerce and members of their royal courts will simply sit on their hands and slough off.
Or jump ship.
I've been thinking about this alot lately. But I wanted to scream this morning as I read David Carr's column in Monday's New York Times. Carr outlines the case made by a Tribune Co. exec with the patrician-sounding name Chandler Bigelow III for paying $66 million in executive bonuses to 700 execs.
The bonuses, Bigelow told a bankruptcy judge, would "incentivize our key managers to battle all of the intense challenges that unfortunately our local media businesses are facing."
And without the bonuses?
As former Chicago Tribune managing editor James Warren told Carr,you have to wonder how many headhunting firms are looking to steal away all that talent that helped drive Tribune Co. into bankruptcy in the first place.
It's a good piece. But one point that doesn't get driven home hard enough in this and stories like it is the fact that you and I are expected to work our tails off without being "incentivized."
Why is that?
Could it be that they  know that the bonus system is a sham (and I don't think it is, entirely, because  people will work harder if it means more goodies.)
Or might it be that they're selfish you know whats who don't want to share more of the wealth that we help produce?
Well, guess what Mr. Chandler Bigelow III and others like you: The schlubs know what's been going on and it still going on, and this also might be the reason that not everyone thinks socialism is a four letter word.
Actually, it's got nine letters. But anyway.
If you haven't seen Michael Moore's new movie, "Capitalism: A Love Story," see it now. Do not wait for the DVD.
I can't say everyone will like it. That Bigelow guy, for instance.But , when the credits rolled, I went looking for a torch to light and an effigy to burn. Viva la revolution.

Sorry to spoil the party, but I have returned

Last spring I started fiddling with this blog. It went away for awhile, and now I have returned.
Mike's Place, as it was called then, wasn't my first time out in the blogosphere. I already was contributing to Prime Buzz on kansascity.com (and still am>) Also, my wife and I collaborated then and still do (though she does most of the work) on a blog we set up to promote our upcoming book, Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise.
But as far as solo blogging, Mike's Place was a first effort. I set it up one Saturday afternoon. Messed with it for a couple of weeks.
Then like so many other projects that I begin, I set this one aside, and for what turned out to be all summer.
I didn't think the hiatus was a big deal, but some claimed it was a sign of, uh, something or other. Perhaps a sign of failure or embarrassment on my part.
As if I couldn't hack the intense pressure (excuse me while I laugh hysterically at this point) of being out there on the internet all alone. As if, after writing thousands of articles over the course of the past 30 years and a column the last 12, I suddenly couldn't hack the scrutiny people might give to my work and that maybe my itty-bitty feelings were hurt by something some big meanie had said about me or the blog.
What a joke.
Truth is, I had other stuff to do. Roxie and I had that book to finish. We took a vacation. There were project at home to start and not quite finish.
Plus, I'm not overly motivated to write when I don't have a deadline looming. In fact, if it wasn't for email, my extended family would never hear from me.
"You're a writer, why don't you write us, Mike?" my sisters and great aunts ask.
And my answer to them is always the same: "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
That's a quote from Samuel Johnson that I first came across in a piece by Mike Royko, the greatest newspaper columnist who ever lived, and a guy who himself lived by that motto.
Problem is, if Royko were alive today, he, like me, would probably feel compelled to have a blog. And he might or might not get paid for it, depending on whether he was doing it on behalf of his employer, or on his own.
That's my situation. This gig is all my doing.
My editors offered me the chance to write a blog for The Kansas City Star's website. But I chose instead to go it alone for a couple of reasons.
First, as a solo act, I can choose to post when I want and how often I want. No pressure, which is a nice break from writing a column for the paper that has to be of a certain length and turned in at a certain time. Popular blogs are often updated several times a day, which is why this blog probably won't be all that popular.
Days might pass between posts. So be it. You get what you pay for.
Likewise, I control the content and plan to write about whatever strikes me as interesting, important, or merely odd or funny.
But because I still work for the paper and wouldn't want to embarrass my co-workers, and because my kids might end up reading this, this blog will be unlike some others out there.
It will have standards.
No raunch. No foul language and no personal attacks.
Some say that blogging is an act of self-indulgence. But then, that's true of nearly every form of writing. Even the instruction manual for your new toaster comes with an assumption.
Which is that someone will care in what the writer has to say. That readers will be interested in receiving the information the writer is conveying or the opinions he or she is slinging onto the page or into the ether.
In short, any nimrod can have a blog, as many bloggers out there prove day in and day out. And as I'm proving once again by restarting this blog.
Stick around and we'll see what happens. Or if you'd rather not, that's ok,too.
I'm not easily offended. Otherwise, I wouldn't be blogging.
.

Chicago lost, but Obama couldn't win

Naturally, blowhards like Rush Limpbaugh* tore into Barack Obama today for not securing the summer olympics for his hometown.
"The ego has landed," Limpbaugh said.
But the thing of it is, Obama couldn't win on this one. If he hadn't gone to Copenhagen and made a case for Chicago, and then Chicago lost, he would have been scolded for not trying hard enough to land the event.
Land it not just for Chicago, mind you, but for the whole country.
"What would it have hurt the guy to put in a good word?" Limpbaugh and others would have howled.
And yet by making the case before the olympic committee, he set himself up for the mocking that's now coming his way.
Of course, you'll never get that take from the right wingers who want to see Obama fail. Liberals do this sort of thing, too. Partisans of whatever stripe are never interested in honesty. They only care about winning or making the guys on the other side of the aisle look bad.
*And yeah, I know that's not how Rush spells his last name. But it is how I spellz it.

Ride of silence honors fallen cyclists

Tonight, Kansas City cyclists will take part in an annual ritual to honor the memories of folks who've been killed while riding their bikes on area streets.
I won't be there, unfortunately, but I have been on the ride before and highly recommend it. More than a solemn occasion, it's a reminder to participants of the great risks we take by exercising our rights to share the road with motor vehicles.
It's easy to forget that when you're flying down a hill at 35 mph or working your butt off to make an appointment across town.
You can get into your own little zone and not notice that car pulling out of a driveway in front of you, or that some jerk on a cell phone is behind you and seems unaware of your presence -- even though you're outfitted in Day-Glo spandex.
The ceremony begins at 6:30 at the Brookside Shopping Center. A list of names will be read, with the bike ride to follow at 7.
Writes my friend Ken Cobb of the Johnson County Bicycle Club:
"It is going to be a one-hour slow ride in silence, with riders wearing black arm bands, in commemoration of those riders who have been killed in accidents with vehicles. The route is going to go clockwise through Mission Hills, to the Prairie Village Shopping Center, up through Fairway, Roeland Park and Westwood, then through the Plaza, and finally down Brookside Blvd. back to the start."

If you're out driving in that area around that time tonight and happen to see a large group of cyclists, give them some room when you pass.
We don't need any more names on the list.

Brett tirade spawns bleeping memories of Teddy ballgame

Naturally I was shocked and dismayed to learn that George Brett, a former ballplayer of all people, had ever used the f-word in private, much less uttered it purposely in a public forum.
Yet it's all over the news today, and some folks are criticizing No. 5 for being highly uncouth.
And he a Hall of Famer.
Of course, the TV station bleeped him saying " (bleep") you and "(bleep) the horse you rode in on," or words to that effect.
Actually, there was no mention of a horse. I think the next "bleep" was in the form of salutations to such sports luminaries as Jack Harry and Kevin Keitzman.
Somehow I suspect that this is not the first time that those two have heard the phrase directed at them.
They're members of the media, after all.
Brett lost it when he was asked to comment about criticisms directed at officials of his former team, The Kansas City Royals.
No need to go into whether that criticism is petty(it is), or to fret over the coarseness of our culture (that's Sam Brownback's job, right?).
Nor do I have time to discuss the "bleeping" news media, or wonder what happened on that golf course Monday to have gotten George in such an agitated state that he would tee off on some punk holding a TV camera.
I'm on deadline, ok.
But I did have time to visit my attic stash of old paperbacks. Brett's outburst brought back fond memories of a scene in Jim Bouton's 1970 classic, "Ball Four." That, as you'll recall, was the book in which an innocent America learned for the first time that some of our heroes on the ball diamond were prone to drink, chase women and occasionally use what was then known as "salty language."
Heavens no!
My favorite scene involves the great Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, who would later go onto become famous to a new generation as the dead ballplayer whose corpse became the subject of much legal action and some rather gruesome discussion about its disposition.
But back in his day, Ted Williams was one of the best players in baseball -- the best, if you asked Ted, as the following passage makes clear (I edited out the profanities, but Bouton didn't..page 216 of the Dell edition):


In the bullpen tonight Jim Pagliaroni was telling us how Ted Williams, when he was still playing, would psyche himself up for a game during batting practice, usually before the fans or reporters got there.
He'd go into the cage, wave his bat at the pitcher and start screaming at the top of his voice, "My name is Ted f---ing Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball."
He'd swing and hit a line drive.
"Jesus H. Christ Himself couldn't get me out."
And then he'd hit another.
Then he'd say, 'Here comes Jim Bunning. Jim f---ing Bunning and that little sh-- slider of his."
Wham!
"He doesn't really think he's gonna get me out with that sh--."
Blam!
"I'm Ted f---ing Williams."
Sock!

Nearly tweeted

I'm off to Dump the Funk headquarters today to gauge whether there's any chance at all of being entertained with a Funkhouser recall campaign this summer or fall.
You know what?
That last sentence could very well be tweet length, only I don't want to take the time to count the characters -- 140, right? -- because then I might want to sign up for twitter and become, uh, a twitterer.
Except it would cost me too much in the long run.
Yes, I know, the service is free.
But I'm not set up for it. First of all, I don't have unlimited texting on my cell phone account. Only enough in the budget for one family member to have that luxury. Have I mentioned that my wife and I have a 14-year-old daughter?
Oh, right, "the company would pay for it," you say. Dream on.
The other reason I haven't gone twitter is that I would have to get another phone with a regular keyboard on it. Does anyone text regularly who has a regular number pad? The most I'll do is respond with "yes" or more often "no" to whatever my daughter has cooked up.
No. That's a lie. It's more often "yes."
And I'm not getting another phone because I like the pink one I have now.
That's right. I have a pink flip top.
I'm man enough to admit that.
Anyway, gotta go and see those who would cut the Funk down to size.
More on that later, along with a column for The Star.
(Sorry, no time to add a dog video, but you can be sure, like it or not, that I'll put one up later.

A word about exploitation

I should explain why I have You Tube videos on the left rail and also use them in my posts.
Mostly, it's because I find them entertaining. Who doesn't love singing dogs, regardless of their choice of material
Here's something from Gwen Stefani:


But here's what appeals to me the most: the irony. I'm a newspaper guy. Made a decent living at it for 30 years. But now newspapers are getting their clocks cleaned by the Internets and the crap economy. A lot of my friends have been laid off because of that.
So here I am, using free online content on my free blog -- therefore doubly exploiting the very Internet players who are killing newspapers by using, for their profit, the free content provided by people like me when we write for newspapers.
They say turnabout is fair play.
Love the free videos, You Tube! Tell Craig's List "hi."

A vision in stained glass

Once again someone claims to have seen the Virgin Mary in a bowl of cornflakes or whatever.
Ok, it wasn't breakfast cereal. This time it was on a window of a Catholic hospital in Springfield, Mass., that people believe they've seen the image of Mary, mother of Jesus.
Quoting from the AP:
Hundreds of faithful, some weeping, gathered outside Mercy Medical Center last October to look at the image displayed on an office window.

The hospital, a Catholic institution, removed the window and are storing it in a secret location.

A hospital official tells The Republican of Springfield that it’s waiting for a report from experts they would not identify to determine if the window is worthy of veneration.

Engineering experts said the image was caused after a failed rubber seal allowed mineral deposits between panes of glass.

But hospital officials have said that doesn’t explain why the deposits combined to resemble the Virgin Mary.

My question is the same as always with these kind of stories: how do they know it looks like anybody in particular, let alone the Virgin Mary? From what famous painting? It's not like we have snap shots of her.

Maybe it's Mary Magalene, instead. Or to someone who isn't religious and less open to seeing Mary in a glass stain, maybe the shape more resembles the cranky clerk at the 7-Eleven, or my second grade teacher Mrs. Beasley. Who says it has to be a person from the Bible?

And then someone else might not even see a person, but a thing. You know how you look at the clouds and convince yourself that one cloud resembles a Sherman tank and another looks like the Michelin man, while your friend sees neither and say you're nuts?

Therefore I'm always more than a little skeptical when someone looks at a paint spatter, mildew stain or rust blotch and proclaims that it is a divine sign from the heavens.

But you won't find me making fun of anyone who believes it's God sending us a wake-up call.

I have enough folks mad at me already.

What if Otto Fleck and Mr. Remodeler had a party?

I quit smoking long ago, But I can't kick my talk radio habit.
To find out why, it would take a session with a shrink to explain my sick compulsion to listen for hours and hours to the idiotic hosts spouting their idiotic ideas. while at the same time these self-important windbags exhibit an extreme, idiotic tolerance for allowing the assorted morons who call in to spout crazed inanities endlessly.

And that's just sports talk.
The news talk programs?
Aye, yi-yi.
Yet, I listen to them. Just in case I might hear something unexpected, like a rational thought. And because, well, I don't know. Sometimes just because NPR won't come in on my crummy lawn-mowing radio, and I've yet to get an I-pod for Christmas.
But if I ever do kick the habit, there's one thing I will miss. I'm going to miss my pals, the home fix-it guys who act as their own spokesmen on the commercials.
You've heard them, if you've ever tuned in.
There's the Dry Basement guy, Otto Fleck. He sounds like a nice guy, but Otto has this thick, German accent. So when he says "dry" it sounds like the German word for 3.
"Drei," with a trill, and it always reminds me of Siegried from TV's Get Smart. I imagine we're in my basement and Otto Fleck is giving me an estimate on mudjacking. Everything's going fine until he tells me the job is going to cost the equivalent of sending my kids through college. So naturally I'm speechless, which annoys Otto, because he wants a yes or no.
He's a busy guy, after all.
And so his eyes narrow as he looks straight at me and says "vee haf vays to make you talk, Mr. Hendricks. Fritz! Kommen see and show him vot vays vee mean."

Another character on the commercials is "Mr. Remodeler" Dean Blay. He's the opposite of hard sell. Mr. Remodeler tells heartwarming stories about his grand kids, or how it's good to sit back and count your blessings at sunset. Then he ends his 30 seconds or whatever it is with a plug for his website in a voice so low and laconic it could be that of an old bloodhound with arthritis in the hindquarters.
One of those Disney dogs with floppy ears. I can't remember the movie and my VCR broke, so I can't play the tapes.
Another remodeler guy, Bill Brackman, boasts that he and his workers are "licensed to do bedroom therapy" and you're never sure whether he means they'd be happy to put a mirror on the ceiling above the water bed or simply enlarge the closet space.
Double entendre you don't get very often on talk radio.
Of course, there's old Roger the Plumber, who is semi retired. But you still hear him now and then. And Bob Hamilton the other plumber, has a corny jingle, and there's a few more who don't come to mind right now because the talk radio guys have been on a Nancy Pelosi jag of late, which I can't stand listening to. Not because I care one way or the other about Nancy Pelosi but because it gets old after a week or two. So I've been turning the radio off a lot more lately, and haven't been hearing as many commercials.
I sort of miss my friends.
I wonder if they know the siding guy who's always telling you to call "neow," as in "now" but slurred into two syllables like "meow" with an "n."
In fact, it would be quite the kick to have all the fix-it commercial guys get together for drinks or coffee.
I know it would be more entertaining than any of programs they sponsor.