Most of the time I simply press the delete key when I receive one of those e-mails sliming some individual or group. You know, the ones that someone has forwarded to everyone in his (or her) address book.j
Occasionally, though, I read through one, search for the facts, and send a link to Snopes or one of the other fact-checking sites to all of the addresses on the e-mail. Not that it does a lot of good.
I find it curious – and even a little scary – that people who are civil enough personally are not the least reluctant to pass on the most venomous personal attacks. They receive a mass e-mail that gibes with their opinion, suspend any skepticism or sense of civility, and speed it on.
They become a mob with a computer keyboard instead of a brickbat.
I find it curious, too, that so many of the people who do that are the same ones who rail against the so-called mainstream media for being unfair or inaccurate. They want publishers to be fair and accurate, but assume no responsibility for being the same. Yet when they click on the send button, they have become publishers themselves.
So many of the things you receive don’t tell you who originated them or where the purported facts came from.
I have recalled more than once my days as a young reporter. Objectivity was the goal – whether anyone can be truly objective is a matter for another column – and reporters were not only supposed to tell the reader where the information in the story came from, they also were to keep their personal opinions out.
No one wanted to have a story that he’d written returned with a terse “Says who?” scrawled in red grease pencil at the top and an offending sentence circled. Attribution was the name of the game, whether it was an opinion or a “fact” that might be disputed.
I wish those people busy forwarding e-mails would more often take time to ask, “says who?”
Even if you know where the piece you’re reading originated, the “says who?” question often goes unanswered.
I received in a mass e-mail the other day a particularly odious piece about presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama. It was a sort of John Birch Society meets the Ku Klux Klan. It did not take long to figure out that the writer made no pretense to being “fair and balanced” or that he was satisfied with planting innuendo in the form of questions.
That was only one of many venomous pieces about Obama circulating, and it is not surprising that The Washington Post reported the other day that his victory has been marked by an increase in racist and white supremacist activity, mainly on the Internet.
None of this is really new. The poison pen has a long history in American politics.
Thomas Jefferson paid notorious propagandist James Callender to pen the most vicious attacks on John Adams. (Callender later turned on Jefferson and circulated the stories about Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings.)
The big difference between then and now, though, is that the poison pen artist has thousands of willing accomplices, and lies can circulate at the speed of light.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Generation Gap Measured
In Thickness of Aluminum Can
The gap between my and my children’s generation is defined not by the IPod or the Internet, but by a simple aluminum drink can. Half full. Warm. Sitting on the kitchen counter or the coffee table or by a chair on the front deck.
It is not just my children -- adults now -- who take only a few sips and then leave their drink to get warm and flat. Taking a few hummingbird like sips of nectar before flitting off seems to be common to all of their generation.
I keep my peace, but my thrifty soul recoils. If I told them that a soft drink was once a rare treat, something to be eagerly anticipated and then savored to the very last drop, they would categorize that information as more harping from dad about his youth, their idea of prehistory. They would roll their eyes and mutter under their breaths, “And you walked to school through the snow – uphill both ways – carrying your lunch in a syrup bucket.” I doubt they really know what a syrup bucket is.
The can is only a symbol, of course. The real divide is an attitude forged by economics. They would never dream that deciding whether to spend money on a soft drink required thought. To them, a soft drink is nothing more than a cheap commodity, like bottled water. (I still have difficulty actually paying for water; my grandfather would think it was just plain nuts.)
For us a soft drink – we never used that term; we called them soda pop, or used Coke as a generic for any kind of soft drink – was nectar.
My aunt, who was single and had a good job, bought Cokes by the case. I hoped that one day I would be as well off. I was out of college and well into my first job before I felt that prosperous.
In our youth, if we could scrounge up a nickel, my cousins and I would trudge up the country road to the store and get a soda pop. Sometimes the money was a generous gift, but more often it came doing chores or from collecting soft drink bottles and turning them in for two cents each. If we had a dime, we could buy a bag of peanuts to go with our drink.
The store was typical of its kind with a lone gas pump out front and a wide porch with hanging swings flanking the door. The store occupied the front room; the rest of the wood frame house was living quarters, territory that we rarely entered. In the front room were shelves with canned goods, bread, flour and meal and a large glass counter that had candy bars, chewing gum and other treats.
And there was the drink box.
It wasn’t like the ones in the stores in town. It was a water-filled cooler that farmers used to keep milk fresh until the dairy truck picked it up.
You plunged your arm deep into the icy water to fish around for your drink – in a glass bottle, of course.
Although we were just school kids, we had firm opinions about our purchases. If we were really thirsty, we went for quantity. That meant a Royal Crown Cola, which we never called anything but RC, or a Pop Kola. If we wanted to balance quantity and taste, we went for a Pepsi Cola, slightly smaller than an RC but bigger than a Coca Cola. (The store didn’t carry root beer because the owners, strict Baptists, wouldn’t stock anything with beer in the name).
If we wanted the best, though, we spent our nickel on a Coke.
We paid for our purchases, often in pennies, and sat on the front porch swing and savor our drinks. If we could affords peanuts, there was a standing debate about whether to pour the them into the drink bottle or to eat from the bag, taking a swig of pop in between. My cousins favored the former while I opted for the latter.
Experiencing the icy liquid and the bubbles on our tongue was the focus of our attention, The drinking itself was the event itself, not an auxiliary to some other activity. With our children’s generation, the drink is very much an incidental.
It was through the price of soft drinks that we learned about inflation. We had heard for months that soft drinks were going up to 6 cents. Then one day we went to the store and indeed they had. No bag of peanuts that day. And more scrounging whenever we wanted a treat.
I don’t think our kids ever scrounged for money to buy a soft drink, nor did they ever trudge up the road in the August heat to buy one.
I understand all of that intellectually, and I don’t complain aloud about the profligacy of leaving nearly full can of pop, but I do notice.
Perhaps one day they will tell their kids about the choices they had to make when gasoline shot up to $4 a gallon.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
It is not just my children -- adults now -- who take only a few sips and then leave their drink to get warm and flat. Taking a few hummingbird like sips of nectar before flitting off seems to be common to all of their generation.
I keep my peace, but my thrifty soul recoils. If I told them that a soft drink was once a rare treat, something to be eagerly anticipated and then savored to the very last drop, they would categorize that information as more harping from dad about his youth, their idea of prehistory. They would roll their eyes and mutter under their breaths, “And you walked to school through the snow – uphill both ways – carrying your lunch in a syrup bucket.” I doubt they really know what a syrup bucket is.
The can is only a symbol, of course. The real divide is an attitude forged by economics. They would never dream that deciding whether to spend money on a soft drink required thought. To them, a soft drink is nothing more than a cheap commodity, like bottled water. (I still have difficulty actually paying for water; my grandfather would think it was just plain nuts.)
For us a soft drink – we never used that term; we called them soda pop, or used Coke as a generic for any kind of soft drink – was nectar.
My aunt, who was single and had a good job, bought Cokes by the case. I hoped that one day I would be as well off. I was out of college and well into my first job before I felt that prosperous.
In our youth, if we could scrounge up a nickel, my cousins and I would trudge up the country road to the store and get a soda pop. Sometimes the money was a generous gift, but more often it came doing chores or from collecting soft drink bottles and turning them in for two cents each. If we had a dime, we could buy a bag of peanuts to go with our drink.
The store was typical of its kind with a lone gas pump out front and a wide porch with hanging swings flanking the door. The store occupied the front room; the rest of the wood frame house was living quarters, territory that we rarely entered. In the front room were shelves with canned goods, bread, flour and meal and a large glass counter that had candy bars, chewing gum and other treats.
And there was the drink box.
It wasn’t like the ones in the stores in town. It was a water-filled cooler that farmers used to keep milk fresh until the dairy truck picked it up.
You plunged your arm deep into the icy water to fish around for your drink – in a glass bottle, of course.
Although we were just school kids, we had firm opinions about our purchases. If we were really thirsty, we went for quantity. That meant a Royal Crown Cola, which we never called anything but RC, or a Pop Kola. If we wanted to balance quantity and taste, we went for a Pepsi Cola, slightly smaller than an RC but bigger than a Coca Cola. (The store didn’t carry root beer because the owners, strict Baptists, wouldn’t stock anything with beer in the name).
If we wanted the best, though, we spent our nickel on a Coke.
We paid for our purchases, often in pennies, and sat on the front porch swing and savor our drinks. If we could affords peanuts, there was a standing debate about whether to pour the them into the drink bottle or to eat from the bag, taking a swig of pop in between. My cousins favored the former while I opted for the latter.
Experiencing the icy liquid and the bubbles on our tongue was the focus of our attention, The drinking itself was the event itself, not an auxiliary to some other activity. With our children’s generation, the drink is very much an incidental.
It was through the price of soft drinks that we learned about inflation. We had heard for months that soft drinks were going up to 6 cents. Then one day we went to the store and indeed they had. No bag of peanuts that day. And more scrounging whenever we wanted a treat.
I don’t think our kids ever scrounged for money to buy a soft drink, nor did they ever trudge up the road in the August heat to buy one.
I understand all of that intellectually, and I don’t complain aloud about the profligacy of leaving nearly full can of pop, but I do notice.
Perhaps one day they will tell their kids about the choices they had to make when gasoline shot up to $4 a gallon.
The writer can be contacted at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, June 8, 2008
A New Front Opens in the Little War With the Squirrels
The squirrels have opened a new front – actually reopened an old one – in our low-intensity conflict.
After I declared victory in our battle over the bird feeder, they decided to seize the territory under our widow’s walk for a housing development.
I could see why they would find the landscape inviting. Our house sits on a steep lot overlooking Lake Martin. From the lakeside, the house is nosebleed tall. There are two chimneys, a real one for the fireplace flue and a false one with a door that opens onto the widow’s walk.
The widow’s walk is reached by climbing the XX rungs of the ladder hidden inside of the false chimney. It is not of much practical value, but it is a good place to sit on a clear summer night and watch for shooting stars or to lie on your back and look straight up into the far reaches of the Milky Way. And it does make the house distinctive. When you say you live in the house with the widow’s walk, people who have seen it from the water know which one you’re talking about it.
Our builder resisted building the widow’s walk, because it’s challenging to support a structure like that atop the roof without having leaks. He could save us money by leaving it off, he said. Build it, we said. You won’t ever use it, he said. Build it, we said. It will just collect leaves, he said. Only if leaves fall up, my wife pointed out. He gave up.
The squirrels were glad that he did.
I happened to gaze up at the widow’s walk one day last summer and noticed a substantial number of twigs protruding from under a part of it. It clearly was not an accidental accumulation. I climbed up to the widow’s walk for a closer examination. Looking over the railing, I could see portions of the nest sticking out, but there was no way I could reach it.
The boards on the deck were nailed down, and I had to pry one of them up in order to gain access to the nest. I broke it up and sent the twigs sliding down the steep roof. The squirrels also had tried to chew through the soft cedar siding, presumably to get inside the false chimney. I repaired that.
Throughout the winter, I didn’t see any construction, and I thought the squirrels had given up.
I should have known better.
The drought-stressed oak trees produced a bumper crop of acorns, which in turn produced a bumper crop of squirrels, and, I suppose, a demand for housing. Spring brought a new construction season.
We sat at the dining table and watched squirrels stretching out on the tiniest of limbs gathering twigs, arranging them in their mouths, and leaping from a tree limb to the roof.
I climbed to the widow’s walk. Sure enough, a new project had started, this one far more ambitious than the previous one, a condominium compared to a cottage. Fresh limbs with leaf buds
But this time, I thought, I had outsmarted the squirrels. I had replaced the decking of the widow’s walk, fastening down the boards with screws so that they were easily removed.
I directed a cascade of twigs down the roof and into the flowerbed. I did not replace the boards, figuring that the exposure would discourage them.
A few days later I was sitting at the dining table watching morning come to the lake when I heard what sounded like a parade on the roof above me. I went out to the front deck and looked up. Three squirrels bearing twigs were marching up the ridge of the roof, headed for the widow’s walk.
I destroyed. They rebuilt. I destroyed again. In the end my perseverance won the skirmish. I guess they were under some pressure to finish new homes somewhere, so they gave up on the condos for this season.
They returned their attention to the bird feeder. Last year the feeder hung by a slender cord from a limb on a white oak tree, and I swelled with pride as I watched a squirrel, practically hanging from the tree limb by his back feed as he tried to reach down to the feeder.
This spring, they discovered that a tree near the white oak had grown, and its limbs reached out toward the bird feeder. I watched as a squirrel scampered out a pencil-sized limb and launched himself at the bird feeder. The feeder is only 10 feet or so outside the dining room window, but the squirrel simply smirked at me when I tapped on the window glass. It was only after I raised the window and shouted dire threats that he retreated.
So I moved the feeder to another tree that is visible from the dining room. I hung it well out on a limb, suspended six feet or so below the limb.
It did not take long for the squirrels to discover it had been moved. I watched a squirrel scurry up and down the tree, out on every skinny limb anywhere near the feeder, and back again.
And I watched as he launched himself from a limb downward at a 20- or 30-degree angle across 10 feet of space and make an aircraft carrier type landing on the feeder. The Flying Wallendas should be so daring.
I raced onto the front deck and shouted at him. He shinnied up the cord hopped onto the tree limb, laughing at me as he leapt from one tree to the next.
I replaced the cord with wire, thinking it would be too slick for the squirrel to climb.
I was wrong. He jumped. I yelled. He scampered up the wire with ease.
I sprayed the wire with lithium grease. He slipped a little as he darted up the wire, but not enough to discourage from trying again.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
I could get one of those feeders with shutters that close when something as heavy as a squirrel lands on them. We’ve had them before, and they work, but they seem to last only a season.
Besides, getting one would somehow seem like cheating.
After I declared victory in our battle over the bird feeder, they decided to seize the territory under our widow’s walk for a housing development.
I could see why they would find the landscape inviting. Our house sits on a steep lot overlooking Lake Martin. From the lakeside, the house is nosebleed tall. There are two chimneys, a real one for the fireplace flue and a false one with a door that opens onto the widow’s walk.
The widow’s walk is reached by climbing the XX rungs of the ladder hidden inside of the false chimney. It is not of much practical value, but it is a good place to sit on a clear summer night and watch for shooting stars or to lie on your back and look straight up into the far reaches of the Milky Way. And it does make the house distinctive. When you say you live in the house with the widow’s walk, people who have seen it from the water know which one you’re talking about it.
Our builder resisted building the widow’s walk, because it’s challenging to support a structure like that atop the roof without having leaks. He could save us money by leaving it off, he said. Build it, we said. You won’t ever use it, he said. Build it, we said. It will just collect leaves, he said. Only if leaves fall up, my wife pointed out. He gave up.
The squirrels were glad that he did.
I happened to gaze up at the widow’s walk one day last summer and noticed a substantial number of twigs protruding from under a part of it. It clearly was not an accidental accumulation. I climbed up to the widow’s walk for a closer examination. Looking over the railing, I could see portions of the nest sticking out, but there was no way I could reach it.
The boards on the deck were nailed down, and I had to pry one of them up in order to gain access to the nest. I broke it up and sent the twigs sliding down the steep roof. The squirrels also had tried to chew through the soft cedar siding, presumably to get inside the false chimney. I repaired that.
Throughout the winter, I didn’t see any construction, and I thought the squirrels had given up.
I should have known better.
The drought-stressed oak trees produced a bumper crop of acorns, which in turn produced a bumper crop of squirrels, and, I suppose, a demand for housing. Spring brought a new construction season.
We sat at the dining table and watched squirrels stretching out on the tiniest of limbs gathering twigs, arranging them in their mouths, and leaping from a tree limb to the roof.
I climbed to the widow’s walk. Sure enough, a new project had started, this one far more ambitious than the previous one, a condominium compared to a cottage. Fresh limbs with leaf buds
But this time, I thought, I had outsmarted the squirrels. I had replaced the decking of the widow’s walk, fastening down the boards with screws so that they were easily removed.
I directed a cascade of twigs down the roof and into the flowerbed. I did not replace the boards, figuring that the exposure would discourage them.
A few days later I was sitting at the dining table watching morning come to the lake when I heard what sounded like a parade on the roof above me. I went out to the front deck and looked up. Three squirrels bearing twigs were marching up the ridge of the roof, headed for the widow’s walk.
I destroyed. They rebuilt. I destroyed again. In the end my perseverance won the skirmish. I guess they were under some pressure to finish new homes somewhere, so they gave up on the condos for this season.
They returned their attention to the bird feeder. Last year the feeder hung by a slender cord from a limb on a white oak tree, and I swelled with pride as I watched a squirrel, practically hanging from the tree limb by his back feed as he tried to reach down to the feeder.
This spring, they discovered that a tree near the white oak had grown, and its limbs reached out toward the bird feeder. I watched as a squirrel scampered out a pencil-sized limb and launched himself at the bird feeder. The feeder is only 10 feet or so outside the dining room window, but the squirrel simply smirked at me when I tapped on the window glass. It was only after I raised the window and shouted dire threats that he retreated.
So I moved the feeder to another tree that is visible from the dining room. I hung it well out on a limb, suspended six feet or so below the limb.
It did not take long for the squirrels to discover it had been moved. I watched a squirrel scurry up and down the tree, out on every skinny limb anywhere near the feeder, and back again.
And I watched as he launched himself from a limb downward at a 20- or 30-degree angle across 10 feet of space and make an aircraft carrier type landing on the feeder. The Flying Wallendas should be so daring.
I raced onto the front deck and shouted at him. He shinnied up the cord hopped onto the tree limb, laughing at me as he leapt from one tree to the next.
I replaced the cord with wire, thinking it would be too slick for the squirrel to climb.
I was wrong. He jumped. I yelled. He scampered up the wire with ease.
I sprayed the wire with lithium grease. He slipped a little as he darted up the wire, but not enough to discourage from trying again.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
I could get one of those feeders with shutters that close when something as heavy as a squirrel lands on them. We’ve had them before, and they work, but they seem to last only a season.
Besides, getting one would somehow seem like cheating.
You can e-mail the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Last Evidence of Yellow Cat Disappears
With a few strokes of a paintbrush the other day I erased the last physical sign of Yellow Cat's presence.
After he died in March, I put away the little house I'd put out for him – one that he seldom deigned to use, not matter how cold the weather – and discarded his food and water dishes.
But I left the scars on the corner board at the top of the steps leading from the side deck to the alcove just outside the door. Yellow Cat was a big guy, and he liked to stretch full length against the corner board and drag his claws down the soft cedar. I covered the raw scars with gray stain any number of times. It would last for a while, but sooner or later he felt the urge to stretch and etch into the wood the sign that this was his home.
Yellow Cat was not my cat; in fact, he was no one's cat, although I do now know whether that was by his choice or whether someone abandoned him. Over the past four years, though, we had achieved an understanding. I would provide food and water and take him to the vet for shots or to be patched up when he occasionally was wounded by some more aggressive creature. In exchange, he would decorate the porch railing or the deck or the driveway, lolling in the sun or curled up in a ball on the bench.
I had been seeing Yellow Cat (that started as a description and became his de facto name) off and on for more than a year before we began slowly establishing a relationship. He would be curled up in the sun at the end of a retaining wall or sitting under a bush down the hill from the house. He covered a wide range. I had spotted him in the woods by the boat ramp more than a mile from the house, and neighbors had seen him lurking around their places.
He was skinny, and his fur was matted; he had luminous eyes. If anyone came too close, he disappeared into the bushes. Occasionally I put food out, well away from the house. It disappeared, but I never knew whether he was the diner.
After we moved to the lake full-time and brought out indoor cat with us, sightings of Yellow Cat increased.
Over time, Yellow Cat began eating from a dish on the side deck, and then from a dish on the stoop. He no longer retreated when I appeared, but allowing an occasional scratching of his ears was about as much contact as he tolerated. He no longer looked emaciated; he grew sleek and seemed to content to spend most of his time around the house.
On the Wednesday morning that he died, Yellow Cat was at the side door as usual, staring patiently through the glass, head cocked to one side, waiting for breakfast.
I filled his dish – it had been licked clean, which meant thad a coon or possum had wandered by; Yellow Cat always left a few crumbs.
A couple of hours later, I went to put some things in the car preparatory to taking my wife to Birmingham for a medical appointment. Yellow Cat was sprawled on the side deck, looking very much as he did when he stretched out in a warm, sunny spot. The day, however, was cold and windy, and ordinarily he would have taken shelter under the tea olive bush at the corner of the house.
He was dead, peacefully dead, as if the end had come by surprise, and I would like to think, painlessly. There were no marks on him, not even any sign of discomfort. It must have happened not long before I found him, because rigor had not yet set in. When animals know they are dying, they often seek a secluded spot to pass away. Yellow Cat apparently didn't have that warning, and I am glad, because if he had simply disappeared, I would always have wondered what happened to him.
I covered him to keep the buzzards and other animals from getting to him, and when we got home that evening, I buried him on the hillside overlooking the lake. My wife donated flowers from a bouquet that someone had sent her.
The next day, I called our veterinarian to tell him about Yellow Cat's death and to ask whether I should be concerned about the health of our indoor cat. The circumstances of his death didn't yield a ready explanation, and he asked me to remove Yellow Cat from his hillside so he could be sent to Auburn University for an autopsy.
So I carefully removed the now stiff body from his hillside and took him to the vet in a black plastic bag.
I said goodbye to Yellow Cat for a second time and promise myself that I won't reach an understanding with another homeless animal. At least not any time soon.
Post Script: A few weeks later, the vet called me with the autopsy report. Yellow Cat died of a heart attack. We never knew how old he was, and a heart attack was a far easier death the the renal failure that claims so many older cats.
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