I remember this motel. Although I grew up in New York, my dad used to take me to Disneyland, beginning as early as 1956; I have a memory of meeting Walt himself as he stood on one of the trolley cars in the center of Main Street.
Memories…
The Old Wolf has spoken.
A friend of mine posted a scanned image of this essay on Facebook; fortunately her scan was sufficient to run through ReadIris and convert it to text. It’s taken from Daniel Pinkwater’s book “Fish Whistle,” and I share it here because it’s a great essay, and because I love Mr. Pinkwater’s writing (and his voice, being a long-time listener and contributor to NPR). It’s ©1990 Addison-Wesley, but I’m hoping this would fall under the “free advertising” rubric and not attract any attorneys hungry for billable hours. If the copyright owners object to its presence here, a friendly comment will be sufficient for its removal.
Daniel Pinkwater
I’D LIKE to say a word in favor of fundamentalists. They’re getting a bad rap.
The dictionary says that fundamentalism is a movement in twentieth-century Protestantism emphasizing as fundamental the literal inerrancy of the Scriptures, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, and so on. Also a movement or attitude similar to Protestant Fundamentalism.
I don’t happen to subscribe to any of those beliefs, but it’s a point of view, and some of the people I’ve encountered whose point of view it is are very nice people.
The bad rap comes from a confusion of fundamentalism and fanaticism. “Moslem fundamentalists meaning terrorists did thus and so,” the media will report. Most all, if not all, Moslems are fundamentalists-that doesn’t mean they all want to blow people up.
I hear from fundamentalists-kids and adults-in my role as an author of children’s books. I hear from bigots and fanatics too but they’re not automatically the same people.
Here’s a case that comes up from time to time: I’ll get a letter from a kid, or a class, commending me for not using profanity in books I write. Sometimes, there’s an explicit religious connection made, sometimes not. Sometimes the letter comes from a religious school.
I write back to the kid or the class, and explain that I do not, as a rule, use vulgar language in books I write for kids as a matter of choice and preference-but that I would not hesitate to use it if the story called for it. For example, if I wrote a character who cussed-I’d have him cuss. It wouldn’t bother me.
I go on to explain that it’s a good idea to be able to distinguish between polite and impolite language, and to try to respect people’s sensibilities-but that I do not believe that words have power within themselves, and by making a special case of certain words and expressions, we imbue them with a power they should not have.
I tell them that I use vulgar language around the house, and when I’m alone, I use nothing else.
Then I suggest-now get this-that maybe they’d like to show my letter to their teacher, pastor or parents, and maybe have a discussion with them, or their class, and compare their ideas on the subject with mine.
And they do it! What do you think of that? These fundamentalist kids, or their teacher, will write back to me and say that they had an interesting talk based on my letter. I don’t expect anyone changes their basic views – but they’re willing to take a look at mine,
They’re not so bad.
Of course, I’m not talking about the educator from down south who accused me of being a Satanist because I wrote a story about a werewolf-but that guy would be a pain in the posterior whatever he believed.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
The first Saltair pavilion in Utah, around 1900. Several resorts have borne the name over time.
Trains every 45 minutes from Saltair depot. Fare, Round trip, 25¢
From the above brochure. Of note: third from front on the right, and fourth from front on the left, are my grandparents – Delbert M. and Frances Rogers Draper. This would date the photo above to around 1912, the date of their marriage.
As the Wikipedia article mentions, the resort has had a checkered history, but in its heyday was one of the premier tourist wonders of the nation.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Found this lovely picture over at Frog Blog, and thought immediately of the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego. They have a word in their language which is classified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most succinct and one of the most difficult to translate.
Mamihlapinatapei (or mamihlapinatapai) means “a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to suggest or offer themselves.” In other words, “we both want this like crazy, but I’m sure as hqiz not going to be the first one to make a move.”
There are many other words like this in other languages, and I’ll toss one out occasionally. I love languages and language oddities, and this one is one of my favorites.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
With little or no fanfare (as usual), a recent change to Facebook’s iPhone and Android mobile apps will forever change the way people share photos and the way Facebook finds out where you are and what you are doing.
Here’s a screen grab from my Android phone, just a few minutes ago.
With an innocent-looking “Start Now” button and the very misleading[1] insinuation that your friends are doing this, Facebook is trying to corral you into sharing every photo you take with your mobile device onto its cloud-based, minable storage. Just two taps, and the last 20 photos you have taken with your phone or tablet, and every image thereafter, will be automatically uploaded to Facebook’s cloud storage. Including photos that you never, ever ever ever ever ever want anyone to see. What kinds of photos those might be I will leave up to your individual imaginations.
Be aware of these things:
You can read more about this over at TechCrunch. I’m not going to insist you “like and share” this, because I think that’s obnoxious – but I felt that folks should know about this new “feature.”
The Old Wolf has spoken.
[1] Yes, these three friends do share photos on Facebook. They are probably not, however, using this “insta-share” feature.
Established in 1898, the Squirrel Point Light Station is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
I have more friends and associates than I can enumerate, and that’s a good thing. It would have been nice to win the Powerball Lottery (no, I don’t play), but I count my wealth in friends rather than gold.
Naturally, these friends are all over the ideological spectrum: some are devout Christian evangelicals, some are devotees of other faiths, others equally dedicated humanists, deists, atheists, anti-theists, and everything in between – and I do my best to respect them all.
And now it’s the Christmas season.
My son’s fiancée posted this on Facebook yesterday…
And my son followed it up with this video as a comment:
I watch with interest as the Christmas season draws nearer, and the blogosphere and social media sites fill up with comments about what the holiday means, who should be celebrating it, and why, and when, and begin to cast aspersions on the common sense, parentage, IQ and chromosomal structure of those who think differently.
It’s sad, really – because it’s an unwinnable argument; everyone gets to choose what the holiday means to them, and act accordingly.
Take the video above: The points it makes are matters of historical record, and I found very little in the essay to argue with. But the creator’s conclusion – that because of the things mentioned in the video, he chooses not to celebrate Christmas – seems to have shot wide of the mark.
C.S. Lewis posited that the historical Jesus was either God or fraud, with no room for the “great human teacher” argument. [1] Personally I’m OK with that assessment, but I know that there are just about as many opinions about Yeshua of Nazareth as there are people. Whatever one may believe about the historical figure, a few things are consistent across most accounts.
The estimable Mr. Lewis notwithstanding, that would be a life worth celebrating.
It is true that over the last two millennia, more evil has been perpetrated in the name of faith; but in contrast, an equal if not greater amount of good has been done as well. The first gets the headlines and is widely pointed to by opponents of religion; the second is done quietly, in bedrooms, back streets, alleys, and out-of-the-way places, and rarely attracts the attention of a media dedicated to selling advertising.
Over the last two millennia, the public celebration of Christmas has morphed from a religious feast day into an orgiastic frenzy of obscene consumption. Society at large has indeed succeeded in taking Christ out of Christmas, leaving nothing but a mass: a mass of confusion, a mass of greed, a mass of debt, and a mass of emptiness; but in countless homes around the world, there are those who celebrate the season by striving to live lives worthy of that original One; lifting the hands that hang down, and strengthening the feeble knees of others in need. Each of us gets to choose, and each of us gets to be right about our choice. We are free to look at the Christmas holiday as a reminder of all the hypocrisy and evil perpetrated in the name of faith by those who have lost sight of what the original Jesus was about; or, as the words of a lovely song state so well, we can choose to see the holiday as something else:
Christmas is a feeling filling the air,
It’s love and joy and laughter of people everywhere.
Christmas is a feeling bringing good cheer;
It reaches out to touch you when the holidays draw near.
Along with Saroyan’s The Human Comedy, “A Christmas Carol” by Dickens ranks very high on my list of important and human writings. The transformation of Scrooge from all that our society today embodies – cold, commercial, heartless, penurious, usurious, and cruel – into someone who captured that feeling of joy and a desire to reach out and do good to all who crossed his path, underscores once again that we are at choice about how we view this holiday season. Each year the words bring me back, and I yearn to read the story again, each time with fresh eyes:
“[Scrooge] became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world … and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!” – Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”
We live in a peculiar, complex, and often bizarre and frightening world – but like Scrooge, despite the challenges, I would “honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year,” pushing back against the tide and celebrating goodness, and giving, and helping everyone to win. That’s how I want to keep Christ in Christmas. Others may disagree, but that’s their privilege.
The Old Wolf has chosen.
[1] “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity
Don’t try to give a bouquet of these to your girlfriend.
The Kadupul flower, or Epiphyllum oxypetalum, blooms rarely, only at night, and its blossoms wilt before dawn. Even if you live in it’s native habitat of Sri Lanka, you’re unlikely to see its delicate beauty. And, it doesn’t smell very nice, either.
The world is so full of a number of things…
The Old Wolf has spoken.
I still get mail addressed to my mother on occasion; she left this world last year at the age of 94. But she was getting ads like this regularly for about 15 years before she finally caught the bus, and as time went on (before we took over her financial affairs) she ordered lots of products, either on her own or at the insistence of skilled but sleazy telephone salesmen. As a result, she ended up on every sucker list out there.
If you have older loved ones, please make sure they throw solicitations like this into the trash, even if they come from places as respectable as the Mayo Clinic – they’re not above drumming up business in the elder sector, and there are thousands of others who are looking for a chance to separate mentally-diminished but resource-wealthy seniors from their incomes, savings, and pensions.
The letter above is pure crap. The company makes a glaring mention of the FDA and implies that said agency has endorsed their product. This is a load of hqiz: the actual FDA letter is here, and if you read it you’ll see that the agency is clearly saying that evidence for effectiveness of phosphatidylserene as a memory-enhancer is feeble at best, although the product is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) based on the information provided to the FDA by the company involved, with the additional disclaimer that the FDA has not done its own research. They went on to say, “FDA continues to believe that the science provides very limited and preliminary evidence sufficient for qualified health claims about phosphatidylserine and reduced risk of these conditions.FDA continues to believe that the science provides very limited and preliminary evidence sufficient for qualified health claims about phosphatidylserine and reduced risk of these conditions“.
Now don’t get me wrong; I’m a long-time proponent of optimal nutrition and there is a lot of science out there about vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and other co-factors that do benefit health. What I object to is outlandish claims and weasel words from companies looking to make a quick buck from the unsuspecting and uneducated, and there are far too many of those out there.
If you’re looking for things to help your loved ones, be sure to do your due diligence. Research as much as you can on the product involved, and make sure you’re not buying smoke and mirrors, which is what 90% of the stuff being marketed out there really is.
The Old Wolf has Spoken.
Be very careful about clicking links in emails, even if they seem to come from a legitimate source.
Notice the email below, which I received this morning – red flags are marked in color, with explanatory notes:
Dear Comcast Member, The credit card we have on file for your Comcast Internet service was declined when we attempted to bill you on 11/29/2012 for your most recent service fees. For this reason, your service could be suspended. Update your credit card information as soon as possible. Once your credit card information is updated, you will be charged immediately, as soon as payment is received. [3] ************************* E-mail ID: 87326473233 ************************* Sincerely, Comcast Customer Care |
This email arrived the day before my actual credit card was set to expire. While the message looks convincing to the untrained eye, it’s phonier than a 7-dollar bill.
Things you can do to protect yourself:
There are countless scumbags out there, and they want your money and your information. Be safe, be careful, and watch out for your loved ones.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Footnotes
[1] Email from a legitimate source will never have alphabet soup as part of the email address.
[2] Look at that URL up there: account.comcast.net.1r9.is-into-cars.com. A web address for a legitimate concern will not have jumbles of letters or numbers, or extraneous words in it. This website had been taken down by the evening, but I’m guessing the douchebags got a few uneducated people to enter their information with the millions of emails they sent out. The URL led to a very realistic-looking website with a login request. As is my wont, I went there and entered scathing obscenities for my username and password.
[3] This is lousy English. “you will be charged immediately, as soon as payment is received” makes no sense. If your payment is received, there is no need to charge you.
Playing in the World Game 