Toledo Dog Trying to Find Its Way Home

(Toledo, OH) Lisa Renee at Glass City Jungle has in her possession a small black dog that is lost.

The dog is older and has both vision and hearing problems.

If you know of someone who has lost such a pet, click on the link above for Lisa's contact information.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.
--Alexander von Humboldt

Catching Up With Ernie Harwell

(Toledo, OH) Like all Detroit Tigers fans I have been ecstatic about the team's resurrection after 12 years of some of the worst baseball ever played. As I write this I am watching the Tigers-Yankees game on ESPN.

I was doubly blessed to find that ESPN invited Ernie Harwell into the broadcast booth. Harwell, for those unfamiliar with this legendary broadcaster, was the radio voice of the Tigers from 1960 until 2002. He worked for 58 years as an announcer in baseball, calling games for the Dodgers, Giants, and Orioles before joining the Tigers.

There are few memories from my childhood clearer than the nights I spent with an ear to my transistor radio listening to Ernie call the Tigers games.

A throwback moment when Kenny Rogers fanned Jason Giambi, and Ernie gave one of his trademark calls: "STRIKE three! He stood there like the house by the side of the road and watched it go by."

One of the few criticisms of Harwell (near the end of his career) was that his vision was weakening, and that there might be no relation between his play-by-play and what happened on the field. In the fourth inning, he summed up a high fastball by Rogers in this fashion: "Strike! He got one on the inside corner."

You know what? I couldn't care less if Ernie called balls as strikes. The reasons I loved listening to Ernie Harwell involved his enthusiasm for the game and his wealth of baseball lore.

I can say with complete honesty that I have never heard the same Harwell anecdote twice. In a discussion with Joe Morgan about the possibility that Derek Jeter might win the Most Valuable Player award, Harwell dug out a nugget about Roger Peckinpaugh, the 1925 MVP who committed 8 errors in the World Series against Pittsburgh.

"Ever since that time, they waited until after the World Series to announce the MVP," he said.

Pretty damn sharp for an 88-year-old man, that Ernie Harwell.

Ernie - it's been too long, but I am glad we reconnected tonight, if only for two innings.

On Cynicism and the Process of Writing

I was speaking recently with someone much more learned and wise than I, and I confided that I have doubts that I will live to see a day when the current money-dominated political system will be reformed.


"That cynicism of which you speak - that is an admission of defeat," he chided me. "Those who control the political system want you to think that way, because then you'll give up."

My mentor nailed it, as usual. He's one of those quiet people who will surprise you by uttering something brilliant at a time when you were convinced he was tuning out.

My cynicism gets in the way of my writing, because I begin to think that the words I scribble for a blog, newspaper, or journal are pointless. "Why write?" I begin to ask myself. "Almost no one reads this material, and few people really seem to care anymore. Most people just want to be entertained in front of the television, and they do what the political marketers tell them."

I know, of course, that this negativism leads me to write even less for the general public, and causes me to retreat to the quiet world of academic research, where I can try to make sense of the past and not have to worry about the modern world.

It's much safer to write for a narrow group of academicians than it is to write for the general public, because average readers are not shy about pointing out bullshit when they see it.

You are forced to be relevant - or you are doomed to obscurity - when writing for a general audience, because most people read for a purpose, be it inspiration, edification, or commiseration. Failure to meet those expectations means that a writer will soon be writing to an audience of one.

And that one person is not his mom.

Thus, I vow to shake the cynicism that has infected my outlook and thought processes, and get back to the business of solving the world's problems, or at the very least that of weighing in with my opinions.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

Who knows but that hereafter some traveller like myself will sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, where now, in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eyes are too slow to take in the multitude of sensations? Who knows but he will sit down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep a people inurned and their greatness changed into an empty name?
--Constantin Francois de Chassebeouf de Volney

On Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Equity Markets

I am among the segment of the American population who is technically a part of the post-World War II baby boom, but who also qualifies as a denizen of Generation X (we will ignore, for the sake of simplicity, any references to such subsets as Baby Busters and Generation Jones, or the period known as the Consciousness Revolution).

I occasionally think about what my retirement years might look like, and I must admit that I am not optimistic. Most of us agree that Social Security will not provide much in the way of retirement income in the next few decades, and we have been taught that 401-K and other investment vehicles are critical for maintaining a comfortable retirement income.

But what happens when all of the Baby Boomers begin to remove money from the equities markets?

The Wall Street crowd tells us not to worry about such things, as there will always be buyers for every seller, ceteris paribus.

My gut tells me differently. I believe that there will be major sell-offs in the 2020s that will erode the value of stocks and bonds, and that retirees (and would-be retirees) will see trillions of dollars in value disappear.

The Baby Boom generation has a demographic edge numbering in the tens of millions, and as a group Boomers are living longer. I suspect that medical advances will likely push life expectancy for Boomers into their 80s, meaning that more retirees will live longer on their savings.

And draw even more money out of the markets.

Will there be enough world investors to pick up the investment slack so that I can retire at age 70? I am assuming that the retirement age will have to be gradually raised to accommodate changes in longevity. I remain skeptical of this optimistic scenario, and believe that I will be working until I am 80 in order to avoid impoverishment.

For the moment I will continue to follow the conventional investment wisdom, but I cannot help but wonder if the equities markets are doomed to implode from an overabundance of investors trying to cash out in order to eat and pay their mortgages.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Blue Jay Way

(Toledo, OH) The agitated screech that accompanies the presence of a blue jay belies the beauty of the bird's sapphire plumage. This representative of the genus Cyanocitta cristata muscled his way into the area around my bird feeders today and attempted to chase away other visitors.

The image is a bit blurry, as the bird refused to cooperate with me and maintained a rather hyperactive pace in the warm fall sun.

When a group of grackels finally asserted themselves, the blue jay and a compatriot perched themselves in a nearby oak tree and squawked for several minutes before flying away.

Rapid Rhetoric: KEDDAH

This is an irregular feature - both in frequency and oddness - dedicated to a word I came across that I have never previously used.

keddah - n. a term used to describe the enclosure constructed to entrap elephants.

Keddah is of Hindu origin, from the word kedhna ("to chase"). The following passage is from the chapter entitled "Toomai of the Elephants" in
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling:

Even a little boy could be of use there, and Toomai was as useful as three boys. He would get his torch and wave it, and yell with the best. But the really good time came when the driving out began, and the Keddah--that is, the stockade-- looked like a picture of the end of the world, and men had to make signs to one another, because they could not hear themselves speak. Then Little Toomai would climb up to the top of one of the quivering stockade posts, his sun-bleached brown hair flying loose all over his shoulders, and he looking like a goblin in the torch-light. And as soon as there was a lull you could hear his high-pitched yells of encouragement to Kala Nag, above the trumpeting and crashing, and snapping of ropes, and groans of the tethered elephants. "Mael, mael, Kala Nag! (Go on, go on, Black Snake!) Dant do! (Give him the tusk!) Somalo! Somalo! (Careful, careful!) Maro! Mar! (Hit him, hit him!) Mind the post! Arre! Arre! Hai! Yai! Kya-a-ah!" he would shout, and the big fight between Kala Nag and the wild elephant would sway to and fro across the Keddah, and the old elephant catchers would wipe the sweat out of their eyes, and find time to nod to Little Toomai wriggling with joy on the top of the posts.

OTA Links

(Toledo, OH) As a member of the Open Trackback Alliance, I highlight sites and posts that I found to be noteworthy.

Follow this link to learn more about the project, which was developed by Samantha Burns.

I have just started following Charleston Daily Mail columnist Don Surber's blog. He is right of center, but not obnoxiously so, and devotes more space to non-political posts than to the political.

Other interesting OTA blogs I visited this week: TMH's Bacon Bits, the unusual Quietly Making Noise, the wretched hive of scum and villainy at Pirate's Cove, Canadian-style politics at Grandinite, the good fun at 7 Deadly Sins, and my regular trips to Liberal Common Sense and Glass City Jungle.

Gunman Opens Fire in Amish Schoolhouse

Left: Aerial view of the scene of the shooting courtesy of WPXI Pittsburgh

(Paradise, PA) An unknown gunman and hostage-taker killed "at least six" people at a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday in Pennsylvania's eastern Lancaster County, and the shooter was among the dead, according to state police Cpl. Ralph Striebig.

The shooting occurred about 11 am at the Wolf Rock School in Paradise, Pennsylvania. CNN is reporting the location as Nickel Mines, PA.

"So far, six confirmed dead, and the helicopters are pulling into (Lancaster General Hospital) like crazy," Coroner G. Gary Kirchner said.

Police surrounded the school late Monday morning, and the Lancaster County 911 Web site reports that dozens of emergency units were dispatched to a "medical emergency" at 10:45 am. A list of the 22 units dispatched is available at this link.

Several dozen people in traditional Amish clothing, hats and bonnets have gathered near the building, speaking with one another and with police. At least two ambulances have already left the scene, and at least one person was taken to a medical helicopter for airlift.

The Quote Shelf

A frequent feature on this site; feel free to comment on the quote or to supply a competing quote.

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
--William Blake