One of the pipe dreams I occasionally entertain is that I have found a way to live on a Hawaiian island. And since this is a complete fantasy I make certain my island home is situated at the end of a long dirt road and that it sits on a rocky outcropping, surrounded by a merrily sloshing surf and whales that salute me with blowhole water jets as they swim past.
It’s a lovely, impossible scene.
But now with the publication of new research we discover that our actual planetary home in the Milky Way is on the outer edge of a vast collection of galaxies that connect through gravity as a supercluster now called Laniakea, which means “Immeasurable Heaven.”
I’m somehow comforted by the knowledge that everything here is being pulled towards The Great Attractor. It explains so much about our behavior. And I’m glad it’s a GREAT attractor that’s dragging us along and not some dumb little diversion that leads absolutely nowhere.
So three months from now, when icy pellets are flying past your window and the temperature is -20, remember that none of this can change the fact that you live on the edge of Laniakea.
In an increasingly busy, hyper-productive, multi-tasking world, many of us are overwhelmed with undone work and yet are still blessed with ample time to examine and complain about the prioritizing skills of other people. I may have absolutely no idea what it takes to do your job, but I know sloughing off when I see it! And as Americans, it is our birthright to offer uninformed criticism of our leaders. That’s how we manage to get outrage over President Obama’s interest in golf.
Yes, he lives over the store and can never really disconnect from the job, but even so, whenever I hear that he is relaxing, I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth. How can he be so lazy when time is precious and the world has so many urgent problems?
Plus, golf seems like an un-serious hobby for a grown man with big responsibilities. Golfers have been known to wear silly clothes and ride around in tiny cars, just like circus clowns. Several of their implements wear flouncy covers and some of the terms of the game (birdie, bogie, mulligan) sound childish. Even the names of some of the ancient tools of the trade (mashie, niblick, brassie, baffing spoon) seem comical.
It made me want to create some bad limericks about Presidents and golf, which, although they are clearly inferior to good limericks, took just as long to write.
Hours, literally.
Don’t tell me I’m not an expert on wasting time!
I.
A Senator griping in Texas
said the president’s golfing effects us.
“If he’d stop chasing pars
He’d have time to start wars!”
Though how that would be better, perplexes.
II.
When the president lines up a putt
tension strains his political gut.
He aims leftward, though slight,
but it breaks to the right,
every time, as if stuck in a rut.
III.
There are critics who count all the swings
that the president hacks, chops and dings.
He plays more than we’d like
But far, far less than Ike
who still managed some serious things.
IV.
When the POTUS hits grass that is rougher,
F.B.I. agents won’t let him suffer.
Though it’s way overgrown
they will summon a drone
which can blast it out for the first duffer.
If the world watched you work, what would it criticize?
Today’s guest post comes from Renee Boomgaarden, aka Renee in North Dakota.
Sometime in 1925, the residents in and around Ellsworth, MN were abuzz with the news that Okke Boomgaarden had bought a $3000 accordion for his daughter, Amanda.
Okke was my great uncle, the fifth oldest of the sixteen children in my grandfather’s family. Okke was, officially, a farmer, sort of like how Don Corleone was, officially, an olive oil importer. Okke made his money bootlegging, and his barn was used for dances, not livestock. Okke had regular dances in the barn. He provided refreshments, at a cost, and members of the family provided the music.
Family historians talk about my grandfather and many of his siblings having a natural aptitude for music. All were self taught.
Great Uncle George learned to play the fiddle when he was 16.
Great Uncle Albert also played the fiddle.
Great Uncle Herman was a noted left handed banjo player.
My grandfather played the cello.
Great Aunt Amelia played the piano.
Other family members played the accordion.
In the years before the First World War they were know as The Boomgaarden Orchestra and played for dances, weddings, and harvest festivals in northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota.
After the war, they changed their name to Mandy’s Jazz Kings, and played in Okke’s barn, joined by Okke’s children Georgie on fiddle, Jake on saxophone, and Amanda and Mabel on the accordion.
My father remembers going to some of those dances when he was a little boy, driving to Ellsworth with his parents in their Graham-Paige automobile. I wish I know more about the music the Jazz Kings and the Boomgaarden Orchestra performed.
I wish I knew what happened to my grandfather’s cello. Until I researched for this post, I never even knew he played a string instrument.
Okke died of a heart attack in 1928, and the dances stopped soon afterwards. The older members of the Jazz Kings had their own farms and families to care for and couldn’t play with the band anymore. Okke’s sons Georgie and Jake kept playing, changing the name to The Georgie Boomgaarden Orchestra. Georgie and his band played in the towns around Ellsworth until the 1970’s.
The Depression hit everybody hard. At one point, Jake’s saxophone needed $12.00 worth of repairs, but he didn’t have the money to fix it. The local doctor intervened and paid for the repairs. He had just built a night club in Ellsworth and needed musicians to play for the dances.
My grandfather felt it was important for my dad and his brother to have some kind of music training despite the tight finances. Grandpa drove Dad and Uncle Alvin to Luverne once a week to practice with a drum and bugle corps. This group was comprised of sons of World War I veterans, and you can see them in the photo at the top of this page. Dad played both drum and the bugle – he is the third boy on the right in the back row. He can still play his bugle, and has two of them in his bedroom.
Renee played bass clarinet for Concordia.
My children and I are the current Boomgaarden music amateurs along with my husband. Husband plays the cello, guitar, harmonica, and piano. He also sings. You can see me playing my bass clarinet in the Concordia College Band in 1978. Daughter plays the violin, French horn, and piano. She sings in college. Son played the trombone and sang in college. He currently sings in the church choir. I drafted husband to join the handbell choir. He drafted me to sometimes play the bass guitar in a very amateur gospel/rock and roll group.
Why do we do these thing? I have no idea. Maybe Okke will explain it to me someday in the Hereafter.
Today’s post comes from perennial Sophomore Bubby Spamden of Wendell Willkie High School.
Hi Mr. C.!
Well, today is the re-beginning of school, and in spite of everything I’ve thought and felt over the past few months and the complaints I’ve made and the different ways I’ve tried to get out of returning to Willkie High, I have to say I’m excited to be going back!
Why?
Well, people like making connections and having routines and seeing old friends and making new ones. And the daily rhythm of being a high school sophomore is a pattern I have perfected! I’ve got my backpack and my notebooks and all my pens and pencils and stuff and I’m ready to go. I’ll collect all the papers my teachers hand out and I’ll take their assignments and bring them home. By this time I know them all by heart. My favorite one is the unit on Stonehenge. We do it every September and I get a real kick out of the idea that Druids dragged huge heavy rocks hundreds of miles to make something big that we still don’t understand and when we look at it all we can do is scratch our heads.
The lesson? People have always done stuff that’s kinda weird.
Anyway, I’ll really try to play by the rules this time and get my work done and handed in on time, but before long I know I’ll start to wonder why I have to study so hard for all these standardized tests and I’m sure I’ll get tired of it, because that’s what I do.
And then around the middle of October, I’ll go into my backyard at home, sneak behind the equipment shed where we keep the lawnmowers and rakes and stuff, and I’ll dig a deep pit.
And then I’ll dump all my assignments and papers and materials into the hole and I’ll cover them up with dirt. And I’ll do this every single week all the way through to the end of school, so when Mr. Boozenporn and all my other teachers ask “Bubby, where’s your homework,” and “Bubby, didn’t you take that assignment home?” and “Bubby, why don’t you get things done?”, I can shrug and say “Oh yeah, it’s probably just buried under some other stuff somewhere.”
That’s how I manage to stay a sophomore year after year at Willke High!
I know it seems like kind of a waste, but the way I see it, someday some cultural archaeologists will come along and dig up all that stuff so they can piece together the history of education in America! Or at least the history of education during this particular time in America, which is bound to seem as strange and mysterious to them as Stonehenge seems to us today.
I admit I’m a gambler, and there are times when I get carried away. I feel kinda bad about that!
I used to go to the Showboat in Atlantic City, NJ. But now the place is closing! So is Revel, another hotel/resort that was opened just 2 years ago, and it was built at the cost of 2 billion dollars.
Talk about coming up a big loser on a risky bet!
In another few weeks, a third casino will close, leaving Atlantic City with only 8 gambling establishments compared with the 12 they had at the start of the year.
I wish I had made a wager on that back in January. Hindsight!
Some experts say it’s necessary for Atlantic City’s survival to reduce the number of casinos, because the traffic just can’t support all of them. Habitual gamblers, they say, will just go to one of the establishments that remains open, so little economic activity will be lost.
Maybe so, but over the years I’ve learned that misery does, in fact, love company. That’s why it grieves me that my favorite vice is not experiencing the kind of growth that can support 12 and even more fancy casinos in Atlantic City.
I mean, it’s bad enough to be stuck in a pattern of behavior that brings you feelings of deep regret, but when I realize it’s not even popular anymore, that leaves me feeling like an even bigger loser!
When I look around at all the different soul-crushing, life-wrecking things I could do, I see that drinking is still a big deal, though I’ve never had much interest in that. Even beer consumption is gaining traction as a bad behavior sub-group. Cocaine, Heroin and meth addiction all continue to bring growing levels of misery to many helpless people. What can I say? They’re not my thing. In the catalog of social ills, even accumulating student debt is getting more attention than problem gambling right now.
Dr. Babooner, up until now it has been an important part of my self-image that I engage in socially destructive behavior. But I feel like I’ve lost my edge. Should I abandon gambling for a more trendy vice?
Sincerely,
Lucky
I told “Lucky” to stop worrying about the popularity of one’s vices. Problem gambling is still plenty bad and it creates more than enough misery to lead any practitioner to feel that he or she is afflicted with something major that is worthy of alarm and attention. I doubt that it is in decline. The news that Atlantic City is closing casinos has more to do with another set of social ill – bad investment decisions and misguided marketing choices. Not to mention plain old hubris, which will always be with us.
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?
Trail Baboon 