I was standing in front of the house the other afternoon, reaching for a string of Christmas lights that had become dislodged from the roof, when I heard the familiar sound of jangling metal behind me – Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty was briskly walking up the driveway, a massive collection of keys slapping the side of his leg as he shouted:

BSOR: Halt! Don’t touch that! You could suffer a terrible injury!

Me: What makes you say that?

BSOR: Power cords are dangerous. Glass is perilous. And ice is potentially lethal! Any one of these alone can deliver massive amounts of pain and suffering!

He had a point. The lights were the kind with the large glass bulbs. And I admit it – I was standing on an icy patch.

BSOR: Also, I know you’re thinking about getting out the ladder.

I hate it when he does this. I WAS thinking about the ladder.

BSOR: Gravity plus electricity plus glass plus the absence of friction at ground level. That’s what you get when you give in to the crazy pressure society puts on all of us to remove holiday lighting displays before the conditions are completely safe!

Me: But it’s April! You can’t say I’ve given in to pressure to take down the lights too early when the holiday was over three months ago!

BSOR: Why the rush? I always dismantle my festive display starting at 5 pm on the Fourth of July. By then the snow has melted, the footing is good, and there’s plenty of daylight left to finish the job. Plus, because of all the illegal fireworks being launched throughout the day I know the local emergency rooms are staffed and supplied with everything they need to treat horrific injuries should something go terribly wrong for me.

Me: Wow, you really have thought this through, completely!

BSOR: And if I wind up being hospitalized that evening, I can make good use of the moments when I’m conscious to scold the other patients around me for playing with explosives!

Me: So you really do visualize all the possibilities and expect the worst!

BSOR: I have a good imagination.

Me: Well I can’t wait until the Fourth of July to take down these decorations. This particular string of lights has detached itself from the house and is swinging by the front door. I could get sued if somebody gets whipped in the face when they come to … I don’t know … deliver the paper?

BSOR: Is that the best you can do? I’ve seen the guy who delivers your paper and he doesn’t get anywhere near your house. He throws the paper at your front door from a moving car in the street. A much more likely scenario is that the person standing by this swinging string of lights would be some sort of sales agent. Or a police officer, come to issue you a citation for having a dangerously detached festive display!

Me: Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that.

BSOR: Or worse, your Congressman, come door knocking! They’re lawyers, you know!

Me: That’s not too likely.

BSOR: And what if one of the bulbs breaks and he gets whipped in the face by the cord AND the jagged edge of shattered glass!

Me: Ugh.

BSOR: And after the glassy shards of your busted lights embed themselves his skin, the string of lights gets wrapped around his neck and he slips on the ice and falls off your front stoop but the string isn’t long enough to allow his feet to touch the ground?

Me: That’s gruesome.

BSOR: And don’t forget – this is still plugged in. Sparks could be flying everywhere and it might take down the grid!

Me: That’s implausible.

BSOR: All the commotion might even draw radiation through the wires from that damaged nuclear power plant in Japan!

Me: Ludicrous.

BSOR: Maybe it’s ludicrous to you and me, but this is a member of Congress we’re talking about now, right? In their imaginations, anything is possible. The National Guard would be deployed. This whole neighborhood would have to be quarantined for thousands of years, and you’d go to jail for at least that long, just because you HAD to take the lights down today!

Me: Everything you just described is completely and utterly impossible.

BSOR: And you are surprisingly weak when it comes to picturing the worst thing that could happen.

Me: I know. That’s why I’m able to sleep at night.

Do you expect the best, or the worst?

There’s a lot of excitement about new photos from the hot planet Mercury, and the news drew a response from an old friend in the enhanced food business – Dr. Larry Kyle of Genway, the supermarket for genetically engineered foods.

Greetings, virtual space travelers!

I’ve been waiting over six years for the Messenger spacecraft to arrive at Mercury, thinking all the while about the ways we can take parts of our natural world and blend them with equally natural parts of other worlds!

Yes, I work in a grocery store, but why should I let that limit my thinking? We can draw inspiration from anywhere, and the universe is full of useful ideas if only we will allow ourselves to dream and not be deterred by nagging questions like “why”?

Look at this amazing photo that was taken just two days ago!

A rare close up of the planet Mercury orbiting an angry sun?

Good guess, but No! It’s Genway’s new EXTREME Cantaloupe!

The cantaloupe is a wonderful melon – golden like squash but sweet like candy, it’s easy to love and fun to eat. But so limited! After you cut it open, scoop out the seeds and cut it into slices or chunks, there’s little left you can do with a cantaloupe except make a cold soup. And I hate cold soup!

Inspired by the Messenger mission, I decided to create a craggy bit of spherical produce that was up to the rigors of outer space, particularly the type of scorching heat and intense cold endured by Mercury in its slow rotation so close to our intense and merciless sun.

I combined normal cantaloupe DNA with genes taken from deep-sea creatures that live near boiling steam vents in the intense cold of the lower depths of our vast oceans. The result? A sturdy fruit with a tough outer shell that that can be tossed in the freezer or the bonfire, with delicious results!

Finally, an easy way to make HOT cantaloupe soup. Here’s how:

Ingredients:

1 Genway EXTREME Cantaloupe
1 sprig of mint

Tools:
1 pair Welder’s Goggles
1 Industrial Blast Furnace
1 pair Insulated Tongs
1 Impervious Robot with Remote Drilling Capability

Take the EXTREME cantaloupe, and using welder’s goggles to protect your eyes from the glare, open the door to the raging blast furnace and toss in the fruit.

Leave it in there for ten full minutes, or until the rugged surface of the melon appears hopelessly charred and totally unable to support life as we know it.

Using insulated tongs, remove the EXTREME cantaloupe and set it on an insulated, ceramic surface.

Making sure that you are more than 20 feet away from the EXTREME cantaloupe, instruct your Impervious Robot to drill a hole in the rugged crust. A jet of sweet, superheated steam will erupt, filling the room with a golden warmth that may also fuse exposed parts of your robot together into a single, useless mass.

If the robot is still operational, have it pour the bright golden molten contents of the EXTREME cantaloupe into an asbestos bowl.

Periodically touch the surface of the soup until it does not raise blisters on your skin.

Toss on the sprig of fresh mint, and Enjoy!

On the drawing board – Saturn Squash, surrounded by rings of butter!

Share a recipe or a story about food that is Too Much Trouble to make.

Dear Dr. Babooner,

They say it is the custom to disguise one’s identity when addressing the great Dr. Babooner, but I am not afraid! My greatness and your greatness can stand side by side because there is something about your face that tells me we are like a brother and sister.

As my sister, you will already know that I do not ask for advice – I share my wisdom with the people. What I have for you today is this – when you are told you must leave a place, especially if it is a place where you have been comfortable for quite some time, it is best to be defiant! Yes, one could pitch one’s tent elsewhere, but the world is unkind to those who are easily dislodged. Jet lag, for example, is God’s vengeance on the weak-willed. Boldly express your insanity and make your critics move instead!

I have no question other than this: How magnificent am I?

Irrationally,
Moammar

I told Moammar he did not appear at all on my personal magnificence chart, but as a provocative, incoherent ranter he is right up there with Charlie Sheen. Saying fatuous, inexplicable things is a well-trod path to getting attention in the world today. However, a publicity-seeking person taking the crazy dictator approach should know when to cash in and move on. Given what I’ve heard about his personal situation at this point, if offered a slot on a reality show, Moammar should take it. Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” would be a perfect vehicle for him. Perhaps the next season could also include Mr. Sheen for a guaranteed ratings bonanza in the first week at least. But it would be wise to get paid in advance.

I did allow that he might have a point about jet lag.
But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

I’m trying, with mixed success, to get back into the routine of writing every day. Even though the heavy lifting has just begun, it can help to catch your breath, so today I’m turning the blog over to Tamara Kant-Waite, Past President Pro-tem of the Future Historians of America.

I believe she has an inspirational message for us all!

Dear Prospective Primary Sources,

You may think you’re a dull nobody today, but once you’ve become part of the unalterable past, you and your things will turn into objects of fascination for historians of the future.

For example, on the lower east side of Manhattan, there’s a wonderful place called the Tenement Museum where the lives of poor immigrants of the 19th and early 20th century are immortalized through conservation of the building where they lived and worked. You can visit the dingy, crowded apartments that generations struggled to get out of! The people who lived in these tenements would no doubt be flabbergasted to see well-fed tour groups shuffling down their narrow hallways.

And I’m guessing when Elizabeth Taylor was 17 years old, in love, starring in the movies and writing ten page long gushing mushy letters to her fiancée, she wasn’t thinking about being dead and having those letters published in national newspapers and sold to the highest bidder.

But there you go. That’s what time will do – it magnifies everything. Whatever purpose you had in mind for that mundane thing you just did, you can be sure history will see it as a fascinating window into another era.

So remember, anything you touch today could become an artifact! Be attentive when you interact with things because that cherished object of yours could have a glass case in its future. Tomorrow’s archivists have just one request – be sure to develop a story about your object and by all means write that story down.

And please, for the sake of historians and auctioneers of the future, use paper.

Yes, e-mails are easier and they supposedly last forever, but the history that impresses us most has to do with things we can pick up and hold, carry around, frame, encase and send on tour. Nobody would buy a ticket to see King Tut’s blogs.

That reminds me – if you ever get the chance to completely cover something in gold, do it!

And remember – these historic objects and artifacts will need to be categorized by curators. That’s honest work for Future Historians of America, a group of people who are mostly unemployed at the moment, and in many cases not even born yet. So do something good today for the economy of tomorrow – write a crazy love letter to someone who you think would be shallow enough to sell that honest expression of devotion to an auction house.

Make it something special, and the scholars of nexter-year will make sure it lives forever!

You’re a dead celebrity. What have you touched or produced that collectors will want to buy?

Public radio audiences lost an old friend this week when Arthur Hoehn passed on, his life cut short by lung cancer.

Much has been made of his status as MPR’s first full time, professional announcer, and I suppose that’s an important detail. To be the first one in the door just ahead of a vast and distinguished crowd is a meaningful bit of timing, but Art Hoehn would have stood out had been the tenth one hired, or the two hundred and tenth.

For many years he was the overnight host, happily working a shift that most dread. While everyone else was asleep, Arthur would be gliding around the radio station in his slippers and sometimes his bathrobe, turning off lights to save energy and flipping over the accordion-fold paper after it had already chunk-chunked through newsroom teletype once, feeding it through again so the blank side could be put to use.

For lazy young journalists it meant you had to check the date on your copy. Coming in first thing in the morning to throw together a newscast, there’s a 50/50 chance the item you’re about to read on the air is three days old, even though it’s still warm from the machine. Take a look at the other side and say thanks to Mr. Hoehn for conserving the resources.

Arthur was the perfect companion for insomniacs and others whose internal clocks put them at odds with the world. Though I’m sure he could do it, he wasn’t the sort of announcer who would dazzle you with a sharp, sparkling monolog. Mr. Hoehn took his time. And face it, if you’re listening to a classical station at 3 am, chances are you’re not there for the energetic pacing. You’re in need of companionship, and Arthur was ready to abide with you.

He was the disc jockey who would be content to stare out the window as you both watched snow fall through the lonely beam of a streetlight. Today’s listeners are deprived of the eerie sensation of tuning in to a station to hear the sound of someone … um … thinking. He gave us deliciously long pauses – a rarity in radio but surprisingly effective as an attention-getting device. “What’s going on?” you wonder. An intake of breath. Another long pause. “Is he going to speak?”

Probably. What’s your hurry?

For all the forms of media we have at our disposal today and the 24/7 streams of programming that flood out of our computers, there are few places where gentle soul is given an open microphone and license to allow his stream of consciousness to meander. For a significant number of years, Art created that sort of comfortable space for his listeners. As one of the announcers who followed him to open up the next “day part”, I was grateful for his easygoing presence. No matter the type of work you do, it’s harder to get started when you’ve just walked into a space that’s cold and dark.

With Arthur Hoehn on duty, there was always a warm spirit in the house.

Yesterday, while waiting for a bus, I struck up a conversation with a pleasant fellow who let me know in no uncertain terms that he had played a role in the ouster of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega back in 1989.

Of course this came up as we were talking about the weather.

I mentioned how it was finally going to hit 50 and he observed that Panama is hotter. Within moments he had the embassy surrounded and was playing heavy metal at peak volume in an attempt to force out el Presidente.

The bus came before the story was complete and I didn’t think it would be smart to follow him to his seat to get the rest. Even a former intelligence officer has to show some discretion. I had already forced him to reveal precious details through my clever climate-directed questioning, and there’s no way to safely discuss covert ops on the 825 into downtown Minneapolis. At least there’s no way to do it where you’ll FEEL safe.

After I spent more time than I wanted to thinking about Manuel Noriega, it occurred to me that we probably stand next to strangers each and every day who have done things that we would find utterly amazing and perhaps unbelievable, if we only knew.

After all, astronauts go to the grocery store to get milk out of the same case we do. Diplomats, crisis negotiators and brain surgeons stand in line behind us when we’re picking up fast food French fries. Billionaires go to movies. Great actors and brilliant inventors stop to hold the door for us and we hardly notice it. But it would be impractical and impolite to try to draw a biography out of every person you encounter.

I was waiting for my wife to pick me up at the airport a few weeks ago when Joe Mauer came out, loaded down with baggage, and stood alongside. He seemed like he wanted to strike up a conversation with me but then thought better of it, realizing that I’m probably tired of making small talk with strange admirers.

It’s true, I am. But for him I would have made an exception.

How close have you stood to greatness?