Downsizing

Every twenty years or so we probably need to downsize. Our most recent move from three bedrooms plus a two car garage plus attic into two bedrooms with no garage necessitated considerable downsizing with several trips to Goodwill Industries. It is amazing what you can accumulate over the years that is not essential when crunch time comes. A friend of mine told me that his ambition at life's end was to have all his possessions in two footlockers. Alas, I would need the equivalent of two footlockers just to hold my wine rack. So I would fail miserably in attempting to match him when the end comes. But they just may need a wine steward behind those pearly gates. Anyway, it appears to be an early spring so let's all smell the flowers. The Philadelphia Flower Show just opened with a theme of "Hawaii". Aloha!
tjs
Next - On the Campaign Trail

Super Tuesday

The waitress at my favorite restaurant when reciting the menu always offered me "super salad". I had to ask for a translation. Now we have Super Tuesday a few months after the Super Bowl so our world is being bombarded with superlatives. We just moved into an apartment and the first person I met was the "super". Personally, I hope the GOP goes all the way to the convention. Tampa in late August can get pretty hot and picture those thousands of media folks in a big "tent". Years ago Mama did the wash on Monday and the ironing on Tuesday which I'm sure she didn't think was a "super" idea. I can handle casual Friday, chore-ful Saturday and prayer-ful Sunday but somehow Tuesday doesn't hack it as being "super" (small s).
tjs
Next - Downsizing

The Demise of sartorial splendor

In January 1953 Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower rode together in stony silence to Ike's inaugural as they were not on friendly terms. Truman was wearing a top hat and Ike was sporting a homburg. A brief eight years later John F. Kennedy put a dagger in the hat business by going hatless. It was a good thing that Truman was a haberdasher BEFORE he got into politics, for had he reversed his careers he would have lost his "shirt".
Now fifty years later comes President Ahmadinejad of Iran to the United Nations meeting in an open neck shirt sans necktie. The trend has caught on in all walks of life so that now the cravat is a thing of the past. We survived the faddish Nehru jacket and the Caribbean Guayabera  is seasonal and comfortable. But here I sit with a half dozen hats - felt and straw - on the shelf and a rack full of neckties from Christmases past. And all because a couple of Presidents defied protocol and precedent. My grandmother's home in the Kensington section of Philadelphia was several blocks from the principal factory of John B. Stetson of hat fame - a whole factory dedicated to manufacturing hats. And you ask where have all the jobs gone?
tjs
Next - Super Tuesday

Funny or Punny VI

Being that it's Friday - another slight attempt at borrowed humor:

Cartoonist found dead in home - details are sketchy.

No matter how much you push the envelope,  it'll still be stationery.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

The man who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

I could not pull out of my parking space, so I used my back up plan.

The roundest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference.
tjs
Next - The demise of Sartorial Splendor.

The March of Time

They used to say "If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb."  But this March first has the lambs bleating. Does this mean that on March 31st we might have rough weather, notwithstanding what the groundhog indicated? In the northeast we are having a balmy spring. The birds are confused and the New York Botanical Society reports that shrubs are beginning to bloom in February. Do I believe in climate change? You bet I do. And it has snowed in Rome and all the scooters are unable to navigate the streets. The locals here tell me that we should expect more mosquitoes this summer in light of an absence of frosts this winter. I'm looking for that first robin.
tjs
Next - Funny or punny VI

Leap Year

I feel sorry for anyone born on February 29 - losing out on all those birthdays. The reason that extra day is added every four years has to do with the earth's circling the sun in slightly excess of 365 days so if Julius Caesar hadn't proposed adding that extra day, we would lose six hours every year and after 100 years we would be 24 days behind - and never catch up. But I keep coming back to the issue of birthday deprivation coupled with the fact that when you are twenty you will look and feel like eighty. Yikes!
tjs
Next - The March of Time

All about whistling

 At a very young age someone taught me how to whistle. He said to pucker up and exhale. But when you are losing your baby teeth it can affect the "pitch".

Then there was the following childhood refrain: I bought a wooden whistle and it would-en whistle - then I bought a steel whistle and steel it would-en whistle. Later an iron whistle and I-OR-Nobody could make it whistle. Now I have a tin whistle and I "tin" whistle.

Who can forget the "come on" line from "To HAVE AND TO HAVE NOT" when Bacall says to Bogart -"You know how to whistle, dontcha?"

You could set your watch by the factory whistle that pierced the air at Noon and five PM but that was a
long time ago when this country was studded with factories.

The latest buzz word by political pundits is "dog-whistle" - apparently it represents a coded message meant for just a certain segment of the population - played on a tin whistle. Shades of Orphan Annie!

We recently moved from Florida where we lived in a gated community on a quiet cul de sac and occasionally - if the wind was blowing from the west - we might hear the forlorn sound of the Florida East Coast train whistle in the distance. Now we are living in the city - on a main thorofare - with the Amtrak trains passing just beyond our parking area. There is something about a train whistle late at night. A woman of the world - not Dorothy Parker - was once quoted as saying "A train whistle is like a wolf whistle - you like to hear it even though you're not going anywhere."
tjs
Next - Leap Year