Who was that masked man?

When I was a second grader at London Elementary school in London, Ohio I had an after school routine that still resonates in me today, 67 years later. I would ride the bus home from school and rush into our home. After fixing myself a peanut butter sandwich I would sit down in front of our enormous black and white TV with the 10 inch screen and prepare to watch The Lone Ranger. I can still hear the theme music adapted from the William Tell overture. Each saga would pit good against evil. The masked man and his faithful side kick, Tonto, would happen upon some poor person in distress and set about righting the wrongs that seemed to be set upon this poor innocent soul. At the conclusion of the episode the person who was the beneficiary of this heroic act would pose the question to those nearby, "Who was that masked man ?". Then the theme music would cue and the credits would roll as the ranger and Tonto would ride up and over the hill to their next adventure.

Some years after that and 40 plus years ago from where I sit now I have another memory. I was working as a salesman in the town of Albany, GA. I had met my district manager there and thought it would be funny to meet him wearing a gas mask. I cannot remember the exact reason why I thought this was such a good idea. However, the mask wearing, was very well received and struck a cord of entertainment with my boss. He thought it was hilarious and referred back to it often over the 30 year career I had with our company. He had a great time years afterwards reciting the hilarity of my meeting him wearing the gas mask.

There were a few moments where I regretted ever having donned the mask. Don, the boss, talked me into wearing the mask into the main post office there in Albany. as I walked into the lobby, patrons and employees riveted their attention on me and gave me a wide berth. I walked to the window and asked to purchase some stamps. The clerk asked me what was the deal with the gas mask. I told him that it was a protest against air pollution. He was not amused. He sternly advised me that he did not think it was funny. He further pointed out to me that I was in a government facility and that I was lucky to escape being arrested for such a silly act. It gave me thoughtful reflection and regret. 

I know that banks and retail shops have paid extra scrutiny to any customers who present themselves while covering up facial features, even marginally, two months prior to now.

I find it ironic to our current state, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, that you bring attention to yourself by electing not to wear a face mask of some variety. Indeed the question may be asked,
 " Who is that unmasked man?" In our current culture there are infectious disease experts all around us. Never mind that most either failed or never took basic Biology, not to mention micro-biology. Their expertise is garnered by non stop infusion of the news media feeding us a constant stream of how dangerous life  has become on the world stage of the corona virus outbreak. You look about you in an historically benign place such as a grocery store and you see people shuffling along wearing masks, gloves and, if they could have gotten them, bio-isolation garments. Indeed it looks like a scene from Zombie Apocalypse all around us.

It seems that if you wait around long enough everything is going to shift to the circular path of hearsay, marginal information, hype and power of suggestion. Is it better to have a plain belly or one decorated by a star? I suppose that Sylvester McMonkey McBean said it about as well as it can ever be said. You just can't teach a Sneech.

Re-Post: Chicken Little is Alive and Well

THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 2009

Chicken Little is alive and well

The American news media has something terribly wrong with it. They love to scare the public. I suppose that they have gotten so convincing that the public is hardly a challenge any longer. They have been haranguing on the economy for awhile now and they have us pretty well convinced that it is in the dumper to stay. That is unless we allow the league of idiots that comprise our congress to fix it. The fix is the federalization of most all of the banking interests in America. They have bailed out a sizeable portion of the heavy hitters and now have their tentacles firmly around the banks and financial institutions. Next stop is health care.

How do you take over health care? First you have to convince America that the current system is a failure. They count the numbers of people without health coverage and say how horrible that is. Never mind that ANYONE can access medical care at the ER of your choice ANYTIME.

Well you have to create a focal point that will create a problem. A health care crisis of some sort.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...........let's see now. How about Swine flu? We start reporting that we have a new viral variant for which there are no vaccines. The congressional gang of morons could then stand tall and nationalize the supply of Relenza and Tamiflu and save the day. All the while they could fast track the development of a vaccine.

Nevermind for the last 100 plus years viruses have been coming and going. There was the Spanish influenza in 1918 that created a world wide pandemic and killed a ton of people. There was the Hong Kong variant that went "pan" on us and knocked off a pretty sizeable number. There was the Asian A-2 that went "demic" and gorked a big portion of the world. The A Bangkok, the A Singapore, etc. etc.

Also, nevermind, that it is the norm for the virus to go into a population of fowl ( A Avion ) or a population of horses ( A Equine ) or Porky's pals the pigs ( A Swine ). So the media sets the stage scaring everyone to death about the BIRD FLU..........................the SWINE FLU. The World Health Organization deals with this year in and year out. When you go to get your flu shot it will have 3 weak little viruses in it. It is trivalent protecting you against 2 A variants and 1 B variant. You go get your shot and you feel kind of protected. That is until a new variant shows up. Then, Oh my gosh !!!!!, I am not protected. What now?

Folks, do you know that the people who die from A flu are either over 90 yoa, immunocompromised, have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ( ie: emphysema ). That is the long and short of it. If you are a healthy human being your immune system will do its job and lock it down. It is no fun to have the flu. I have had it 5-6 times over my 63 years. I am sitting here being obnoxious writing about it. However, I am way less obnoxious than the ridiculous media that is scaring everyone to death over it.

There is another front to perambulate. How do I know when I have the flu? As opposed to a common upper respiratory infection. I used to sell a very specific medicine for influenza A. The docs I called on would ask or postulate, " How do I know when I am seeing influenza A ?" We would always discuss high fever, malaise, retrobulbar aching ( behind the eyes ), etc. I would always say by the time you do your anti-body titer and send it off to the health department and get an answer the flu will have moved on down the road. Use my drug, amantadine, it is safe in children down to 1 yoa. I sold a boat load of it and even won Man of the Year honors within my company.

I called on this one old country doc up in Blakely, Ga. He had been practicing medicine for about 50 years. I was making my pitch and told him, " Doctor, I know just what you are thinking. How do I know if I am seeing influenza A?" He responded by saying. " No, Lee, I know when I am seeing the A flu. If a person comes into my office and sits right there where you are sitting and tells me that they have the flu, they don't have the flu. They have a head cold. If a man sends his wife in to get me to come out to the car and look him over because his fever is 103, his legs are like noodles and he is aching all over, now that man has the flu." He had it right.

Forget about obsessing over this A-variant of the influenza. If you get it, chances are you are going to outlive it. If you die, it was probably just a matter of time anyways.

Same thing holds true with the reporting you are hearing about the real estate business. The media has it mostly incorrect. There is plenty of money out there for mortgages. The rates are below 5%. You can get in with less than 4% down. If you are a first time buyer you get a, $8k tax credit if you close by December 1. Quit obsessing over the swine flu and let's go buy you a house. Now that is something to get fired up about.

Please visit me on the web at http://elvass.com/

The Evolution of a Back Yard Pool

                                                                                                                                               

When our children were younger we were fortunate enough to live next door to wonderful people who loved them. They had a swimming pool and our kids had standing invitations to swim. Our children became very strong swimmers and we all enjoyed their pool. I am sure that I appreciated that wonderful circumstance. I am also sure that I did not appreciate it enough. You see, all the cleaning and maintaining of that pool went unnoticed by our whole family. By the time we engaged with it all we saw was a sparkling blue watery playground.

Switch forward a few years and we moved from that home and those neighbors. It was 1993 and we needed a larger home because we were all getting larger. So we moved into a very nice home in a nice neighborhood on a golf course with a swimming pool. Life raced along and career, school, church, sports and a busy life consumed us all.

Along the way that swimming pool became my nemesis. I seemed to need to constantly clean the miserable thing. I spent hours upon hours brushing it down, removing leaves, vacuuming, shocking it, pouring $1,000’s in chemicals into it and it would still be green and murky looking. Changing pumps, filters and of course liners helped. I seemed to get more proficient in the process and on occasion it would look sparkling, cool and inviting.

I admit getting into it and floating around on an inflated apparatus was a very nice source of relaxation. We all sported some pretty impressive tans in the summer. That is, when the weather permitted. I recall many times when my kids were in high school and later, college they would plan to have friends over to get into the pool and voila our semi tropical location here in Florida would produce the afternoon thunderstorm and cancel all plans. During prolonged hot weather periods the water in the pool felt like lukewarm bath water.

Then there is the capital investment side of it. After I became a real estate broker, later in life, I learned that a pool is a neutral asset. There are as many people who would hate a pool as there are who would love a pool when it came time to market your property. On top of that is the liability associated with owning a pool. I have a fence around my property. However I added a $2,000 kiddy fence put there by an acquaintance in the fence business who gave me a “deal” on it.

Along the way a beloved pet, Maggie, drowned in it. I still have nightmares about pulling her out of it. That was almost 10 years ago in 2010. Also there is the financial shock of having to replace liners at $5,000 a clip.

The liners seem to have a life span of 10 years. I replaced one in 1996 at that cost. Of course we were pretty engaged in getting into it at that point in time. Then in 2006 with our three children pretty much moved out, married with children, etc. I decided that the thing I wanted most of all was to fill it in. I had the man with his back hoe on the road practically when my wife sat me down and showed me videos of our last July Fourth holiday. Of course that occurred around our pool. Watching our little grandchildren splashing around in the pool was more than I could resist. I not only replaced the liner but built a much nicer, concrete deck around it and added some other amenities at a cost of $10k plus.

Well, we took a great vacation to the Smokeys back in August. When we got back I noticed that the pool was down about a foot. We were in the midst of one of the worst heat wave droughts in 50 years so I felt perhaps it was just intense evaporation. So I put in the hose and got it back up only to find it down another foot in a couple of days. I did not even bother to look for the leak. Liner is now 13 years old so it is beyond its life span.

It is impossible to find someone to do any kind of work around your house.  So I spent almost 6 weeks and finally got two disparate bids. As I put out the word my wife and daughters were distraught. My grandchildren became militant. However, no one swam in the pool at all this past summer. It was time and it became a done deal.

Now that it is done,  I experience some unexpected pangs of emotion. At the same time I cannot prevent myself  from smiling and occasionally breaking out in glee. Yet, also I find myself with a little sadness and nostalgia. My ownership of this pool now spans more than 25 years. I assess that passage of time. My three children have graduated, married and given me grandchildren. I retired from a 30 year career and started a second career. Filling in the pool sort of becomes a simile for the passage of that time. As the albatross hung around the neck of the ancient mariner in the Coleridge poem the pool has hung around mine. I wonder if the mariner ever got rid of his albatross? I surely have mine and in due time when the summer sun beats down and I am swimming in my daughter’s pool I will never have any regrets for cutting that bird loose.

Take your Vacation

Take your vacation. Sometimes you just have to shut it all down and undertake a change of scenery. If you stay home you always have some sort of routine task to consume your time. It is healthy and good for your overall production to use that leave that your company provides you, if you are so lucky, to benefit your mental health.

Get up in the morning to a different day. Sleep all day if that is what you want to do. Just to see that the same 24 hour roll out on a new day takes on a little different slant away from home. There is nothing wrong with sitting on a porch and looking at a mountain off on the distance, hearing a river run constantly, hear the surf pound all day and all night. Just mixing it up brings renewal.

Surround yourself with loved ones. Yes, those are the same people that drive you nuts at home. However, they will look and seem differently to you in new surroundings. Talk to them before, during and after a trip. This will make your overall relationship with them a little taller as you share a journey.

Read a good book with all that extra time you have. It never fails that a book lends you a new perspective on things. Sit and daydream. It is amazing what sorts of ideas your mind will spontaneously produce when it has the time to roam.

My family, just a few weeks ago, spent a week together in the Great Smokey Mountains. There are 16 of us. We stayed near Bryson City in three different mountain cabins. They were located in a 20 mile radius of my wife and me. We also had local relatives in that area that we got to see. There was lots of hiking, tubing, whitewater rafting, picnicking, shopping, eating together, sightseeing, visiting and just plain being lazy. We have been back for 6 weeks now and I cannot help thinking about various elements of that trip. I hear the same thing from children and grandchildren.

During the thirty years that I worked for DuPont there were many different trips I took with work colleagues. We went to some pretty interesting places and participated in team building activities. The interaction spurned many unique discussions and new approaches to our business.

There is no more important team than your family. You need to get off together and do some team building now and then. It pays dividends and fosters many wonderful ideas and fresh takes on relationships, interaction and approaches to solving problems.

 

Keeping a Baby

11 August 2019

I am a semi-retired septuagenarian. I have owned my own business for the last 18 years and retired at 55 after 30 years with a Fortune 500 company. I did a lot of important things for the Fortune 500 firm and was well satisfied with that career. I did a lot of traveling all over the country and was given a full retirement after the company decided to sell our division.

My wife and I set up housekeeping in 1973. She was fully employed at the time with the state of Florida as a social worker. We were blessed with a son in September 1974. Rather than going back to work she decided that she wanted to stay home and be a full time mother. I agreed to buy the diapers and she agreed to do most of the diaper changing. However it seems I did my fair share of diaper changing and delighted in doing so. That son will be 45 years of age in September. We added two daughters and Mom stayed at home all along the way.

My son and daughter in law have one little girl who is 8 and they had another little girl who is now 17 months. Before the little baby was delivered they began to look for child care. The going rate was $1,000 per month. My wife and I provided most of the child care for our other little grand daughter. I began to process that fact and announced to my son and daughter in law that I would keep the new baby full time and come to their house to do so. I expected to get paid, albeit not $1,000 per month. We thus keep the baby out of day care, I get paid a little bit and do it at their home.

We are into the 14th month of this arrangement and it has not yet killed me. Overall I would have to say that I have enjoyed it a great deal. I work 8 hour days starting at 8:00 AM. I took over when she was 3 months old. It was pretty easy with her sleeping all the time and all I had to do was feed her and change her and sit around and watch her.

I have watched her start to take first steps, begin to say words and make demands on this old man that keep me getting up and moving around the house. Our relationship has developed its own characteristics. We argue over whether we are going to watch Baby First TV or MLB. She can't quite work sentences yet so she stands in front of me and just yells and points. I have to figure out what her demands are and do my best to fulfill them.

She loves me and I love her. Our family just spent a week in the Smokeys. We were in three different locations and got together a lot with extended family. After we had been separated for 3-4 days when we finally got together all she wanted to do was sit in her Bop's lap.  To the exclusion of everyone else. All 7 of my grand children call me Pop. She calls me Bop. She came around a corner in her Mom and Dad's cabin in the Smokeys and found my 17 year old grand daughter sitting in my lap. She demonstrably made it clear that she did not approve. She made her way to us and began pulling at Caroline and made it clear that she was in her seat. 17 year old Caroline said to her, " Now, just wait a minute. He was my Pop before he ever was your Bop." So now they are fighting over me which just adds to my escalation in self esteem. No one at the Fortune 500 company ever fought over me.

I have a newer, more enhanced respect for my wife and her role in our family over the years. I always told my children when they came home with the announcement that one of their friends families had just acquired a new beach house, mountain cabin, car, boat, pool, etc. that our luxury was that Mom stayed home. Looking back I can honestly see that has made a HUGE difference in our family. I know that some folks, if not all folks, need a two pay check financial stream to make it these days. I am happy to be able to provide a way where my little grand daughter stays at home, naps in her own bed and plays in her own toy box.

I have to say that Bop is quite happy to be getting a pay check to add on to a pension. I also am able to work any real estate transactions from my son's house. I am happy mostly to have the love and allegiance with a cute little 17 month old grand daughter. Some days are longer than others. Some days Bop is not quite on his game and drags a little more. However, this is one of the best jobs I ever had. A labor of love that loves you back.

If You Can't Nar-Can

I worked for a manufacturer of pharmaceuticals for 30 years of my working career. Looking back on my personal experience in that venue is a dizzying and surreal experience. I promoted several products. Some of the list are Percodan, Percocet, Hycodan, Nubain, Narcan. The first four on that list are narcotics. Two of them are Oxycodone products and the last is the polar opposite of a narcotic. It is a narcotic antagonist and reverses the illicit effects of the first four.

Against the canvas of history those narcotics were once considered the good guys. If you were in moderate to severe pain your physician could use his pen to almost instantly relieve your pain. Nowadays in the new light of some grassroots campaigning we are in the midst of the Opiate Crisis. Percodan, Percocet, OxyContin, etc. are all bad guys now with this new perspective. The Opiate Crisis drum is being beaten all across America. Who created this crisis? Physicians who prescribed opiates irresponsibly? Pharmacists who dispensed opiates irresponsibly? The manufacturers who created these products and promoted them irresponsibly? Rarely does the end user bear any responsibility for the abuse feeding this crisis! In my opinion the only thing that has been creating this crisis are those down and out individuals that choose to start down the path of opiate abuse through their irresponsible search to take them out of the main stream. I really don't want to get a job nor to go to school. I would really rather inject heroin into myself, get high and sit around and beat on my drum all day. I am the poor, poor victim here. Society, commercialism and the free enterprise system have driven us all to this crisis. I am a victim of all that. Let's institute a government centered in Socialism and all this will go away. You want to talk about some jacked up thinking.

So we have our protagonist to our story now we have to introduce an antagonist. In most stories the antagonist is a bad guy. However this one is a good guy. The brilliant scientists who worked for the same company as I did created a unique analog to the opiate molecule. Up on the carbon chain they substituted an allyl chain for the carbon. What they got was a molecule that did the polar opposite of the opiate. Whereas the opiate killed people by occupying the nerve centers along the diaphragm thus inducing respiratory depression this product competed with the opiate at the receptor site and via competitive antagonism always won the fight to occupy the receptor. You could have a patient stop breathing during balanced anesthesia. The anesthesiologist might have gotten a little heavy handed with the fentanyl. At that point the physician ordered the administration of  Narcan ( naloxone HCl). The patient would miraculously start breathing again. Thus the phrase arose in medical circles, " If You Can't Then Nar-Can" 

This morning I read an article in our local muckraker about a policeman who encountered a heroin overdose patient who had stopped breathing. His local agency had just authorized all law enforcement people to carry Narcan in their emergency kits. So he gets his name in the paper for reversing the overdose caused by an addict exercising their right to imbibe the illicit drug of their choosing, in this case a narcotic of choice.

All the while, dear reader, a new sophistry has arisen. Another psychoactive substance the use of which could send you to prison 10 or more years ago has arisen to save us all. It is Tetrahydrocannibinol (THC) the psychoactive component of marijauna. As we learn from other states first comes medical use and then recreational use. All the while those who have aided and abetted its legalization get incredibly rich. We have just elected a new Ag Commissioner who is heavily engaged in the marijuana issue and will surely add to its burgeoning adoption by a beer drinking, weed smoking, opiate consuming public.

At the bottom line as always is the almighty $$$$. The prophet Isaiah, who lived roughly 3000 years ago said it pretty well in the 5th Chapter of his book "Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

An Old Friend in Mexico Beach

October 26, 2018

I, like many others, am a hurricane Michael survivor. My family members here in Tallahassee are all safe and sound, The worst inconvenience suffered was 6 days without electricity. Which meant no cable TV, no internet, no hot water, and most of all NO A/C. With the help of generators we got by with floor fans, listening to radio, accessing the internet on cell phones charged by the generator. All is back to normal now. I am able to get back to blogging even.

Tallahassee was spared. Had the storm veered 50 miles east that would not be the case. We would have lost significant infrastructure. Many homes would have been destroyed just like those to the west of us. Tallahassee was bruised but there were towns that were killed or at least placed on the critical care list.

Ground zero was Mexico Beach Florida. That town is about 90 miles from us. I have an old friend that lives there. She has been my friend since 1972 when I first moved to Tallahassee. Ironically enough, I moved to Tallahassee in June of that year in the midst of a hurricane. It was Hurricane Agnes.

This old friend of mine is the El Governor motel. I discovered her early in my first year as a traveling salesman. It sits right on the beach adjacent to the beautiful Gulf of Mexico. I had to overnight in my job to work the western part of my territory. I elected to make the El Governor as my overnight spot. From there I could access Panama City, Port St Joe, Apalachicola, Marianna, Blountstown, Carrabelle.

I met a wonderful, beautiful girl in my 20's and married her. We were blessed with children. We could not wait to introduce them to our friend in Mexico Beach. We were within her walls 4 times on the average in a given year. Spring breaks from school, summer vacations there, birthdays, special events. We would many times stay there in a 4 bedroom town home. Friends of the family, boy friends, girl friends of our kids accompanied us there. From there we could access Captain Andersons restaurant, Angeloes restaurant, Miracle Strip in Panama City, theaters in the malls, etc. Ultimately we introduced her to grandchildren and enjoyed so much family time there. Lazy, sun-filled, happy leisure days there on her decks and swings, cabanas, pool and lovely rooms with cooking and refrigeration in our rooms.

I saw a video of her on You Tube after hurricane Michael. It broke my heart. It was like seeing an old friend who had been in a terrible accident and was in intensive care. I don't know if she will live on. However, my hope is that she will.

I seem to keep learning the same lesson over and over. Nothing ever remains the same. Old friends get sick and some even die and move on from our association. I look in the mirror and see an old man who has lost his hair, his looks, his teeth, etc. The only thing that remains clear is that our spirits pretty much remain the same. The difference over time is the amalgamation of experiences, associations, love, joy, family, etc. Those intangibles that you cannot put in the bank, hold in your hand, wear on your body are the well springs of a life well lived. The winds of war, storms, illness, grief, sadness can beat on us from time to time. We human beings are greater than anything that can inconvenience us or make life difficult. What we are, are angels fallen from the presence of God into the storm of life. The British poet, John Milton taught us concerning that in his poem Paradise Lost. A myriad of experiences gives us wisdom and awareness. At the end we stand in the memories of many like the El Governor being weighed in what is considered as life experience. We should live our lives in a fashion that makes us worthy of reflection. Turn aside from anger, terse words, acts of inpropriety. Let us instead live our lives in a fashion that is expected of an angel.

Thank you to my old friend the El Governor. She has been a respite for my family amidst the storms of life. I am hoping that you survive this death blow you have been dealt.