Thanksgiving at its Verse

Some Fowl Words

Oh, the turkey is in despair

As he frets about Thanksgiving.

The fowl calls "Foul," says it's unfair.

Oh, the turkey is in despair,

"What's wrong with steak, well-done or rare?

Have you no shame or misgiving?"

Oh, the turkey is in despair

As he frets about Thanksgiving.

'Tis the Season Opener

Christmas comes but once a year, which is just as well,

although all the retailers would like to have more

so every single week there would be a Black Friday,

with hordes of crazed, lusting shoppers outside the store

at three-ten in the morning, credit card in hand.

Christmas: a great excuse for a shopping orgy.

The proudly religious also up and orgy

over "Season's Greetings," a term they don't take well.

And "Happy Holidays" gives the devil a hand,

they say. "And we'll not shop here, not even once more

unless the cash registers in your godless store

tell the clerks to say "Merry Christmas" by Friday.

That way, when the saved go shopping on Black Friday

they can revel religiously in the orgy

and shop with wild, untamed abandon in the store,

certain that big spending makes God love them so well.

With every smile and proper greeting, they spend more,

and piles of cash go into the store owner's hand.

"Merry Christmas:" a small price for cash in the hand.

No wonder retailers so enjoy Black Friday

and hope consumer greed will lead to more.

Shoppers spend money they don't have to fund the orgy,

pulling buckets of cash from the credit card well,

forgetting that dunning notices are in store.

A timid person faces danger in the store.

A Type-A shopper might hit him with her purse or hand.

He'll leave in an ambulance, and she'll say, "Oh, well.

Wimps should know better than to shop on Black Friday;

you've got to be tough to survive this mad orgy.

He's out of the way now, and I'm going to shop more."

The retailer is so glad she keeps spending more;

If she's got money, she's welcome in his store.

Voyeuristic economists watch the orgy

to see if it's giving business a fiscal hand,

or if it's just another nondescript Friday,

when despite the madness, the stores do not fare well.

The annual orgy, set to begin once more.

To get things going well, you must spend big at the store.

Credit cards in hand, go deep into debt on Friday.

My Exacerbating Exasperation

While reading today I came upon the word exacerbate. It's been a while since an author told me a situation had been exacerbated. That seems strange, because even the most cockeyed optimist would have to admit there is a whole lot of exacerbating going on. There might be a situation out there that is not being aggravated or increasing in severity, bitterness or violence, or just plain getting worse, but I don't know what it is. Still, no one, or hardly anyone, says our current problems are being exacerbated. Present day pundits, like those who preceded them, are sure that every problem is getting bigger by the hour and is well on its way to becoming unsolvable. Depending on his or her point of view, the problem is the incompetents in the White House, or the idiots in Congress; the one percent with the wealth, or the ninety-nine percent without it; the greedy unions, or the money-grubbing capitalists; the armed-to-the-teeth NRA, or the soft-on-crime ACLU; the educational system that doesn't educate, or the effete, ivory-tower intellectuals who are educated; the decaying industrial base that can't compete, or the rascally Chinese who have rigged the rules.

But as all our problems get bigger, it is a rare pundit who opines, "the crisis is being exacerbated by..." It wasn't always this way. In the 1980s and 90s, commentators constantly told us that the crisis du jour was being exacerbated. Now, hardly ever. And, as it turns out, the book I was reading had a 1998 copyright.

Like the moon, the popularity of a word waxes and wanes, and right now iconic is waxing more than S.C. Johnson. Anything that has been around a week-and-a-half is iconic. There are iconic TV shows, iconic movies, iconic stars, iconic personalities, iconic sports heroes, iconic buildings, iconic automobiles, iconic places, iconic candies, iconic fashions and, presumably, iconic icons. The increasing use of icon has nothing to do with something found in a Russian Orthodox Church and everything to do with those things found on your computer's desktop. If the high-tech types had called the pictograms pictograms there might not be any iconic people, places or things.

But trite or not, it would quite an ego boost to be called iconic. Too bad by the time someone refers to me as iconic, all our difficulties will be exacerbating again, iconic will be listed as archaic and, alas and alack, so will I.

Memories of Max

Maxine died Monday. These few unforgettable moments are from August 2010.

     There were fifteen of us at the Edgewood Diner, most of us retired from the Ashtabula County Board of Developmental Disabilities, where we had worked in the Adult Services Program at Ash/Craft Industries. Three or four were looking forward to returning to Florida at the first sign of winter.

     After a few minutes of politely bringing everyone up to date with our lives, we began talking of the past and getting raucous. Like the eight million in the Naked City, we each had a story - in fact, most of us had several to share. We laughed at ourselves, we laughed at each other and we laughed at former colleagues who weren't there. We laughed at our frequent ineptitude and marveled at the even more frequent insight and brilliance of the people we were supposed to be helping.

     I had been told several times over the years that I would know when it was time to retire. As it turned out, Multiple Sclerosis intervened and forced me to retire before I was ready. A few years earlier, I had a job that kept me on my feet most of the day, and at home I cut the grass, shoveled snow, cleaned the gutters, often made dinner, sometimes did the ironing, played ball with the kids, went to Little League games and band concerts, and took long, meandering walks. But now I spent most of my waking hours in a wheelchair.

     Maxine was there, and she put it all in perspective for me. She is seventy-one, originally from Nova Scotia and has the most wonderful accent and self-deprecating sense of humor. She also has cancer, and she wore a baseball cap to hide the smattering of hair that had sprouted since her last series of treatments. Not long before I had heard Maxine might have just a few months to live. If she was suffering that night from either the disease or the treatments, it didn't show.

     "Tom, tell me the truth now," she said when she came in, "do your loins still long for me."

     It was vintage Max. Then she spent the evening telling her stories, wonderful stories. Like the time an Ash/Craft client - a woman who in appearance and attitude resembled the Maxine of greeting card fame - asked her if she had found a man.

     "No, not yet," Maxine told her.

     "Well," the client said, "if you'd fix yourself up a little maybe you could get one."

     One day, Maxine was talking to the staff psychologist about care for the aged, and a client walked by and heard just a snippet of the conversation. Later in the day, the client went up to Maxine and asked: "So, how's your new boyfriend?"

"What new boyfriend?"

     "Jerry."

     "Jerry?"

     "Yeah, Jerry. You know, Jerry Atricks."

     And there was the time a client put a bag of chocolate chip cookies on Maxine's desk. Maxine said she couldn't accept them, but the client kept insisting.

     "I went to the doctor the other day," Maxine said, trying another approach. "He told me chocolate cause me to get cysts."

     "Well, it doesn't give the shits," the client said.

     As the gathering was breaking up, Maxine asked me, "How did this happen to two such wonderful people as ourselves?"

     Neither of us had an answer, of course. I told her, in many ways I feel fortunate: I'm not suffering and I have good insurance. But the not being able to do all the things I once did gets me down.

     "I know two things," Maxine said. "I'm not in control of this, and I have to take things one day at a time. This is my life, and I'm going to make the most of it."

     Sometimes, the ebb and flow of life, like the tides, cannot be controlled. But sometimes, in small ways, it can. And I thank Maxine for reminding me.

All Set

After I set the challenge for myself, I set about searching for the English word with the largest set of definitions. Hoping to be set straight, I went to Google, which set before me an extensive set of websites that might provide the answer. Opting for the link to dictionary.com, I was set back on my heels when I discovered that the Oxford English Dictionary, which is a set of several volumes, set forth 496 definitions for "set." "Set" not only set the record for definitions, it set it in convincing fashion, topping runner-up "run," which merits a mere 396 definitions.

But as I set out to set forth my thoughts on the word "set," I was beset by doubts that in my hurry to set my ideas on paper I might inadvertently set myself up for failure. What if I wrote something foolish and set tongues wagging about my idiocy? Then, as I was about to set two books and a tablet on the table, I realized the table was set for dinner, and with our best set of Melmac dishes. I knew at once it would be a while until I could set to work, and so I set my stuff on the recliner and waited for dinner to be set before me.

After we ate and the dishes had been set aside, I set my mind to the matter at hand and set a time limit of three hours to complete an essay. I hoped a glance at all the definitions would set off an explosion of creativity. But, no. My mind remained set in its unimaginative mode, and even my efforts to set aside a few ideas in order to set a solid foundation for thought the next morning came to naught. It was unsettling. I was dead set against giving up. It was no use. I should have called my tennis buddy and set a date to play a set or two. Instead I sat there trying to set things in perspective. Alas, the little exercise turned out to be another set back.

The Maple Tree

Yesterday, a single shaft of sunlight broke through the ominous clouds and fell upon the maple tree across the way. And the maple, resplendent in its autumn leaves, like a star in the spotlight at the Oscars, dazzled all who saw it.

It stormed last night: lightning, thunder and a fierce wind. By morning, the maple was disheveled, half dressed, tattered and lifeless. Soon its naked arms and fingers will be clothed in snow – until spring, when life begins again.

All News is Old News

Is Africa a preview of the world's future?

With apologies to D'Arcy Egan, the Plain Dealer's outdoors writer.

I have taken the liberty of rewriting a portion of Mr. Egan's article "Is the Illinois River a preview of Lake Erie's future? The Battle Against Asian Carp," which appeared in the October 22, 2011 edition of the Plain Dealer. After all, the Asian Carp isn't the first invasive species.

The Wooly Mammoth Press-Prevaricator, Oct. 22, 55,001 BC

SOMEWHERE IN AFRICA - There have been experts who say human beings won't survive outside of this small enclave in Africa. The rest of the world is too cold, they suggest, and will not provide the level of comfort the funny looking bipeds need in order to thrive and reproduce.

But nobody needs to tell the saber-tooth tigers and mastodons how amazingly adaptable and resilient humans are, and how they can easily overwhelm and change a way of life. The humans are thriving here, and many mammoth scientists firmly believe they would flourish in other parts of the globe, especially in places where there is plenty of game and a wealth of fish in the lakes and rivers to encourage them to eat heartily.

As you travel through Africa, it is startling to watch the humans become comfortable on the lands they have claimed for themselves. The humans are seemingly everywhere, from smart-mouthed youngsters to behemoths who can weigh 300 pounds and much more.

It is impossible not to imagine what would happen should these erstwhile apes continue to come down from the trees and migrate to other areas.

Humans have proven they can dominate an ecosystem, displacing the native animal species. In some sections of Africa, humans already make up 90 percent of the population. Day by day, the humans are expanding their range, with new populations most recently found in a place called Europe.

If they make it to other parts of the world, experts say the humans could overwhelm the native species and, given their ravenous habits, deplete the food supply.

In the worst case, various species could face the danger of flying spears and arrows, and predatory species could see their prey disappear.

A 15-mile tour of one river provided a clear picture. Humans were everywhere, ready to grab rocks and spears at the sound of approaching wildlife. They could be spotted all along the banks of the river. They jumped up and down, yelling for their young to bring them weapons. The erratic "thumps" we felt were caused by humans hitting us with rocks they tossed from the shore.

When the number of humans increased in Asia Minor a few years ago, native species were amazed. They couldn't believe humans used weapons to obtain food, and sometimes made a game of killing native species. Dangerously armed humans were stalking the same animals local species relied on for nourishment.

"Of course they're dangerous," said one lion. "A tiger cub was recently hit by a flying spear. The spear punctured his chest. He needed to have it removed by his parents."

Preposterous Predicament

The assignment was to have fun with words beginning with P-R-E. I had fun doing this. Whether or not anyone else will find any fun in it remains to be seen.

Jackie was surprised to see Herman, her husband, in the middle of the living room attempting to touch his toes.

"What, pray tell, are you doing?"

"My preamble," he said, slowly raising himself to the full-upright position, although his stomach remained several inches below his belt. "These are the stretching exercises I do before taking my walk."

"Your walk usually ends up a prebendary."

"I know. I know," Herman said. "There were times when I walked to the bar and bent the elbow for a few days and usually wound up in the gutter. But those days are over. I'm jumping on the wagon."

"If I were you, I'd be careful. As fat as you are, if you jump on, you'll probably put the wagon in a prefixed condition."

"They'll just have to repair it," he said. "Besides, I'm going on a diet and I'll soon be a sight to behold."

"I bet," Jackie said. "I'd love to stay and watch your preamble. But I've got an appointment with the doctor, and I want to be prelate. They get so angry when I'm not on time."

After Jackie left, Herman wandered into the bedroom and looked at himself in the full-length mirror. He wasn't proud of the rotund reflection, but he thought he should have Jackie take a picture of his prefigure. Then, when he got down to a buff one-sixty-five, she could take a picture of his post-diet form. Maybe he could sell his weight-loss secrets and get rich.

A financial windfall would solve many problems. Right now, they had enough money, but with wage freezes, inflation and a balloon mortgage, the future would require some belt tightening beyond that needed to keep Herman's pants up around his soon to be slimmer waist. The pretension was obvious every time Herman and Jackie talked about finances. In a month or two, he was sure they'd have to start making difficult choices, and their fiscal fears and anxieties would dominate thoughts and discussions.

At lunchtime, Herman looked for something healthy in the kitchen. He found some prepared apples, but he didn't like to eat the skins and he didn't want to take the time to remove them. So, he went to his stash of Snicker's bars and devoured seven of them. He would have had more, but he heard Jackie come in.

"So, Mr. I'm on a Diet, who ate all the candy bars?" she asked, sneering at the empty wrappers on the counter.

With no time to prefabricate, Herman had invent a story on the spot.

"Little Johnny from next door came over and I let have a few Snicker's. It made him happy, and it got rid some temptation. I'm serious about this diet, you know."

He could tell Jackie was in a prevent mood. She wanted to tell Herman exactly what she thought of him, to yell, and shout, and scream at him. She managed to hold herself in check, but Herman knew he was just one wrong move from setting off a torrent of vitriol.

Two days later, the stress was too much for Herman. He had always thought he was a presage and would one day be renown for his wisdom. But now he was curled up on the couch in his underwear, sucking his thumb and mumbling endlessly in prediction. Jackie smiled. The doctor, who was also her lover, had told her that when Herman began babbling like a child not yet able to speak clearly, she would have no trouble getting him committed and getting a divorce. The doctor had also said he would marry Jackie. But once Herman was out of the way, he said he'd have to give marriage some thought.

"And when do you think you'll think about it?" she asked.

"I'm really busy right now," the doctor said. "I might be able to preponderate some in a couple weeks. Unfortunately, I won't be able to do any actual thinking for at least six months."

Jackie slammed the phone down. "He might be predeceased now," she thought. "But he won't be for long."