Celebrity Deaths Who Cares?

This week three celebrities died, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson. They died in that order like Death was doing some celebrity countdown. Each one was a bigger celebrity than the previous. When the week culminated in Jackson’s death, hysteria filled the air and digital waves. Twitter and Facebook spiked with everything from the major networks stories down to the smallest “I remember my first kiss was to a Michael Jackson song” tribute on MySpace.

Do I mourn these people. Sure I do, in a John Donne For Whom the Bell Tolls sort of way, sure. But I didn’t know these people and neither did the 99.9% of the people who pretended their deaths were the end of an era. No matter what fond memories you have of The Tonight Show, Charlie’s Angels, or the Bad album, you didn’t know any of these people. All the internet equivalent of throwing yourself on their caskets does only one thing. It makes me sad…for you.

Over 140,000 other people died today. Their lives were just as important as Michael Jackson’s. They just aren’t in your iPod. Do you mourn their deaths? This year over 300,000 women died in child birth leaving 300,000 motherless children. Many of those same children died of malnutrition or curable diseases before their fifth birthday. In fact, 5.3 million children under five died this year alone. Did you mourn them? Did you even donate to a charity that was trying to prevent their deaths? 22 million abortions were performed this year. Less than 3% were done because the mother was at risk. That’s more than one abortion every 3 seconds. Did you try to help those girls in distress? Did you offer them an alternative? Did you just picket a clinic and make them feel worse about their predicament? More than half a million lonely people committed suicide this year. Did you do anything to reach out to any of them and try to prevent their deaths?

I’d venture to say, someone in your neighborhood had a family member pass away this year. Did you take them food or even send a condolence card? I was expressing these feelings to my sister-in-law this morning. A member of her church died this week. She didn’t know them very well, but she vowed to at least attend and help out with food or the nursery so others could mourn properly. That is how you deal with death. That is real. That is tangible. That is mourning.

Sappy, crappy, faux feelings for someone you never even met because you feel they touched your life doesn’t impress me. It makes me kind of sad. There are people on your street who could change your life in infinitely more meaningful ways than a few entertainers, if you would just let them. When was the last time your even spoke to your neighbor? Do you even know their names? If you got their mail, would you know where to return it without looking at the address?

Do us both a favor. Don’t post another stupid ode to Michael Jackson on your blog unless you meet a neighbor you haven’t met. No more fake feelings on Facebook about Farah until you visit a nursing home or hospice this week. Stop acting like you know these people when you don’t even know the names of the people you work with every day. Make death personal and deal with the people involved face to face. Then you’ll have something of substance to talk or write about.

You can check these and more statistics at the World-o-Meter.

Water. Cool Clear Water.

Summer is officially here. The temperature is pushing triple digits (Fahrenheit) and the talking heads on the news casts are doing their summer heat precautions shtick again. If my digital weather station is to be believed, the humidity inside my house is 71%.

But that’s OK. After living 28 in Alabama, you learn a few things about how to beat the heat. My grandparents live 80 years in L.A. (Lower Alabama) without air conditioning. They pickup and passed on a few tricks for survival, too.

Rule #1: Water. Drink it. Drink it all day. If you want to change it up, drink decaffeinated iced tea. Because…
Rule #2: Lay off the caffeine and alcohol. They are diuretic and sap the body of water.
Rule #3: Take breaks. Take it easy and rest in the shade often.

This third rule is why Yankees characterized Southerners as slow. We’re not slow. We just don’t move too quickly because of the heat. We’re smart that way. Life goes on. Chores still need doin’. We just know how to work with the heat and not against it.

Just to prove how important water is, here are some before and after pictures of my Angel Trumpets. In the before shot, you can see how the leaves are curling and drooping. The after pictures were taken only five minutes after a good soaking with water, just plain old water.

Plant one. Before.	Plant one. After.
Plant two. Before.	Plant two. After.

My advice for beating the summer heat is simple. Be a plant. Don’t move around to much. Let the breeze move you when possible. Drink plenty of water all day long. However you choose to beat the heat, stay hydrated.

Closing in on the Odd Little Happy

Weather is one of those things that we are hard-wired for. It’s our base brain which responds to weather. Sure, you can intellectualize it. You can quantify it with temperature and pressure. But weather is as primeval as fear, food, and sex. You’re not buying this, are you?

Think about it. What do we talk about? Our fears, good food, great sex, and the weather. “Nice day?” is one of the most common introductory phrases spoken. Like a fire, we stare at the sunrise. Who hasn’t laid on a hillside and made shapes in their mind from passing clouds? If we’re lucky, sometimes we have the perfect dinner, stare at the sunset, and follow it with great sex. See, your primeval brain can have a great night out.

We’re wired to pay attention to the weather like our lives depend on it and they do. Just like our ancestors, we need to know when to take shelter from a storm and when the season is right to plant our crops. Even our moods are affected by how much sunlight we see. People at extreme latitudes suffer more depression in the shortened days of winter. We should feel sorry for them, but during those long night, they’re having great sex so screw them, literally.

So where’s the odd little happy in all this talk about the weather? Today was gray and overcast. There was brilliant, ozone-creating lightening and rolls of echoing thunder this morning. It rained most of the day. True to the old saying, “Don’t like the weather? Wait a minute,” by 5 o’clock, the sky was clear and blue. The birds were back singing after hunkering down all day. The dogs weren’t afraid to go outside again and stopped peeing on the rugs. Things changed that quickly.

Some complain about the rain, but I don’t. I didn’t have to mow the lawn today or water it either. Free, nitrogen-rich water literally fell from the sky. Some complain about the sun, but I don’t. I just put on my sunglasses, pour a tall iced tea, sit on my deck, and took fabulous in the good light. Whichever the weather, you just have to learn to take the good with the good.

While your chasing the odd little happy, beware of reindeer-munching, semi-depressed Eskimos looking for a one-night stand and keep your eye on the sky. The odd little happy may be just behind the next cloud.

Following the Odd Little Happy

After yesterday’s post, I got several comments here and at the Facebook version which is autofed.  Over at Facebook, Cindy Gunnin commented using my new favorite phrase, “those odd little happys.” Then Michy asked for more pictures of my flowers. I decided that it’s not in me to deprive people of the small beauty I’ve tried to create. Therefore, today, I shall grant Ms. Michy’s wish and offer up a few out-of-focus shots of my flowers.  My digital camera really sucks for close ups so this is the best I could do.

I start out simply with the two-week-old Angel Trumpet my wife bought. This is her attempt to join in the grand experiment. The arrangement we apparently have is she will buy plants on-line or from QVC and I’ll do all the work potting and caring for them. I don’t remember signing up for that, but I’m sure she has some paperwork somewhere.	Angel Trumpet
Feather and Verbena Leftover Feather and Verbena	I emptied the window boxes. They were full of sundry perennials that I transplanted to the front yard. Sorry, I didn’t take pictures of that. My wife complained that she couldn’t enjoy the deck without “her” window boxes so I stuck some Feather and Verbena in them. I’ve discovered that Verbena is just about impossible to kill.
You may remember (Who am I kidding? You don’t remember. Here’s a link.) that I did a little concrete work to fix a downspout/drainage problem I had. I stuck a bunch of stuff there, but the Petunias really took off and took over. Sadly, the Dahlia were lost. Something about needing full-sun and the Petunias blocking the light.	Attack of the monster Petunias
Impatiens around a pine	Lastly, here are the Impatiens (pink) and Begonia (white) I planted in the front yard. I started with the Impatiens, but thought they had drown in the Spring monsoon we had. I went back and filled in the gaps with Begonia.
Unbeknownst to me, I have a green thumb and everything shot up together. The resulting bed under my Dogwood is pretty impressive, in my humble opinion. Here’s a couple of more angles. You decide.	More of the front bed

Impatiens (pink) and Begonia (white)

Here’s a parting shot of the same bed. I hope even virtual flowers made you smile today. Today’s odd little happy for me, in addition to sharing my flowers, was seeing the first lightening bug of the Summer.

When Do I Get My Red Rubber Ball?

Yesterday, I stopped by the Dollar General on the way home from work. Why? Cheap coloring books my wife could use as quilting patterns. Smart, no? But that’s not the point of this thought. It was the five-year-old girl with her mother, checking out ahead of me, that really got me thinking.

The child was proudly holding a 10-inch red ball. I think it had some cartoon character on it, maybe Dora the Explorer. She was so elated that mommy was buying her that ball. She repeatedly expressed her appreciation. For a moment, she had me convinced that $2.50 could buy happiness. I wanted to go back and buy a ball.

I wanted to go further back and be that innocent, to be in a place where something as simple as a red ball could make me that happy. It was a moment of clarity and confusion. It was a moment where my heart knew exactly how that little girl felt. In that same moment, my head couldn’t understand why I wasn’t as jubilant as that child. After all, I’m in the prime of my life. I’m earning more money than I ever have. My kids are grown and sort of out of the house. I have a wife whom I love and loves me more than grits. I have two little Chihuahuas who think me walking through the door is grander than the sunrise. The bank is letting me live in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. The bank even lets me park a new car in the driveway. My yard is full of colorful flowers that I can point to and say, “I did that.” Thanks to years of hard work and steady insurance payments, I even have a new roof over my head. But somewhere along the way, I lost the ability to enjoy a simple red rubber ball.

Sure that little girl may lose her ball tomorrow. She may forget about it in a week, but for a few hours yesterday, that 10-inch sphere made her the happiest girl on the planet. When do I get my red rubber ball? When do I get that second chance at innocence? Is there a switch in my brain I can throw to tell my heart it’s time to be happy again? I know money can’t buy happiness, but I’m seriously considering taking $2.50 to the Dollar General tomorrow just to buy a ball. I’ll bounce it off my head a few times and see if that switch flips.

Or maybe, I’ll just be grateful for what I have. That was a pretty good list I just wrote. For someone, any one of those things would be their red ball. I’m going to go pet my wife and kiss my dogs.

Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.

Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Why did I get that Twitter account? Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Haven’t even opened my Facebook page in a week. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Paid bills. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Have no money left for fun. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Money would be good. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Got to go back to work tomorrow. Guess what? I’ll be bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.

How’s with you? Smily happy fun game show good time?

Me? I’m bored.  You know “Bored” was a great Young Ones episode. I should go find that. Maybe I won’t be bored.

Recycling, Going Green, Being Poor

I was going to write more about the insanity at Associated Content tonight, but every time I think about it, my eyes cross, my blood pressure rises, and the dogs start to howl.  Instead, allow me to share a simple little project which exemplifies how thinking green gets under your wallet & sometimes trips you down memory lane.

If my grandparents were alive today, they would be the greenest people on the planet. They recycled everything. Granny canned and preserved all sorts of fruits and vegetables, all which they grew. Everything got repaired by Papa. Trash was a rare thing. It was a very simple life they lived. They were farmers. They were poor.

By today’s standards they were very, very green.  Recycling was not a choice. It was a necessity. My dad was the same way and slowly I’ve discovered everything old is new again. I’m not near the pack-rat my dad was, but I’ve started to look at everything with a “how can I recycle this” attitude. It’s not that I’m a dyed-in-the-all-natural-sheared-from-free-range-sheep-wool Green freak. It’s just that I’m cheap. Here’s the project that proves how cheap I am.

Just as most people keep a grocery list and jot down items as they run out or just have a moment, I keep a Lowe’s list. You read correctly. I jot down items I need at the hardware store as I come across a repair for which I don’t have the correct parts. On that list I’ve had “hooks for hat rack” for the last couple of weeks. The empty wall in the laundry room was a perfect place to put up some hooks to hang my hats. I have about a dozen hats and the cheapest six-hook bar I found at Lowe’s was about $14. I intended to buy a couple and utilize that empty laundry room wall until I found something squirreled away in the garage.

While looking through scrap wood for a step stool I wanted to build (yet another item I didn’t want to spend $60 on and for which I found the boards from an old entertainment center I had disassembled), I found a tool bar. It was something I bought three years ago thinking I would hang the tools in the shed. I hadn’t thought that out very well. My shed doesn’t really have a vertical wall high enough to mount a board like that. But the cheap, green CFL light switched on over my head. This board-and-peg bar would make a great hat rack!

I grabbed some paint, gave it a few strokes, found some screws, tapped in the pegs, and woke my wife up at 10:30 PM with the noise from my power driver.

Standard tool rack

Now a lovely hat rack

Since finding a new place to hang my hat, I’ve pried my wallet opened and sprung for a level. After using my new level to hang a couple of pictures, I decided to check my work. It turns out I have a pretty good eye. The hat rack was dead-on level.

A hat rack is a simple thing, but using what was supposed to be a tool rack as a hat rack and not cluttering a landfill with a idea gone wrong, is green. Before you toss it out, think about my hat rack. Think about my Papa. He’d be proud of such a simple thing. He was green before there was green, not because of his ideology, but because of his economy.

When green becomes economically feasible, that’s when it will really catch on. In the current economy simple things like converting a tool rack to a hat rack are becoming things of necessity. Forcing people to be green with guilt or taxes only pushes people so far. The average person will only find the green path if led by their wallets. Follow me! I’m so lazy and cheap, I’ll find the shortest, easiest path.

Not Liking What I’m Seeing At Associated Content

Associated Content (AC) has gone through some major changes and problems lately. I’m not getting a good vibe from it either. As ya’ll know, I’ve been publishing with AC for about three years. I’ve stuck with them through the bad and the good. I’ve always been honest when I express my feelings about Associated Content. I praise them for what they do right and call their mistakes what they are.

Lately, AC has created several glitches. Some they have corrected. Some have been corrected, but subsequently reappeared. Some they refuse to acknowledge. As always the communications, both internally and externally, appear lacking. The most serious problem right now,one AC refuses to admit is a problem, is the de-indexing of AC articles.

The problem started in late 2008. AC writers (note, I refuse to buy into AC’s new, dehumanizing terminology and call their members “sources”) began noticing that Google would index articles as it always did, but then de-index them. The articles would show up about a week later with a much lower placement. To add insult to injury, the newly index article would have its abstract jumble with HTML code. Many articles did not get indexed by Google at all. I noticed this when the weekly Google alerts I had set up, stopped coming. When they did trickle in, the links were only to blogs and other sites that mentioned my articles, never the AC article.

The forum was awash in complaints about the problem, but they Associated Content staff seldom reads their own forum. The one guy who did participate in the forum, the one guy who kept members informed of problems and the status of the solutions, was let go from AC today along with the AC staffer who ran AC’s blog.

I’m not a conspiracy nut. I like to think there are simple, logical reasons for happenings in this universe, but the time line of events all point to one conclusion…AC has lost its mojo. The two things AC had going were its built-in audience and a special relationship with Google. That relationship has been debated and speculated numerous times, but the debate is moot. The love affair between AC and Google is over.

Here’s a brief time line that led me to this conclusion.

• Late 2008, the de-indexing of AC articles starts.
• December 2008, some AC members think the problem is a change to the article’s link because AC adds a “?cat=#” to all articles.
• January-ish 2009, AC members start comparing notes and posting examples.
• February-ish 2009, AC ignores the forum chatter completely.
• Late February 2009 AC begins deleting articles due to “questionable content and poor grammar/spelling.” This unannounced rule change, though probably for the best, was an attempt to get back in the good graces of Google.
• March-ish 2009, AC says they’re looking into it.
• April-ish 2009, AC says there is no problem with articles being indexed. AC says it’s working like always and they don’t control what Google does anyway.
• May 2009, despite dozens of forum posts and hundreds of emails with examples of the problem, AC continues to say, “There is no problem.”
• May 2009, after getting a new CEO and $6M in investment funds, AC fires some of the people who have been the best communication link for their writing members.

Conclusions:

• AC lost it’s Google mojo.
• AC doesn’t want to admit they no longer have a special relationship with Google
• AC has new management and is trying to clear out the old guard
• Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

Given the facts, I don’t think any of this is a random collection of events. AC is changing. AC is hiding something. AC isn’t looking so well these days. Google has devalued the AC domain so severely, it now just ignores articles posted there. If the average surfer can’t located an AC article with a search, traffic will be reduced significantly. No traffic? No per-click payments. AC’s biggest draw disappears. It’s really no wonder AC doesn’t want to admit this is a problem.  If Google is going to ignore the AC domain, there is really no incentive to put up with the other glitches and formatting limitations.  I can have more formatting options and complete control over my writing here on my blog and still get ignored by Google.  If the pay is the same, why bother jumping through AC’s hoops?

That’s my take on the situation.  It’s not one I jumped to without some serious thought. It’s one that fits the facts.

P.S. Sam we’re going to miss you, but I think you may have gotten off the AC ship at just the right time. I’m sure there are many AC members who will be following you. AC is becoming more trouble than it’s worth.

Parts One and Two of Three of the Rain Barrel Project

While waiting for the roofers to repair my plumbing flanges, which will spawn my bathroom ceiling and wall repair, I got antsy and started my drainage fix. I call it the rain barrel project. Ultimately, I’ll have a Kentucky whiskey barrel turned rain barrel, but for now it’s part concrete, part flower bed.

The Problem
The problem was a pesky down spout. It empties at the front corner of my garage. More accurately, after fifteen years of rain, it drilled a hole clear to the base of the foundation. I needed to fill the hole and keep the water out. My solution is a little concrete, some flowers, and eventually the rain barrel. Not only do I solve the foundation problem, I get free water for the new flowers.

The problem patch. Note the down spout on the left.

Part One: Concrete
The area in question is a 4′ x 2.5′ patch of earth encased by the garage brick, driveway, and L-shaped front walk. Not much to work with and just enough to allow the water to cause a problem. I dug up the half closest to the house and repacked the dirt with an 8″ x 8″ tamper. The solid Alabama red clay is a very tough water barrier. Once firmly packed up to the bottom of the four-inch-thick walk, I poured in 160 pounds of Quikrete. Here are the results (Those aren’t worms, by the way. They’re immature pine cones):

After pouring concrete.

Part Two: The Flower Bed
I dug the remaining dirt down to fifteen inches being careful to leave that good solid clay on all sides. Then it was off to Lowe’s for some top soil, potting soil and a little color. Here’s a little tip. Holes are always bigger than they look, but math doesn’t lie. Measure the hole and calculate the volume so you don’t come home with too little soil. At 2.5 ft.², my hole needed just over 5 cubic feet of soil. Always buy a little extra to fill in as it settles.

I used a 3:2 ratio of top soil to potting soil. Since both are sold in 1 cubic foot bags, it was easy to decide how many bags to buy because I did the math before going to the store. I only wish I had remembered to take my wallet with me. I had to park the carts and zip home. For some reason, they won’t let you take it all home on a promise to return with the money.

With a few terracotta pots as place holders for the rain barrel, I’m 2/3 of the way to completion. I poked in some verbena, dahlia, columbine (red and purple), marigolds, petunias, and a few surprises for later. Here are the results so far. I didn’t get done in time to catch the sun for these pictures. Pardon my flash.

A long shot.

My place holder pots

Oh, pretty colors

I moved a couple of solar lights into the mix. They were previously in a spot that didn’t really get enough sun to power them. Next month, I’ll order the rain barrel and get some bed-edging to keep the soil from washing away. Yep, should have thought of that when I went back to get my wallet.

Before and After: The Addiciton Continues

The Lowe’s addiction is growing. I ruined a perfectly good massage with fix-it projects yesterday.

It started when my wife wanted a facial and hair cut. I knew I’d have time to kill so I scheduled a massage at the same time. I was done long before they even started talking about hair. I needed a hair cut too, but they couldn’t work me in. While she was getting the works, I had time to go down the road, get a cut, and pickup a few things a Lowe’s. Drain grate and elbow, check. One-hundred and sixty pounds of concrete mix, check. Soil tamper, check New light fixture for the dining room, check. New chair for the deck set, check.

After I pick up my gorgeously new bride, we still went for lunch at Terra Nova’s — great Italian food, by the way — and stopped at the grocery store for a prescription and a few items. By the time we returned home, the light was faded too much to tackle the light fixture replacement. The circuit it was on took out all the surrounding lights so I had to wait for a sunny day.

I figured there was just enough day left to do the drain replacement. I gathered the necessary tools and opened the garage. A roller fell off. I lost ten minutes of light fixing the door roller, but was undeterred. After just a little digging, the new grate was in place and tamped down solidly. Since I had all the digging tools at hand, I figured I could at least prepare the spot I wanted to concrete.

The digging went much more quickly than I planned and the next thing I knew I was mixing and pouring concrete. In case you’re wondering, two eighty-pound bags of concrete undo a $45 massage in about 10 minutes.

So it’s Easter and I barely rose from the bed. It took another trip to Lowe’s to get longer screws for the light fixture. The ones included were a 1/4″ too short. Here’s the before and after. Gone is the ugly, low hanging chandler. Now we have an out-of-the-way faux-Tiffany complete with CFL for power saving.

Before: the ugly chandelier

After: Cute Tiffany with CFL

Some one stop me, but not before I finish the project the concrete started. I’ll be putting in a rain-barrel and planting some flowers in the un-concreted area. Yeah, yeah, I’ll take pictures.