Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, September 20, 2019

Batteries


What’s in a man’s pocket? Does anybody really want to know?

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Men walk around with their hands shoved in their front pockets all the time like they’re trying to hide something. Or maybe they just simply don’t know what to do with their hands. Pockets are as good a place as any to stash them for the time being.

Hands can sometimes be a problem. It’s dangerous to have loose hands. Not only are they prone to mischief, but they can pick up germs by the millions by fiddling with magazines with swimsuit photographs or opening doors. Wisdom is to always open public doors with an elbow or just simply lean against it. Sometimes I back into a door to open it. If you back in, it looks like you are walking out. Idiosyncrasies abound.

Have you ever wondered what treasures these pockets might be hiding? Large rolls of cash, protective talismans, knives, guns or other unmentionables? Maybe you have never thought about it, or care. Not your business what’s in another man’s pockets, you say. But you lie. You really want to know.

This morning I shoved my hand into yesterday’s jeans to empty the pockets. Like a blind man groping a familiar wall for direction, I find the usual suspects occupying their assigned space: a pen with the bank logo (they’re free) and a small bottle of eyewash. But then, something else: two small batteries, both dead as a doornail.

You might find it strange for someone to be walking around with two dead batteries in their pocket, like by some strange alchemy they will miraculously come to life. Let me help you understand…they’re there to remind me to get new ones. They’ve passed from life unto death. And nothing’s more worthless than a dead battery in a flashlight.

Remembering things is not as easy at this age. I used to keep a legal pad handy, filled with my list of things to do. I later found out that the bigger the pad, the longer the list, the less that got done. So, I converted to the smaller post-its stuffed into my shirt pocket. Hence the cliché, less is best.

We have our own peculiarities when it comes to remembering things. Forget the string-tied-to-the-finger routine. There are more creative ways, like Siri, Alexi, iPhone dings, and throwing notes on the floor at the door of your office.

My daddy always had at least two things in his pocket: a sharp pocketknife and loose change. His change was always sufficient to buy a coke from the cooler, but he threatened bodily harm if I touched his knife. Real men in that era all carried knives. It was the true sign of manhood, or so it seemed.

Now I don’t carry a knife, having discovered the pen is mightier than the sword. It can sign deposit tickets or write checks, even contracts in a hurry. I don’t know anyone now who thinks knife fighting is good sport.

To be honest, I don’t even care too much about loose change. I toss it in an old Choc-full-of-nuts coffee tin which, when it’s full, brings about $85 at the grocery store. Less, of course, the 10% usury rate they charge to convert to bills. Loose change is like dead batteries…what good is it anymore but to take up space in your pocket? It’s essentially as useless as a dead battery.

Sorry. I’ve drifted so far from my subject of batteries I find myself off in a writer’s ditch of confusion. Bear with me.

There’s a lot of discussion, and frustration associated with the short shelf life of batteries. Tesla is having a hard time selling cars running on battery power alone. I saw recently a plug-in station being run by diesel fuel. Try that on for irony.

Of course, with the Green Movement assault, batteries will soon power everything. We’ll all be wearing battery packs on our back to catch the sun’s rays. Finally, an end to dead batteries of all sorts. I can hardly wait for president Warren’s subsidy to arrive at my door.

Here’s a little-known trick. Spend $2 and save $40 bucks. Hack into a 12-volt battery and you’ll find 8 tiny 1.5 volt ‘button’ batteries. These tiny batteries will power five or six small flashlights. Google can show you how.

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But today I’m going to replace my dead batteries and unload my front pocket. That’s after I recharge my own battery at Starbucks.

What’s in your pocket today?


Bud Hearn
September 20, 2019


Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Hurricane Dorian…It Might be a Metaphor


About this time last week, we were warned the gates of hell were about to open. Escape while there’s time, they said, run for the hills. It’s coming, the hurricane. Evacuate, don’t look back. Save life and limb; don’t be like Lot’s wife who looked back. You know what happens when you fall for that backward glance.

Dorian the son of perdition, is its name. Formerly named Diablo, it was changed at the last minute so as not to suggest anything demonically sinister. Weather channel groupies were freaked out already and didn’t need any extra adrenaline.

No time to waste, the tv blasted. Dorian is on the way up the Atlantic coastline, promising to bring its Category 5 destruction with it. Of course, Jim and the weather team had prepped us for the horror to come about ten days earlier. As it approached the mainline, the dire warnings proved prescient. It left a wrath of destruction in Freeport, Abaco and Marsh Harbor.

The mass exodus and diaspora began, clogging roads and creating frenetic pandemonium. Lacking rain or wind sufficient to frame cinematic scenes, tv reporters were hard-pressed for excitement and resorted to interviews with harried gas shoppers and Walmart water purchasers. Exciting photos of wave foam blowing across vacant sands set something less of a tragic scene. After the Bahamas, you might say Dorian lacked drama.

Natural disasters are prime opportunities for advertisers on weather channels. They have even taken to choreographing the various scenes with music appropriate to situation. Drumbeats added to the urgency while trumpets and violins bring a heightened crescendo to the impending end times. Hand it to the advertising gurus, they know how to squeeze the utmost farthing from acts of God.

Dorian is the third hurricane in four years to head up the coast. Something’s clearly going on. It reminds me of the ancient prophesy by the prophet Haggai and later retold in the book of Hebrews:

Yet once more I shake not only the earth but the heavens as well; and this saying, ‘Yet once more,’ signifies the removing of the things that are shaken, as things that are made, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” Now meditate on this for a while.

Of course, no hurricane is a meditative matter. And anyone foolish enough to ‘ride it out’ has no brain from which to meditate. But being human, we Georgians waited anxiously to see the next card, glued to our tv’s for every hour-by-hour update. Leave or stay, we only decide at the last minute. We stayed, camping out at my brother’s home.

As it happened, Dorian sashayed about 100 miles out following the Gulf Stream. It swept the beaches clean and blew us a kiss as it passed by, sort of a reminder of hey, you owe me one.

Haggai was not alone in prophesy it seems. POTUS even found a way to light up the twitter lines. He prophesied that Alabama was the real destination of Dorian. But try as he might, he was unable to force a change of direction of the winds.

Nevertheless, the ruse apparently worked. While his sanity was again in question, his aids secretly brokered a trade deal with China. Today we own Hong Kong, and California has been ceded to China.

When we returned to our home the next day, we found nothing, just twigs and leaves scattered around. Not a limb was broken, not a tree had fallen. The Haggai text indeed proved a point. I sat on the porch and thought about it. We were blessed this time. Escaped what others did not.

This morning the butterflies float carelessly in slow motion over the flower garden. Two hummingbirds hover in midair, inspecting the late summer flowers and the cardinals fight over the feeder portals. All is peaceful…for now.

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Twigs and leaves’ give affirmation to Haggai’s prophesy. The winds blow, the rains fall and the weak are shaken. But the strong remain. As in nature, so in life.

Dorian is past, but its metaphor lingers. Twigs and leaves…It’s something to consider after a hurricane.


Bud Hearn
September 11, 2019