Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Robbery

Nothing quite like getting robbed first thing in the morning. It kinda sets the day’s tone, wouldn’t you say? At least we weren’t mugged. After all, it was only a lone thief. It was just petty thievery, not grand larceny. The amount stolen was of small value. Our thief was frugal, taking only what could be easily toted. Anyway, we didn’t miss it all that much.

It was bound to happen. It’s the law of probability at work. Such felonious occurrences are more common in difficult times. Thieves thrive where security is lax, entry is easy and the pickings are plentiful. Didn’t Sutton say he robbed banks “…because that’s where the money is?” Apparently our thief was acquainted with Willie’s logic.

This thief was a huge specimen, a fearsome brute on steroids. Forget trying to defend the concept of private property rights with these thugs. Discussions with barbarians fall on deaf ears. I did the smart thing, backing off, zipping my mouth and offering no further verbal threat to the intruder. Look, I’ve had run-ins with these types before. I always come out on the losing end. There’s no glory in a battle with savages. Besides, who needs to endure the brutality of mano-a-mano combat? Discretion is still the better part of valor.

We were once robbed big time in Atlanta by thugs from a roving trailer park gang that terrorized the neighborhood. Not only were they nasty but were crude as well. And they stunk! They plundered the house, looting it of everything from jewelry to guns and leaving the premises in a ravaged mess. Fortunately they left the electric toothbrush, most of the dog food and the huge boulder used to destroy the French door. Their stench remained for days!

The cops responded to the 911 call with usual promptness and wrote a report. “Why us?” I asked stupidly. “It was just your time,” the cop answered. Oh, just the answer I was looking for. I felt better immediately, having now been inducted into the “Just-Your-Time” hall of fame. “Get a big dog,” he added. Neither the goons nor the loot were found. But the insurance company did return my call, so there you go. We bought a Doberman the next week. We’ve been safe ever since…until today.

Today’s thief was methodical, and apparently quite skilled in the nefarious art of stealing. Our home had obviously been scoped out and targeted as an easy mark. Why else would a thief show up in broad daylight and brazenly just take his own sweet time in the larceny? But that’s exactly what happened. Fortunately nothing of real value was taken or damaged. The incident was over in less than five minutes.

Identifying such criminals in a line-up is impossible, although they do tend to run in packs and gangs, pillaging at will with seeming impunity. Not that it would have done much good, since the law only laughs at reports of such insignificant intrusions. We just chalked it up to another “just-our-time” rip-off.

I once had an office on a quiet street in Atlanta. One morning I came in and the entire back door had been ripped from its hinges. All that was stolen was an old black/white TV and my Gore-Tex rain gear. Oh, and he drank the six pack of Bud in the refrig and left the cans. This was not your average thief. He had some class, leaving me his street shoes in place of my new Adidas fast-starts. Hardly a fair trade, but it was a humorous gesture. Touché!

Today’s theft, however, paled with the thievery going on in Washington. Talk about feeling violated! Still, I’m a sucker, an easy touch, for the needy and the down and out. Clearly this thief was both. Quietly he came, quietly he left (I only assume it was a he)….can’t help but appreciate that. So I figured it was a pretty good trade off.

Besides, I don’t think we’ll miss what was taken. After all, how much water from my pool can a large horsefly drink?

Bud Hearn
July 29, 2010

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Snake Oil and Other Placebos

The night was unusually dark. Paul’s hand gripped my shoulder like a vice as I stood in the food store checkout line. He whispered furtively, “Have you ever had any Claxton moonshine?” I answered, “No, why do you ask?”

“Meet me in the parking lot
,” he said. I found him in a remote parking space, bending over an opened trunk. “Here,” he said, handing me a small Mason jar of amber colored liquid. “Try it, it’s guaranteed to cure what ails you. It was aged in a wooden “kag.”

I downed a small taste, remembering the Polish proverb, “Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.” Not too bad, I thought. So I took a big gulp. Bad move. It tasted like burnt charcoal and coursed through my body like a raging fire. Breathless, I shouted, “Whoa,” wondering if that which doesn’t kill us really makes us stronger. The fire transcended all pain in my body. “See?” he said. “I told you.”

As I recovered, I remembered the river boat trip we took in China. Midway in the excursion we developed a powerful thirst and were offered Chinese Snake Wine. It was a clear liquid in a gallon jug that came with the same promise...a panacea for all that ails you. Coiled in the bottom was a cobra, its menacing eyes glistening, daring us to take a swig. We did. It produced the same result as the moonshine.

Snake Oil, as a remedy for curing ailments, originated in China. Actually, there’s some truth to the promise. In addition to its power to persuade women to eat fruit, snakes do have certain bodily fats and oils that actually remediate inflammation and arthritic pains. It’s sold in Chinese pharmacies today. Of course, the local markets sell everything imaginable to cure ills, from bird nests to shark fins.

Most medicinal promises have a grain of truth. The snake oil theory, now debunked, was based on balancing the bodily humors (fluids). Methods like bleeding with live leeches were worse than the ailments treated. We seem to have some of those same leeches at work in our body politic today, but that’s another story. American ‘medicine men’ took to the countryside with wagon-loads of elixirs having exaggerated promises of cures. They contained mostly alcohol, which does a pretty fair job itself of instant well-being, often becoming habitual.

Modern day hucksters are peddling some of the same placebos with outlandish packaging and exaggerated claims. We have just voted on, and will soon elect, quite a number of these fraudsters. Like the traveling medicine shows of yore, these televised miracle-workers show up with humorous quotations, juggling acts and overblown rhetoric. They complete their acts with testimonials and talking heads to demonstrate cures. Worse, all these “performers” make a living from selling snake oil cure-alls. Americans will buy anything, it seems!

The word “placebo” has an interesting background. It comes from the Latin word, “placere,” meaning “to please.” Placebos often work. They trick the mind of the patient by getting them to believe that the treatment works. Their power of persuasion comes from the packaging and slick marketing campaigns. Yet at best they are but empty promises.

Of course we can blame the Chinese for causing a lot of this. Their remedies showed up in America during the building of the railroads. The Chinese also exported human labor to build it, a built-in customer base. Even to this day we continue to consume their exports.

But Americans have learned a trick or two from snake oil. We’re exporting some “Made in America” snake oil back to the Chinese. I think it’s called U. S. Treasury Certificates. You know, that fiat money we’re fecklessly printing. The T-bill promise-to-pay requires a whole lot of faith and belief in the claims made by our Washington Medicine Men. Only a fool would test the depth of that water with both feet!

But back to the moonshine. It’s in my refrigerator, what’s left that is. I must admit when I have any pain, I take a shot or two. Placebo or not, temporary relief is sometimes better than no relief at all…by whatever means.

Who knows what kind of political placebos we’re electing. Let’s just hope that the remedies they offer are not worse than the ailments they are meant to cure. We each have one vote…better use it wisely.

Bud Hearn
July 22, 2010

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Shelf Life

This morning my wife pulled a new carton of strawberries from the refrigerator and opened it. She stood stark still, hands on hips, looking at the plump berries. Something is never right when a woman has both hands on her hips. Men learn that lesson the hard way!

They looked OK, except for a strange green alien that’d taken up residence. Mold. It happens, especially on things with a short shelf life. I think I heard the carton speak, “Gotcha again!” She musta heard it, too. She fed the garbage disposal strawberries for breakfast.

She muttered something unintelligible under her breath and then said, “I’m never buying any more fruit that’s 2 for 1. I’m always suspect when things are marked down. There’s no such thing as a bargain; there’s always a reason things are cheap!” Nothing a man says in these situations will benefit him. I just grunted.

But she had a point. There’s a reason for everything. The other night I was munching on some Pop ‘Ems, those tiny, powdered sugar donuts by Entenmanns’s. The milk ran out, saving me from eating the entire bag. I read the section of “Nutrition Facts,” which is an oxymoron (only morons would waste time in such useless endeavors). Their chemical compositions have little nutritional value…who with half a brain cell would believe such bunk?

The “Ingredients” section was ghastly. A chemist with a microscope is required to read and understand such small print. The bag contained no shelf-life date, which is not unusual, since the first ingredient was enriched bleached wheat flour. Clorox for dessert anyone? Such flour never dies…as far as I know these donuts might have been 50 years old. Even vermin won’t touch the stuff…it has no food value. That’s probably why rats are used in lab experiments in place of humans. They’re smarter!

There’re reasons for long shelf lives. Sooner or later some rube who can’t read will wander by, attracted by the virginal white donuts, and scarf ‘em up. Since they never perish, they’ll last into the next millennium.

Not all things with long shelf life are necessarily bad. FM 96.9 Jacksonville plays 93 minutes of uninterrupted classic rock music. We’d be poorer without the long shelf life of REM, Rolling Stones, Elvis and BB King. O Kings, live forever!

Do you suppose that these donuts could have radioactive half-lives? Uranium 238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years! Carbon 14 has a half-life of 5,230 years. It’s used for dating archeological data. But Carbon 15 has a half-life of 2.5 seconds, about the same as my attention span. I once heard a landfill was excavated. Among the exhumation were hot dogs. Thanks to nitrite infusions, they’d remained in their original state for decades. Could hot dogs actually be radioactive isotopes?

Back to my wife’s comment about bargains. It reminded me of a story that’s popular among real estate circles. It’s had a pretty long shelf life itself, applicable in many diverse situations. I’ll pass it on.

Manny, a fish monger, bought a boatload of sardines for 10 cents a pound. He soon sold them to Abe for 20 cents a pound. Abe found Nat, who was looking for a bargain, and sold them to him for 30 cents a pound. Nat knew Hosmer was a bargain hound, so he sold the sardines to him for 40 cents a pound. Hosmer found Benny who owned a restaurant and sold him the same sardines for 50 cents a pound. Benny made plenty of money selling the sardines at retail to customers, except his customers got sick.

So the “bargain” came unwound. Benny, Hosmer, Nat and Abe demanded that Manny reimburse them for selling sardines with such a short shelf life. Manny, clearly schooled in the art of deception, said, “Boys, didn’t you know? Them sardines were for tradin’, not for eatin’.” Not a bad analogy for the financial messes we find ourselves in these days.

Well, you get the message. Like Mason once said to Dixon, “We’ve gotta draw the line somewhere.” I’ll conclude with this thought: Before you brag about your 2 for 1 bargain, remember my wife’s advice…”there’s always a reason things are cheap!” Caveat emptor, y’all.


Bud Hearn
July 15, 2010

Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Scar…A Lesson Learned

God won’t look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.” Elbert Hubbard

The Collision was violent. The bodies of two women lay sprawled upon the grass, writhing in pain. Bikes, twisted and scattered, lay in a disorderly array. Another body lay unconscious, his pooling blood a crimson contrast upon the sidewalk’s white concrete. That’d be me!

Like most, this accident was unintended, the consequence of speed, stupidity and insufficient sagacity. All were to blame. Fortunately the wounds were not unto death…this time. The women gathered their twisted metal and skulked away. Onlookers gawked as the EMTs hoisted my bloody body into the ambulance. Today only a knee scar remains. The lesson learned? Never have a run-in with two women at the same time!

Funny thing about scars…we all have them. Examine your body, and your mind, you’ll find a bunch of ‘em. What’s more, scars are better than old photos…we remember the details as if they happened yesterday. At last count I had 21 scars of various sizes and shapes. I remember the details of each one. How many do you have?

Take the pencil lead in my palm, for example. I sat behind a girl in a high school class. One day she wore a dress that tied in the back. I tied it to the desk, winking to my pals, waiting for the bell to ring. It did. She jumped up, along with the desk. We laughed uncontrollably. She was mortified. Like a woman scorned, she grasped her pencil as a dagger, attacking me viciously, stabbing my palm in revenge. Lesson here? Women with daggers are dangerous.

I had a friend who had no body hair as a youth. Body hair for boys was a big deal growing up…it signaled maturation. He was teased unmercifully as being a freak. He finally found a way to overcome nature’s unfortunate twist by the motto, “Hair won’t grow on steel.” He later became a stud, played football at Vandy. Lesson here? Don’t mess with a man with no body hair.

Scars are like badges…they let us know we’ve lived. Most physical scars ultimately heal, leaving us with another memory of the past. It’s fun to reminisce and recall the incidents. Over time scars take on a new life, a life of hyperbole and embellishment superior to photographs. The stories, like wine, just get better with age. Lesson here? Life’s the stage, you’re the actor…rebuttal is impossible.

We have mental scars, too. Some of these linger long past their appointed healing process. We harbor these scars inside us, telling ourselves it’s who we are. It’s like dragging around a huge bag of garbage. I did that once…dragging around a bag of mental rubbish. A wise friend recognized the scar and suggested, “Why lug all that refuse around? Dump the mental trash of the past and move on.” I did, never looked back. Lesson here? Nobody wants to be around your stinky landfill.

Some scars are hideous. Scars against humanity, like Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Normandy, World Trade Center, Gettysburg, for example. These ugly scars have been transformed from their horror to the redemption of humanity. Some scars always need to be visible.

People disguise scars. It’s easy. We dress ‘em up in garish outfits, like circus clowns, with the costumes of cars, houses, apparel, and jobs. But they’re still scars, and they’ll remain scars until they are disrobed and seen for what they are. Then the stigma quickly disappears. Lesson here? Prison doors open to the sunlight.

Alas, the scars of heartbreak may be the toughest to heal. Each has their own heartbreaks. Maybe it’s comforting to keep some of these wounds. My wife reminds me that “we’re only as happy as our unhappiest child.” Lesson? I really don’t know!

But I know this: some scars are prisons and can only be healed by Forgiveness...a Healing of the Memories. Forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others, all the time. It’s the key that unlocks the prison doors and sets the prisoner free.

Funny thing about scars…we all have ‘em. Show me yours, I’ll show you mine…and together we’ll move on from here (who the hell is Elbert Hubbard anyway?)

Bud Hearn
July 8, 2010

Thursday, July 1, 2010

The Price of Liberty

Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.” Patrick Henry

Thomas Jefferson penned what each American should memorize: the Preamble to The Declaration of Independence. He was 33 years old. Part of those famous words that undergirded the Constitution of the United States was:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.”

Each of these rights is subjective concepts, especially Liberty. Every person has their own idea of liberty. What’s mine? Yours? Without liberty, Life would be in jeopardy every hour, consisting of uncertainty, of chaos and hanging by a slender thread. The Pursuit of Happiness--the fruit of Liberty--would be defined by others…kings, tyrants, dictators, juntas, religious nutcases, thugs or outright Anarchists.

But this nation was founded by men with a higher vision, fearless, valiant in the face of death and unwilling to bear the chains of domination and economic slavery to the King of England. These men did not indulge themselves in the delusive phantom of hope of peace. They knew that revolutions for liberty succeeded not by great oratorical words of ideology, but by the shedding of blood. Brave men, these, willing to give their last full measure of devotion for Liberty. They are our fathers, the progenitors of this nation.

Such a man of Liberty, our friend, is among us today. His name is Colonel George Stapleton, US Army (Ret.). I sleep better knowing that men like Col. Stapleton are awake and keeping our shores from barbaric hordes.

On this shore in Neptune Park, situated on the St. Simons Sound, our huddled masses sat in the twilight of Veterans Memorial Day, May 31, 2010. It was an acclamation of liberty and a remembrance of its cost. A southerly wind, the spirit-voice of ancestral warriors, wafted through the commingled crowd. We were there to commemorate and honor veterans of conflicts past and present.

A lone flagpole loomed large in the park rotunda. Our national flag, the symbol of Liberty, flew proudly, beckoning us to acknowledge our collective heritage. Even John Phillip Sousa was there, at least ipso facto, lending his music to the Golden Isles Community Band.

A Marine Color Guard presented the colors, followed by Col. Stapleton, who placed a floral wreath in honor of the occasion. The pomp of it was humbling, as veterans from each branch of military service were recognized and applauded for their bravery and commitment to the cause of Liberty. It felt good knowing men and women of this ilk “had our backs.”

How can we put flesh on this abstraction of Liberty? The national icon is, of course, our flag. It’s not just a symbol of sentiment, nor simply an emblem of our commitment to Liberty. It’s more. It’s the embodiment of Liberty itself. When we look upon it, all of our history flashes before us. And what a history we have. From July 4, 1776 until today, it represents our continual pledge of Liberty, and our higher vision of freedom to all mankind. Salute this flag with pride!

Patrick Henry spoke these inspiring words on March 23, 1774 to the Virginia delegates to the First Continental Congress:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

My fellow Americans, Liberty’s neither cheap nor achieved once and for all time. It’s generational, a struggle without cessation. It’s only by our personal and collective commitment to eternal vigilance that can keep its flame alive. This is what Liberty is all about. This is the real cost of Liberty.

Sing with me now these words:

“Oh, say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Yes, Liberty is a profound abstraction. How do you define it? And what price will you pay for it?

Bud Hearn
July 2, 2010