SUNDAY FUNDAY - APRIL 11, 2021

 

SUNDAY FUNDAY - APRIL 11TH, 2021

WOW - WE ARE GETTING TO DO THINGS IN GROUPS!!

(Almost an April Fool’s Day analysis)

So, it is getting to be time to move on.  So, how can groups operate in a post COVID world?  A rules committee was formed as follows:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy 

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Disease Control, CDC

Dr. John William Hellerstedt, Texas Department of Health Commissioner 

Dr. Karen White, Civilian advisor to the President on Health Rules for Groups (you know this isn’t real when you see that name)

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When you come to your organization/church/sports park/whatever starting on May 1st

When you arrive, you will go into a detox chamber (like the astronauts did after returning from space.). You will be sprayed, and totally disinfected.

Your clothes will be dropped off as you clean and then also will have each and every fiber (and atom) disinfected).  You will be given a hazmat suit to wear while watching the game (or attending church or even playing golf)

You can select a hazmat suit of your particular color choice (as long as it is blah gray). These will all be connected to a portable oxygen tank - preprogrammed with two hours of oxygen (mixed with a 0.01 solution of chlorine bleach).  

NOTE - if you get excited about your team scoring and you breathe excitedly, you may use up your oxygen quickly, so don’t get excited.

Your hazmat suits will be equipped with hearing devices and with microphones to speak.  The coordinator can mute your suit - or you get changing the settings to allow small group conversations (so in church, you will be muted, at a baseball game, you can talk to friends - but no cheering)

If you are at a sporting event, you may purchase beer and sandwiches, but you may NOT eat them.  To eat or drink, you would have to remove part of your hazmat suit!!

Also, while you are at your event your vehicles will be totally cleaned and disinfected (after all, you don’t want germs!!)

The entire building and block around the event will be blocked off by CDC forces, and totally disinfected before the event, and the CDC forces will be armed with rubber bullets (that will not penetrate your hazmat suit.)

You must bring your vaccination record and verification of your immunization to every event.  A vaccination passport will soon be issued if you have received the appropriate shots.

At the end of your event, the process will be repeated, and you will get your clothes returned to you, you will return the hazmat suits.

And, because of the extra expense, you must pay $10,000 per person to Dr. Karen White (preferably in cash - $20 bills!!!) to cover the hazmat suits, oxygen, CDC forces.  

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Okay - this is not true, but just a late April Fool’s Joke.  (WOW - has the novel “1984” finally come?)

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Laughter is the brush that sweeps away

the cobwebs of the heart.

Mort Walker

(Trivia - who was Mort Walker?)

 

Rules for Happiness: 

Something to do, 

Someone to love, 

Something to hope for.

Immanuel Kant

(Trivia - who was Immanuel Kant)

 

You can’t buy happiness but you can buy ice cream.

And that’s kind of the same thing.

Anonymous

 

Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon.

Winnie the Pooh

(Trivia Who wrote the Winne the Pooh books)

*****

One week down in April.  

The other day I say something that reminded me of an old April joke:

April Showers bring May Flowers - and what do Mayflowers bring -people moving to your neighborhood.  Mayflower was a major moving company at one time - and the other day I saw a moving truck that said “Mayflower Moving”.

I think moving is more prevalent today.  In my grandparent’s generation, there was little moving.  In my grandparents' case, they moved once when they were in the early 70s to a smaller one-level house.  My parents moved three times (until into their 80s).  I’ve (we’ve) moved several times, from Keokuk Iowa to Winona Minnesota, to Gresham Oregon (and two locations there), to Madison, South Dakota (and three houses there), to Hamden, Connecticut (and only one house there), and then to Leander Texas (and then I was moved out to my apartment).

I think several of you have moved more frequently than I did.  And, traveled more than I have.  

I’ve been in all the United States ‘states’ except one (see Trivia at the bottom).

And, most of us will move again.  Some of us may move to senior housing, or to assisted living in the future - who knows!!!

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My parents moved to assisted living and they really enjoyed that.  How many meals have you prepared over your many years of life (and marriage)?  For my parents, It was nice for them to have a comfortable room, meals, companions down the hall (instead of driving), and activities.  

I do have to tell you about my saintly mother!!!  She cheated at BINGO!!!!  She developed macular degeneration and by her mid-90s, was fairly well functionally blind. She had two bingo cards that she had memorized (which I thought was a significant thing for a 95-year-old).  They played at their assisted living facility for the (tiny) bite-sized candy bars.  It had been all afternoon and hadn’t won, so she slipped a marker on one of her cards so she could say she had a bingo!!  (Not that she couldn’t have bought bags of candy, but it is special to “win” occasionally when you are in your 90s!!)

Now that I am reminded, she also cheated at solitaire.  When I was maybe 10 or so, she would sit on the floor in our living room and pull out a deck of cards that were hidden under the sofa shirt. She would play solitaire - and if she got stuck, she would look through the cards to find the one she needed, and keep playing - until she got stuck again - or won!!!  (Gee, you can’t cheat like that in the online versions of solitaire!!!)

I guess I’m writing about my mother and my parents today - so I’ll continue.  My father was a jokester and my mother was the ‘straight man’ for his jokes.  He was bald at an early age.  My sister and I saw their wedding picture and asked “Who’s that man with Mom?” (answer - Dad before he lost his hair!!).  With his bald head, he wore hats - baseball hats, berets, but no cowboy hats.  

One day he was talking to my mother about his new hat.  He asked, “Don’t you think $20 is a pretty high price for this hat?”. (a very cheap looking baseball cap)  She was amazed “Woody White, that is highway robbery, you take that hat back and get your money back”.  Finally, he said, “I only spent $2 for that cap, but I agree with you that $20 is a pretty high price for this hat”.  That got her fuming and she stammered, and finally blurted “Woody White, you’re a BASTARD”.  My mother never swore and that took my father by surprise that she called him a bastard.  When he regained his composure he asked her “Helen White, where did you learn that language?”  And she answered, “From King Lear as he had a bastard son”.  She had to go back to school to get her bachelor’s degree to keep teaching first grade, and somehow ended up as an English major and was taking a Shakespeare class.

They were married for about 69 years.  My father died at age 97 and my mother outlived him by dying at age 98.  They were great parents to my sister and I.

(As you know, I’m a little different.  My wife and I were married 46 years before she divorced me.  There is some longevity in marriages.  How long have you been married?  I still view my vows of for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health as valid - but she was correct as she said “He’s not the man I married!!!”)  [Some day I am going to tell that story].

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STORY (to go with the picture)

Pictured are the massive war tubas of the 87th Acoustic Brigade, Moldavian 1st Army, before the unsuccessful attack on the city of Müd during the Third Balkan War, 1908. It is said that these gigantic instruments played fortissimo could knock a flight of geese from the sky at 15 kilometers. The piece de Guerre of the day was reported to be Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in F minor, transcribed for war tuba and barrage trombone by the young Wilhelm Furtwängler, who, as a noted conductor later in the century, went on to more significant victories in Europe’s concert halls.

The intent of such powerful W.M.D.s (Weapons of Musical Destruction) was, naturally, to render enemy soldiers, tone-deaf mindless zombies, unable to hear orders and fit only for filling empty symphony halls during new music concerts. Where the original notion of war music came from is unknown. Possibly the first use came in the early 18th century with the composition of the war tune that came to be known as Pachelbel’s “Cannon”, which, as all students of war music know, kills by ennui rather than aural violence.

It is known that Major-General Musislav Smertch was inspired to experiment with war music by a particularly invigorating performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture in Moscow which, typical for late Czarist Russia, featured live fire during the cannon obligato in the final section, causing major structural damage to the south wall of the Imperial Opera House. Fortunately, casualties were limited to a handful of cheap boxes and ground floor seating. The performance struck a discordant note in the general’s otherwise finely-tuned mind and shortly afterward he was experimenting with bassoon attack squads and regiments armed only with clarinets and flugelhorns. Success was elusive, even though the basic idea was sound.

History was made during the siege of Dröss in the Carpathian Insurrection, when General Michigjan Svedja led a company of 76 barrage trombones against a unit of Hungarian Todesviolines, the first time war instruments fought against each other, later immortalized (albeit in obscure fashion) in the stirring tune by Meredith Wilson. Svedja later won an important victory over the famed Galician Oboe Battalion near Günk, in north-central Lïnt.

Having demonstrated the battlefield supremacy of labrosones over strings and woodwinds, Svedja went on to construct his renowned war tubas, which, when played molto vivace under the right atmospheric conditions, could knock stone buildings off their foundations and shatter all the glassware in an opposing army’s officers’ mess.

As the use of war tubas spread, draft boards scoured the orchestras of central Europe to find instrumentalists with sufficient embouchure. Composers like Shoenberg, Webern, Berg, Bartôk, and Scriabin were commissioned to write pieces. Even Stravinsky volunteered his services to the newly-formed French Brigade de Euphonium Militaire.

Alas, the career of the war tuba was short. It was found that with the wrong wind direction, the sound carried back to friendly forces, making them unable to fight past intermission. Despite the issuance of earplugs, Alban Berg’s War Tuba Sonata (Op. 2) rendered both sides hors de combat before the end of the first movement. The war tuba saw little action in World War I. Indeed, war music, in general, fell out of use after the Americans showed up “over there.” Having listened to so many Jazz and Broadway show tunes, the Yanks were, of course, already tone-deaf and largely immune to war music’s effects. The last recorded use of a war tuba was the deployment of the German army’s giant “Paris Tuba”, otherwise known as “Tubbi”, a 12-meter-belled behemoth so enormous that it had to be transported by railway carriage. On a clear day, the “Tubbi” tuba barrage could be heard all the way to Bologne. It was specially tuned to loosen all the bolts in the Eiffel Tower from a range of 70 miles. Unfortunately for the Germans, all the bolts in the famous tower had long since rusted tight.

Even though they are over a century gone, the modern world should never question the lethal power of Smertch and Svedja’s war instruments.  At least one instrument was considered so heinous in its effect that its use was specifically barred by the Geneva Convention. As a result, to this day, no saxophone is ever seen or heard in the world’s symphony orchestras.

NATIONAL DAYS

Sunday, April 11th - National Barbershop Quartet Day

One of my father’s friends sang in the SPEBSQSA - Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America and we bought (had to buy?) tickets to their annual show.  It was generally very good.  

Tuesday, April 13th - National Peach Cobbler Day

YES - that sounds like a great day!!  (Maybe I could make a peach cobbler and bring it to our bridge brat gathering!!!)  

Wednesday, April 14th - National Gardening Day

I now live in an apartment - but I miss gardening.  Not that I was a master gardener, but that I liked to plant things and watch them grow.  I currently have two pots on my patio with green beans growing.  And, for those you know, these are “bush” beans, not “pole” beans.  So, when I get real beans, I can have Bush's Baked Beans!!!

Thursday, April 15th - TAX DAY

But, alas - taxes have been moved to Monday, May 17th!!  But, “The Taxman Cometh”!!!

Saturday, April 17th - Husband Appreciation Day

Not to be confused with Father’s Day - but do you appreciate your husband?  Show him!!!

The link says, “More romantic than Father’s Day with less pressure than Valentine’s Day, Husband Appreciation Day is observed on the third Saturday in April. We love this little-known holiday dedicated to the men in our lives who show up for us in bold and subtle ways every day of the year.

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WRAP-UP

So, over a year later, we can definitely see the light in the tunnel - we are heading towards “herd immunity”.  

TRIVIA:

What state have I never been to?  Alaska.  I had hoped to do that with my wife and I guess that soured quickly!!!

Mort Walker - cartoonist - best known for Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois

Immanuel Kant - German philosopher - best known for his philosophy “You kant do that”!!!

Winnie the Pooh - the creation of A.A. Milne

LOVE WINS!!!

HUGS!!!

KAREN