“I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away.”
The controversial, counter-culture comedian authored Brain Droppings, and made millions laugh over his routine: “The Seven Dirty Words that are keeping us from winning the war.”
– George Carlin
I drove out of state to visit my mother, but her state’s police wouldn’t let me in, nor would her gated community. So I headed back home, and my state won’t let me back in. Oh well, at least I’m maintaining social distance.
***
About 5:15 pm take your coffee, sit outside, and watch the army of your locked-down neighbors finally stagger out of their homes in outlandish attire, and blink into the light. There is no more intriguing people-watching venue on the Champs Elysees in Paris.
***
Ten years ago I valet-parked cars in the lot of our local restaurant. Today, I now wait tables outside on that same lot – and get bigger tips. Covid’s got me moving up in the world, without changing locations.
***
So now my state allows me to dine inside a restaurant where the waiter standing fifty feet from the kitchen takes twenty minutes longer to deliver my food than he did last week, when I was sitting a hundred yards away out in the parking lot.
***
‘Tis the electoral season and the candidates are in full spin – literally. As I understand the speeches, marching protestors are courageous patriots seeking liberty, if the politician believes they will vote for him. The violent thugs and marauding looters are those carrying banners for the opposition.
***
Bart’s elevator pitch is brilliantly clever. Trouble is, unless the elevator runs from Baltimore to Bangor, he can never finish it.
***
I truly admire everyone efforts to fill us with good cheer during these times, and I’m sure I could pull myself out of the dumps if only my investments would turn around and lead the way. (When the liquor business booms – beware your portfolio, my friend.)
***
Now that the president’s name is printed on the stimulus checks, they may be issued in hopes that, like a small child swallowing a dime, they may quickly pass through, providing no effect on the child, and go on to stimulate the corporations so desperately in need. (Notice: they were not called “public aid checks.)
***
Our office is finally opening up, rotating small groups back in, beginning with the most essential. Based on my value, looks as if I’ve got a vacation until November.
***
I don’t get all this fuss about wearing masks. Most folks I meet put on a mask every day to protect me from discovering their darker side. So now their being encouraged to mask up and protect themselves from my darker, diseased side. What’s the big deal?
***
Campaigning politicians have gotten so desperate during this lockdown that they have stopped begging for your money and are actually phoning to explain why they’d like your vote.
***
Covid-19 lockdown has been particularly tough on the young. Many teens have become so bored they are reduced to texting their own parents across the dinner table – and not asking for money.
***
If you doubt that this virus has perched every sector of America on the edge of financial ruin – wait a minute. There’s bound to be a telebeggar calling in who will happily explain it to you.
***
I learned that the Rockettes are giving free aerobic classes online. So I grabbed a cold beer, tuned in, and I must say it really works – my heart hasn’t raced this fast in years.
***
I truly admire everyone efforts to fill us with good cheer during these times, and I’m sure I could pull myself out of the dumps if only my investments would turn around and lead the way. (When the liquor business booms – beware your portfolio, my friend.)
***
Now that the president’s name is printed on the stimulus checks, they may be issued in hopes that, like a small child swallowing a dime, they may quickly pass through, providing no effect on the child, and go on to stimulate the corporations so desperately in need. (Notice: they were not called “public aid checks.)
***
The surest way to avoid the truth is to seek it in a survey. Do you a) strongly agree. b) strongly disagree c) don’t give a damn.
***
This morning I knocked on the back door of a store and a man wearing a mask sold me one large pack of toilet paper. I felt half way between the 1950’s Soviet communist shopper and a Prohibition era alcoholic trying to enter a speakeasy.
This virus is harsh – I’ve finally learned to handle the social distancing, but it’s the fiscal distancing – watching my money drift ever further away, that’s crushing me.
***
One thing I’ve learned from this virus is gratitude for everything from friendship to toilet paper. Before it, I was like the farmer so busy praying for rain that I forgot to hold out my cup in a thunderstorm.
***
Social Media is a mask that allows you to scream to an audience of thousands tales that would make you blush crimson if told to one friend in a bar room.
Twenty some years ago my wife Lorraine awoke and assured me that I was craving to build an authentic Japanese Teahouse in our back meadow. So I did – and the original thatch has lasted a quarter century. These pictures show the new bundles of thatch I scythed down, hauled up, and tied down onto the roof, with a lot of help from my buddy – Thanks Marvin. Everyone should have a retreat, be it for solitude and/or contemplation with a few close friends.
Remember that question from last week’s Quip? Well, the answer is below.
“A school without football is in danger of deteriorating into a medieval study hall.”
Author: Those words were spoken by the famed Green Bay Packers football coach admitted to a slight bias in the offering of this quote. Vince Lombardi
* * *
“Common sense is the set of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
Author: Those words were spoken by the inventor of the world’s best known formula: E=mc2, by age 15, had read Immanuel Kant and written On the investigation of the state of ether in a magnetic field. Albert Einstein
* * *
“I learned law so well that the day I graduated, I sued the college and got my tuition back.”
Author: Those words were spoken by the radio comedian who got most of his real education at the Boston Public Library, maintained a mock feud with fellow funster Jack Benny.
* * *
“If future generations are to remember us with more gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just miracles of technology.”
Author: Those words were spoken by the the 36th President and legendary lawmaker pushed through the Civil Rights act. Mr. Lyndon Johnson.
* * *
“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
Author: Those words were spoken by the American President who saw us through the Civil War believed that war, like conversation, should be completed “with malice towards none.” Abraham Lincoln
* * *
“Why doesn’t the fellow who says, ‘I’m no speechmaker,’ let it go at that, instead of giving us a demonstration?”
Author: Those words were spoken by the Indianapolis News cartoonist and journalist created the “Abe Martin” drawings that appeared in over 200 U.S. papers weekly. Kin Hubbard
* * *
“Self-made men tend to be a little too proud of the job.”
Author: Those words were spoken by the 19th century humorist, noted for his truly original spelling, came by his trade honestly – being the son and nephew of Congressmen. Josh Billings
* * *
“Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
Author: Those words were spoken bythe American President who saw us through the Civil War believed that war, like conversation, should be completed “with malice towards none.” Abraham Lincoln
* * *
“Why doesn’t the fellow who says, ‘I’m no speechmaker,’ let it go at that, instead of giving us a demonstration?”
Author: Those words were spoken by Kin Hubbard
* * *
“Self-made men tend to be a little too proud of the job.”
Author: Those words were spoken by Josh Billings
* * *
“Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.”
Author: Those words were spoken by none other than Razor-tongued journalist of America’s politics and well-foibled culture – Mr P.J. O’Rourke.
* * *
“Washington D.C. is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm.”
Author: Those words were spoken by John F. Kennedy
* * *
“There is a vast difference between the savage and the civilized man. But it is never apparent to their wives until after breakfast.”
Author: Those words were spoken by Helen Rowland, This New York Times Journalist wrote a column “Reflections of a Bachelor Girl” and the wittily truth-laden book “A Guide to Men.”
* * *
“Nothing gives us courage more readily than the desire to avoid looking like a damn fool.
Author: Those words were spoken by this Pennsylvania-born, wildly best-selling novelist of suspense thrillers penned “Demon Seed” and “The Key to Midnight.”. Dean Kootz.
* * *
“Maturity comes when you have the first real good laugh at yourself.”
Author: Those words were spoken by “The First Lady of the American Theatre”, Ethel Barrymore
* * *
“Women have always been the guardians of wisdom and humanity which makes them natural, but usually secret rulers. The time has come for them to rule openly, but together with and not against men.”
Author: Those words were spoken by the Polish-born psychotherapist wrote the groundbreaking 1977 book “Bisexuality.” Dr. Charlotte Wolff
* * *
“The bitterness of poor service remains long after the elation of low prices is forgotten.”
Author: Those words were spoken by Ben Franklin
* * *
“Credit cards are like snakes – handle ‘em long enough and one of them will bite you.”
Author: Those words were spoken by Elizabeth Warren
* * *
“The chief value of money is that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.”
Author: Those words were spoken by H.L. Mencken
* * *
“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”
Author: Those words were spoken by Will Rogers.
‘Twas a dizzyingly moveable feast of music. Within barely more than one brief rotation of our terrestrial orb I have had my soul opened to the finest music that we humans and the Divine have to offer.
The morning sun’s lifting over the Osa Peninsula in southern Costa Rica once again orchestrates a fugal flood of God’s most elegant song birds. Our guide Abraham slings his scope and tripod over shoulder, leading Lorraine and me down slender trails through the leafy jungle. Somewhere, amidst this dense ramage, bellbirds cello, pink-legged woodrails trill, tanagers staccato, and the clay-colored thrush lets loose the sweet stab of a call that has won him the honor of Costa Rica’s National bird. Thousands join the chorus – even sun-dappled pairs of macaws lend their raucous cries to this symphonic surge of life.
Compared to Abraham, Lorraine and I cannot find a lion in our living room, but with his tutelage and our binoculars we try to poke our eyes where bodies could not possibly penetrate – to spy the sources of this symphony in the bush. With each bird sighted comes an almost disenchanting ease at their songs. Such magnificent rhapsodies so effortlessly, so spontaneously brought forth – and yet enchanting beyond telling.
Then, suddenly – thanks to the near-magical mechanics of today’s travel, and scores unseen assisting hands – here Lorraine and I sit: a mere tanager’s swoop from virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell and the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields Orchestra performing Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. (After landing at Newark airport, a friend raced us home with enough time to pick up our tickets and arrive back at Newark’s NJ Performing Arts Center for the 8 p.m. curtain.) Poised concentration etched Bell’s face and passion poured through his agile fingers and on into the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius which delivered his mastery. That same awe of the Avian’s morning’s symphony returned. Again, we paused, still, amazed that such beauty was ours for the hearing…reveling in the sounds and letting our souls crescendo and descend with the moment of the music.
But with this second concerto an additional emotion kept creeping in: admiration. Joshua Bell had labored admirably, astoundingly, to achieve this pinnacle of performance. The untold thousands of hours of practice, the hundreds of thousands of hours of his fellow musicians in the orchestra, had prepared them for this soul-enriching experience we were sharing. And even during the performance, each measure of music hung precariously on that instant’s expertise.
The entire house rose to its feet and applauded the artists – none more enthusiastically than Lorraine and I. To compare the morning’s vs. the evening’s symphony would be ludicrous. Both transformed and uplifted me. Both were divinely inspired. Yet walking out of NJPAC into the evening air, the truth of this beauty became clear: whatever the source we are better for seeking it; we should accept it with gratitude; and while beauty’s creation comes with easy spontaneity for some and only with sweat for others, it always God’s best within us.
– Bart Jackson
