Past Blogs

My sympathy to all of you who will be taking a domestic flight to be with your family and Thanksgiving feast. Have fortitude, a terrific book and a brown bag lunch.

On our last trip, the flight attendant started out by announcing,”you can get an extra five inches of legroom for only $20.00.”  No one on the plane booed, laughed or took the guy up on his offer.

In case you haven’t flown lately, air travel is the last frontier of marketing to a captive audience. It is also a case study on how not to give customer service.

My husband has often joked that it’s a good thing I didn’t pursue a career in marketing as my creative energies would be used for diabolical purposes. That flight attendant spurred me to dreaming up all the revenue possibilities the airlines have missed, a nice mental exercise as I was crammed into my steerage section seat for four hours.

Consider that armrest between you and your fellow passenger. For only $2.50 it will come down to assure your minuscule space cannot be encroached. Want to read a book on your long flight? $3.00 will turn on the overhead light. The space under the seat in front of you is all yours for a mere $10.00. For $1.00 per cubic inch you can rent a handy overhead bin.

While congregating near a lavatory is strictly forbidden, you may have the misfortune of having to use one. Bring your credit card with you and it will open the locked door for a fee of $7.47. Soap, paper towels and toilet paper will be available from the handy vending machine inside.

Breaking news! If your weight meets the airline standards and you fork over $200.00, you qualify for a seat in the new skinny section.

Be forewarned…your airline purchases cannot be bought with cash. Need coins for the bathroom vending machines? Don’t even dream of asking your flight attendant for change. None of them will touch the filthy stuff: these airline folks don’t know the meaning of the words “legal tender”. You can easily die of thirst or hunger if you don’t have a credit card.

This blog comes with a warning: Do not forward to anyone even remotely connected to the airline industry.

Thanks to my husband, we have become trackers. I am not referring to the deer and goose tracks on the beach or the possum, skunk, raccoon and myriad other tracks in our yard. No, we are now official trackers of ships, and our reporting number is 1080.

Last spring my spouse climbed to the peak of our steep roof and installed his absolutely free ship tracking antennae, thus making us an official reporting site for the University of the Aegean in Greece which maps global shipping.

We  report on ships in Lake Michigan that are in our range and sending out radio signals. Thanks to the Saint Lawrence Seaway which connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, ships registered around the world regularly pass through our “front yard”.

Then my guy had another brilliant inspiration and started writing a computer program. “You’ll love this, Mary,” he beamed. “My cell phone will now ring every time a ship is in front of our house.” Since November is prime boat time in the Great Lakes, the phone started ringing around the clock and the cell phone bill started soaring. The program has subsequently been modified to notify the computer.

Our tracking station has a good record, online 89% of the time. Our cat, Batman, did, however, interrupt our ship reporting for a while. We discovered he was jumping up in the basement rafters where the antennae wire comes into the house and taking us offline. We gave him a lecture on Homeland Security and closed up his access to the wires.

Check out the worldwide Marine site at http://www.marinetraffic.com. Click on the ship icons to get a photo, name, destination, etc.

Indulge me. This blog started six years ago as an antidote to the sadness of the Bush years. I promised to stay off political topics. But I can’t ignore the fact that this Tuesday is an election day. We will choose to continue our grand experiment in democracy or vote in an oligarchy. This is my once in four years political rant.

Whatever happens tonight, I have decided to spend the rest of my life being a Molly Ivins wannabe. Molly was the sharp witted Texas journalist who nicknamed our last Republican President “Shrub”.

I briefly considered being a Dixie Chick, but rejected that idea. They spoke the truth about the Iraq War. Everyone knows that the bearer of bad news is vilified or shot.

Molly attacked the establishment with her humor. It’s hard to hate someone when she’s got you doubled over with laughter.

Here are some choice Mollyisms:

“The first rule of holes: when you’re in one, stop digging.”

“Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel…it is vulgar.”

“I believe in practicing prudence once every two or three years.”

“I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.”

“You want moral leadership? Try the clergy. It’s their job.”

Don’t rest in peace, Molly. We need you more than ever.

If there is one thing America excels at, it is excess. Super-sized sodas, burgers, living room couches, stretch limos, you name it, our fair nation can super-size it. Pumpkins are no exception.

Competitive pumpkin growing has become a huge sport in the last fifteen years. The kings of the Great Pumpkin field are the father and son team Dick and Ron Wallace from Rhode Island. This dedicated duo has been toiling for years to smash (a scary word in the pumpkin business) the world records.

The first All New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh-Off began at the Topsfield, Massachusetts, Fair in 1984. The largest pumpkin weighed in at 433 pounds, and the farmer got $100. An Alaskan grower with timed heaters and a greenhouse grew the first 1,000 pound pumpkin in 2000. In 2006, Ron Wallace’s super squash hit the scales at 1,500 pounds at the Topsfield Fair. Nine growers beat Ron’s record in 2007 and the race was on to grow the first one ton pumpkin. But could it be done?

From a small seed to 2000 pounds in one growing season is a lot to ask of Mother Nature. Could the pumpkin structurally support itself? Root rot, foaming stump slime, hungry deer and groundhogs are but a few of the ever present perils to pumpkin success. The bad news is that only 50 per cent of the super size pumpkins survive to maturity. The good news is that once the pumpkin starts growing, slow growing is an amazing one pound an hour.

The 2012 Topsfield Fair was the last weekend in September. Ron Wallace was there with his pampered, well-fed pumpkin and high hopes. His entry was named The Freak II. The fork lift raised the giant squash to the scale and the needle started going up…..to 2009 pounds. History was made.

Ron Wallace received $10,000 for growing the first one ton pumpkin, $5,000 for first place and an orange ribbon.

Congratulations, Ron. What can possibly come next?

Halloween is fast approaching, but I am not into blood and gore. I am, however, a fan of Gorey, Edward St. John Gorey to be precise.

Gorey is one of my favorite artists and writers, one who never ceases to bring pleasure. Born in a suburb of Chicago in 1925, Gorey describes the start of his artistic career as follows:

“My first drawing was of trains that passed by my grandparents’ house …the composition was of various sausage shapes.”

His formal art training consisted of one semester at The Chicago Art Institute. He was then drafted and served as a clerk at the Dugway Proving Ground near Salt Lake City. “They tested mortars and poison gas,” he stated. “Whenever you read that somewhere in the Western states twenty thousand sheep have expired for some mysterious reason, it’s always the Dugway Proving Ground.”

After his service, he enrolled at Harvard and majored in French literature. Shortly after graduation, Gorey moved to New York City where he lived in a one room studio apartment with three of his beloved cats. Doubleday initially employed him as an illustrator and book jacket designer. He subsequently worked on scores of books including a wonderfully droll version of Little Red Riding Hood. Soon he began writing and illustrating his own books, often under pseudonyms that were anagrams of his own name such as Ogdred Weary, Dogear Wryde, Wardore Edgy and Mrs. Regera Dowdy.

Edward Gorey became “absolutely hooked” on George Balanchine and The New York City Ballet. No fan will ever be more loyal. In his full length fur coat, sneakers and ring encrusted fingers, he attended nearly EVERY performance of the NYCB for over thirty years. He once attended 39 performances of the Nutcracker in a row.

In his later years, Mr. Gorey lived in Yarmouth Port in Cape Cod. The number of cats expanded and a raccoon once lived happily in the attic. His artistic output was prodigious, yet he found time to work for local theaters, scout out yard sales and watch TV (he loved Dallas).

Edward Gorey died in 2000; his home is now a museum of his art, life and creatures.

One reviewer describes Gorey’s style as,”Macabre yet delicate; grim but amusing; ghoulish without a drop of blood.” Intricately detailed black and white drawings are his hallmark. Gorey’s costumes for the Broadway production of Dracula received a Tony award in 1978.

Get yourself in an ominous Halloween mood by checking out his artwork for the opening of the PBS Mystery! series. Click here.