Petfinder has announced the most popular dog names from 2011. “Buddy” continues to dominate the doggy world for the fifth year in a row. The Twilight saga seems to have some influence over dog owners, as the name “Bella” appears high on the list. I’m pleased to see the name we picked for our Aussie pup – Jack – is on the list.
1. Buddy
2. Max
3. Daisy
4. Bella
5. Lucy
6. Molly
7. Charlie
8. Jack
9. Sadie
10. Rocky
Maria called yesterday afternoon to say they needed a photo illustration of a dog in a kennel to go with George Jared’s story on the Women’s Crisis Center partnering with Northeast Arkansans For Animals to care for pets of women who flee abusive homes.
I asked Jack, the Aussie pup, if he would like to help and he agreed. At least I think he agreed. He went into his kennel when I tossed in a treat.
So here he is, 2 columns wide, on page A8 of this morning’s paper.
Cute little guy, isn’t he?
Jack will be 17 weeks old tomorrow. He’s been with us 5½ weeks and is growing like crazy!
I took Maria’s ‘94 BMW K75S for a pleasant 25-mile jaunt on Christmas Day, thinking it may be my last ride of 2011.
But the forecast calls for highs in the mid- to upper 50s tomorrow through the end of the week, so I may get a few more miles in.
My BMW mileage for 2011 stands at a rather pathetic 6,323 miles – down significantly from last year when I logged 9,343 miles – my best riding year since 2004 when I rode 10,163 miles and way short of my all-time personal record of 21,928 miles in 1993.
My Christmas Day ride was inspired by a visit earlier in the day by Jonesboro BMW riding friends Charlie and Deb Parsons, who showed up on their GS bikes to meet Jack the Aussie puppy. Also, it had been a month since my last ride on the K75S and I want to keep the battery up. I’d put it on a trickle charger, but the accessory plug isn’t connected to the battery and the battery terminals are buried under body work and mechanical stuff.
It was a pleasant ride up U.S. 49 to Paragould, then back roads to home along Crowley’s Ridge. Other than being blinded by a sun low on the horizon, it was a nice relaxing experience. Hardly any traffic and the delightful surprise that I’ve lost enough weight to let last summer’s uncomfortably tight First Gear Kathmandu riding pants fit, even with the quilted liner in place. It had me entertaining thoughts of riding to Daytona for Bike Week, even though I don’t much like Bike Week. It’s the ride to a warmer clime and a chance to sit by the ocean at Flagler Beach that lures me. We shall see.
I’m in town, having a free (I finally accumulated enough punch card holes) cup of coffee at Seattle Grind and getting ready to drive over to Petco for a fresh bag of IAMS puppy food. Then it’s off to pick up Maria for lunch.
The fancy-schmantzy ignition/entry/do-everything key to my Lexus is falling apart.
The case is supposed to fit flush to the key, but as you can see, it’s all whopper-jawed.
My first thought was about what a hassle it’s going to be to drive to the nearest Lexus dealer (Memphis) next week and spend an insane amount of money for a replacement. And, of course, this happens on the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend.
Hoping to learn what it will cost me, I Googled “2004 Lexus RX330 replacement key” and found iKeyless.com where I discovered I can buy just the shell (which is the only thing that’s broken) for a ridiculously reasonable $19.95. Assuming they are working Monday, it will ship then and be in my hands by mid-week.
Dealerships charge $175 for a replacement key.
I love the Internet.
Doc says go back onto the liver pills. We had a brand new box when he stopped taking them last summer, so we're well supplied.
He thinks Pete has a mild case of canine epilepsy - too mild to require medication. The seizures are too infrequent and too mild to make medication worth the effort and the toll the chemicals take on the body.
These were the gas prices advertised at the Kroger store in Jonesboro, Ark. the afternoon of Nov. 8, 2008.
That was four days after Obama was elected and two months before he took office.
What are you paying now?
Meet the Philco Model 41-295 console radio. It used 11 tubes and received AM as well as shortwave from 2.3 to 7 mc, 9 to 12 mc and 13.5 to 18 mc. It had eight pushbuttons; seven for preset AM stations and one for off-on control. It operated on 115 volts, AC only. The cabinet was a wood veneer and it stood 36 inches tall. The original price was $100. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $1,538.98 in today’s money.
I stumbled across one of these on Ebay this afternoon. The seller wants $125, noting it’s non-functioning and useful as a “parts” radio for someone restoring a 41-295.
These pictures brought back a flood of memories for me. My parents, who were married in April of 1939, had one of these radios. Since this model was made in 1940 for the 1941 market, it’s entirely possible my parents listened to broadcasts about the Pearl Harbor attack on their Philco.
My dad was a Ford guy and he favored Philco electronics because Philco was owned by Ford. Our first television, purchased just before Christmas of 1953, was a Philco table model.
I spent hours in front of our Philco console radio in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. Much of the time, it was tuned to WBAA (AM, of course. This was years before FM broadcasting), the Purdue University station in West Lafayette, Ind. We lived about 20 miles east of West Lafayette in Delphi.
One of the highlights of my day came at 5 p.m. when the Storytime Special came on the air and I got to hear a story read by the “Story Lady,” a Purdue coed, probably a radio or communications major.
I remember listening to WBAA afternoon jazz programming and wondering why they played so much stuff by the Art Van Damme Quintet. Maybe it was because he was a Dutchman from Michigan and there was, and is, a large Dutch Reformed community in Lafayette. Van Damme was considered the father of the jazz accordion.
Saturday nights, WLS in Chicago carried the National Barn Dance. One of the acts was Captain Stubby and his Buccaneers. Captain Stubby’s real name was Tom Fouts and he grew up with my mom in eastern Carroll County.
I had a little oak rocking chair, decorated on the back with a decal of a penguin, and I sat and rocked while I listened to Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, the Green Hornet and lots of other programs that you can hear today on the Old Time Radio channel on SiriusXM satellite radio. (I still have the rocking chair. It sits in a corner of our living room and is the repository for dog toys. Every now and then I allow a visiting child to sit in it.)
Winter came to Arkansas at 11:30 last night without me noticing it.
I generally don’t like winter, but I find Arkansas winters less objectionable than Indiana winters. I had 62 Indiana winters and that’s enough for me.
It’s raining here this morning and will continue all day with a predicted accumulation of about ½ inch. That means we won’t see the sun, which weighs heavily on my mood. At least the daylight hours will increase, starting today through June.
Pete came over and laid down on the kitchen floor next to my foot as I made my morning mocha cappuccino and it took me a moment to realize he was having a seizure. The tipoff was the way he pressed himself up against my leg.
I knelt and comforted him until it subsided. He looked so freaked out and helpless lying on his left side, his right front paw trembling. This is the first seizure we’ve noticed since the summer.
He asked to sleep with us in our bed last night, which is kind of unusual and, given what just happened, makes me wonder if he wasn’t feeling good last night. He always comes to us when he’s not feeling well or about to have a seizure.
I’m going to take him to the vet this morning for tests. I suspect it’s time to resume his liver meds that the doc said we could suspend a few months ago.
My new (to me) Lexus has a couple of driver-accessible power outlets – one next to the radio on the dash where you’d expect a cigarette lighter, the other on a floor-mounted tray between the dashboard and the center console.
The lower outlet was dead, leading me to conclude that its fuse was blown. Consulting the owner’s manual, I was impressed to discover the car has nearly 70 fuses. Most of them are in a fuse box in the engine compartment and the rest are under the dashboard on the driver’s side.
The fuse in question turned out to be #64, bottom row, third from the right in the interior fuse box.
I first supposed it was an ATO fuse, but the illustration in the owner’s manual showed a min fuse. Since Toyota makes the Lexus, I reasoned I could get the requisite 15 amp mini fuse at the local Toyota dealership.
Not having found a fuse-puller in either fuse box, I had not removed the offending fuse and inspected it, so I trusted the owner’s manual and plunked down $1.80 for a 15 amp mini fuse.
When I got home, I used needle-nosed pliers to pull the fuse and discovered, to my dismay, that it was a low-profile mini fuse.
So it was back to Central Toyota where the parts department guy swapped me for the right fuse. I stuck it in the #64 slot and voila! the outlet works. So much for trusting the owner’s manual.
These are the Seven Deadly Sins, also known as Cardinal Sins. I can understand and plead guilty to six of them, but one – Envy – baffles me.
This comes to mind because there are a few of my Facebook friends, younger men, who are eager to let us all know how much they hate rich, successful people. Especially rich, successful people who want to hang onto what they’ve earned.
I can honestly say I don’t envy anyone for anything they are or have. Yes, I’d love to have more money – a summer home in the Colorado Rockies and a winter home in the Sun Belt and, just for the hell of it, a really nice place in Big Sur. There are lots of people who have all that and more and I’m happy for them. Either through hard work or karma or inheritance, they’ve come by it honestly. They didn’t cheat or steal to get it. And I don’t see how any rational person can begrudge them what they have. (If they did get it by dishonest means, I’d be crazy to envy them for something that will eventually destroy them.)
I guess it comes down to how I was raised. The message I took from my parents was that it was up to me to achieve and earn for myself, according to my level of ambition and desire.
They also taught me that jealousy and envy are shameful emotions and bespeak a poverty of spirit. So when I see these guys posting stuff about the evil rich – the same kind of horseshit you hear the Occupy Wall Street morons spouting – I feel profoundly embarrassed for them because they’re telling us about something really sad and weak in their character.
I occasionally throw out a low bid on an Ebay item just for the hell of it, expecting I will be outbid and that the item will go for a much higher price.
But once in a blue moon, I win the auction.
Such was the case a week or so ago when I placed an opening bid of $19.99 for this pair of Wallace China Westward Ho Boots & Saddle pattern cups and saucers.
These should have gone for upwards of $80, but apparently the Westward Ho collectors had their eyes on other stuff.
I’ve admired the Westward Ho line ever since I was 10 years old and my parents took me on a vacation in the West where we dined at restaurants that used this distinctive dinnerware decorated with cattle brands.
I rediscovered it on Ebay about 15 years ago and have since built a modest collection, mostly in the Rodeo pattern. Maria gave me a rather expensive Boots & Saddle dinner plate for Christmas several years ago and this was the first really good Boots & Saddle cup and saucer set deal I’ve seen in a long time.
It arrived, well packed in bubble wrap, this morning and made me very happy.
This has to be the largest display of phony grief in the history of the world.
The pictures coming out of North Korea following the death of Kim Jong Il show hundreds upon hundreds of people, some of them standing at desks in what appears to be a classroom, wailing and sobbing in creepy synchronization. Do the North Korean propagandists really expect us to believe this obviously staged charade is a spontaneous, albeit regimented, outpouring of grief and despair?
Kim Jong Il is the guy who ruined their lives, imposed starvation and slavery on them and made their country a pariah among the nations of the world.
The only conceivable justification for tears is worry that his son and successor will be even more batshit crazy than was the father.
Buddy was a gangly young hound who would have been a year old next February. He was huge and getting bigger by the day.
He lived in a kennel behind the neighbors’ house, complete with a dog house. He liked to sit on the dog house roof and survey the neighborhood. His owners would let his run loose occasionally and he got on the bad side of other neighbors when he got into their garage and ate a bunch of popcorn and paper products last summer.
He was big and goofy and full of fun and he came visiting yesterday morning while our dogs were out in the fenced backyard. Pete didn’t much care for Buddy and they kept each other busy pissing on fence posts, one after the other, each wanting to be the last dog to mark the spot.
But Jack delighted in this new playmate and tore around the perimeter as Buddy ran from one end of the chain link fence to the other, back and forth, back and forth.
It turns out that Buddy was on a tether late yesterday while his owners were away from home. Somehow, he slipped out of his collar and went exploring. Unfortunately, his explorations took him to nearby U.S. 49 where he was hit by a car or truck and suffered fatal head injuries.
Our neighbor buried Buddy this afternoon under a pine tree behind their house.
This has been a hard year for dogs that we know. Son Steve had to put down Frank, Sean and Ruth had to say goodbye to Daisy, Free Range Frank died of injuries suffered when he was hit by a vehicle, we had to let go of Ruthie and now Buddy is gone.
Hug your dogs and keep them safe. They deserve it.
I’m putting together a package documenting Flat Stanley travels to Memphis for young Jacob Shillings.
Jake, as you may recall, sent Flat Stanley to us a few weeks ago with a request that we photograph him somewhere interesting and return him with some mementos of his travels.
Here he is in front of the Elvis Presley statue in the I-40 Tennessee Welcome Center in Memphis.
I hope to get the package into the mail tomorrow.
The car I had no intention of buying has won me over.
I’ve put more than 500 miles on the odometer in the past two days – Little Rock yesterday to send my watch off for service and Memphis today for bagels and to photograph Flat Stanley at Graceland and elsewhere.
This is, without question, the most comfortable and relaxed vehicle I’ve ever driven. I returned home both days without the feeling of having done something physically or psychologically tiring. I never realized what a struggle it is to drive my Honda del Sol and even our Subaru.
Now I’m wondering where to drive tomorrow…
(I keep telling myself it’s just a jumped-up Toyota.)
I took the new car on its first road trip today – a 154-mile whirlwind run down to Little Rock to the only Breitling watch dealer in Arkansas to send my 11-year-old 
That means they send it back home to Switzerland where the watchmakers inspect it and return an estimate of what it will cost to make it like new. Once they have my approval, they go to work and presumably I get my watch back in 40-60 days. I had it serviced once before, back around 2003, and it wasn’t cheap, so I’m expecting a sharp pain in the wallet in a few weeks.
But my wallet was kinda happy when I got back to Jonesboro this afternoon and pulled up to the pumps at Sam’s Club to discover the price of regular was down to $2.94.9 a gallon. That’s two cents cheaper than 24 hours ago. I seems almost miraculous to see gas under $3 a gallon.
The car performed splendidly, although the low tire pressure indicator light came on a couple of times. I looked at the tires and didn’t see any that were conspicuously low, but I’ll check pressures after they cool down from the drive.
There’s heavy flooding in the farmland south of Jonesboro and north of Newport which is great news for ducks. The sky was full of them and at one point the flocks were so dense the sky was almost black with an overcast of ducks.
Spike Jones would have been 100 years old today but sadly, he died in 1965 at the age of 53.
Weird Al Yankovic explains Spike’s importance in the music world of the 1940s, ‘50s and early ‘60 eloquently and puts what follows into context.
My parents took me to a Spike Jones concert at the Elliott Hall of Music on the Purdue University campus when I was about 5 years old. I was absolutely dazzled and saved the program from that evening in a scrap book.
Spike Jones and his City Slickers were the funniest thing I had ever heard and even today, I laugh out loud at several of his musical derangements.
Unfortunately, several generations have grown up without being exposed to Spike’s brilliant insanity. That is a tragedy. I can’t imagine a person being musically literate without appreciating the works of Spike Jones.
Here are some samples. Sometimes, they start out slowly, but stick around for the payoff:
When I started going to a chiropractor about 18 months ago and gave her my list of medical complaints, I mentioned that I have Restless Leg Syndrome. It typically hits me in the evenings when I'm sitting on the couch watching TV and frequently interferes with my sleep.
I don’t get the extreme burning and tingling that some people have with RLS, but my legs have to move frequently in an effort to get comfortable.
I didn't suppose she could do anything about it, but I was wrong.
She gave me a few packets of ElectroMix with the instructions to dissolve a packet in a glass of water. (Never mind that the instructions on the packet say to dissolve it into a liter of water for use as a sports drink.) That makes for a powerful dose with a pretty intense flavor, but I found it stops my Restless Leg Syndrome cold.
I'm writing this review because RLS woke me up about 3 a.m. today and I was able to get back to sleep easily after slamming down a glass of ElectroMix.
This, of course, isn't how the manufacturer intends for it to be used, but it sure works wonders for me.
The reason it works is that one cause of RLS is electrolyte imbalance and ElectroMix gets puts things back into balance.
If you can’t find it in a drugstore or other store, you can get a 30-packet box for under $10 on Amazon.com.
I’m making a rare stop at Seattle Grind, having come into town to run some errands.
I won’t stay long because this place is like a freaking sauna. My Swiss Army knife thermometer says it’s 83 degrees. I suppose they have the temperature cranked up to offset the chill from the drive-up window, but 83 is a bit much.
Our tenant is now delinquent on his rent for November and December. He promised to send a check on Saturday to catch up, including late fees. Instead, we got a cashier’s check today for a little more than one-third of the amount owed. With no note of explanation.
This is making my head explode, which is why I let Maria do all of our communicating with this guy.
I consider myself amazingly lucky to share my home with the two smartest dogs I have ever known.
Pete, the 5-year-old Aussie, and Jack, who will be 14 weeks old on Thursday, greet us every morning with boundless joy and enthusiasm.
Where the late great Ruthie the Wonder Dog accepted Pete grudgingly, Pete seems to recognize a kindred spirit in Jack, also an Aussie. He puts up with Jack’s pestering and play fighting and the only time Pete gets serious with Jack is when the little guy tests Pete’s alpha dog status in the realm of food and treats. Pete gave him a painful nip on the nose over the weekend when Jack contested a particularly tasty treat. Maria rubbed some Vitamin E on the wound and it’s healing quickly.
Both dogs are extremely affectionate and love physical contact with us. They rub up against our legs like cats and lie close, sometimes on our feet, when we sit to watch TV.
We occasionally let Pete sleep between us on the bed. Jack, who sleeps in a kennel in the bedroom watches everything closely and complained loudly the other night when Pete got to sleep on the bed and he didn’t. Get some bladder control, little guy, and your time will come.
Jack loves to retrieve tennis balls or whatever toy we care to toss. I have high hopes that he can be a great frisbee dog and will start his training soon.
It’s “The Price of Milk” set in New Zealand. I don’t give away any of the plot except to say it’s utterly unpredictable.
And it includes a dog named Nigel who goes around with a big cardboard box over him because he has agoraphobia.
Check it out.
I’m scanning negatives today, putting together a set of photos of Maria’s ex’s father who is near death in an Indiana hospital.
Bob is a Korean War veteran and a tough-as-nails farmer who, until lately, was still working hard on the family farm. He’s 85 years old.
The photos I’m offering to his granddaughter are from 2002 when we found him with his antique tractor at the county fair and a small town festival parade.
I had to run in to town this morning for a bag of puppy food for Jack.
I was expecting someone here at the house at noon, so I was determined to waste no time when I left here about 11:05 a.m.
Everything went smoothly until I got into line at Petco with my bag of IAMS. I knew I was in trouble when I noticed the couple at the head of the line were the same people who were there when I entered the store.
The 20-something girl pretending to be a cashier was clearly struggling, but finally completed the transaction. Then, the next person in line had some kind of an issue that completely boggled the cashier. She called for help, so now we had two 20-something girls puzzling over the checkout computer and the line not moving.
The upshot of the thing was that a checkout process that should have taken a couple of minutes dragged out to about 20 minutes.
When they finally opened another checkout line, it was because they had abandoned the original computer and moved the girl genius to the new line. Naturally, she was unable to get the new computer to read the barcode on the $5 coupon I handed her and had to have another girl read the dozen or so digits to her so she could input them.
She offered that she had been fighting that other computer all morning. Looks like she lost.
I made it home about 10 minutes after my friend got there.
My Bushnell Trophy Camera Model 119435 is going back to the company today.
There appears to be a defect in the power switch and maybe more. When I bought the unit back in March, I had difficulty getting the screen to come on in the “setup” position. I had to slide it to the click stop position for “setup” and then wiggle it for several seconds before the screen would light up.
I was able to use the camera in this fashion for the summer and up until about a month ago when I noticed it was creating a lot of corrupted, unreadable video files and re-setting the date and time to different years and times.
Now, I can't get the screen to turn on at all. The last time I pulled the SD card, it appeared that the camera had stopped functioning a week or two earlier, as there were no recent video files despite the presence of wildlife.
So I’m invoking the two-year limited warranty and sending it to Bushnell Outdoor Products in Lenexa, Kans. for repair or replacement. I’m mindful that this camera had wildly mixed reviews on Amazon.com. Most users liked it, but several complained about getting defective units. I guess that’s to be expected with a product mass produced in China.
I’ve had a weakness for binoculars and telescopes for as long as I can remember.
My first binoculars were actually field glasses (binos have prisms and higher magnification, field glasses are straight-through matching telescopes with lower power) that my mom got for me with the S&H Green Stamps she collected for shopping at the local IGA supermarket.
My first real binos were a Christmas present from my parents – a basic 7x50 (7 times magnification with 50mm diameter objective lenses) made by Tasco. I always thought Tasco was a Japanese outfit until I looked them up on Wikipedia and discovered it’s an American company founded in 1954 in Florida. Bushnell bought them and was, in turn, purchased by MidOcean Partners, a private equity firm based in New York and London.
But I digress.
Tasco isn’t in the same league with Leitz or Swarovski or Steiner, but their optics have always been good enough for my purposes. I have a pair of 8x50 rubber armored Tasco binoculars that I bought in the mid-1970s that are still as clear and sharp as they ever were.
I also have a Tasco 34TZ 36x50 spotting scope that is too powerful to use hand-held and has to be tripod mounted.
My most exotic binoculars are a WWII bring-back by my first father-in-law who served as a captain in the U.S. Army’s 144th Field Artillery Group and ended the war in Austria. He brought home a lot of neat stuff, including the most powerful hand-held binoculars ever made by Ernst Leitz of Wetzlar – the 15x60 Campofortit model. The optics are a touch hazy after nearly 70 years, but they’re still impressive.
But I’ve lusted after the Tasco Offshore 36 or 54 binoculars ever since I first saw them because they have a built-in illuminated compass and a reticle for measuring the height or width of an object if the distance is known or the distance if the height or width is known. They’re waterproof and come in the standard marine 7X50 configuration. Steiner makes a compass-equipped bino also, but they can run as high as $1,200, compared with $250 or so for the Tasco. Never mind that the Tasco Offshore binos are out of production. You can still find new and used examples.
I’ve been watching for a decently-priced pair on Ebay for years and finally noticed some a couple of weeks ago with a Buy It Now price of $50. Never mind that the shipping from Virginia was an exorbitant $20. It was still a killer deal.
So I pulled the trigger and they showed up at our post office last Saturday. As advertised, they came without the original case or lens caps and – I discovered yesterday – without the batteries to illuminate the compass at night. But who cares? Fifty dollars, man!
But I quickly realized that living in a wooded subdivision, we have little use for such optics. We have no long views or scenic vistas. If I want to do anything interesting with binoculars, I have to drive someplace where I can see a long distance. And the novelty of having a compass bearing included in your view wears off pretty quickly unless you can use it for navigation. Like on the ocean or a lake.
I guess I’m glad I bought them, but I’m gladder still that I only paid 20 percent of retail. I’d really be pissed off at myself if I’d paid $1,200 or even $250.
My neighbor’s garage as seen from my office window. You can see the very top of the compass inset at the bottom. The 10-foot-high basketball goal is about 220 feet away.
I took a look at the links in my Cool Blogs & Other Stuff this morning and concluded it’s time to dump some of them.
Some were fresh and vibrant when I discovered them and added them to the list, but those of us who follow blogs know that bloggers can get burned out, run out of things to say, have changes in their lives that make blogging inconvenient, or just stop for any number of reasons. I had high hopes for all of them when I included them in the list.
So say goodbye to:
There are a few others that haven’t seen any fresh material in several weeks, but I’m keeping them because their old stuff is worth reading.
We took Flat Stanley to Memphis yesterday to see the sights and to get a dozen bagels from City Bagel East.
Here he is supervising the selection of bagels.
We left City Bagel East about 10:40 a.m. with a Garmin-projected ETA at Boscos for 10:59. We finally got there about 12:30 p.m. thanks to the enormous traffic snarl created by 18,000 runners, walkers, limpers and gimpers in the St. Jude Children’s Hospital Marathon.
Cops were letting traffic cross the marathon route only when there was a substantial gap between participants. Considering that the vast majority of participants were non-competitive and had absolutely no chance of winning anything and maybe not even finishing, it would have made more sense to have them jog in place while the traffic signals cycled. After being stuck in a miles-long three-lane backup of traffic for more than a half-hour, I turned more cynical than usual and started resenting these self-indulgent people in Spandex 
To make matters worse, by the time we got to Boscos and were seated, we found ourselves surrounded by tables full of these people, noisily congratulating themselves on their heroic achievements. Fortunately, our server was able to move us to a much quieter space where we could enjoy our lunch in peace.
I had a mug of Boscos own porter, which Maria sampled and didn’t much care for.
Maria got a shot of Flat Stanley and the Memphis Pyramid on the way out of town.
The dogs were happy to see us when we got home.
A tourist from the future visits the Reichstag to hang out with Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess.
Jacob Shillings, a son of our friends Jim and Lauri, sent us a fun request this week:
I am a fifth grade student in Ms. French's class at New Market
Elementary. When I was in first grade our class read the book Flat Stanley. He was a boy who was flattened by a bulletin board. Stanley wanted to travel, so his family folded him up and mailed him to California.
In fifth grade, we are currently learning the states and capitals of the United States. Our teacher, Ms. French, wanted to enhance these geography lessons by using Flat Stanley. So, I am mailing my Flat Stanley to you. Please take him somewhere and write me back telling me about his adventures. If you have pictures, postcards, or brochures, please send them back with him. I will share his adventures with my classmates and this will help my classmates and I learn about the geography of the United States. We have a wall display in our grade level for the entire school to view.
Thank you for helping me with this project. Hope you have fun with him!
Stanley is about 9 inches tall. I think he’ll travel to Memphis this weekend for bagels and sightseeing.
Having worn a beard most of the time since a June, 1976 backpacking trip to Isle Royale National Park, I don’t do a lot of shaving. Mostly, I shave around the edges to better define my beard and under my lower lip.
I switched from shave cream in aerosol cans to shaving soap, mug, and brush in the late ‘70s when I bought a set on closeout at a gift shop called Kittle’s Other Side in downtown Indianapolis. Kittle’s is a local furniture chain and the gift shop was on the other side of Pennsylvania Street from the anchor furniture store.
I retired the mug when I found this Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity mug on Ebay a dozen or more years ago, but still use the Chicago Shaving Co. brush. Since I use them sparingly, a cake of shaving soap lasts me a long time – a couple of years at least.
I noticed I was getting down to the end of the Williams shaving soap recently and made a mental note to resupply the next time I went to Walmart. But, to my surprise, the Parker Road Walmart in Jonesboro, Ark., apparently doesn’t stock shaving soap. I can’t be the last aficionado of hot lather in town, but I guess it’s become obsolete as far as Walmart is concerned.
So I resolved to make a trip to Walgreens one of these days to see if they still carry shaving soap.
But on Tuesday afternoon, I realized I can have my pick of a huge selection of shaving soaps and since I paid $79 to become an Amazon Prime member early this year, I could get two-day shipping free. A few mouse clicks later, it was a done deal. No driving to Walgreens to scour the shaving section for something that very well might not be there.
Then it occurred to me that we could use some new pads for our Shark steam mop. Click, click, and they were in the pipeline.
The FedEx truck pulled into our driveway about an hour ago and the driver dropped off a box with the shaving cream and steamer pads, less than 48 hours after I placed the order.
I’ve bought more than 40 items from Amazon.com this year – ranging from a wheelbarrow tire to a GPS to coffee to motorcycle boots to a trailcam – and almost all of it was shipped free, so the Amazon Prime membership paid for itself many times over. The money I saved by not paying state and local sales tax alone probably covered the cost. Amazon Prime membership also gives us access to hundreds of streaming movies and TV shows.
It really is a brilliant marketing scheme. I get the stuff I need/want without driving the 20-some miles into town and back and I can find almost anything with a few mouse clicks.
Yes, it means I’m not spending my money locally, but that’s how the free market works. As far as I’m concerned, low prices and convenience trump sentiment. Local businesses that offer unique goods and services will do fine.
