Toot

Hello World,

Some of us, instead of being here at their weekly post, are busy trying their hands at fending off the Saracen interlopers in Jerusalem, or something like that anyway. Actually, it wasn't the medieval Crusades of lore and legend that I volunteered for, but the Greater New York Billy Graham Crusade in Flushing Meadows Park this weekend, and so I've been there for four days, working behind the scenes and doing their data entry and other information gathering services. Luckily, we have Bill to fill in, holding down the fort at home (no Saracens there!) and in the Editor's chair for today, with this story from several years ago that ties in nicely with my horn story from a couple of weeks ago --

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TOOT

I dropped my car off for its inspection this morning and when I picked it up after work, Dennis said it passed with flying colors. (Of course, he makes SURE it passes, if you catch my drift!) Anyway, he left it parked at the curb in the afternoon sun - not a good thing to do with a black car with a maroon interior! So we schmoozed for a while and as we were standing there with the usual assortment of macho types that hang around the service station, a couple of senoritas strolled past on their way home from high school. This elicited the usual thinly-disguised appraisal from the group - one of the few times I am truly embarrassed to be a human male (and NO, I wasn't looking at them, even if they wanted ALL of us to. Which seemed to be the case.) It was about Dennis's quitting time so the group of oglers broke up at that point and I was finally able to get into the station proper and pay Den for the inspection. And off I went. Well, almost.

I got in and started her up and pulled away from the curb. At the next corner I went to make a left onto Webster Avenue and heard an interesting "Tootle-oot" from my own horn. Hmmm. I never even touched it - who could, the steering wheel was so hot?! At the next intersection, the light was red so I got in the left lane to head around the block towards home. And my horn started tooting. All by itself.

"TOOOOt toot too-lleoot TOOT toot tootle" And then it stopped. And right in front of the car, crossing the street, were the two young girls who had sashayed past the station moments before. Talk about embarrassed! Here they were, still strolling, but this time they were staring into my face as if I had accosted them wearing nothing but a raincoat! Then came the Lucy moment.

"TOOTlleeeeTOOTlleeeetoot" it went again and this time they really looked MAD. That was when I held my hands up in the Universal Gesture of Innocence - and it tooted right at them with my hands at my shoulders! They looked at the car and looked at my shrugging shoulders and upraised hands and one of them said to the other.

"Oom, that's coo-ah. I have to see maybe Robbie coo make his cah do dat. Hey, that's coo-ah, man!"

The light turned green and I drove around the corner back to Dennis's. When I pulled in, I left the car running on the apron and went inside to find him. He was changing into his civvies in the bathroom and when he came out, we both went to look at the car. As we walked out of the station, it started very softly going "tootootootootototolllltotototootototoolllllle" as if it were clearing its throat. I told him about the Senoritas and he started to laugh. "It's the horn pads on these Fords," he said, "If you leave them parked in the sun, it swells up or something and the horn starts to blow. Happened when you were turning the wheel, right?" I agreed and he imparted the "solution."

"OK, what you do is this," he said "Pound..." BEEEP **BANG BANG*** BEEEEEEP "...on the horn pad...." BEEEP **BANG BANG** BEEEEEEEEP "...up at the top here until it stops."

And it stopped.

"OK, Bill?"

"I guess so - did you see my ear drums anywhere around here?" I said "Hey, your neighbors must love having you in the vicinity!"

"Hey, they can't complain - I change their fuses for free. See you!"

And I got in the car, armed with my new knowledge and the determination to NEVER have to "fix" the horn myself. Especially within earshot of Robbie or his friends!
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Well, personally, I think Bill is onto something there with the self-actuating automatic horn, although I can see where that might cause any number of problems, depending on what else is happening when it decides to activate!

True Colors

Hello World,

And here is more than half of the month of June gone already, believe that or don't, and what have we got to show for it, I ask you that? It will be very easy for me to explain to you what sort of week this has been, when I say that in spite of considerable determination to the contrary, I completely forgot about Flag Day on Tuesday. I don't remember what the weather was like that day, but unless it was pouring down rain all day, you know I would have been flying the flags upstairs and downstairs, like I always do, and proud to show Old Glory on its special day. But no, I was having the kind of week that makes even Flag Day fade into oblivion, and the air is filled with the sounds of weeping and gnashing of teeth. In the midst of a week like that, poor Flag Day didn't stand a chance.

On the other hand, in the Ask Dr. Science newsletter for Tuesday, in the section of celebration days where they announce items of interest such as "National Anxiety Disorders Screening Day" (May 3) and "World Pork Expo in Indiana" (June 9) they declared June 14 as something they referred to as "U.S. Flat Day." I admit that I've never heard of Flat Day, and I would be surprised to find it on the same day as Flag Day. However, unlike Flag Day, where I totally fell down on the job, if there is such a thing as Flat Day, I feel that I have done my part for this holiday, because I certainly left things flat when I went to work. Of course, we have to consider the possibility that may not be at all what they meant by that.

Speaking of things that are not what they mean, our church recently had a dedication service for its new Community Prayer Garden, and afterwards, I found myself walking into the social hall with two other ladies, one of whom was dressed in lavender, as I was. I said to the other woman, who was wearing brown, "I guess you didn't get that memo!" She turned to me, and in all seriousness, said, "No, you know, I find that a lot of the information that's supposed to come to me, I never get it, or else I don't get it until it's too late to do anything about it, and so if they sent it, I didn't see it, but I'm not surprised, because this happens all the time ... " and she just went on and on like that. I finally had to stop her in mid-stream and tell her I was only making a little joke, like we often do at work, when two people show up in the same color, the next person we see who's not in that color, we say, "You didn't get that memo" just as a joke. And here she's thinking that we really did send out a memo from church telling people what color to wear to the dedication service. Hey, let's remember these are Lutherans, not Baptists!

And while we're on the topic of things that have gotten lost in the translation, we get this next tidbit from Bill, where one of their customers requested a sign in Spanish and helpfully provided the wording as follows:

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ATENCION EMPLEADOS:
SE LES SOLICITA POR FAVOR
NO DEJAR SUS UNIFORMES
EN LOS ARMARIOS CUANDO
SE VAN SUS HOGARES YA
LOS ARMARIOS SON
PARA USARSE MIENTRAS
SE ESTA TRABAJANDO.
GRACIAS

For your laugh of the day, I went to Babelfish online translation to see how it translated BACK into English from this and I got the following:

ATTENTION EMPLOYEES
IT IS ASKED FOR PLEASE
NOT TO LEAVE ITS UNIFORMS
TO THEM IN THE CLOSETS WHEN
THEIR HOMES GO AWAY ALREADY
THE CLOSETS ARE FOR BEING USED
WHILE THIS WORKING.
THANKS
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Now, you know I always say, there's just no way to argue with logic like that! Meanwhile, a cyber-friend shared some tantalizingly exotic junk email that she recently received (thanks, Jenny!) and they not only changed her name to Phoebe Houle (her name isn't any closer to Phoebe Houle than mine is) but the rest of the message is incomprehensible to an unprecedented degree:

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Subject: Re: Glad I Made the Move
To: Phoebe Houle
Hello,
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armed"My property?""Did I not say that I desired to be your friend?"the bay,
and who profited further by commissions upon money which

----- End forwarded message -----

Text of the original:

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patch of light flutteredointed!
===================================

Well, I hate to leave us disappleading upwards to the house and across the patch of light flutterdointed, but I just don't know any way to improve upon that!

Tooting My Own Horn

Hello World,

Well, when the poets said, "What is so rare as a day in June," they certainly weren't thinking of this week of days, not by any means. Two weeks ago, it was 50 degrees and raining, and suddenly this week, it's close to 90 degrees and the humidity is off the charts. I thought we were all going to drop dead with this crazy weather just going from one extreme to another. Now they're warning us about dangerous thunderstorms, related to Hurricane Arlene, of all things, off Florida. I realize there's no standards any more, but I thought one thing we could all agree on is that hurricane season starts in September, and there's no such thing as hurricanes in June. Of course, like professional sports, this could be the pre-season hurricane training camps, but I can't say that I care for it much.

Every year over the Memorial Day weekend, my sister Linda organizes a famous and long-standing barbecue at the log cabin, for about 150 million of their closest friends from around the country. This has been going on so long now (this year was the 33rd) that people who had gotten married and brought their children, now these same children are married and bringing children of their own. I don't usually go, finding it a little crowded and noisy for my tastes, but this year I threw caution to the winds and drove up for a few hours last Sunday. It wasn't particularly crowded or noisy when I was there, and the weather was even cooperating for the most part, which is very often not the case. I had a nice time and was glad I made the trip. Later, my sister sent me a digital photo that one of her friends had taken of the two of us, which she complained, was perfectly wonderful except for a smelly ratty sneaker on a shelf behind us, that appeared to be coming out of both of our heads. I told her that Bill (who as we all know, loves a challenge) would be happy to edit the photo to remove the offending footwear, and put Paris Hilton in there instead. I was only kidding, because Bill has been known to "improve" family pictures by inserting incongruous elements, such as Groucho Marx, Orson Welles or space aliens. Anyway, Linda sent the photo to Bill, asking him to fix the sneaker problem, and while he was at it, make her look 20 years younger. So he took Linda out and put Paris Hilton in her place. This was only funny because Bill and I hadn't discussed it ahead of time, and yet somehow both managed to hit on the idea of Paris Hilton independently. Everyone knows that I'm nothing if not diplomatic, so I told Linda that I would rather have her as a sister than Paris any day.

Meanwhile at work, our crack IT department has been going to great pains to prove that even people who understand a lot about computers can still be borderline illiterate. Here's a sampling of some of their less intelligible messages that have greeted us in the mornings lately:

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ATTN ALL USERS PLEASE SIGN OFF YOUR TERINALS

any users still active will be terminated imediately

ANY JOB STILL ACTIVW WILL BE IMMEDIATELY TERMINATED

all devices still active will be terminated immeidately

ANY USERS STILL ACTIVE WILL BE TERMINATED IMMEDITAELY

ANY JOBS STILL ACYIVE WILL BE TERMINATED

can you please sign off oyur terminals

WE WILL BE PERFPRMING OUR DAILLY BACKUPS
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Honestly, this is enough to bring Casey Stengel back from the beyond to wonder, "Can't anybody here play this game?" Also at work, one of our sales reps stopped by Purchasing to drop off some paperwork, and was bemoaning the condition of the economy in general, and the state of health care in particular. He complained that his commissions were being decreased through no fault of his own, but because hospitals in his territory keep closing. He said that he had already lost 5 or 6, and now another one was going out of business in Brooklyn. I told him, "You're a jinx! We should probably make you stop coming here. After all, the one thing all of those hospitals have in common is YOU!" He laughed.

Back in the old days (and how I do miss my old friends, the dinosaurs) when they built cars, they gave you a horn that was right out in plain sight and anyone could use it, including infants in arms and the family dog, with no trouble (and sometimes without even meaning to) because it was right there on the steering wheel and easy to use. Somewhere along the way (and here I blame jealous violinists) it was either decided that the horns were too unsightly for the aesthetics of modern interiors, or else there was some sort of conspiracy afoot to prevent people from using their horns altogether, because now, trying to find a horn in the car is like a quest for the Holy Grail. First of all, it could be anywhere - on the steering wheel, the dashboard, center console, the shift lever, the floor, just anywhere. Even when it's some place that you can see it, they give you a picture that makes no sense, so that you have no idea what it's supposed to be anyway. God forbid it was some kind of an emergency, by the time you found the darned horn, the runaway freight train would have long since crashed over the side of the collapsed trestle and plunged into the river below. No thanks to you and your stupid horn, mind you.

Anyway, the Gremlin, bless its little purple heart, came with a very handy horn right in the center of the steering wheel and you could press it and make horn noises all the livelong day if you wanted to. It worked like a charm, and I would never complain about not being able to honk it when I wanted to. The problem with that horn was that it was so faint and sweet (more of a "tweet" rather than a "TOOT!") that whenever I would try to honk at people doing stupid things while they were driving, they would invariably turn and wave at me, figuring that I was trying to be friendly. I finally had to give that up as a lost cause, with the moral being, I suppose, that you can't drive a funny-looking purple car and tweet at people and expect them to understand that you're mad at them. The Tempo, on the other hand, has a fine deep basso profundo sort of horn that gets people's attention and no nonsense about it. Well, it would do that, if only I could find it when I needed it. This is one of those cars that suffers badly from "horn camouflage" and even though it's on the steering wheel, it defies all attempts to locate it. The helpful Ford engineers (or perhaps this was just their idea of a joke) provided two horn-shaped designs on the steering wheel that serve a decorative purpose which in no way engages the horn mechanism. After years of driving the Tempo, I resigned myself to the fact that the horn was an elusive feature whose mysteries I would never unravel.

The problem with taking the Tempo to work however, or in fact any car with no horn, is that there are so many one-way streets along the way. In some places, they go right from one to another to another, with veritable waves of traffic all rolling along in the same direction. It's at times like this, when everyone behind you is all going the same way, and you look up to find some poor lost soul driving straight at you, that you wish you had a horn that you could count on when you need it. This finally happened to me one too many times when I was coming home from work, and I said I was going to find that darned horn or know the reason why. I started pushing every part of the steering wheel one at a time, starting with the picture of the horn (AS IF!) and moving outward from there. I was more surprised than anybody to actually find the horn several inches down and to the left of the picture, but when I did, it let out a clear and full-bodied TOOOOT for all the world to hear. I was so tickled with my success that I did it again, with the same result. Then to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I pressed it again. By now, I'm sure that people would have been wondering what I was honking about, since I was driving along pretty much by myself, and no traffic to speak of around me, and honking merrily all the way home. I got plenty of practice at finding the horn without any clues, and the next time that somebody comes lurching at me going the wrong way on a one-way street, you can believe that I'm really going to let them have it. Unless it's Paris Hilton, of course.

Milling Around

Hello World,

Well, this has certainly been another week for the birds, and they're welcome to it. It started out bad and went downhill from there, and those of us waiting around to see some improvement, suffice to say, are still waiting. The big story all week around here was the mighty Yankees being swept by the hapless Kansas City Royals, and anyone who watched it on TV knows that the Royals reacted to this unexpected outcome as if they had just won the World Series and then some. Hometown fans may quibble, but I think it's nice to see that kind of enthusiasm in June, with little else to cheer about. (Certainly not the weather, so don't even get me started on that!) Of course, pretty soon the NBA playoffs will be over, no doubt ushering in the usual riots and car fires, but that's a different sort of enthusiasm altogether.

This year was one of the few times that Memorial Day was observed on what is generally referred to as "traditional" Memorial Day, that is, May 30th. Like its brethren holidays of Presidents Day and Labor Day, but quite unlike Christmas and Independence Day, Memorial Day has recently become a moveable feast, falling on whatever is the last Monday in May, rather than staying put on May 30th. This is a nuisance for those of us who run up the colors, and are purists, because I end up putting up and taking down flags on both days, for traditional Memorial Day and also the day it's observed. It can be as early as the 25th, or as late as the 31st, but no later than that. Periodically, it falls on May 30th, just like in the good old days, and that makes it doubly special. Not to mention, half as much work for the flag brigade around here, and since I fly flags upstairs and downstairs, that makes a big difference. Like the gunslinger riding off into the sunset after cleaning up the wild frontier, I can say, "My work here is done."

Speaking of work, I arrived on the campus as usual on Tuesday, to be confronted with a large sign outside of the parking lot and announcing this as one of "Solucient's Top 100 Hospitals," for all the world to see, or at least the local pedestrians and motorists who share our neighborhood. I said to Bill, "I don't have any idea what that means, and I work here!" So I asked them in Administration, and they gushed about receiving what they referred to as a great honor, although it turned out, as Jon Stewart always says, "Mmmmm, not so much!" It seems that Solucient is a company that you can pay to send you a sign, which you can erect on your property, and is basically a billboard for Solucient, because all it has is their name on it, and not the name of your hospital. This is what used to be known in the old days as "snake oil," and anyone else out there who considers this to be a great honor, please contact me, because I have a very handsome bridge that I'd be happy to sell you.

I had occasion recently to attend an event held at the prestigious and magnificent Mill Neck Manor in the scenic enclave of Mill Neck on Long Island's north shore, in the area known as "the Gold Coast" for all of the wealthy families who built estates there. Please feel free to visit their web site at www.millneck.org and see for yourself. If you ever have an opportunity to go there for any reason, you should definitely not walk, but run full-tilt at once, because it is worth the trip. The treasure that is now Mill Neck begins its life as Sefton Manor, a classically styled stone mansion nestled on 86 bucolic acres, built in the 1920's for four million dollars, back when money really meant something. In 1948, the Lutheran Friends of the Deaf were scouting around for some property to build a school, and through some miraculous set of circumstances (and here, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of divine intervention) they were able to buy the property from Mrs. Lillian Sefton Dodge for only $216,000. For those of you out there keeping score, this transaction netted the Sefton family a loss of almost $3.8 million in less than 30 years, which is a rate of return usually seen in stocks for bankrupt railroads, or municipal bonds issued by crazed despots in Third World wastelands. I think this illustrates either that the Seftons were financially inept, or that they were generous to a fault. I prefer the latter interpretation.

In any case, they opened the Mill Neck Lutheran School for the Deaf in 1951 (you would think the least they could do would be to keep the Sefton's name on it after that!) with 19 students learning in classrooms converted from farm buildings, and living in rooms right on the property. Over 50 years later, they're still going strong and teaching people today, although now it's a day program and not residential. They've expanded many times over the years, converting unused rooms or buildings to new purposes. My favorite was described this way in their brochure: "In the Spring of 1961, the third-floor servants' quarters of the Manor House were converted into a library. The first library card was presented to New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller." And they have a picture of him looking about as delighted as you would expect a grown man getting a library card to look, and it is just too priceless. Eventually, they had to add some new buildings, to meet the needs for extra classrooms, a conference center, audiology clinics, job placement programs, an early childhood center and sports complex. Through it all, it's remarkable how well the newer buildings blend in with their surroundings, not as a cheap imitation of the same design, but rather as understated and thematically-related companion pieces.

Nothing can take away from the glory of the original manor house, which manages to appear grand and imposing, not only from the front and also the back, but both sides as well. Ah, for those halcyon days of yore when people cared about quality, and beauty was appreciated just for the sake of being beautiful. I don't know if they let people in the manor house, because the event I attended was in the conference center, which was nice enough as conference centers go nowadays, but I wouldn't recommend it as a tourist destination. But the real jewel of the estate, at least for me, was the Memorial Garden, which I stumbled upon by accident, after following a wrong path along a hedge. When the path ended at an ornate wrought iron gate and I looked inside, I was mesmerized by the grandeur and symmetry of the formal gardens, with their stone walks, massive gazebos and decorative fountains. I was surprised the gate wasn't locked and I walked right in, to drink in the splendor of the gardens and be transported back in time to a simpler and more elegant era. After I walked around, I realized that the rest of the garden was open on all the other sides, and the wall where I came in was basically serving a purely decorative purpose and not a security one, so it would have done no good to lock the gate anyway.

It was with regret that I went back to the rest of my conference, and when we finally finished, it was too dark to enjoy another stroll in the gardens. But I was so glad that I decided to attend this event and have a chance to see this beautiful estate for myself. Because Mill Neck Manor is a privately-owned educational facility, I don't know that they allow the general public to just drive in and wander around the grounds for their own enjoyment, although I would certainly vote for that if anyone asked me. But every year over the Columbus Day weekend, they host the locally famous Mill Neck Manor Fall Harvest Festival, which draws crowds from all over to indulge in their variety of apples, home-made pies, fresh produce and other treats, as well as arts and crafts. If you find yourself at loose ends at that time of the year, by all means, jump in your car and go there, and don't spare the horses.