The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  I woke up Monday morning to a clear calendar. I know that doesn't sound remarkable, and it shouldn't.

2  People mistake retirement with flying off to exotic places, sipping wine midday, tanning in Aruba, or reading 984-page novels.

3  <basketball buzzer>

4  Doesn't work for this old guy who moves around in Cargos. 

5  Allow me to address each of the above concepts.

6  I have a dreadful fear of flying. I never used to, despite the fact that both my father and his brother (after whom I am named) went down in planes. 

7  After my Dad's accident, which happened when I was Crayon age, I would spend a lot of crayon times making single-blue-stripe skies, yellow suns, huge white areas where any normal artist would have blue, capital M birds, a green lawn, a tree, and stick kids playing. 

8  Most of those pictures would include an airplane. Not because of any trauma, but because as a kid, you look up, you see airplanes. 

9  I also practiced how to draw airplanes. 

10  People used to ask me if I feared flying, and I bravely declared that I didn't. But each time I would get on an airplane, I would press my fingers hard against the armrests, and close my eyes every time the plane would experience mild turbulence. 

11  Never liked it. 

12  I recall one Tahoe trip years ago when we decided to take a plane. 

13  The plane was small. When my Dad went down, it was in a small craft on its way to Reno. 

14  I decided the only way to keep from establishing a 
life-long fear of flying was to climb aboard. 

15  It smelled of army shoes and old clothes. 

16  The first thing I noticed was that in the back, instead of having a stewardess and a bathroom, it had a stack of parachutes.

17  I could go on. We landed safely in Tahoe, and the flight out was on a larger plane, so I managed to navigate that one with grace and faux bravery.

18  As far as sipping wine daily, I used to manage that all the time during my summer vacays as a teacher. You have bragging rights. My annual two-weeks in Tahoe I considered sacrosanct. We always had Tahoe a couple of weeks before returning to the classroom, and any teacher will tell you that you NEED that in order to survive the exhaustion that comes with grading papers, working weekends, working through all that time we seem to have off, and waking up every hour on the hour worrying about lesson plans, educational trends, lesson-planning, and low coffee levels. 

19  Nobody said it was easy.

20  As far as tanning in Aruba, I used to be a tanner. Tanning always made people look more relaxed, and I always wanted people to think I was more relaxed. 

21 In my earlier days, I used to spend most of my summer trying to get the perfect tan. That was good for pretty much nothing. At some point, everything would start to peel. Tanning oils or ointments inevitably fell into my eyes and burned them. Rubbing my eyes exacerbated the problem, and only much later in life did I decide I could be doing more productive things. I STILL don't mind if I get a gardening tan. I wear straw hats for protection, but I don't mind looking a little darker when the sun starts to descend.

22  As far as reading 984-page novels: Ummmmm...nah. To be honest, I would rarely make it past page 157. I was always the kind of guy who would read about six books at a time, and leave each of them face down on various flat surfaces in the house. 

23  I'd get back to each every month or so, go back three chapters, and re-enjoy each book. 

24  I learned a lot that way, got led to some obscure books, and remembered obscure facts through all of it. Did the Arden family plot to kill Queen Elizabeth? I'm pretty sure they did. I read it somewhere in all those years. Lots of spying and intrigue in the Shakespeare house. 

25  I have stuff like that tucked away somewhere in my frabjous mind. 

26  It's funny because I'd rather hang out with family, go for walks, enjoy the Beebeez, laugh with friends, and avoid door knocks. Reading a long book is not at the top of my list. 

27  My calendar has hundreds of different things happening in the coming weeks, so many I want to crawl under the covers and hide. 

28  But on this past Monday, I woke up to a clear calendar. Clear. Bird sounds. That stillness we all crave, but that we seldom welcome in. 

29  "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
                                 ---John Lennon, Beautiful Boy 

30  John Lennon was spot-on with that line. 

31  He wrote that about his own son, Sean. It works with every father, and probably with most grandfathers if the relationship with family is strong. 

32  On Sunday, the day before I began writing all this, I saw Li'l Jack flying all over the living room in his walker. His smile went in six different directions and ended in dimples. He clearly LOVES living, and can't seem to get enough of it. 

33  And on Monday morning, I looked at the blank page on my calendar. I again heard birds. I fell into a bit of Zen, or that moment-of-empty-headedness that befalls us, proving once and for all that there is a Creator of the Universe, and that he/she is benign. 

34

35  Anybody lookin'?

36  Of course. Here is a link to some bird sounds. You should have them tweeting in the background quietly. You get ten hours of them:

37

Dawn Chorus

38  Moving On, Part One: I'm happy to report that Grammarly is beginning to know me. 

39  Grammarly knows grammar reasonably well. It doesn't do well with some things. It doesn't do well with deliberate sentence fragments, for example. Never does.

40  But it DOES know how to omit bad commas. There are lots of comma rules, and there is even disagreement on when and where to throw a comma. 

41  While I always taught the comma using older Warriner's English Grammar and Composition books, I would sometimes advise students, "When in doubt leave it out!"  I look back now and think, "Well THAT is pretty ill-advised!"

42  Unfortunately, it is difficult to find good grammar books in 2017. Those plastic grammar cards they sell at Fed-Ex and other printing places lay it out pretty nicely, but years ago I saw excellent Warriner's grammar books being removed from the shelves. I was flabbergasted. I would grab doomed class sets and smuggle them into my classroom. 

43  You can STILL get Warriner's grammar books online, but when I look at the atrocious use of grammar on the social media, I can see that it is like using a squirt gun on a forest fire. 

44  I got that one from Lousy Analogies R Us. 

45  If you are serious about learning English grammar, you might have a look at this link. Hit the link, not the picture. 

Warriner's English Grammar and Composition Fourth Course

46  It costs $3.58 plus tax and shipping. I've gotten several. The Fourth Course is the easiest to follow. Some stuff is dated, but the grammar proper is concise. I keep thinking about buying tons of them and selling them at flea markets. 

48  I'm sure I'd become rich beyond my wildest dreams. But only if I mark up the price to twenty bucks. They did get rid of hundreds of millions of them, so why not profit on the dummying down of 'Murica? 

49  Yeah-No. But younger teachers might want to grab a few copies. The price is right, and delivery usually takes less than a week. 

50  Miracle cure? In some ways, yes. 

51  They have my vote. They also have nearly every great writer's vote. Stephen King, for example, a guy who writes 984-page books, swears by Warriner's. 

52  Give it some thought.

53  Gottago.

54  I think I'm going to clear my Tuesday calendar, edit this stuff, and work on my tan.

55  See you again.

56  Have a GREAT day.

57  Live life.

58  Love life.

59  Peace. 

~H~

fin.