Solving the Squirrel Problem*

A mid-sized city in the heartland of America had a problem - it was overrun with squirrels. The problem was particularly acute for the city's churches which, in addition to the simple fact of the huge number of squirrels, were faced with the additional problem of dealing with them in a religiously appropriate and moral fashion. Here's how some of the denominations approached the problem ...

The Presbyterians called a meeting to discuss what to do. After much prayer and introspection, they determined the squirrels were predestined to be there and they shouldn't interfere with God's divine will. The squirrels stayed.

At the Baptist Church, the squirrels tended to congregate in the baptistery. The deacons met and decided to install a water slide so the squirrels would drown themselves in the baptismal pool. Squirrels, however, know instinctively how to swim. They liked the slide, and twice as many squirrels showed up the following week.

The Episcopal Church decided that they should not harm any of God's creatures, so they humanely trapped their squirrels and set them free near the Baptist Church. Two weeks later the squirrels were back when the Baptists took down the water slide.

The Catholics baptized all the squirrels and consecrated them as members of the church. Now they only see them on Christmas and Easter.

The rabbi at the local Jewish Synagogue set a trap and caught one squirrel. He circumcised the squirrel and let him go, and they haven't seen a squirrel on their property since.

The Mormons sent pairs of missionaries to talk to each squirrel. The squirrels were gone the next day.

At the local mosque, the imam welcomed the squirrels, but had to create two new prayer areas so the male and female squirrels could pray separately.

The Evangelicals were so thrilled at the thought of the squirrels coming to Jesus that they gathered together and shouted "Hallelujah!!" over and over. The noise was so great it scared the squirrels away. Problem solved.

Amen.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Thanks to my old and somewhat twisted friend Ken, who sent me the original joke on which this post is based.

Musical Monday

The Republican National Convention starts in Cleveland today. I think we need to call on Bobby McFerrin to help get us through the week ...

Sadly, I'm still worried. But it's a cute song, anyhow ... who else would rhyme "late" and "litigate?"

News Flash: I have decided to combine my Poetry Sunday and Musical Monday posts down to a single day. Starting next month, Sundays will alternate between Poetry and Music in the same way that Fridays now alternate between the Editorial Gems and the Ass Clown Awards. While both topics are reasonably popular, the statistics on readership and number of comments suggest that it might be better to dedicate one day and alternate the topics ... plus, it will give me four days each week, rather than three, to bloviate about other things. This is no small advantage in an election year.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Poetry Sunday

Now that I'm retired, a quiet life is what I want. I want to do the things I enjoy doing, to watch my grandchildren grow up, to write my blog and the occasional letter, to read, and to tend my little garden. What I desire in life isn't a properly boiled egg ... although this poem by Baron Wormser makes the contemplation of that egg seem pretty interesting ...

A Quiet Life 

What a person desires in life
    is a properly boiled egg.
This isn’t as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
    the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
    banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
    and furnaces and factories,
    of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
    of women in kerchiefs and men with
    sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
    and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
    of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
    stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
    the ace in any argument for God.
Only God could have imagined from
    nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
    when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
    knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
    ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
    take it out on you, no dictators
    posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
    the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
    of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
    that came from nowhere.


I think I may have a nice boiled egg for breakfast, but without all the ruminations about how it got to the table. If I think too long, my coffee will get cold.

Have a good day. See you tomorrow for Musical Monday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

I'm afraid to ask what's next ...

At least 84 people were murdered and more than 200 injured, many critically, in the French city of Nice when a man drove a huge truck through streets crowded with people celebrating the Bastille Day holiday; an attempted military coup in Turkey has left more than 160 people dead and thousands of others under arrest; in The Hague, the Permanent Court of Arbitration has ruled decisively against China's aggressive claims in the South China Sea, and China has said it will ignore the ruling; new British Prime Minister Teresa May has named former London mayor and political gadfly Boris Johnson - who once wrote a limerick about the President of Turkey having sex with a goat - as the new Foreign Minister; and the online game Pokemon Go has become so popular that in Washington, DC, officials were forced to ask people not to play the game at Arlington National Cemetery and the National Holocaust Museum.

If the present is this screwed up, what is the future going to be like? This week's cartoons take a look at the world of those who ought to know ... fortune tellers and gurus.

It's always important for professionals to have the latest and best equipment to serve their customers ...

I hope this won't be my life in focus ...

Makes about as much sense as most paid fortunes ...

Sometimes the future is easy to predict ...

What the well-equipped fortune teller has on her smart phone ...

Well, why not? ...

Madame Obviouso finds another mark ...

At newer banks, it's hard to find a human teller of any kind ...

For sure! ...

After hours, down at the bar ...

And that's it for this week's edition of Cartoon Saturday ... I hope it helped you recover - at least partially - from the rigors of the past week. And I hope that wherever you are, you have air conditioning. Or at least, a breeze. Here in NoVa, it's going to be hotter than the proverbial two-dollar pistol, just when I need to get some serious yard work done. Hmmm ... or maybe I should just stay in and write a few more blog posts, whattaya think? 

Have a good day and a great weekend. Come back tomorrow for Poetry Sunday. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

The Left Cheek Ass Clown for July, 2016

It hardly seems right that it's only the 15th of the month, and we're ready to announce the

Left Cheek Ass Clown for July, 2015

July is one of those months with five Fridays, and they fall such that we will have not two, but three Ass Clown awards. Lucky for us there's no shortage of worthy candidates. And so it is that with the usual flatulent blare of trumpets, we announce our Left Cheek Ass Clown for the month - 

Associate Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Judges at every level - like the rest of us - have their own political beliefs and ideas, but judges in general, and Supreme Court justices in particular, have a duty to subordinate their personal beliefs and prejudices to the impartial administration of the law. During the past week, Justice Ginsberg engaged in an unnecessary and unprofessional war of words with presumptive GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, in which she has cast very specific doubts on his ability to govern and his fitness to serve as president. These doubts are not original to Justice Ginsberg, are not news, and are matters of concern to every thinking American. But a Supreme Court justice may at some time be required to rule on the actions or policies of the president, and the sort of remarks made by Justice Ginsberg about Mr Trump cast her ability to be an impartial arbiter of such cases into doubt. 

It's bad enough to have an insult-hurling buffoon like Donald Trump as a candidate for president. It's worse when a distinguished jurist makes unnecessary comments that call her judicial impartiality into question. As a highly critical editorial in Wednesday's Washington Post said,

"However valid her comments may have been, though, and however in keeping with her known political bent, they were still much, much better left unsaid by a member of the Supreme Court. There’s a good reason the Code of Conduct for United States Judges flatly states that a “judge should not . . . publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office.” Politicization, real or perceived, undermines public faith in the impartiality of the courts. No doubt this restriction requires judges, and justices, to muzzle themselves and, to a certain extent, to pretend they either do or do not think various things that they obviously do or do not believe. As the saying goes, however, “'hypocrisy is the compliment vice pays to virtue.'”

For her injudicious and unprofessional comments about Donald Trump, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is named our Left Cheek Ass Clown for July, 2016.

Have a good day. See you tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday ... you know you need it.

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Afterword: I wrote the original draft of this post on Wednesday, July 13th. On Thursday, July 14th, Justice Ginsburg apologized for her remarks, saying: "On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them. Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect." I give her credit for the apology, but still believe she should have known better. The award stands. 

The Things That Matter

One of my favorite songs is a John Denver ditty from back in the 70's called "Late Night Radio," which includes this line -

"I turn the dial a little bit past one-oh-one point two,
In time to catch the news and see who's shootin' who"

Those lines are more relevant now than ever before. What's wrong with our country that these things keep happening?

I think the best explanation of why things are the way they are was written in a 1972 memoir by Dennis Smith. Report from Engine Company 82 describes Smith's experiences - by turns dramatic, funny, and horrifying - as a career firefighter in New York City. Commenting on demonstrators who were pelting his crew with rocks as they tried to fight a fire in a New York slum, he wrote:

"I used to believe that people who threw rocks at firemen were motivated by conditions - the lower depths of American society. I used to believe that the fundamental problems were housing and education ... but I don't believe that anymore ... The disease is much more seriously latent, more pernicious than uncaring landlords, or bureaucratic, apathetic school officials. The malignancy lies in the guts of humankind at all levels. We have unlearned the value of a human life."

There are a lot of "explanations" for why we're stuck in this insane cesspool of violence. It's easy to spread the blame, and commentators from across the political spectrum are busy doing it. Depending on your political persuasion, the fault lies with the ready availability and glorification of powerful weapons, ultraviolent movies and television shows, parents who don't teach their children right from wrong, people who value individual freedom over responsibility to the community, religious and social bigotry, or any of a thousand other excuses. But the real reason is the one Dennis Smith identified more than 40 years ago - we have unlearned the value of a human life.

A human life. Not black or white or asian or hispanic. Human.

And I don't know what else to say.

Have a good day. And be careful. I need you all safe and sound.

More thoughts tomorrow, when we salute the Left Cheek Ass Clown for July.

Bilbo

Our Baltic Cruise Ends: Copenhagen, Denmark

Our Baltic cruise ended early on the morning of Saturday, June 25th, when the Regal Princess docked in the harbor at Copenhagen, Denmark - 11 days after we'd set sail.

We had arranged for a transfer from the ship to a local hotel (the Scandic Copenhagen), and at about 9:30 we boarded the bus for the drive into town. We'd packed our luggage and put it outside our stateroom door the night before, and it was sent separately to the hotel ... a bellman delivered it to us a few hours after we checked in. At the hotel, we were greeted by a Princess representative who gave us our taxi vouchers for the trip to the airport at the end of our stay, and a sheet of detailed instructions for arrival, departure, and sightseeing recommendations.

Despite the presence in the lobby of about 390,000 people, our check-in went very smoothly, and a very pleasant young lady at the desk (who, like just about everyone else, spoke better English than I did) soon had us on our way to our room on the 9th floor. It was small and a bit spartan in an Ikea sort of way, but had two wonderful features: a heated floor in the bathroom, and a nice reading bench under the window. We didn't care all that much about the room, though, as we planned to spend much of our time out seeing the sights.

After we got settled in, we went back down to the lobby to ask Javi, the Princess representative, for some advice on a good place for lunch. He recommended the Cafe Emma, a few blocks from the hotel, but noted that "it's pricey, but so is everything in Copenhagen."

We strolled there and had a very nice lunch of goat cheese sandwiches ("gedeost") and baskets of some the best french fries I've ever had ... pricey, yes ... the bill came to 480 kroner, or about $72 at the current exchange rate!

After lunch and a short nap (hey, we were on vacation!), we decided to walk across town to see the famous statue of The Little Mermaid which, according to the hotel website, was not all that far from the hotel. The concierge gave us a map, but it was pretty useless, so Agnes suggested that we try using Google Maps on our iPhones. Yes, Dear Readers, Google Maps worked just fine, and even automatically converted the distances from miles to kilometers (about 4.7 each way). It was a warm and sunny day, and the route took us down the main pedestrian shopping street (Agnes bravely resisted the siren call of a large Lego store) and through a bunch of doglegs and twists before bringing us to the harbor and the world-famous Little Mermaid ...

If you've never seen this statue before (and I had) I hate to burst your bubble, but it's not worth going out of your way to visit. Yes, it's cute in its way. But it's definitely "little," surrounded by hordes of tourists* and souvenir/snack stands, in an out-of-the-way place, and very much an anticlimax to a long walk. Agnes's comment was along the lines of "That's it??"

We walked back to the hotel, with Google Maps routing us by a different path that showed some other parts of the city, which is full of beautiful parks ...

and interesting architecture ...

Several times along our walk in both directions to The Little Mermaid, and again early the next morning when I went out to wander the streets and take pictures, we saw trucks like this one, full of young people cheering and yelling and blaring loud music. 

I couldn't figure out what they were making noise about, and couldn't read their signs, and so I went to trusty Google Translate. As near as I can figure, the sign says something like, "We came to school drunk**, and got the highest averages anyhow." If anyone out there speaks Danish and can improve on that, please leave a comment!

We'd made reservations for dinner that evening at a local restaurant recommended by the Princess representative for excellent, "real" Danish food, but we were both so worn out after the long day and the long, warm hike across town that we decided to cancel the reservation and eat in the hotel restaurant instead. Good decision - the food was amazing. As was the price.

Our plan for the next day was to visit the famous Tivoli Gardens Amusement Park, which was a mere 10-minute walk from our hotel ...

The park was absolutely beautiful and, in comparison to similar parks in the States, very neat and tidy. There were huge numbers of people, but it didn't feel crowded. It was full of narrow streets lined with shops and restaurants and various attractions, shady walkways and beautifully sculpted flower gardens ...

There were brightly painted walls and interesting sculptures everywhere you looked. I liked this fellow, who took advantage of his high perch to spend a little time reading*** ...

Like some parks in the States (Disney World in Orlando comes to mind), the Tivoli was divided into themed areas separated by flower beds, green lawns, and many lakes and streams. One of my favorites was this Persian-style palace with a beautiful garden and fountain in front ...

If you look closely in the lower right corner of the previous picture, you can see this fellow - a solar powered robot lawn mower gussied up to look like a bunny ...

Lots of birds were wandering free around the park as well, including this gorgeous peacock ...

And dozens of ducks and geese, who had their own little houses set up at various locations ...

Here are a few other shots that show random areas of the park ...

This pirate ship, moored in one of the larger lakes, was actually a family restaurant ...

The park opened at 11:00 AM; we arrived a few minutes after that and stayed until around 5:30, after enjoying lunch at the Promenaden i Tivoli followed by an enormous ice cream cone later in the afternoon ...

That evening we had dinner again in the hotel restaurant (being too tired to go anywhere else), and then went to bed very early, as we had to meet our taxi to the airport at 3:30 the next morning ...

... and the story of our return home is another heroic saga in itself, one best told over a few drinks.

To wrap up, here are a few of my general observations about Copenhagen ...

- It's beautiful.

- The people are very friendly.

- Everyone speaks better English than you do.

- If you're homophobic, you probably want to go somewhere else. Same-sex couples are very much in evidence, and are completely ignored by everyone else.

- It's horrendously expensive.

- It's the most bicycle-friendly place I've ever seen. Bicycles were parked everywhere, and were lined up outside virtually every building, in addition to very large bike parking lots dotted around the city. It seemed like there was a bicycle rental shop or store or repair shop on almost every block, and cyclists had their own traffic lanes and signals. This was just one small sample, shot from our bus ...

And that, Dear Readers, is the end of Bilbo's summary of our Baltic cruise vacation. We had a wonderful time, saw many beautiful sights, met lots of interesting people ... and were glad to be back home again.

Have a good day. Tomorrow, we go back to the regular ranting. More thoughts then.

Bilbo

* I was standing on the staircase down to the beach, framing a picture, when a young Oriental woman came blasting up the stairs and slammed full-tilt into me, jamming the camera into my face ... and kept on going without a word! I'm used to people carelessly blocking photos I'm trying to take, but this was the first time I'd actually been run down.

** Google Translate actually gave me "Came to school worn, anyway we got the highest average." The editorial license is my own.

*** I believe he was supposed to represent Hans Christian Andersen reading his stories to children.

Our Baltic Cruise: Stockholm, Sweden

Hang in there ... we're nearly done with the travelogue!

On Thursday, June 23rd, we arrived in Stockholm, Sweden shortly after 7:00 AM for a brief stop of only a few hours - not enough to really see, appreciate, and enjoy a beautiful city - especially on a warm and beautiful day. Here are a few pictures ...

This was a view across the harbor from where the Regal Princess was moored. You can see what a gorgeous day it was for a visit ...

Here are a few photos showing some of the sights we saw as the ship navigated the Stockholm harbor and the incredibly complex Stockholm archipelago, which consists of some 30,000 islands of varying sizes and shapes. The Regal Princess took several hours to thread its way through the vast maze of the archipelago, often seeming to narrowly miss bits of land.

Our tour of Stockholm consisted mainly of a short visit to the Royal Palace (Kungliga Slottet) ... not the one where the Swedish royal family lives, but where the king and the crown princess work. It's a pretty popular tourist destination, as you can see from this picture of me with a few other sightseers waiting for the doors to open ...

Along with the usual collection of antiques, statuary, tapestries, and other such royal stuff, the palace contains a large hall used for formal state banquets (including the annual Nobel Prize awards dinners) and a Hall of State used for official receptions and the occasional dinner and dominated by the Silver Throne - which, as it happens, was manufactured in Augsburg, Germany! I thought the most interesting room was this one, used by the king for official meetings with his government ministers - the two chairs at the head of the table are for the king and crown princess, and the books down the center of the table are copies of the Swedish constitution, readily available for reference as needed. Compared to the US Constitution, it appears to be a pretty large document ...

Sadly, I wasn't able to get many useful pictures within the palace, as flash photography was not allowed.

After the tour of the palace, we had a mere 45 minutes* to explore the surrounding area of Gamla Stan, the old city. It was a beautiful place, filled with colorful buildings, narrow streets, and vast crowds of tourists ...

I loved this slightly chaotic flower shop in a narrow street just down the hill from the palace ... 

And sidewalk cafes are nice, but nicer when there's a bit more sidewalk ...

Should we ever manage to get back to Stockholm for a longer visit (and I hope we can), I think a little advance study might be in order so that we can more thoroughly appreciate the country ...

Not wishing to miss our bus (the ship was going to sail on time, with or without us, according to the captain's much-repeated warning), we stuck fairly close to the square in front of the palace, where we spotted this stern sentry, whose main function seemed to be gently shooing tourists out of the street ...

Our bus was due to pick us up at 12:10, and at a few minutes before noon we heard a blare of marching music: two mounted police officers trotted up the hill from the harbor to the palace square, followed by a marching band ...

and a formation of armed soldiers. By sheer luck, we'd managed to be on hand to see the daily changing-of-the-guard parade ...

The parade put a temporary hold on the intricate ballet of tour buses arriving and departing from the palace square, which was packed with vast crowds of tourists swarming in all directions. It seemed miraculous that we somehow found the rest of our group ("Purple 6") and our bus, and equally miraculous that no one was run over by any buses.

Stockholm is a beautiful city in which we could easily have spent days seeing all the available parks, museums, palaces, and other worthy sights, while guarding against the omnipresent pickpockets. It was a shame that we had only a few hours to visit, much of it spent on a bus rather than on the streets or in the museums.

Tomorrow we come to the end of the Baltic cruise travelogue with our return to the city of Copenhagen, Denmark, and our adventures therein. Hope to see you then.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Less time for the routine old-guy pit stop.

Musical Monday

If there was ever a time we needed to call for help, it's now. Our government is a gridlocked mess, the country is awash in guns, people are being murdered by police officers who are supposed to protect and serve them, and two of the most distrusted people in America are positioned to compete for the presidency in November. I think it's time to send a distress signal ... maybe Abba can help ...

They certainly can't hurt.

Have a good day. Come back tomorrow, when we'll visit the next-to-last stop on our Baltic cruise: Stockholm, Sweden. No, we didn't see Abba live.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Poetry Sunday

Since I retired (for the second and final time) back in April, I've been dealing with the reality of my advancing age. Navigating the rocky shoals of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicare Supplements is bad enough, but watching my beloved grandchildren turn one-by-one into teenagers brings it home more than any bureaucratic morass ever could. And that brings us to this poem by Charles Kingsley that looks at both sides of the coin of life ...

Young and Old 

by Charles Kingsley 

When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.
When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.


Have a good day. Enjoy life, whatever your age.

See you tomorrow for Musical Monday ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo