Month: August 2011

Wining

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

You can tell a lot with a bottle of wine.  Not as much as you can tell after a bottle of wine, but close.

Say, for instance, you’re invited to someone’s house for the evening.  It’s the expected and accepted practice to bring a bottle of wine.  The expected and accepted reaction is to raise one eyebrow, smile quietly and say “well, thank you very much.”  This generally means that even though you don’t know wine from wine vinegar you need to pretend to know.

Some people see it as a gift and put in on a shelf in the corner.  That’s the last it will be seen.  These people we’ll call Receivers.  Others see it as a contribution to the evening and open the bottle and pour it.  They are Sharers.

A Receiver can become a Sharer, but not in the same evening.  Not until the next time he has a party, when he brings out the wine you brought him last time and shares it.  A Sharer, on the other hand, cannot become a Receiver, unless inundated with wine from guests at the party.

I’m not about to pass judgment on which is the appropriate response.  The problem, if there is one, comes when a Sharer gives a bottle to a Receiver.  The Sharer spends the evening walking nonchalantly in and out of the kitchen looking for the wine bottle he carefully selected and wondering why it isn’t open yet.  If he’s particularly bold, he will move the bottle out of the corner and put it next to the box wine that is being served.

The Receiver, on the other hand, figures that if the Sharer wanted to taste the wine he would have left it at home and drunk it on his own time.  It was given to the Receiver to do as he pleases and it pleases him to open it when he can have more than five drops in the bottom of a glass after passing it around to everyone else in the room.  Or he’ll take it to make a good impression at someone else’s party.  The Receiver, after all, usually chooses wine by the color of the label.

By the way, that’s also the extent of what I know about wine. And that’s why I’m a Sharer when it comes to wine. I’ve seen people snort, swirl, squint, swish and spit wine trying to decide if it is worthy of walking around with while they mingle. Whether they approve or disapprove, it all tastes disturbingly like wine.

Now if you want to talk single malt scotch or brandy, we can have an intelligent conversation.  I know, brandy is just wine on steroids, but in the process it can turn into a nice grownup beverage.  And if you drop by with one of those bottles and expect to have a glass or two, well, you better bring a bottle for yourself.

Coincidence?

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

Time was, if I told someone I grew up in Minnesota I would get one of two reactions; either, “Oh, Min-n-ne-s-o-h-t-ah” in what they thought was a Scandinavian accent or, “B-r-r-r, it’s cold there.”

I had answers for those; “ya-a-ah” a three syllable word in what truly is a Scandinavian accent or, “nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding.”

Times were simpler then. Now, if I mention Minnesota, people invariably say “Ooh, Michele Bachmann.”

Rather than roll my eyes and shrug, I have decided I need a snappy comeback.  Something that will explain that a geographic quirk of fate is the only thing she and I could possibly have in common.

After all, I have one “l” and two “e’s” in my first name and two “n’s” in my last name.  She, on the other hand has….ONE “L” AND TWO “E’S ” IN HER FIRST NAME AND, OH MY GOD, TWO “N’S” IN HER LAST NAME.  But I have ten letters in my name; she has fifteen letters in her name.  I’m five years older than she is.

Five, ten and fifteen are all divisible by five. Coincidence, or conspiracy?  We could be twins.

But really, that’s all there is to it. I swear.

When she announced she was running for President, she confused John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy.  I would never make that mistake.  Serial killer Gacy lived in a city where I worked for a time – Waterloo, Iowa – where Bachmann was born.  That can’t mean anything.  It’s just a quirk, a fluke, an accident, a mistake, a total embarrassment to me.

Is it too late to claim I was born in Kenya?

-0-

Funny little side story about Waterloo Iowa.  After Gacy was tried and convicted of murdering 33 teenage boys, someone sent a pen to the television station newsroom where I was working.  It was one of those cheap promotional pens, probably very similar to the pen that’s nearest to you right now.  And it was imprinted “John Gacy for President – Waterloo Jaycees.”

I guess when he (and Bachmann) lived in Waterloo in the sixties he was active in the Jaycees and was named “outstanding vice president.”  So he decided to run for president and had those pens made up.  For a day, I had that pen in my desk drawer.  The next morning it was gone.  I’ve regretted it ever since.

So you want to talk about coincidences?  Michelle Bachmann of Waterloo Iowa mentioned John Wayne as being from her hometown when it was actually John Wayne Gacy who is from Waterloo Iowa, and both Bachmann and Gacy ran for president.  And the happiest coincidence:  neither of them wins.

Headlines

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

An Associated Press a headline today said Executives Don’t See Reason to Panic, Yet.  It was the first I realized panic is a reasoned response, arrived at only after long and considered study.

“Elizabeth, arrange a conference call with the board.  I’ve been looking over these balance sheets for two days now and I think it’s time to take a vote on panicking.”

“A videoconference, sir?”

“No, just on the phone.  I don’t want to tip my hand by letting the board see that my hair is on fire.”

Wile E. Coyote

Acme Industries’ Board Votes 7-6 Against Panic

Director Wile E. Coyote Casts Deciding Vote

“I’ve seen worse,” Coyote explained.  “Once you’ve run off the edge of a cliff with an anvil and a case of dynamite strapped to your leg, a few drops in stock prices don’t scare you much.”

Walking

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

We walk.  Every day without fail.  Some days not as far as other days, but always somewhere; even if it’s just around the block in the rain.  We’re not going anywhere.  This is not one of those “walk across America to cure people from ever wanting to walk again” stories.  There’s nothing heroic in where we go.  It’s just what we do.

The dogs
Ginger and Rudy

It was probably my idea. They don’t have many ideas of their own, at least not many good ones.  But they took to it right away and now, even if I’m not feeling up to it, they bound out of bed and insist we go. There’s no point in trying to reason with them.

When we pass people on the sidewalk someone is almost certain to say “how cute.”  I figure they’re talking about the dogs, but I often ask.

I’ve had a dog most of my life—except for that part in the middle when I was living in apartments and moving from city to city.  But no question, we are dog people.  When my parents got married they got a Pekinese named Peke and not long after a Scottish terrier named Scottie.  Let’s just say the creativity gene pool was not overflowing.  I should be grateful they didn’t name me “Kid.”

It’s a funny thing, what a stabilizing force a habit can be.  We walked when my Mother died and after my brother called to say he was diagnosed with brain cancer and had less than a year to live.  And when he died, we walked.  We walked through my layoff and job search.  We walked through my leukemia diagnosis and we walked through chemotherapy.  Cheryl’s father died and we walked.  Cheryl prefers the treadmill because it doesn’t stop to sniff the bushes and you don’t have to pick up after it.

We walk down the street and wind through the blocks.  The route is a little different every day, but it’s all the same neighborhood.  We’ve seen the streets day in and day out for nearly eight years.   We know where the sidewalk is raised from overgrown tree roots.  We know who waters their lawn and when they water it.  We notice the landscaping.  (When did flower beds become “landscaping?”)

This morning I saw a house I hadn’t seen before.  We walk past it every day, sometimes both coming and going, but I’d never seen it.  I can tell you what plants they have in their yard and can describe the stucco wall around their planter, but I hadn’t noticed the house.  A whole house unseen.

That’s when I decided I have so much more to see.