Belated New Year Thoughts on Blogging, Water, Solar, Lost Hats, Blimps, Guns and Foreign Students

Happy belated New Year. 

If it seems more time is passing between postings, you’d be correct. Last year I wrote 79 rants, er, blogs, compared to 85 in 2014, which was a reduction from 107 in 2013, which was 49 fewer than the 156 posted in 2012 and even that was 31 below my all-time production high of 187 in 2011.

Can I explain away this verbal shortfall? Somewhat, though some might discount my excuses. First in my mind is that for the last 16 months I have been driving Gilda to and from work Monday through Wednesday. That’s four to six hours behind the wheel each day, depending on traffic. Writing takes time, and, more to the point, the driving is exhausting. So blame Gilda if you crave but don’t get more blogging.

Second, for the last three years I have had a real estate license. I mostly help my friend Linda, occasionally co-hosting an open house, or erecting For Sale signs, or securing information from city/town hall records. Maybe I work a couple hours each week, not a lot, but enough to carve into my writing time. So blame Linda, as she’s the one who talked me into getting my realtor’s license.

Third, in response to several comments, I’ve reduced the number of blogs devoted to sports. After all, no one has replaced Derek Jeter on the New York Yankees as copy-worthy. 

Fourth, I’m to blame for just being … lazy. Lord knows there’s enough craziness out there, especially during this presidential election cycle, to keep me busy multiple times each week. Yet I too often fail to exert myself. Lethargy prevails. But what good is retirement if you can’t be excused for just goofing off? 

Okay, now that I’ve explained myself, here are some thoughts I hope interest you:

Water, Water Everywhere: Amid all the rainfall out West and the flooding along the Mississippi, not to mention how my backyard looks after last night’s and this morning’s monsoon, we should not lose sight of the real water problem that exists around the world—there’s a growing scarcity of potable water that threatens to be the next reason nations go to war or regions within our country dispute federal water management policies. 

Water has become more expensive than oil. Not really. Just seems that way. While clearing out some old files, I came across our city water bills for 2003. For the full year we used 10,200 cubic feet of water, equivalent to 76,301 gallons, at a cost of $73.80, or .0009672 cents per gallon. For 2015 we used 11,000 cubic feet of water, 82,285 gallons, at an annual cost of $220.60, or .0026809 cents per gallon—a 177.2% increase per gallon over the last 12 years. 

Had the price just increased by the cumulative rate of inflation (29%), our price per gallon of water would have been .0012476 cents for a grand total of $102.66. 

Solar Savings: At least we are saving money on our electricity usage thanks to our solar electric panels. Eight months into the program we’ve saved nearly $700. Equally important, we’ve reduced our ConEd dependence by nearly 5,000 kilowatts.  

Hats Off: I’m bummed out. I lost one of my favorite baseball hats, a promotional gift I received back in 1994 to celebrate the release of That’s Entertainment III by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Actually, three hats came my way. I kept two and gave one to my art director, Milton, after he said he’d like one. 

The hats are quite pliable, making it easy to fold into a winter jacket pocket. I think I lost the hat in a movie theater while watching the new Star Wars flick. 

Bottom line—I preferred the hat over the movie. and by that I mean both Star Wars VII and That’s Entertainment III.

Hot Air Rising: Today’s CBS Sunday Morning aired a piece on the evolution of the Goodyear blimp. It reminded me of my quixotic attempt to bum a ride on a blimp moored in Miami.

Back in 1972, as part of a graduate journalism program at the Newhouse School of Public Communications of Syracuse University, my class covered the Florida presidential primary. We were stationed in Miami. I was assigned to follow the campaign of John Ashbrook, a conservative Republican congressman from Ohio. He had little chance of winning, especially in the Miami area, so I had lots of free time. Two of my classmates and I came upon a Goodyear blimp moored at a field. The blimp was there for coverage of a sporting event some days later. We talked up the crew who promised us a free ride the next day. When we arrived Tuesday morning at the mooring site, the blimp was not there. Seems Walter Cronkite’s crew had been ordered to film Miami vistas for that evening’s election coverage. I never forgave Cronkite for pre-empting my chance to float in air.

Bang Bang: Christmas Day I headlined a blog post asking if you found an AR-15 under your tree, Seems I wasn’t too far off from the truth. 

Click on this article from Britain’s The Daily Mail and you’ll see some extraordinary pictures of “Americans showing off their new weapons at the firing range the day after Christmas - including a woman’s custom-made pink anti-tank rifle”: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3380575/

I fail to understand why anyone needs such personal firepower. 

Finally, Some International Humor you might identify with, courtesy of my brother-in-law David, who along with my sister Lee, has participated for several years in a university program to house foreign students in the Los Angeles area. Here are three “thank-you” notes received from Chinese parents by one program host:

“Thank you for teaching my son to wash dishes.”

“Thank you for teaching my daughter to make her own bed.”

“Thank you for teaching my son to cook and heat up his own food.”

Bible Studio Is Not Bible Study

It's no secret to loyal readers of this blog—I prefer movies to books. From my childhood days I've been a fan of biblical-themed films. Counting last week’s airing of The Ten Commandments, I must have seen that film at least 30 times. Probably lots more. 

Maybe my fascination with bible movies harks back to my father telling me bible stories before bedtime. He gave a particularly emotive rendition of the Samson and Delilah story. The movie version of the strongman and the seductress, starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr, was among the first I recall seeing.

I was non-sectarian in my devotion to bible films. Demetrius and the Gladiator, also starring Mature, Androcles and the Lion (Mature, once again), The Robe (with you know who, once more), Quo Vadis,  David and Bathsheba, Barabbas, Ben Hur—I was all in on those 1950s-early 1960s epics, mostly because The Million Dollar Movie on WOR-TV Channel 9 in New York City played them a week at a time, over and over. I drew the line at King of Kings and other Jesus bio-pics, though I did enjoy Jesus Christ Superstar when the musical debuted in 1970.

All this by way of saying I was less than enthralled by Noah, Darren Aronofsky’s treatment of the Flood. One of the things you want to see in any bible film is creative treatment of the back story, how the director fills in missing details, what Jewish scholars call midrash. What you don't want to see are significant contradictions to the accepted text. Thus, as absurd as it was to see rock people (fallen angels) help Noah against the onslaught of an evil mob, it was an imaginative interpretation of the Bible’s suggestion of giants living during those times, though a little too derivative, in my mind, to the tree-like Ents that aid the hobbits Merry and Pippin in The Lord of the Rings.

The Bible several times states the three wives of Noah's sons boarded the ark, yet Aronofsky chose to have only one daughter-in-law, Shem’s wife, in his retelling. How the world would be repopulated with only one woman of child-bearing age is solved(?) by having her deliver twin girls. Aronofsky would have us believe uncles Ham and Japheth will just have to wait until their nieces’ puberty arrive to fulfill god’s directive to be fruitful and multiply.

I also had difficulty swallowing the notion of a stowaway on the ark. Sure, it made for a more interesting plot line, but it was an uncalled for reach. 

I did like the creative way Noah kept the animals from feasting on each other, by putting them to sleep. But I was humorously amazed to see biblical man and woman dressed to the nines. Their boots could have come from Steve Madden, their leather, form-fitting togs from Beged Or, the once formidable Israeli leather clothing maker. 

And who knew the ancients had real firepower. Forget swords, spears, bows and arrows. Tubal Cain had the equivalent of a rocket propelled grenade launcher.

I'm not alone in dismissing the choices made by Aronofsky. My friend Noah R., no relation to Noah of the Bible, had this to say:

“Due to my name, I was overwhelmed by invitations to see the movie ‘Noah’, and we finally succumbed. I understand what the director was trying to do to reconcile the Biblical narrative with the possible historical basis, but the "stone giants" [who reminded me of the employees of the contractor who put-on a new roof for us a couple of years ago] and watching Hermione Granger (Emma Watson from the Harry Potter movies) give birth to Noah's grandchildren detracted greatly from the experience.  Furthermore, you and your beard are MUCH better-looking than Russell Crowe.

“It also got me thinking about who the director might have cast as Noah’s other two daughters-in-law to complement Hermione Granger and provide the diversity needed for future generations of mankind/womankind.

“Perhaps Kerry Washington and Ziyi Zhang?  I also think that Lindsay Lohan would have been a more interesting daughter-in-law than Emma Watson.  [And if Lindsay had failed to show-up for the sailing of the ark, as was the case with her court appearances, well.....]”

But here’s my real bottom line: There are too many people out there who profess belief that the Bible is sacred, that it really is the word of god. Yet too many of those people have not read the Bible and are ignorant of simple facts. They don’t know, for example, that Jesus was born and died a Jew. They don’t know that men, not a higher authority or power, chose what to include in, and exclude from, the Bible based on their own prejudices. They gloss over contradictions in the text. 

So, a movie that has so much fable simply complicates an already hard-to-believe text. Let’s remember the Bible says Noah was 600 years old when the deluge began, that he lived another 350 years after the waters abated. Russell Crowe hardly looked a day over 50. 

Tales of Men from the Bible, WWII, the Election

It has taken me longer than I would have wanted, or care to admit, but I finally completed reading The Preservationist by David Maine at a most opportune time. The book is an imaginative re-creation of the story of the Noah and the flood, coincidentally the portion of the Torah read this past Saturday in synagogues throughout the world.  

The Preservationist is not a great book; it’s part of a genre, like The Red Tent, known as midrash that transforms Jewish Bible stories into extended prose, in this case beyond the 125 verses dedicated to Noah in the Old Testament. It allows the writer and reader to delve into the personalities of the family saved on the ark, of Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives. It creates back stories for all of them, humanizes them, and gives only the faintest hint of what must have gone through their minds when the waters abated and they were left devoid of any other humans. They might not have had to worry about marauders or any others bent on the injustices that caused God to wipe out the rest of humanity, but they were all alone. Not even God talked to Noah anymore after He set the rainbow as a sign there would be no more all inclusive and destructive floods. 

Here’s how Noah’s wife interprets God’s silence: “The test doesn’t end when the flood does. It’s only the start. Without Yahweh whispering in your ear you’re no more nor less than anybody else. No special assurance that you’re blessed or that God gives a rat’s ass what happens to you ... Now you’re just like the rest of us.”

According to the Bible, Noah lived another 350 years as an ordinary man. 

George McGovern considered himself a prototypical American. “I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like,” the former South Dakota U.S. senator and 1972 Democratic presidential candidate told The NY Times in 2005, seven years before his death Sunday at age 90. “May dad was a Methodist minister, I went off to war (World War II). I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.”

Which got me to thinking that we have entered an era when most of our political leaders never experienced the horrors of war. Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan—none of them fired a weapon at an enemy combatant or was targeted by one. Not that it takes combat experience to lead a nation into battle, but it does seem that the strongest voices for peace, from Eisenhower to JFK to McGovern to John Kerry, were tempered by their time at war. 

Speaking of temper, what jumped out at me from watching the three presidential debates, and some of the Republican primary debates, is that Mitt Romney is petulant and does not have a high opinion of those who would question his judgment, whether it be Obama, Rick Perry, or the debate moderator. Time and again Romney displayed a haughtiness that transcended acceptable behavior. To be fair, I didn’t find Biden’s cheesy smiles too endearing during his debate with Ryan, either. 

I thought Obama did better than Romney in the last two debates, but Romney’s rapid salesman’s litany of negative commentary on the performance of the current administration no doubt scored points with those who favored his positions and, regrettably, with those who valued image over substance. When rehearsed, Romney has the gift of gab. He’s much smoother than the plodding, thoughtful Obama. 

The election will boil down to substance or sizzle.