He looks like me.

And that’s why last Monday was a miracle.

Last Monday, President Barack Obama was sworn in for a second term. For some, this was a hoped-for event. Others were not so pleased. Most of us, however, might be able to understand and agree that, regardless of our political opinions, there is a miracle here.

The miracle lies in a picture that one mother posted to CNN in response for their requests for photographs of viewers watching the inauguration.

The picture was not of an adult all bundled up on the mall surrounded by thousands of enthusiastic, cheering supporters.

It was a picture of a little 5-year-old boy in a t-shirt in front of a television. He was watching the official, constitutionally-mandated swearing in on the day before the big outdoor ceremony—when President Obama took the oath of office indoors in a semi-private ceremony. As the President raised his right hand, so did the little boy, and the mother’s camera caught that moment.

She asked him why he had his hand up, and he said, “Because the President looks like me!”

It reminds me of an episode of The West Wing in which Jimmy Smits as Matt Santos, the first Latino candidate for President, counters Josh’s warning not to mortgage his house for campaign funds with a story. He tells him that when he’d first gotten out of the Marines, he had applied for a Pentagon job but was having trouble with the background check. The FBI agents couldn’t find anybody in his old neighborhood who knew him. He went back to Texas, and a bunch of the neighbor kids came running up to him.

“Tio Matt, Tio Matt! The Feds. They were here lookin’ for you. We told ’em we never heard of you.”

He tells Josh, with great determination, “I am running for President in that Texas primary, and those kids are gonna see me do that.”

Life often imitates art.

Elected once, it could have been a fluke, a reaction to what is widely perceived as the abysmal Presidency of George W. Bush.

Elected twice? Those kids have seen him do that.

And that may be the biggest and best legacy of any modern President.

Another Dame

The Grand Dame of Dish.

This is not a title by royal fiat. It’s more of a PR title, but considering a career that began in 1949 and is still continuing—what is that? 63 years?—it’s okay with me.

Today’s Smith is Liz Smith.

Currently blogging for the Huffington Post, for decades she was one of New York’s premiere gossip columnists. Before that, she was a news producer for NBC and an entertainment editor for Cosmopolitan magazine.

You can also find her stuff currently on the website she helped found: The Women on the Web.

You can say what you like about gossip columnists, but for any woman to make it in journalism in that era and to make herself a household name in NYC, a power in the theatre, and to still be going strong—that’s impressive!

The pursuit of knowledge

Useful or not.

I am one of those people who has a head full of basically useless information. Now, that means I’m fairly good at Trivial Pursuit, especially if we’re playing in teams and you, yourself, are good at sports trivia. We’d be fairly unbeatable—given ordinary luck with the dice and assuming it was a classic version of the game. (I kind of lost interest in pop culture the last few years, so the more recent versions…I make no promises.)

I’d be fairly good at Jeopardy, too, except for the wagering and the Final Jeopardy question. I always lose Final Jeopardy.

I’m not sure where this fascination with minutiae originated, except that my family does tend to acquire books like Why Do We Say It? and The Book of Lists.

So, imagine what a find a website is like the one I’m going to point you toward today!

Imagine, too, what a total time sink it is, and be warned.

Now, that you’ve been warned, check out The Straight Dope.

The Straight Dope is a syndicated newspaper column in which, as far as I can tell, readers write in to ask odd questions about anything and everything, and Cecil Adams, the columnist, answers them.

Some of the interesting things you can learn from perusing The Straight Dope are:

Can a bullet fired into the air kill someone when it comes down?
Do you burn more calories when you think hard? (We can only hope.)
How does the Queen answer the telephone?
What’s the likeliest doomsday scnario?

You can see that these are critical pieces of information. I mean, when I call the Queen, I would want to be sure it really was Her Majesty on the other end of the line.

Other than that, it’s just interesting stuff and a way to kill a few hours. I’m not even sure much of it would help you on Jeopardy, the show not usually having a category heading of “Doomsday” or caring too much about royal phone habits.

But it’s interesting stuff, and you never know. You might just be the one to settle the argument about Fibonacci numbers at your next family gathering.

Don’t count out the old wives

Yet.

Their tales, I mean. Because, here’s a question my sister raised, and I think it’s a good one.

As we continue to navigate what has become a really bad flu season (not for me, touch wood), I am wondering why the flu even has a season?

Doesn’t it seem really odd to you that we tend to have flu epidemics in the winter? Because we (my sister and I) have always thought that the reason hospitals are so cold is to inhibit the growth and spread of germs. So, either I am wrong about why I try to remember to bring a sweater when I have to visit someone in a hospital, or there is something about the cold that lowers our resistance and/or strengthens the flu.

Well, it turns out that scientists have been asking this very question!

Because, of course, once I start to wonder about something, I can’t just let it go.

Perhaps, that is not entirely accurate. I can let it go just fine—especially as I’m likely to forget it before any research can be done—unless I don’t have much else going on at the point the question is raised, unless it really does interest me, and unless my sister says, “Hey! It’s a thing for Wondering Wednesday.” (I do like it when other people come up with ideas for blog posts. If nothing else, it proves someone is reading!)

Since I had time and since it struck me as a good thing for a Wondering Wednesday post and since I really do wonder about it…here we are.

Turning to my trusty Google, I discovered a few possibilities:

One, the air is dryer in the winter. So, it dries out the mucous membranes of our respiratory system which, in theory, allows the little flu bugs easier access.

Two, the flu virus—the actual molecules or whatever—have a protective coating in the cold which is missing in higher temperatures and which allows them to live longer outside a host.

Neither of these theories have been proven conclusively, but it seems the scientists are on it. I have every confidence they’ll figure it out.

In the meantime, and since they haven’t yet, I think I’ll continue to wear a hat in the cold weather, because I always get sick when I don’t!

Never put off ’til tomorrow

Well, hardly ever.

My tip for today is identify one thing that you’ve been putting off. Maybe it’s too hard like cleaning out the attic. Maybe it’s too scary like going to the dentist. Maybe it’s too complicated like doing your taxes.

Whatever it is, do it.

If it’s so complicated that you cannot possibly finish it in the time you have, do the first steps.

It’s not because the things we put off have a tendency to jump up and bite us—although they do. And it’s not because I think you simply must be organized and efficient.

It’s because I’ve found that all those little (and big) things that I avoid doing are sucking drains on my peace of mind and they interfere with the creative process.

When I’ve got a thing like that hanging over me, there is always some little corner of my mind clouded and shadowed and knotted up with having to remember it and dreading it. It’s a dark inky blotch on my To Do list. It’s a mosquito buzzing around my head, a twinge in the stomach, a headache waiting to happen. In short, it’s a damned nuisance.

There’s this contract I’ve made, and I’m not living up to my part of it. The energy it takes to worry about and/or try to repress it is far less than the energy it will take to do it. In the end, it’s just easier.

Sometimes, it even turns out not to have been as hard or unpleasant as I’d anticipated. That’s often the case, in fact, but the real point is that the brain cells that are taken up with the looming task are brain cells that are not available to help you write your novel, invent the next big thing, or play Chutes and Ladders with your kids.

And wouldn’t that be more fun?

Aren’t you glad?

I know you are.

This Monday’s Miracle is that I have run out of things to say about lizards. For now.

It reminds me of that old Knock, Knock joke

Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?
Knock, Knock
Who’s there?
Banana.
Banana who?

Repeat until your parents accuse you of not knowing the punch line and THEN you say

Knock, knock
Who’s there?
Orange.
(with relief) Orange who?
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana again?

And much hilarity ensues. At least, when you’re seven.

So, aren’t you glad I didn’t say lizard again?

But, I must point out something else about this whole thing.

I got seven (eight, if you count this one) blog posts out of a five minute incident.

And that is surely a miracle!

You just knew there had to be one, right?

A lizard Smith

After the week we’ve had discussing lizards, you didn’t think I would let a Smith Sunday pass without finding out if there were any Smiths anywhere remotely connected to lizards, did you?

Surprisingly, it wasn’t that hard to find one!

Meet Hobart Muir Smith, the most published herpetologist of all time.

As best I can tell, Mr. Smith is still alive—and probably, still publishing. He’s over 100 now.

Not many people have had five species named after them, including—how could you doubt it?—a lizard!

Best wishes for a long and healthy life, Mr. Smith!

I can’t believe

I ate the whole thing.*

Boy, am I thankful that all the holiday food is finally gone. That perpetual New Year’s Resolution I make (probably, it should be called an All Years Resolution) is impossible to even begin to honor while there are still cookies and cakes and chips and dips around. I was derailed even further this year because of a family gathering on the 5th for a long-lost cousin.

He wasn’t really lost, of course The Navy has known where he is for almost 20 years. And I’ve seen him on Facebook. It’s just that it’s been a good long time since any of us have seen him in person. He was here for a day or two, so there was a gathering out at the pond.

When we do that, everybody brings something. Then, there is always too much food and most of us end up taking part of what we brought back home. Clearly, I need to learn not to volunteer to bring cake.

The thing is, I have all kinds of will power at the grocery store (assuming, of course, that I’m not starving when I go in there). I do not, however, have any will power at all once the food is already in the house. Quite the reverse, in fact, as I somehow manage to rationalize—at this time of year, anyway—the necessity to eat it up so that the dieting can begin.

(I am aware of how ridiculous that is. It’s the point at which the sensible idea of watching what I eat comes smack up against the other sensible idea of frugality—waste not, want not—and frugality wins. Because it has hunger—or, rather, bad eating habits—on its side.

But the cake is gone now. The dip is past its expiration date. (That’s a triumph. I didn’t eat it all this time!) And the MotH** can be trusted to finish off the few chips that are left.

Let the misery begin!

* That dates me, doesn’t it? Remember the Alka-Seltzer commercial?

** MotH = Man of the House

Spreading the word

to Swiffer WetJet owners.

Maybe you don’t have a Swiffer WetJet and have no intention of ever getting one. That’s okay. Talk amongst yourselves.

Those of us who do have them find them very easy to use and quite convenient for quick clean-up. They are also inordinately expensive in terms of their renewables—i.e., the stuff you have to keep buying.

The expense is bad enough. But I also get annoyed by a marketing tactic that creates demand by proprietary “technology” rather than quality of the product. It’s bad enough when software doesn’t work with older operating systems, or your music and video collections stop being playable when you buy a new machine, but when we’re talking about cleaning products, it really annoys me.

So, I am very pleased to bring you this Tuesday Tip on how you can refill your Swiffer bottle yourself. Just one caveat—in finding this tip, I did read of some people who had trouble with it. It’s possible that Swiffer has changed the design and newer bottles won’t work this way. However, you’re not out anything if you give it a try. Nothing to lose. Oh—and a safety warning. You’ll be dealing with boiling water. Be careful. Use common sense. Don’t burn yourself or anyone else.

Here’s what you do.

Once the bottle of cleaning solution is empty, get a small saucepan.

Fill it with a couple of inches of water. Just enough to cover the white cap of the bottle and a little bit of the blue part—when you hold it upside down.

Get the water boiling. You can turn the burner off now.

Hold the bottle upside down in the hot water. (I wasn’t sure if it would melt if it touched the bottom of the pan, so I made sure there was enough water to hold it off the bottom.)

The instructions I read said 10 seconds was long enough. I found it didn’t work until I’d held the bottle in the water for about 3 minutes.

Using a dish towel or something to protect your hand from the hot water, take the bottle out of the water, and twist off the top. This will take some force, but if you’ve heated it enough, it will not be too hard. I’m not that strong, and I managed it.

That’s it. The top will twist on and off now without heating. If you want to make it easier, you can use nail clippers or wire cutters to cut off the little white teeth around the inside of the cap.

Now you can fill it with a homemade cleaning solution or any commercial solution of your choice.

If your Swiffer is still under warranty, you may not want to do this. I suppose it would void the warranty. Once you’re done with the warranty period, however, save yourself some money.

I hear you can also make your own re-usable cleaning pads. I’m going to try that next.

Avian Antics

Who can fathom a bird brain?

It’s been a couple of days of bird bemusedness.

First, there was an injured bluebird, being succored out at the farm.

And the begging duck, unfortunately trained by one of my cousins to like Cheerios, with the result that he (or she) was constantly underfoot at another cousin’s homecoming party. Which is hilarious—partly because ducks are inherently hilarious but also because I’m more used to dogs and cats weaving around my ankles than I am to ducks. (As I said to yet another cousin, “‘Stop chasing the duck’ isn’t a sentence I heard very often in New York.) So, funny, yes, but I don’t really imagine that dropped potato chips are good for ducks. On the other hand, hanging around the humans may keep it out of the way of predators, so who knows?

Meanwhile, we seem to be a stop on the migration path of the Turkey Vultures. Nothing like seeing five or six of them ominously circling overhead and then looking up to find another dozen hulking in the trees above you. Even if you didn’t know they were scavengers, I think you’d find those big dark forms, hunched over and peering down at you, to be something less than a good omen.

However, their dour presence is offset by the Canadian Geese standing on their heads in the pond. Three or four of them with their little butts in the air just make me laugh–especially with a small white heron standing there staring at them.

We had a baby hawk sitting on our mailbox for a time last week.

Then, there are the coots. I’ve been wondering where they’ve gone. And, yesterday, a group of four or five coots came back—in the rain—to huddle next to the sea wall. I don’t know why they don’t swim under the dock. The huddling seems to indicate they aren’t that fond of the rain, but they don’t take the obvious shelter. So, I don’t know. Who can fathom the mind of a bird?

But it’s a miracle, in the face of humanity’s ever increasing encroachment on their habitats, to have all these flighty friends around, still, to astonish and perplex me.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Category Archives: Life in General