Quiet

So I made the long drive to the city, and visited my folks over the weekend. It was good to see them again. Aside from major holidays or vacation, I don't make it over to see them that often.

But I must admit, even this brief visit was enough to remind me once again of my mother's habit of talking incessantly. I mean, she talks every waking minute of the day. She scarcely pauses for breath. She talks about anything. She talks about nothing. If even nothing doesn't come to hand, she will provide nonstop color commentary on whatever diddly task she's doing at the moment. To whoever's in the room, whether they're listening or not. To thin air, if nobody's in the room.

I can't remember the last time I heard my mother stay silent for as long as fifteen seconds at a time. It's been years, I'm sure.

Maybe you've known someone like this, someone who talks constantly, continually, all the time? I've known a few people like that, and my mother unfortunately is one of them.

Don't get me wrong, I love my mother dearly. I'm glad when I get a chance to get away and visit my folks. Only I count it among my blessings that ordinarily I live by myself, in a big old house on a gravel road far, far out into the depths of the countryside, where I can go all day long surrounded by peace and quiet. Nothing more than perhaps the sound of the refrigerator running, or the sound of air running through the heating ducts. Or the occasional sound of a pickup going by down the road.

I thrive on peace and solitude and quiet. I cannot imagine how I would get along in a setting where I was constantly surrounded and bombarded by sound.

Radio Personality

On a radio station around here -- one of the few AM stations I can receive during daylight hours, I'm way out in the sticks -- there's this little segment that comes on in the morning while I'm eating breakfast.

Two fellows talking, most of it inconsequential chat. One guy is in the studio, and the other is very obviously talking over a phone line, audio quality none too good. Chat, and some of it is, Mr. Studio will pose questions and Mr. Phone Line will ramble on with long, wandering, gaseous replies. Actually Mr. Phone Line does the bulk of the talking.

And here's the thing: I can tell how Mr. Phone Line looks. He wears sunglasses with big silvered lenses. He's got black hair, but with a severely receding hairline, and the hair on top of his head is thinning out. He wears a nylon windbreaker. Big forehead, with prominent creases in it. Bad teeth, and nicotine stained.

How can I tell? By the sound of his voice. Anyone with a voice like that has got to look like that. Even over a mediocre phone connection, by his voice you shall know him.

Computer Screens on Dollhouse

Perhaps I haven't mentioned, but I'm a fan of Joss Whedon's probably doomed TV series, Dollhouse.

Anyhow, am I the only person who has the impression that Topher is using the Enlightenment window manager on his computers? Animated backgrounds, wonderfully nonrectangular windows, when I saw it I immediately thought, "Ah! Enlightenment." Suitably geekish choice. I mean, I could be mistaken, but that's sure what it looks like to me.

Dinosaurs Shitting in the Woods

Sometimes these phrases just drift into my mind unbidden, from I know not where...

Dinosaurs shitting in the woods. No idea what it means, but it sounds cool.

What, didn't you think Triceratops and T-rex had to go take a shit like any other animal you've ever heard of?

Saying Grace

I grew up in a family that was schizophrenic about saying grace at the table. Basically, we didn't. Devout churchgoing folk that we were, we never said grace before we ate. Or at least, not except at lunch on Sunday, and that was as much of a concession as my Mom was able to wring out of my Dad.

See, it just so happened that my Dad grew up in a family -- a deeply devout churchgoing family -- where they never said grace. For whatever reason, they just didn't. And so when my folks got married, my Dad insisted that he was not going to start saying grace at the table just to go through the motions. My father is as genuinely and sincerely committed a Christian as you're ever going to meet, but he has this thing -- I suppose it's a stubborn mainline Protestant thing -- about not piling up empty words or practices just for the sake of appearances.

To my mother, who grew up in a devout churchgoing family where they did say grace, all this was horrifying. The compromise my parents arrived at eventually was that we would say grace once a week, when we sat down for lunch after church on Sunday.

So I grew up pretty much not saying grace. I grew up into an adult who is deeply committed to Christ, who is in church pretty much every Sunday, who has served in various positions of church leadership... but to whom it would not ordinarily occur even to think of saying grace. Saying grace? I'd be about as likely to sacrifice pigeons with a flint knife on a stone altar. Not because I don't believe; quite the opposite! But because the habit never got a foothold within me.

Until these past couple of months, with my current health problems. I have to watch my diet closely. I also find, for the very first time in my life, that when I sit down to eat I say grace. I haven't quite figured it out yet. But I'm saying grace. Regularly. Easily.

Perhaps sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.

Getting Ready for Halloween

Out here on the gravel roads far into the countryside, there used to be a fair -- never huge -- number of kids within trick-or-treating distance. When I first moved here years back, I'd get at least 15 or 20 costumed witches, mummies, cowboys, commandos, and bumblebees on a Halloween.

But those kids have gotten older and outgrown Halloween. Last year I believe I got only three or four trick-or-treaters all evening long. There are a few little ones who will be old enough in another year or two, but once again this year I really don't expect more than three or four.

So I'm trying to decide whether I'm going to leave the light on out front tomorrow evening, or leave the house shrouded in darkness. Whether even to pick up some candy when I run in to town this afternoon. We shall see. I'm in a decidedly un-Halloween-like mood this year.

Coat Revisited

That new wool coat I got a few weeks ago has quickly become my favorite. Enough so that I'm mildly annoyed that Indian summer is keeping me from wearing it right at the moment. Oh well, colder weather will soon be upon us.

One odd thing I discovered about the coat, something I wouldn't have realized without actually wearing it. (And I guess this shows how little experience I have with wearing a long buttoned coat.) I discover that in order for me to sit down, the lowermost button on the coat needs to be unbuttoned. In fact unless I'm standing or walking in unusually cold weather, it would be best to leave that lowermost button unbuttoned.

It's a minor thing, and no problem, but I never in my life would've realized it without actually wearing and using the coat.

This set me to thinking of how many things around us have characteristics that we would be highly unlikely ever to discover except through direct hands-on experience with them. You can theorize and cogitate all you want, but the world is filled with lowermost coat buttons that, unbeknownst to you, had best be left unbuttoned.

Or as Yogi Berra put it, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."