Why I Quit Taking Surveys

Readers of this page will know that I used to take a lot of online surveys. They were kind of fun, and put me into the running to win prizes that I never won or to earn points that expired before I could amass enough to acquire that nifty looking ballpoint pen or some other glitzy trinket. I stopped doing them, for the most part, because they had become repetitious, as well as...well, here’s this:

Perhaps you see the problem. The correct answer to the question is, in fact, zero. But zero is not an option, nor is the question optional. Because the originators of the survey failed to sufficiently think through their design, I am left with two choices:

1. Lie

2. Quit

I chose the latter, not only because of my legendary devotion to total honesty (made that up) but also because if the survey writers make a boneheaded mistake like this at the beginning of the process, the odds are not good that the rest of the undertaking will be any better.

Besides, I suddenly remembered why I had quit taking so many surveys.

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And Still They Say

Some more quotations. Once upon a time, nearly all of the quotations that I shared in these pages came from the wonderful newsletter A Word a Day, but now—thanks to the astounding power of Twitter—they come from all over this great land of ours. Better than e-mailed cartoons, even. Or pretty close.

“A witty saying proves nothing.” —Voltaire

“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” —Chinese Proverbs

“In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.” —Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine, mystic (1782-1857)

“There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.” —Christopher Morley

“Gentleness in every kind of behavior: that is the praise of the wise man.” —Egyptian Proverb

“Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.” —George Bernard Shaw

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” —Gerry Spence

“A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.” —Henrik Ibsen

“An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.” —Unknown

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” —Albert Einstein

“My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot. —Ashleigh Brilliant.

“We may have filled our lives so full of other things that we have no room to receive our blessings.” —Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings

“Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.” —Carl Zwanzig

“It’s not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.” —Mary Astor

“More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all of the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all of the doubts in the world.” —William Barclay, theologian (1907-1978)

“Neuroscientists, developmental biologists, psychologists, social scientists, and researchers from every point of the scientific compass now know that play is a profound biological process.” —Stuart Brown, MD

“Every conversation is a form of jazz. The activity of instantaneous creation is as ordinary to us as breathing.” —Stephen Nachmanovitch

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” —Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

“Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” —Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Care of the soul is a continuous process that concerns itself not so much with ‘fixing’ a central flaw as with attending to the small details of everyday life, as well as to major decisions and changes.” —Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

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Amusing. Also True.

Someone else posted this on Facebook. Not sure of its origins. Amusing enough, but it does tend to underscore the fact that there is real, serious stuff going on in the world, despite the tomfoolery of GOP presidential hopefuls, Faux News pundits, and the Great Unhinged.

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And Where Was the News?

Like millions of Americans (I presume), I was in front of the television set late last night awaiting the president's comments on the death of Osama bin Laden. After a certain amount of channel surfing, in which we saw a lot of talking heads all saying pretty much the same things, we ended up on CBS.

As I waited for the president, I also had Twitter running on my phone. Tellingly, it was Twitter that first brought me the news of bin Laden's demise. (Actually, it was my wife calling down from upstairs shortly before 10:00 p.m. CDT that a friend of our son had just texted him the news, prompting me to check Twitter. It would be several minutes before my e-mail started popping with news alerts from various sources.) By and by, tweets began to appear describing scenes of celebrating crowds that had gathered in front of the White House, cheering, chanting, and singing the national anthem.

And then CBS's White House bloke interrupts himself to say that his producer had just stepped outside and reported back that crowds had gathered, cheering, chanting, etc.

And my thought was, Where was the news?

Here we have a guy standing in front of a sign saying CBS News White House, and reporting that his producer ran outside to see what was going on. But where were the pictures? It seems to me that even two or three years ago, the reporter would have interrupted himself to throw to another reporter out on Pennsylvania Avenue, showing us the cheering, chanting, singing crowds. But that costs money, I suppose, so instead we have a talking head telling us what is going on outside the building.

I might as well have been listening on the radio.

Or reading it on Twitter.

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Damn! Forgot the Camera Again!

As will sometimes happen, local daily had an interesting letter in it this morning:

Where were the women and children?

In the Voices section of the April 23 Argus Leader was a picture of the Last Supper. The picture was a good one, but what it portrayed was completely inaccurate. Where were the women and children?

Everywhere that Jesus went, he was accompanied by women and children. He loved them. He cared for them. He always had them near.

Most biblical stories are about men. Two thousand-plus years ago, the roles of women were much restricted, and women were treated as inferior to men. The role of women in Christianity and Judaism was as if they were invisible, which resulted in men being all there was when the Bible was written. And, of course, we need to remember that the Bible was written by men.

In biblical usage the term “disciple” often means “student,” someone who believes in a person’s message and who tries to follow that person’s values and teachings. “Apostle” means “one who is sent forth as a messenger.” Using such definitions, all female and male followers of Jesus could be considered his disciples.

According to Wikipedia, there are at least 53 named women who were disciples and/or apostles of Jesus.

Not much has changed in the past 2,000-plus years. Women still are restricted and treated as inferior to men. If Jesus was physically here with us now, he would be appalled. It is past time that the good old boys woke up to the fact that without women, there would be “nothing” and “no one.”

I hope that the next time I see a picture of the Last Supper, I won’t have to ask, “Where are the women and children?”

Rev. Ed D. Crowson

Pierre

Letters such as this always provoke in me a chuckle. “The picture was a good one, but what it portrayed was completely inaccurate.”

Really? Completely inaccurate?

Am I to conclude, then, that the letter’s author was there?

No one, apparently, had the presence of mind to bring a camera to the Last Supper, so it’s hard to say who, precisely, was there.

The biblical accounts reference “the twelve,” but they don’t say “the twelve and nobody else,” nor do they say “the twelve and a bunch of women and children and two puppy dogs,” so that’s all up in the air.

Note that I am not quibbling with the Reverend’s comments on the sexist nature of the Bible, since I happen to agree with him on that score, for the most part. Nor am I arguing about whether any or all portions of the Bible actually happened, for that is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Which is the claim made about the portrayal of the Last Supper. Viz., “completely inaccurate.”

Completely inaccurate?

Well, let’s see. Anyone reading the biblical record (the only source) would have to conclude that, for one, Jesus was there, and the twelve disciples, too—so that much of it must be accurate enough. Perhaps the picture is incomplete and other people, unmentioned for whatever reason or no reason at all, were indeed present. But to say that the rendition is “completely inaccurate” is...yep, completely inaccurate.

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What Does it Mean When You Pose the Question and Then Don't Answer it?

I’ve received notice from my credit union that its board has decided to merge with another local credit union. I’m not keen on the idea—my experience has been that when credit unions decide they need to be bigger, service suffers—and I think it should have been put to a vote of the members (evidently the other credit union’s members get to vote, but not ours), but what really caught my attention in the “information” packet I received in the mail was how little real information it contained. And what a dandy job its creators did of dancing around questions...even though they were the ones posing the questions!

Take this example, for, um, example:

Okay, good to know...but tell me: How much is the merger going to cost??

Sort of never gets around to saying. And much of what little id does say makes no sense. “...instead of two computer systems, we will operate on just one.” Uh-huh. Well, I can tell you how much money that will save the current members of my credit union: Precisely nothing at all. See, my credit union currently operates one computer system. The other credit union, a competitor, operates its own, as does every other credit union in town. What they do is not an expense to me or my fellow members, just as what wedo is not an expense for them. The same goes for “combining facilities, our insurance bond, card programs, and much more”—these are not duplicated expenditures, as implied, since currently the two businesses are completely separate. The idea that merging two independent businesses cuts duplicated expenses is ludicrous. It’s tantamount to saying that if I double my expenses, then cut them, I’ve “saved” money.

And while there may be “cost savings” in the future—real cost savings, I mean, not sleight-of-hand “savings”—it bothers me that not even ballpark guesstimates are being put forward. Absent any figures, it’s impossible to judge whether the board is indeed accurate in claiming that bigger will in fact be any better for the members.

Looks like I might have to drag myself to one of the “informational meetings,” even though it feels like a waste of time. We don’t get to vote, and it’s obvious where the big shots weigh in on the deal. Still, my longstanding motto is You have to make your own fun, so perhaps I’ll turn up and ask some salient questions.

Like, How much is the $!#@&% merger going to cost??

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Maybe Sex Sells After All!

I mentioned in passing nearly a month ago (“Catching My Eye,” March 26, that USA Today’s Tech Briefing had been touting for several weeks already the article “Free porn on ‘tube sites’ puts a big dent in industry”—and I expressed my wish that I had been keeping track from the beginning so I could report on exactly how many months now they’ve been plumping this patently salacious headline.

However, I can report that USA Today has yet to give up on it: Here’s a screenshot of this morning’s Tech Briefing e-mail, with the porn headline still enjoying its place of honor. I assume it’s there after all this time because it continues to generate clicks, so maybe it is indeed true that sex sells.

Let’s not fool ourselves: I’m not particularly prudish, as anyone who’s read one or more of my detective novels can attest. My issue here is with the blatantly prurient intent attached to running this same link day after day, week after week, for well over a month now. Enough, already!

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Even in the 21st Century!

Shocking, just shocking!

I was in a local supermarket last evening when I espied this sign in an area being remodeled:

I would have hoped that by this point in the 21st century we might be beyond such blatant discrimination, but apparently not!

No, I did not venture over to the north side of the building. The thought of those poor Chinese people crammed into one corner of the place was too sad for me to bear. 

To make the discrimination even more odious, the supermarket seems to have done away with its Chinese deli, which used to be located where the sign now is! Odd.

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A Prepositional Bee in the Syntactical Bonnet

Here’s an excerpt from the excerpt in today’s Delanceyplace.com e-mail, “The precision and clarity of Latin.” Given my profession and my inclinations, I’ve read many things about the strange histories of English language “rules,” but I’d never come across this anecdote before:

“Why is it ‘wrong’ to end a sentence with a preposition? ... Who, upon seeing a cake in the office break room, says, ‘For whom is this cake?’ instead of ‘Who’s the cake for?’ Where did this rule come from?

 

“The answer will surprise even most English teachers: John Dryden, the seventeenth-century poet less well known as an early, influential stickler. In a 1672 essay, he criticized his literary predecessor Ben Jonson for writing ‘The bodies that these souls were frightened from.’ Why the prepositional bee in Dryden’s syntactical bonnet? This pseudo-rule probably springs from the same source many others do: the classical languages. Dryden said he liked to compose in Latin and translate into English, as he valued the precision and clarity he believed Latin required of writers. The preposition-final construction is impossible in Latin. Hence: it is impossible in English. Confused by his logic? Linguists remain so to this day. But once Dryden proclaimed the rule, it made its way into the first generation of English usage books roughly a century later and thence into the minds of two hundred years of English teachers and copy editors.

 

“The rule has no basis in clarity (‘Who’s that cake for?’ is perfectly clear); history (it was made up from whole cloth); literary tradition (Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, Lord Byron, Henry Adams, Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, and dozens of other great writers have violated it); or purity (it isn’t native to English but probably stolen from Latin; clause-final prepositions exist in English’s cousin languages such as Danish and Icelandic). Many people know that the Dryden rule is nonsense. From the great usage-book writer Henry Fowler in the early twentieth century, usage experts began to caution readers io ignore it. The New York Times flouts it. The ‘rule’ should be put to death, but it may never be. Even those who know it is ridiculous observe it for fear of annoying others.”

This excerpt is from the book You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity by Robert Lane Greene. Read the entire excerpt at Delanceyplace.com.

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The Candidate Candidate

Recently I have been musing upon the notion that there is a new (in my lifetime, at least) breed of presidential candidate—for want of a better word—stalking the land. We have had in the past the Comic Candidate (e.g., Pat Paulsen), the Goofball Candidate (e.g., Lyndon LaRouche), the Once Relevant Candidate (e.g., Harold Stassen), the Irrelevant Candidate (e.g., Ralph Nader)...but to my knowledge we have not had until recently what I’ve come to think of as the Candidate Candidate.

Harvey Dunn, The Harvest Orator, South Dakota Art Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like someone who is “famous for being famous,” the Candidate Candidate is a candidate for no other reason than to be a candidate. He or she may or may not be serious about wanting to be president, but they seem to have little desire to do the actual work necessary to become president.

I suspect that Fred Dalton Thompson may have been the first Candidate Candidate. He seemed to want to be president, all right, but for no reason other than to be president. He stood for nothing, nothing that I could discern, at least. Early on there were some vague Reaganesque pronouncements and comparisons, but they never went anywhere—largely, I imagine, because Thompson had no depth. Perhaps the expectation was that the ghost of Reagan would cast some sort of aura around him that would propel him into the Oval Office. Guess not.

The consummate Candidate Candidate has got to be Sarah Palin, of course. Some might say she belongs in the Once Relevant Candidate category, but I dispute that she ever was relevant. No doubt those who, inexplicably, shoved her onto McCain’s ticket must have felt she had relevancy, but I believe they were sadly mistaken. And I believe history has shown me to be correct in my belief. Harold Stassen, who was, alas, something of a joke when I was a kid—this old guy from Minnesota who sought the Republican nomination every four years even though he had no chance at all of coming anywhere near the ticket—but he had a distinguished and important career in public service, not the least as a district attorney and three-time governor of Minnesota. (Yeah, he resigned midway through his third term, in 1943...but he did so in order to go on active duty with the Naval Reserve, not to have a half-baked TV series and go collect speaking fees.) Stassen was once relevant, and big time; Palin not so much.

But now a new contender emerges: Donald Trump. Why is he running? What does he hope to gain? Is it a publicity stunt? A circus act? Is he serious—and, if so, about what?

The man puts me in mind of a Fred Dalton Thompson with deep pockets. He may well want to be President...but beyond that, well, what is he? He seems only to be a Candidate Candidate—on the hustings for the sake of being on the hustings, apparently with no other agenda in mind. Eventually there will be a book deal, of course. Maybe another television show. But beyond that...as Gertrude Stein once said of her childhood hometown, “There is no there there.” So it is with Trump, to date. There is no him there.

It’s easy, and fun, to look upon Candidate Candidates as harmless buffoons, as a sideshow, to use the term most frequently applied to Trump. But there’s the real danger that one of them could catch fire, could in in fact end up in a position where he or she could do some real and lasting damage. “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” said H.L. Mencken, and he was and is right. You get enough people to believe that so-and-so is “one of us” or “tells it like it is” or whatever the sound bite of the day may be, and trouble will follow. In fact, you don’t actually need people so much, thanks to the likes of Fox Noise and the Koch Brothers.

Where’s Harold Stassen now that we need him. Hell, where’s Pat Paulsen?

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You Mean I Have to Share the Road with THIS Jerk??

This photo hardly does justice to the subject, but as you can tell, the circumstances were far from ideal: It was 7:29 this morning, there was a misty-drizzly action going on, and the light at 37th and Minnesota had just changed to green, meaning that the driver of the Volkswagen Beetle in front of me was compelled to floor it in order to, I dunno, get ahead of all the Saturday morning 7:29 a.m. traffic you see here.

Nor is the angle as advantageous as I would like, but perhaps it’s enough to set the scene: A few blocks farther south, this Beetle came flying past me in the right-hand lane. The speed limit at that point is 35; this driver was doing at least 40, maybe 45. Which is fine, except that the driver had to be about as blind as a blindfolded bat. You see the condition of the car’s back window? Well, except for a porthole scratched out in the side window and another on the driver’s side of the windshield, all of the car’s windows were in like condition.

Annoyingly, a few blocks north we encountered a southbound police car, but there was no joy there: The officer seemed not to notice that the driver’s field of vision was seriously compromised (a fancy way of saying nonexistent), and that he or she was continuing to drive in the 40-to-45-miles-per-hour range when the posted speed limit in this stretch is a mere 30 miles per hour.

Upon some reflection, I think I’d rather take my chances with a texting driver than this one.

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Or Second. Or Third. Or So.

This evening I happened to catch this ad for Law and Order: LA (a show which, just a couple of weeks ago I wondered aloud about the continued existence of...obviously having been mesmerized by the one and only episode of it I watched last fall).

What struck me was the apparent ignorance of the network, or the producers, or an advertising agency, or whoever wrote and approved these lines:

For the first time in twenty years, a Law and Order detective will fall.

Oh? Really?

If by “fall” they mean “will die,” then they obviously have forgotten the very first L&O lead detective, Sgt. Max Greevey, who was murdered in the 1991 episode “Confession.”

I imagine they would argue that Capt. Danny Ross, who was killed at the beginning of the ninth season of Law and Order: Criminal Intent does not qualify as a “detective”--but the fact that he was killed while working undercover sure makes it feel like he was another L&O detective to “fall.”

Perhaps there have been others as well--I don’t follow Law and Order: Special Victims Unit--but in any event, I’m thinking it’s not exactly accurate to portray this apparent killing-off of a Law and Order franchise detective as a “first.” More of a “second” or even “third.”

But, who's counting?

Still Standing. For Now

So I typed in my address and got this map, indicating the state of the bridges within 10 miles of my house.

I presume the green icons represent bridges that are in decent shape (a helpful graphic should have a complete legend); the red ones, obviously, are not. Although the green icons, thankfully, outnumber the red ones, there's still a distressing number on red ones. Doesn’t fill a guy with a lot of confidence … especially since the red icon right next to the “pin” on the map is a bridge I use several times a week.

Amuse and/or frighten yourself by visiting http://t4america.org/resources/bridges/.

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Random Unhelpfulness

The other day I was reminded of a sign that used to be on a door at a past place of employment:

OPEN CAREFULLY, AS IF YOU WERE ON OTHER SIDE!

What idiotic advice. If I were on the other side, I wouldn’t need to open the door! 

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When I was a kid, you used to see little cards and tokens and whatnot that Catholics were encouraged to carry on them in case they were involved in a serious accident. My dad used to have one that sounded like the set=up for a bad joke:

I AM A CATHOLIC. PLEASE CALL ME A PRIEST.

Okay, you're a priest!

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Filling out some forms, I came to this question:

NUMBER TO CALL IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

Well, 911, of course!

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What He Said

Previous visitors will know that I collect quotations from here and there in my travels. Some I disperse via Facebook and Twitter (too many quotations require more than 140 characters!); most I amass and then gang up here. Herewith, the latest batch:

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” —Susan B. Anthony

“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.” Oscar Levant

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.” —Mohandas Gandhi

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.” —George Bernard Shaw

“Isn’t it ironic that in the continuing Atheist/Religious war the only side to have tortured and killed is the religious side.” —Baron von Knifty

“Several excuses are always less convincing than one.” —Aldous Huxley

“Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.” —Jim Rohn

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” —Tennessee Williams

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

“We ... must have a period in which we lie fallow, and restore our souls.” —Wayne Muller

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” —John Cage

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.” —Sydney Smith

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Catching My Eye

A few recent things from the inbox that caught my eye. Click on the pictures for larger views.

It’s not just me: Thanksgiving does come earlier every year.

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Is “No-Charge Shipping” different than “Free Shipping”? If so, how? If not, why not call it “Free Shipping”?

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Sure, I’ve heard of ham steak. But ham from Omaha Steaks? That’s just wrong.

 

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It’s good to have choices. Even when one of them kind of freaks me out.

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USA Today’s Tech Briefing has been running this item for weeks now. Wish I had been keeping track from the beginning. The word “prurient” comes to mind.

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Maybe It’s Not God’s Fault

Yesterday on Facebook, Cathy Lynn Grossman posted an interesting little item from her Faith & Reason column at USA Today, “Japan’s suffering raises eternal question: Where’s God?”  Many of the early comments (I haven’t looked at them since yesterday afternoon) were fairly predictable—from “Man let evil into the world, that’s why bad things happen” to “Well, that just proves there is no God”—but in instances such as this I’m always a little surprised that there seems to be nobody putting forward a third possibility: Maybe our expectations are wrong.

Well, nobody but me, at least.

Here was my comment on the Facebook post:

Or it could be that our notion of the nature of God and the role he may or may not play is mistaken.

(It came in the middle of a string of other comments, thus the “or.”)

Assuming for the sake of argument that there is indeed a entity behind creation—“God,” for simplicity’s sake—it seems to me that we have to ask ourselves what we know of the entity’s personality and behavior, and where we come by that knowledge. Most people will immediately point to the Bible. But of course the Bible is a human invention, and it hardly portrays a single cohesive portrait of God. I would not be the first to point out that the God of the Old Testament seems to be a completely different entity than the God of the New Testament. Some have put forward the idea that the former is a vengeful, ill-tempered God who ultimately was defeated by a loving, nurturing God.

It’s an interesting notion, and only serves to underscore my belief that what we profess to “know” about God has been invented by human beings—ourselves, and our ancient ancestors—and so when God fails to live up to our expectations, is it not in fact our fault and not God’s?

Perhaps—and again I acknowledge that I am hardly the first to come up with the idea—God’s role is to create a then step back and see what happens. In that context, the answer to the question of why bad things happen in the world is simply, That’s just how it goes. Storms roll in. Earthquakes occur. Trains derail. Illnesses take hold. People get hit by buses.

In short: Shit happens.

And we, in our hubris (and, I suspect, fear) say with unfounded certainty, “God is X, Y, and Z.” And when God instead seems to be Q or even M, we wring our hands and moan and wonder why God has “failed.” Why God has failed? Seriously?

Seems to me we have spent thousands of years setting God up to fail.

I know that scholars and theologians will object, and talk about that which has been “revealed” in texts and traditions. Maybe so. But it’s always looked like these “revelations” are the product of human endeavors. And humans get things wrong, humans have ulterior motives, humans are hidebound by their traditions and superstitions, humans are, well, only human.

All I’m saying is, maybe it’s time for God’s people to cut him a little slack.

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Guesswork

I don’t know about anyone else, but whenever I have taken out a loan or made any kind of major purchase, I have been required to provide name, rank, and serial number; thirty-two forms of identification; references from priests, pastors, rabbis, and a Scoutmaster; a pint of blood; and copies of my income-tax returns dating back to three years before I was born. All of which have left me with the distinct impression that any attempt on my part to skip out on payments will decidedly fall under the category You Can Run but You Can’t Hide. They have more than enough information to track me down no matter where I may flee.

But I wonder if I haven’t been giving The Establishment too much credit.

Off and on for the past two or three years, I have received letters and phone calls from various sources—collection agencies, mostly, several of whom work awfully hard to appear to be anything but a collection agency—looking for a Wendy J. Reynolds. It’s pretty apparent from the letters, many of which are conveying the “good” news that this or that creditor is willing to settle for a lesser amount if she steps up immediately, that Wendy owes a lot of people a lot of money.

And they’ve lost her.

Cast your memory back to my first paragraph, where I express all of the various hoops one traditionally must leap through in order to qualify for car loans, mortgages, etc. At the very least, every loan application I have ever made requires my Social Security Number, and triggers a credit check. You would think that between those two, no one could long elude The Establishment as it seeks repayment.

But you would, apparently, be mistaken.

Not only does it seem that this Wendy person has skipped, it also seems that her creditors and their minions have no idea at all where she’s gone to...nor where she’s come from. As I have explained multiple times (as recently as 20 minutes ago: read on), there is no such person at my address or phone number. Nor has there ever been. There is no member of my family named Wendy, and outside of my nuclear family there is no other Reynolds in town—or indeed the entire state—to whom I am related.

Leaving us with the question: Why are they bothering me?

And the answer: They’re guessing.

Having completely lost track of their quarry, they have in effect picked up the phone book and stuck a pin in the R section.

“Hey, Murray, this guy has the same initials as that dame we’re looking for!”

“Great Scott, Clarence, you’re right! Why, this has to be her hiding place!”

And so on.

And obviously as soon as one bright bulb came up with that idea, my address went into The System and—presto!—became Wendy’s address, an error that perpetuates itself ad infinitum.

For a brief interval, after a long run of letters and phone calls for Wendy, I thought I had perhaps made my case. I spoke with a nice woman who claimed that her company helped people locate missing money or some silliness, and implied that they were looking for Wendy in order to reunite her with long-lost funds. (It was, no doubt, a fun-house mirror version of the actual story. They undoubtedly do help people locate missing money, viz., they help their clients find debtors who’ve skipped. And they wanted to find Wendy in oder to reunite her with her creditors.) Anyhow, I explained the whole business to this nice woman, after which it seemed we were getting no more mail or calls for Wendy. I allowed myself to think that maybe the word had gone out on collection agencies’ network that my tree was not the right one to be barking up.

Hahahaha!

The other day as I left the house, I noted a small bit of yellow paper in a puddle on the sidewalk. Picked it up and read that some unnamed someone had “an URGENT delivery”—yes, that’s right, so urgent that “urgent“ was rendered in caps and boldface and was underscored—“for ___________________”—on which line was written a name that was scratched out and “Wendy Reynolds” inserted. It asked that one “please call” a number “as soon as possible for prompt delivery.” Yep, I thought, prompt delivery of a summons, and shoved the paper in my pocket, muttering a mild curse.

Well, another one appeared on the doorstep this afternoon, so I spent a couple of minutes with Google and to my complete lack of surprise discovered that the number belongs to a local process server.

So I called, and in what I hope was a polite but firm voice explained—yet again!—that there is no such person at my address, in my family, or anywhere at all in my orbit, and that I have grown mighty tired of constantly being harassed by the various entities looking for this woman. She is gone, friends, gone; she has eluded you completely; somehow she has gone so far off the grid that not even having her Social Security Number is of any use to you. It is as if she never existed at all. Time to admit defeat and stop hassling innocent bystanders.

Or maybe it’s time to call my own lawyer. Certainly that’s looking like the next step.

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Education Is the Future

I took a few moments yesterday to dash off notes to the Governor of South Dakota and my elected representatives from District 13. The governor, to address a budget crisis that, as a candidate while still lieutenant governor, he told us did not exist, has proposed a ten-percent across-the-board cut in the state budget. This would have the effect of eviscerating public education, in a state that already ranks at or near dead last in what it invests in its students. (And a state where one hears much wailing and gnashing of teeth because a great many of its young people pack up and leave to seek opportunity elsewhere. The two are not unconnected.)

Although probably a waste of time, there are instances in which it is good to be on the record on a given topic, and this is one of them. Here's what I sent to the governor; the sentiment if not the phrasing, was the same in the messages I sent to my legislators.

Dear Governor Daugaard,

I am writing to urge you to support and invest in the future of our state by working with the legislature to avoid crippling cuts to K-12 education that are under consideration in Pierre.

My fear is that in haste to balance the books we lose track of the inarguable fact that the future progress and prosperity of South Dakota depends on its children receiving a top-notch education, and that deep cuts today will have a negative effect on the quality of education for years into the future. I am sure you will agree that sacrifice the future of our state -- and of our children -- on the altar of austerity is false economy.

For the record, the proposed cuts would have virtually no effect on my family, since our youngest is only a year away from high-school graduation. My concern is for the generations of South Dakota children who follow, and for the continued advancement of our state into the future.

Thank you for supporting the future of South Dakota.

Sincerely,

William J Reynolds

One seriously doubts that even these glittering and well-reasoned sentences will change anyone's mind. But at least, in years to come, I can say with honesty that I did not sit silently while a Republican governor and Republican legislators gutted public education.

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Buy Some Insurance, You Lowlife!

This fax arrived at the office yesterday morning, proving once again that word placement does matter, and it’s always a good idea to have someone else read yoaur stuff over before you unleash it upon a world full of sarcastic editors:

Which is not to say that lowlifes don’t need insurance. In fact, they may need insurance more than anyone else.

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