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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

A Short Story, A Luncheon for Four, and a Bit More

You will note that the Potpouuri Poll has disappeared from the blog.  Responses were minimal, but we may bring it back as the Presidential election draws near.  Also, we have added some advertisements to the blog.  We neither select nor endorse the ads. And if you have any idea of the location pictured off to the right, send me an Email at riart1@aol.com.

Beside an old short story from my archives, there are some interesting items on today's posting.  Unfortuantely, none of you submitted anything to include this time around.  I wish that you had.  Certainly, some of you have the skills and opinions to come up with an interesting contribution to this blog.  Give it a try.
Jack Lippman


                                                                         


Advice from my Gym Teacher


I had a gym teacher back in elementary school who said that we should believe about 25% of what we hear and about 50% of what we read.  There was a lot of philosophy dispensed while we were doing “two sixteens” of “up and touch your toes” or “duckwalking” around the gymnasium. There was no internet in those days and no Email.  If there were, I think Mr. O’Sullivan would have added that the 50% rule also applied to well documented sources of information on the internet, but circulated Email, with the original document unsigned, warranted no more than 5% credibility.  

Unfortunately, there are very large numbers of Americans who are totally misinformed about important things and believe everything that they read on the internet.  Recently, surveys in Mississippi and Alabama among likely voters in the Republican primaries there indicated that more than half of them believed the President was a Muslim.  

I am thankful that some of my more conservative friends include me in their Emails, which also go to hundreds of others, probably less discerning than I am.  Without them, I would not know that (1) there is still significant doubt about the birthplace of President Obama, (2) the Affordable Health Care Act requires everyone who sells a house to pay a special tax, (3) that the President and the Vice President were stupid enough to push for retraining of “cattle guards,” which are not people but mechanical devices used on ranch roads. 4) that the United States is willing to throw Israel “under the bus,” (5) that the government is engaged in a fight against religious freedom,  etc., etc., etc.

Please, I ask you, read whatever political Emails you receive carefully, and in your own mind, question what they are saying.  Look for the source of the information.  Just because it is a web site or a blog doesn't automatically give it legitimacy.
 JL
                                                           

 Is there a War on Women?

Contrary to what I am hearing from the liberal media, the G.O.P. is not waging a war against women.  Their failure to support provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act which provide for payment of benefits for abortions and contraceptives is merely an attempt to lock in the support of the people who do believe for religious reasons that taxpayers should not pay for such services. Except perhaps for the unelectable Rick Santorum, most Republicans don’t believe that themselves, but why shouldn’t they seek the votes of those who do?  The end justifies the means.

                     

Such measures, incidentally, do not attack religious freedom.  They do not favor or establish any particular religion or denomination.  They require that all taxpayers share in the providing of such services, even if they personally do not believe in them.  That is the price of living in a democracy.  Consider that individuals who choose to home school their children or have them attend a religious rather than a public school are not excused from paying taxes to support public schools.  Excluding them from paying for the female services mentioned above because their religion objects to them, in the name of religious freedom, would be a travesty on the First Amendment. 
 JL

                                                            
Baseball Season Approaches

The sharp sound of a baseball being struck by a bat  …   the thump of a fastball being caught in a catcher’s mitt  …  the umpire’s cry of “Play Ball !”  It all comes together each Spring as 32 major league teams each battle their way through 162 games  involving our “national pastime.”  Baseball is old fashioned.  It is played pretty much the same way as it was played a century ago.  Rules have changed very little. That’s why America loves it. Baseball is like a comfortable old pair of shoes.  Along with the players’ salaries, ticket prices, unfortunately, have skyrocketed.  But most games are viewable on television, from which Major League Baseball makes loads of money.  

                                          
                                                          Mike Palfrey

Last week, we saw an exhibition game between the world champion St. Louis Cardinals and the New York Mets.  When New York starter Mike Palfrey yielded a first inning homer to Cardinal David Freese, a leather-lunged Met fan sitting behind us bellowed out, “Atta boy, Mike, you’re in mid-season form alreddy!”  When we left the stadium eight innings later, our shoes made crunchy noises as we trod on the peanut shells the fans had deposited on the concrete floor by their seats. Welcome back, baseball!
 JL
                                                           

An Interesting Luncheon                                                                                                 



Cal Thomas is a right wing columnist with whom I almost always disagree.  I feel that most of his views are reprehensible. But inside of his repulsive persona, Cal is probably a nice guy. He eats lunch every day.   

Cal Thomas and Rachel Maddow

Recently, at a conservative political convention, he got the crowd cheering when he mentioned that contraception would have been a good thing for Rachel Maddow’s parents to have practiced (Maddow is a liberal MSNBC commentator) and that applied to others at that station as well. A few days later, Thomas realized that he had gone too far and apologized to Maddow in his column and suggested they go to lunch together and get to know each other’s thoughts better.
Rush Limbaugh and Sandra Fluke

A couple of weeks later, after infamous right wing pseudo-journalist Rush Limbaugh called law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” because of her outspoken views on the availability of contraceptive drugs, Thomas chimed in, writing that perhaps Limbaugh (who had weakly apologized to Fluke on the air) should invite Fluke to lunch to talk things over.  Obviously, Cal Thomas supports the kind of lunches which can be considered as business expenses and hence, a tax deduction.  I did Email Cal suggesting that he and Rush make it a foursome and go out together with Rachel and Sandra for lunch.  I am still waiting for his reply.
JL 


                                                    


                                   Future Radio, A Glimpse into the Future

                                                        Jack Lippman


When I picked up my new car at the dealership and the salesman went over all of the goodies which were included, I remember asking about an unfamiliar looking purple sticker on the AM-FM radio.

“I dunno what that is, never saw it before,” he had said, “but I’ll check it out with the service department and call you if it means anything.  Probably some extra examination the car went through.  They’re always adding new procedures to make sure everything works fine, and your car checks out great!”  And after three months of enjoying the pleasures of owning that car, that was exactly my opinion too!

Except for the radio.  As soon as I had gotten home with the car, I tried to set the radio pushbuttons for the stations to which I usually listen.  It wasn’t an easy job, because whenever I pressed a button to set a station, the words FUTURE OPTION kept popping up briefly on the digital dial screen.  I studied the manual but found nothing about that in it.  I even called the dealership but they weren’t able to help either.  Finally, after setting up the pushbuttons the way I wanted them, my curiosity got the best of me about this FUTURE OPTION thing, whatever it was, and I started fiddling around with the buttons when I saw those two words flashing on the screen.  After a few tries, I accidentally hit the SEEK and SCAN buttons simultaneously and to my surprise, the words started flashing even more rapidly and changed to a purple color.  Frankly, I didn’t know what to do next but to my amazement, the screen started scrolling upward and now read in blinking purple letters, TONY, PUSH SEEK AND SCAN TOGETHER NOW TO CONTINUE.  Somewhere between being frightened out of my wits by this radio which apparently knew my name, and being unable to resist the temptation to find out what was going on, I took a deep breath and simultaneously pressed the SEEK and SCAN buttons once more.

My entire body starting shaking when next I heard a deep voice, resonating through eight Bose speakers announcing, “Welcome to the future.  We wondered how long it was going to take you to figure out how to get here, Tony.  Although you car’s manufacturer will deny it, and rightly so since they know nothing of what I am about to tell you, your car’s radio system has been selected by a technology you are not capable of understanding to be equipped with a special band enabling you to listen to future radio broadcasts.  By simply moving the tuning arrows, which will reflect digits from 100 to 1000, you will be able to tune in on radio broadcasts from one hundred to one thousand years into the future.  Development of this system is not yet sufficiently advanced to enable you to select the frequencies to which you may listen, but generally, transmissions of news or current affairs stations will be provided.  In order to make certain that you, or the next few generations of your offspring, Tony, will not be able to profit from information heard on these broadcasts from the future, the system has been programmed so that it cannot access broadcasts in the relatively near future, that is, within the next hundred years.  We hope this limitation will not lessen your enjoyment of your Future Radio experience!”

After my initial shock wore off, I started tuning in on the future.  At first tentatively, but shortly with the gusto of a computer surfer who just went on line, I found that I was able to listen to English language newscasts which reported what was going on in the world and depending on how far into the future I tuned, even in the rest of our solar system over the next thousand years.

Now, just to set things straight and answer what might be the most obvious questions of anyone who is reading this, insofar as I have been able to discern from my future listening experience thus far, it appears that a world-wide nuclear war did not take place during the next millennium.  In fact, it appears that weaponry of mass destruction for use on our own planet was not a significant factor in the future.  I would guess that something occurred during the next hundred years, which of course I was not able to listen in on, to resolve that problem or at least push it into the background.  I did, however, listen to a few broadcasts from about five hundred years down the road when people on our planet did use what sounded like a very sophisticated weapons system to prevent a force from another part of the universe from colonizing another planet in our solar system.  Apparently, there was great loss of life in this venture, and a holiday memorializing it started being celebrated throughout the planet shortly thereafter.

Through the future centuries, however, I heard many, many broadcasts dealing with an ongoing struggle the earth’s human population was waging against the planet’s insect, bacterial and viral populations.  Most of the world’s technical and financial resources seemed to be devoted to this apparently very exhausting battle against these other forms of life for control of the planet.

But beyond this necessarily brief summary of what I have learned about what will occur during the next millennium, let me report to you on what I feel is, thus far, the most memorable story which I heard while tuned in on news broadcasts from the future.

It is unusual in that while I failed in my earlier attempts to record these transmissions, I had no difficulty whatsoever in making a tape of this particular broadcast, and with such ease that I suspect that it was intended that I be able to do so.  Here is the tape, which reproduces a narration by a gentleman I presume to be a Walter Cronkite type in the year 2752.

“It has been three days now since observers have been reporting seeing what appears to be a horse and rider in the sky circling the planet.  Although readily visible with rudimentary telescopes and occasionally to the naked eye, authorities have been unable to approach the horse and rider, due to a force field of some kind surrounding it.  Since it does not appear to be hostile, is not interfering with our sky routes and probes indicate that it does not possess weaponry, government action at this point has been limited to continuous observation.”

“Reaction among the Earth’s population, however, has not been so reserved.  Although traditional religions are still legally permitted to be practiced on Earth, most of the world’s population, for better or for worse, have limited their faith to a simple belief, far short of worship, in an omnipotent power, similar to what in the past was referred to as God.  Nevertheless, many groups on the planet still do have knowledge of and follow some of the old rituals historically used in worshipping this power, or God, as they still often call it, and it is these groups that have been particularly enthusiastic in attributing great significance to the appearance of the horse and rider.”

“Leaders of the Muslim religion have announced that the horse and rider are nothing more than the promised return of their Prophet, Mohammed, who had ridden off on his horse to Heaven centuries ago from an elevated area in Jerusalem.  The Catholic Church, from its offices in the Vatican City, has proclaimed that while no horse was actually needed to carry him, close-up views seen by equipment at the Georgetown University Observatory leave no doubt that the rider is actually Jesus Christ, coming again as proclaimed by his followers.  Protestant leaders have echoed this Catholic assertion.  And in Jerusalem, Orthodox Jews in black hats can be seen dancing in the streets, firmly believing that although the Messiah they expect is neither Mohammed nor Jesus Christ, what is going on certainly indicates that this is a most propitious time to expect his arrival.”
 

“And so it was that this morning when the horse and rider were expected to swoop down, setting foot on the ground near Jerusalem, there were nearly two million Muslims, Christians and Jews assembled waiting in awe.  Among them were the leading clerics of what formal religions are still being practiced on Earth.  The planet’s leading ministers, priests, imams, rabbis and holy men of all varieties, sizes and shapes had come there and shared a set of bleachers authorities had quickly set up when their tracking systems confirmed the time and place of the impending landing.  Finally, as the horse and rider touched down amidst the din of a million prayers being chanted, whispered, wailed and mumbled in a myriad of tongues, there was reported an overpowering gleam of light filling the sky, forcing all present to raise their hands to shield their eyes at the same time as a sudden and eviscerating silence blanketed the assemblage.  When the gathered believers finally dropped their hands from their faces and opened their eyes and looked before them, there was neither horse nor rider to be seen.  And then, as if following some universal but silent directive, the crowd quickly dispersed amidst a warming, unnatural and all-encompassing calm which seemed to pervade the atmosphere and seep into the consciousness of every individual there, imparting a sweet feeling of well-being.  They all smiled inwardly knowing, if they were Muslim, that their Prophet had returned and if they were Christian, that the resurrected Jesus had come again, and if they were Jewish, that the Messiah now walked among them, all of which means, I guess, that in the eyes of believers, God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world.  This is Correspondent   4456 reporting from Jerusalem.”

Frankly, I was surprised that the newscaster finished his story, which speaks for itself, with a line from a poem by Robert Browning and I wondered how much more of our cultural heritage survived into the twenty-eighth century.  That’s what I was thinking as I waited outside of CBS News’ offices in New York City.  The door opened and the gentleman I had spoken to on the phone came out.

“Tony, we’ve listened to your tape and frankly, we can’t use it.” He said as he handed me back the manila envelope containing my cassette.  “It’s a good story, but how can we prove that it isn’t a hoax.  You know, a lot of these stories end up being fabrications when we get to the bottom of them.”

“I expected that you would be saying something like that.  If you’d come out to my place, you could listen to the radio yourself and see that this is no hoax,” I replied.

“Fair enough,” he said.  “I live out your way and I’ll stop by on the way to work tomorrow.  Would eight in the morning be too early?”

“See you then,” I said.  “You have my address, right?”

“Yup!”

When I got home that evening, my car was missing from the garage where I kept it under lock and key, and the lock showed no signs of having been tampered with.  I immediately notified the police and at about one in the morning, the phone rang. 

“Mr. Green, this is Officer Morton down at police headquarters.  Good news!  We found your car in a parking lot at a mall.  Looks like some kids must have taken it, did some riding around and left it there.  They didn’t do any damage either other than ripping out your radio.  Damn neat job of it, they did, too.  Didn’t leave a scratch.  But that’s no big deal, I guess.  Don’t worry.  We’ll catch them.  We usually do, sooner or later.  Can you come down in the morning, get the paperwork done and pick up your car?  Okay?”

I didn’t reply right away and after a few seconds, Officer Morton repeated his question.  “Are you okay, Mr. Green?  Will you be coming down tomorrow?  Is anything wrong?

“No, Officer.  Everything is alright.  I’ll come down in the morning to take care of the paperwork.”  And I silently added to myself that I knew very well that the police would not be able to catch whomever or whatever it was that departed with my car’s radio.  Not for a very, very long time, anyway.

                                                     ***   ***   ***     

                                                                           
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Also, be aware that www.Jackspotpourri.com is now available on your mobile devices in a modified, easy-to-read, format.

Our family of web sites includes:   www.computerdrek.com  - www.politicaldrek.com  -  www.sportsdrek.com  -  www.healthdrek.com
Check all of them out, find out what “drek” really means and feel free to submit your thoughts and articles for publication on these sites, which, while still “under construction,” already contain some interesting content.
Jack Lippman
                                                   

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