A billion here, a billion there

     Uncle Jack has been reading a lot lately about how the new Republican members of the House of Representatives are determined to reduce the federal deficit by cutting or eliminating many government programs.  They want to eliminate all funding for National Public Radio, for example, which would mean that Uncle Jack would have to get along without Morning Edition and All Things Considered and all the other good programs he listens to on NPR which is just about the only station an intelligent person can listen to any more without suffering severe brain damage.
      Even worse, though, is how they want to cut back or eliminate many programs that are aimed at helping poor people and especially the 25% of American children who are growing up in poverty.  These Republicans seem to have signed on to Social Darwinism as their guiding philosophy when it comes to what to do about the least fortunate members of our society.  It's sink or swim for them.
       The military budget, of course, is off limits.  The Defense Department eats up half our wealth every year and we are fighting two wars simultaneously "off the books".  No room for cuts or savings there according to our politicians---and not just Republicans.  If a Democrat has a defense-related industry in his district it's untouchable no matter whether it's expendable or not.
       Anyway Uncle Jack must have been thinking about this many years ago when he was still writing columns for the Outer Banks Current because he ran across this one deep in the archives:


                      No, Virginia  

   Uncle Jack came mighty close to cancelling his subscription
to the Norfolk paper last week. There was so much bad news in
the front section on Wednesday that he could hardly pull himself
together enough to read Hints from Heloise.
  On the front page it said that the state senators in Virginia
are going to raise the tax on spiritual beverages by 33%. Uncle
Jack isn't good enough at arithmetic to figure out exactly how
much that is but he knows it's a lot.
   The higher prices in the Virginia ABC stores are not going
to hurt Uncle Jack personally because he never goes up to
Virginia if he can help it, but he does feel sorry for all the
people who live up there. For one thing those legislators call
this a "luxury tax" which means that the citizens of Virginia
are being led down the trail to oblivion by people who don't
know the difference between a luxury and a necessity.
   Senators who think bourbon belongs in the same category as
perfume and jewelry need to be watched very carefully. They
are obviously not to be trusted.
   Also in that same paper last week Uncle Jack read that the
big U.S. Navy warehouse in Norfolk is missing about $l80 million
worth of stuff that is either lost or stolen. Nobody knows how
much is lost and how much is stolen because they only have 3500
people keeping track of it and that isn't nearly enough people
according to the admiral who runs the place.
   This admiral doesn't think it was all stolen because he had
one of his lieutenant commanders figure out that each one of
those 3500 employees would have had to steal $50,000 worth of
stuff before it could add up to $l80 million and he thought
that was unlikely even though the government seems to pay twice
as much for everything as anybody else does.
   Some congressmen came down from Washington to do one of those
televised "investigations" that congressmen love to do during
election years. You can add the cost of the investigation to
the losses they had at the warehouse last year.
    One good thing came out of the investigation, though, that
might save some money over the long haul. One of the congressmen
was surprised to learn that the employees' parking lot was right
next to the warehouse and he wondered if that didn't make it
pretty easy for dishonest employees to steal things like
lightbulbs and typewriters and small ships and other stuff they
could hide in their cars.
   The admiral said he never thought of that but he would
certainly have one of his lieutenant commanders look into the
matter and find out if it would be a good idea to build a fence
around the warehouse and make the employees park on the other
side of it. Uncle Jack can remember the old days when you had
to be fairly smart to be an admiral.
   About a year from now Uncle Jack will probably read in the
paper that the Navy has given a contract to somebody for $l0
million to build a picket fence around the warehouse. The next
thing he will read is that somebody stole half the pickets before
the fence got built so the Navy had to give the contractor
another $5 million to finish the job. If anybody asks you how
the Pentagon can manage to spend over $300 billion every year
on "defense", that's how they do it.
                                                          
                                              

On Wisconsin?

           As faithful readers know Uncle Jack is a native of Wisconsin so they would not be surprised that he is concerned about the news out of Madison where he matriculated at the university back in the first ice age.  He learned many things while he was there, most of them having to do with beer, but by far the most important course he took was called "A History of Trade Unionism in the United States".  Of all the experiences he has had in his long life that was probably the one that did the most to turn him into the unrepentant pinko, lefty liberal he remains today.
           He wishes that everybody could read professor Selig Perlman's book of the same name because they would have a much better understanding of the events transpiring in Wisconsin right now.  Life was hell for many workingmen (and working women and working children) in the U.S. before unions became strong enough to stand up to the worst exploitative excesses of the corporations.  Only by banding together in unions could workers hope to improve their miserable situations by collectively demanding change.  Most of the good things that have happened for  American workers over the past century have resulted from union activity.
         Uncle Jack is proud to say that historically Wisconsin has been in the forefront of  legislation to improve the lot of working people and he is distressed to see that Wisconsin voters have seen fit to elect as their governor a man who seems hell bent on crushing the last vestiges of unionism in the state with the help of extreme right-wing groups funded by ultra-wealthy corporate backers.  If they succeed look for more of the Wal-Mart approach to cutting labor costs----low wages, poor or no benefits, lots of part-time employees lusting after the pathetic jobs of the full-timers who are too cowed to complain---and no unions.  Not a pretty picture but all too accurate in our high-unemployment economy.
        This isn't the first time Wisconsin voters have shot themselves in the foot, of course.  They gave the country Senator Joseph McCarthy a half-century ago and we're still recovering from that.  Perhaps the time will come when Governor Walker will be lumped together with McCarthy as one of the biggest mistakes Wisconsin voters ever made.

      The news from Baltimore is substantially better.  The winter is progressing mildly-----no big blizzards like we had had by this time last year---and temperatures warm enough most of the time to permit an occasional walk through the JHU campus where the new library addition is taking shape at a rapid pace.
He hopes the workers over there are unionized and making decent wages because they deserve it.  Working construction out of doors in the winter is not a walk in the park---even when the winter is mild.

      Uncle Jack found time this week to put the finishing touches on a website advertising the fact that his and Mrs. U.J.'s house in Nags Head will be available for rental this summer.  Interested parties can see it by clicking on this link:   http://unclejackshouse.blogspot.com/

      Once again he has dug deep into the archives to resurrect a piece he wrote a long time ago about music in his old public high school.  He hopes the cost cutters haven't wrecked what was once a wonderful program because kids today deserve it just as much as he did.



                     The Music Man

   Sometime during all that hoopty-doo before the Super Bowl
Uncle Jack saw a show on TV about a high school band in New
Jersey that was so good they were invited to march in the
Super Bowl parade. He didn't get all the details about it because
his eyes tend to glaze over when he sees too much stuff about
the Super Bowl but he remembers this band's nickname---The Big
Green Machine---because they had it painted on the side of their
bass drum which was so big it took two people to carry it and
two more to play it.
   They showed pictures of this band marching around on a
football field and doing a lot of fancy stuff. There must have
been 200 kids in the band, not counting all the cute girls who
waved flags and twirled batons and tried very hard to look sexy
like the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
      They also showed these kids washing thousands of cars at
shopping malls in New Jersey to earn enough money to go to the
Super Bowl.
   This story was actually even more boring than most of the
stuff they put on TV about the Super Bowl but it did remind
Uncle Jack of the time when he played in his school band so
it wasn't completely worthless.
   Uncle Jack went to a rinkey-dink lttle high school up in
northern Wisconsin that didn't have as many students in it all
together as they had saxaphone players in the The Big Green
Machine. His high school band never had a nickname which is
a good thing because it probably would have been something really
stupid. Uncle Jack's high school football team was called the
"Purgolders" because the school colors were purple and gold.
They were not very good at thinking up nicknames when Uncle
Jack was in high school, maybe because it was too cold.
   Uncle Jack's high school band never got invited to go anywhere
which was a good thing, too, because nobody had to wash cars
to raise money and that gave everybody more time to practice.
You had to practice a lot because if you didn't you couldn't
stay in the band.
   Everybody in Uncle Jack's high school wanted to be in the
band even more than they wanted to be on the football team.
Uncle Jack himself never went out for football because he was
afraid he would hurt his fingers and not be able to play his
clarinet. (Also his mother would not let him go out for football
because he was six feet tall and weighed about 74  pounds but
that is another story).
   The reason everybody wanted to be in the band was that they
liked and admired the band director so much. He was one of the
most inspiring teachers in northern Wisconsn at that time.
Uncle Jack is not going to mention his name because you probably
never heard of him even though he did become quite famous in
band circles after he got fired from his job in Uncle Jack's
high school.
   Why did this revered teacher and all-around impressive person
get fired from Uncle Jack's high school? The board of education
did not like him because (l) he did not want his band to waste
a lot of time marching in football games where the instruments
could get rained on, (2) he thought he should be able to go
into a tavern and have a glass of beer just like any other grown-
up person even though he was a teacher, and (3) he got caught
fooling around with the choir director.
   Anyway Uncle Jack was lucky that the band director didn't
get fired until after he graduated from high school because
the band director was the most important teacher he ever had
in all the 25 or 30 years he spent going to school with the
possible exception of Mrs. Stonebreaker in the fourth grade
who taught him to hold his pencil right.  
   He was so important because he taught Uncle Jack about the
music of Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert and Bach and the
other great composers. That was the kind of music Uncle Jack's
high school band played.
   He feels sorry for those kids in the Big Green Machine band
because all they got to do is march around and wash cars and
   go to the Super Bowl. They got cheated.
   Uncle Jack knows.

The library project seems to have entered a new phase.  Lots of scaffolding has been erected on top of the concrete slabs poured in the last couple of weeks.  It looks like a huge erector set at the moment.

The earth movers are digging big new holes around the periphery of the south wall but it's not clear yet what is going to happen there.

Vestiges of last week's snow still remain but today's 60+ temperature and rain short make short work of it.

            
        

        
        
      
  

Fun City

     Uncle Jack's cup ranneth over this week what with the springlike weather and a surfeit of first-class cultural activities.  The thermometer actually reached 70 F on Friday which made his morning walk through the Johns Hopkins campus even more enjoyable than usual----and not just because so many of the co-eds had shed their winter garb.  He has a lot of sympathy for the male students on days like this because it must be very hard to concentrate on dull stuff like math and physics.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
     Friday night's concert by the Baltimore Symphony was enjoyable as always but particularly so because the first piece on the program was Rossini's Overture to William Tell which has had special meaning for him ever since he was a kid.  Aged persons like himself will remember (if they ever knew) that William Tell was the theme music for the Lone Ranger radio program to which he listened faithfully every weekday afternoon for many years.  It was the first piece of classical music he ever heard and he is sure it helped to turn him into a lifelong lover of same.  Who could not love that blood-stirring finale to which accompaniment the Masked Man and Tonto galloped off into the sunset after each thrilling episode.
      Saturday afternoon he and Mrs. Uncle Jack repaired to the Everyman Theater a few blocks down Charles Street where they enjoyed an excellent performance of an intriguing play called "Shooting Star" by the prolific American playwright Steven Dietz.  It's a 90 minute one-acter in which the two characters, a man and a woman who were lovers a long time ago, are forced to spend many hours together in the waiting room of a snowed-in airport.  Uncle Jack remembered to put his hearing aids in so he could hear every word of the dialogue and he can tell you it was very clever and he understood it all which is more than he can say about the Harold Pinter play he went to last week.

     This afternoon he and Mrs. U.J. will stroll over to the Mattin Center on the JHU campus to hear the Johns Hopkins orchestra, a group of students, faculty and alumni, in concert.  They went last year to this same annual concert and were blown away by the quality of the music.  They will be playing Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring"  which he dearly loves and he knows he will enjoy it even though the high temperature is back down to 40 today.  You can't have everything but you can come close when you live in Charm City.

                                 This is how one part of the worksite looked three weeks ago.

The same corner yesterday.  These guys have not been sitting around like they are in this picture. (It's lunch time obviously).

                     Another part of the site back on January 31 before Uncle Jack left for Nags Head.

                            And how it looked yesterday.  Only a year-and-a-half to go now.

                                                    In the beginning......six months ago.
  

Home again?

       Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. are back in Baltimore again after an enjoyable ten-day sojourn in Nags Head during which they experienced just about every kind of weather one could reasonably expect on the Outer Banks at this time of year.  There were no freakishly warm days like the one he remembers from back in the 70's when the temperature reached 80 one day and all the migratory waterfowl got so excited they started heading north en masse.  They probably got as far north as D.C. before they all realized their mistake and turned around because they were back Roanoke Sound the next day. Geese are not noted for their intellect so it shouldn't have been surprising to see them do something really stupid like that. At least they didn't have to pay for gas.
      Last week was mostly rainy, cold and windy except when it was snowing, none of which was conducive to favorite outdoor activities like walking on the beach.  This was not entirely bad because they were down there to work on getting their house ready to rent this summer and there is nothing like nasty weather to discourage frivolous pursuits.  There is still a lot to do so they will be going back to Nags Head in a week or so.  They have already spent so much time down there this year that they are not sure which place to call home at this point----South Nags Head or Charm City.  This is not exactly what you could call a serious problem he would be the first to admit.
      They got back to Bawlmer on Tuesday and plunged almost immediately back into the cultural swim  by going to the Center Theater downtown to see a performance of  Harold Pinter's enigmatic 1965 play called "The Homecoming" which Uncle Jack thought was pretty funny for a tragedy.  Pinter got the Nobel Prize in literature a few years back so he must be a very important playwright but Uncle Jack has to confess that he has never understood anything the man wrote.  Lucky for him you don't have to understand his plays to enjoy them so it wasn't a total loss.
      Tomorrow night it's the symphony (mostly Chopin) and Saturday afternoon another play,  this time at the Everyman Theater down the street a few blocks.  On Sunday he will rest his brain lest it become overheated and cause a stroke or worse.
      By popular request Uncle Jack has reached deep into the archives for another piece he wrote so long ago that by his reckoning very few people who read it originally could still be alive. It came to mind as he watched the snow melt last week.

South Nags Head on Dwellable

                                   Ditches


   Uncle Jack has been thinking a lot lately about ditches.
This is not something he would normally think about very much
but with all the water standing around everywhere in Nags Head
after the big rain last week and everybody talking about drainage
all the time he could not help remembering the ditches of his
childhood.
   When Uncle Jack was a kid ditches were just about the number
one source of entertainment in his neighborhood, especially
in the spring when the snow started to melt. Uncle Jack should
back up and explain that he grew up in a small town in northern
Wisconsin near the Arctic Circle where it started snowing right
after Labor Day and it kept right on snowing right up to Memorial
Day.
   During that time, known as "winter", shoveling snow was the
number one source of recreation. Nobody in Uncle Jack's home
town ever went skiing or anything like that because they were
always too tired from shoveling snow.
   In the spring, which usually came around the first week of
June and lasted about four or five days, the sun would come
out and the temperature would go way up to 35 degrees above
zero and the snow would start to melt. This is where the ditches
came in. Uncle Jack's home town did not have too much in the
way of culture but it did have wonderful ditches. During the
spring when the snow was melting people would refer to Uncle
Jack's home town as the Venice of Northern Wisconsin and they
were not exaggerating very much either.
   Uncle Jack can still remember how the old people would stand
out by the ditches in front of their houses when the water was
running good and they would nod to each other and smile and
say things like "By golly, Lars, she's really running good today,
ain't she". People really knew how to appreciate a good ditch
in those days, that's for sure.
   The old people would watch Uncle Jack and the other kids
playing in the ditches just the way they did when they were
kids and they would say things like "Watch out you don't get
sucked into the culvert" just like their mothers and fathers
used to say to them. As far as Uncle Jack knows, nobody in his
neighborhood ever actually got sucked into the culvert but he
thinks that could be what happened to Dorothy Magnuson's cat
in the spring of '39.
   Building dams in the ditches and flooding the street was
one thing Uncle Jack and his friends used to do but racing boats
was more fun and you did not get yelled at by the old people
as much, either, when you raced boats. Uncle Jack and his friends
would make boats out of chunks of wood or whatever      
and then they would see whose boat could get from Seventh Street
to the culvert first.
   This was how they got to practice some of the skills they
would need when they grew up such as how to cheat and get away
with it and how to win an argument even when you know you are
wrong.
   On the first Saturday of spring (which was also the last
Saturday of spring) Uncle Jack and his friends would have the
Big Culvert Race which was where everybody let their boats get
sucked into the culvert and then they would jump on their
bicycles and ride down to where the culvert emptied out through
a big pipe right into Lake Superior. Then they would sit there
and wait to see whose boat came out first and you can probably
imagine how exciting that was.
   Uncle Jack is not going to tell you some of the things he
saw that came out of that pipe and went right into Lake Superior
because you might be eating lunch or something. He will say
that after he saw what came out of that pipe he could never
get up much enthusiasm for swimming in Lake Superior and it
wasn't because it never completely thawed out, either.
   But mostly Uncle Jack has very fond memories of the ditches
he played in and he would like to tell all the people in Nags
Head who have a lot of water standing in their yards that they
should not be afraid of ditches. He knows from experience that
ditches are not only useful for getting the water out of your
yard but they are also a good source of wholesome, inexpensive
entertainment for the whole family and something the community
can be proud of.
   But watch out you don't get sucked into the culvert.

This was a pretty blizzard while it lasted.  The snow fell Wednesday night and was gone by Thursday night.

Uncle Jack didn't have to brush the snow off the Mini---it melted before he could find the broom.

Monday, the day before they had to leave, was actually almost pleasant.  They walked toward Jennette's Pier, which looks like it is on track to open as scheduled in May, but had to turn around before they got there.  Needless to say they had the beach to themselves.  Most people are not quite as dumb as geese. Click the picture to enlarge it and you might be able to see the pier.

Winter at the Beach

    Weatherwise it's not all that great in Nags Head right now but it's warmer than Charm City and snowless so it's nice to be here.  Uncle Jack and Mrs. U.J. arrived in the rain and fog on Saturday, enjoyed a sunny day yesterday and are coping with an 80% chance of rain today.  Who knows what tomorrow may bring in addition to Uncle Jack's trip to the dentist to have an errant crown replaced. In the meantime "Let them eat soup" as the French lady once said. (The crown fell off while he was sleeping but with the grace of the Good Fairy he didn't swallow it),
     He and Mrs. U.J. will be busy for the next week getting their Nags Head house ready for rental this summer.  They have had a wonderful year-round tenant for the past couple of years but hated not being able to use the house whenever they wanted to during the off season.  Uncle Jack is working on a descriptive website for the house but in the meantime if you are interested in a moderately priced rental just a block from the ocean (one mile south of Jennette's pier in upper South Nags Head) please let him know by emailing to
jsandberg3143@gmail.com
and he will be happy to tell you all about it.
    The Super Bowl (except for the half-time nonsense) was enjoyable and a win-win contest for Uncle Jack.  He is a Cheesehead by birth so he was happy the Packers prevailed but he lived in Pittsburgh during the Steelers' glory years so he wouldn't have minded if they had pulled it out at the last second in true Steeler fashion.  Next year it's the Ravens for sure, right after the Orioles clinch the World Series.
     Here's another hoary offering from the archive for all the unemployed persons who have plenty of time to read these days for which Uncle Jack is truly sorry.  He wishes he could offer you a job instead but he doesn't even have one himself anymore.

South Nags Head on Dwellable

      

                                                         Proud to be a Quitter


   Uncle Jack read in the paper where Americans are smoking fewer cigarettes than ever before which makes him very happy but he finds it hard to believe when he sees all the cigarette butts in his parking lot every day. It seems like most of the people who are still smoking still think the world is their ashtray just like Uncle Jack did when he was a smoker.
   The paper said that even though the cigarette companies spend over a billion dollars a year on advertising they have only managed to hook about one out of every three grown-ups on cigarettes. That is pretty amazing when you consider how many of those dollars are aimed at trying to convince children that they are never going to amount to much if they do not have at least one cigarette going at all times.
   Most of the people who don't smoke must have a hard time understanding why smokers smoke when even the dumb smokers who never finished high school must have heard by now that smoking is bad for their health.
   Some of the non-smokers probably tried to learn how to smoke when they were young but it made them sick right off the bat instead of having to wait thirty years to get lung cancer. They were lucky.
   Uncle Jack does not smoke but it isn't hard for him to understand why people do smoke even though they know it makes them cough and it stinks up their clothes and it is costing them a fortune.Uncle Jack knows why they smoke because a long time ago he used to smoke, too, and he can still remember what it was like. For ten years he started every day with a cigarette and ended every day with a cigarette and in between he smoked at least twenty more, two or three of which he really enjoyed.
   This is not something Uncle Jack is proud of. It is not easy to admit that he was a slave but for ten years Uncle Jack belonged to the Marlboro Man. He crawled along in the dust  behind the Marlboro Man all those years and the Marlboro Man would never even let him ride his horse, much less introduce him to any pretty girls.
     One day Uncle Jack really got fed up with the Marlboro Man and he decided he would never smoke a cigarette again. He knows exactly when this was because it was on the very day his only begotten son was born. (Uncle Jack has always had a flair for the dramatic).
   Actually Uncle Jack had tried to quit smoking many times before but the Marlboro Man wouldn't let him. This time, though, Uncle Jack had help from Bob Newhart.
   Back in the old days before he got rich and famous doing TV sitcoms Bob Newhart was a stand-up comedian who did funny skits where he would pretend he was talking on the phone to somebody. In one of those skits he pretended to be a high pressure salesman in England who was talking to Sir Walter Raleigh.
   Raleigh has just discovered tobacco in America and he is trying to convince this salesman that there is big money to be made in something called "cigarettes". He tries to describe over the phone what tobacco is and how you make cigarettes and what you are supposed to do with them and it goes something like this:
   "So you take this weed and you let it dry out and then you crumble it up and wrap it in a little paper tube," the salesman says. "O.K. Walt, baby, I follow you so far but then what?"
   "You put the little tube of tobacco in your mouth and set fire to it?" he says, beginning to laugh uncontrollably. After he recovers he says, "And then what do you do, Walt?"
   "You ...you...breathe the smoke into your lungs?!! Walt, baby, you've got to be kidding!!"
   Anyway Uncle Jack has not smoked a cigarette since November 2, l96l and he cannot even begin to figure out how much money he has not spent on cigarettes in that time but it must have
been enough to pay for all the bourbon he has consumed in the same period. We are talking real money here.
   He would like to conclude by saying that he would be happy to serve as an inspiration to anybody who would would like to quit smoking but doesn't think he can. If somebody as inherently spineless as Uncle Jack can quit, he is sure that anybody can.
   And if all else fails he will let you borrow his Bob Newhart record.

Looking north toward Jennette's Pier from Whitecap Street Saturday afternoon February 5.

          .

                                  Same view 24 hours later.  What a difference a day makes.