Help Wanted: a tenor and a back-up band

I sing bass and have been (in another life) in several singing groups and quartets. The music I enjoy most is from the 50's and 60's, the street-corner doo-wop sometimes acapella four part harmony. Not barbershop, but what most call the golden oldies.

Is there anyone out there who'd like to form a group? I'm not thinking performance but just garage jam type music. If we get invited somewhere, fine but I'm into the fun of it, not the glory.

Anybody out there?

Oxymorons

"Oxymoron" is something we can relate to more these days than in past decades. It means literally sharp ("oxys" from the Greek) and "moros" meaning foolish. Interestingly the dictionary says "more at MORON". A bad sign. Anyway, without getting too technical here it means two words or phrases that are contradictory as in the photo above.

There are many examples: jumbo shrimp, rolling stop, civil war, military intelligence, political integrity, and so on.

Well. I have an addition to suggest: technical support. "Support"??? Hah. I am certain each of you has experienced the thrill and pleasure of working with a 'support' person who neither understands English nor your problem. And this is after the fifteen minute "press three if . . . " endurance entry exam.

You see, they don't WANT you to call for help. That's why there are FAQ's, chat lines, and all sorts of "try this and that" to throw you off your determination. There really are no real people out there. All calls are routed to automatons programmed to respond to your frantic cries with "I am so sorry to hear that you are having problems with our magnificent product, how may I help you?"

But I digress.

It was HP this time and I really NEEDED this printer. I had already drilled through the troubleshooting maze on their website which concluded "you have faulty printheads" so I'm trying to order them. Reasonable, right?

Hah.

The dainty lady in India took :55 to run me through the same tests I had done myself with the excuse that she could not replace anything until these tests had been completed. So on we went, changing out the cartridges, cleaning them, aligning them, printing (the same) test patterns over and over. Finally, almost an hour later I get promoted to her supervisor who says . . . . yes . . . you need new printheads.

AAARRRGHHH!!!

PS: if we REALLY want to get nit-picky (how many of you know what THAT originally meant?....) the plural is oxymora. Which means lots of oxymorons. Which leads me into the discovery of the new element called govermentium on which I will expound later. Much later.

12 to 1

Sally and I recently were in San Francisco as you can see (this shot is at Fort Baker at the north end of the bridge, before you get into the city) and we walked nearly everywhere. Our hotel was in the Marina district, within striking distance of the shops on Union and Chestnut. Lombard is a major bus route so we rode to and from Golden Gate park and the bridge for a cheap 50 cents.

I bring up the shopping because of a mileage disparity Sally and I share. We had driven down on Sunday which took about 4-1/2 hours, three of which were mine and from Interstate 80 onward it was white-knuckle work.

I had gotten up that morning around 6 and so I was a little beat by the time we got to our room at the Cow Hollow Inn on Lombard. Normally by two o'clock most days I try to grab 20 winks so that I won't doze off during dinner and put my face into the spaghetti.

"Nap? DID YOU SAY NAP!?!?", Sally said. "We are in the cosmic center of the retail universe, the cosmic core of fashion and culture in all of western civilization and you want to SLEEP!!??"

I hadn't expected it to go quite this smoothly and then she followed this up with the brisk almost rude "suggestion" that we exit the comfortable, inviting, sleepy confines of the motel room and walk around the 'hood.

"Walk" is Sally's term. Mine is more along the lines of long-distance-endurance marching. Where Sally sees one mile of "walking" I on the other hand calculate twelve. With the #28 bus stop a block away for example she nonetheless wanted to "walk" from the hotel to the Golden Gate Bridge.

And then across it.

Now it had taken about ten minutes on that bus the day before to reach the bridge. And that was at speeds I felt were impossible for a vehicle that big in traffic that tight. So, what, five miles maybe? I also discovered the main span of the bridge is 4,200 feet with the approaches at each end adding another 2,500 feet. Each. That makes the bridge 9,200 feet or 1.7424 miles long. Not counting getting to it.

One way.

So let's do the math here: 5 miles times 2 = ten miles to and from the bridge. Across and back is 1.7424 times 2 or 3.484 miles. Add it all up and you get 13.484 miles and the reason we measure 12 to one (approximately). . . Sally pretty much always claims "it is just a mile or two" regardless of where we are or what time / space warp we are in at the moment.

Oh, I forgot to mention the serious bicyclists in Spandex who were flying along the bridge sidewalk. No horns, no bells, not even "On your left!" to warn the unwary tourist. These sleek, intense-looking people threaded through the many globs of people with perfect aplomb, and good aim, too. No one was even brushed that I could see although there were a whole lot of potential deadly encounters of the first kind that somehow just never happened. These guys are the type you probably don't want to meet on a tennis court, either. Or across a chess board for that matter. WAY serious.

And finally, the painters. The bridge is a suspension span, the roadway suspended from huge cables that swoop down from the towers on each end by wires. Sadly we reached a paint crew that was just quitting for the day because I would love to have seen them at work.

We looked upward at one four-wire set and then at the two halves of the paint cabinet the guy clamps together around them and rides up to paint downward. Gad. It had windows of course but it might be better if it hadn't. Can you imagine winching up who-knows how many hundreds of feet, swaying in the wind (and usually fog or rain), and WANTING to do it every day of the week?

I learned later the riggers who work this bridge fight for their jobs. It is evidently very prideful and competitive because of the prestige and glory.

I think I'll stick to plodding a mile a day here in Lake Shastina.

Squirrel Stew

This is a European red squirrel. Note the distinctive tuffed ears. I ran across this creature while researching yet another improvement on my already improved bird feeder designs. There was an article in the dining section of the New York Times reporting that squirrel meat was becoming very popular in Britain. It seems that the American gray squirrel has invaded the British Isles and is crowding out the native (and cherished) red variety.

As a result gamekeepers and huntsmen are culling the grays and selling them to restaurants and meat markets where they are turned into pies, stew meat, and even pate'. A popular marketing theme reads "Eat a gray, save a red!" according to the story.

Even environmentalists are on board saying how important it is to save the red and how sensible it is that the culled animals are put to good use rather than just killed and discarded as pests.

My next birdfeeder design won't go this far although some readers have already called with remarks varying from "why are you feeding wildlife in the first place?" to "do you have a .22?" which leans more toward the British experience. Gray squirrels were indeed hunted here in the past, both for meat and fur so this Brit thing is understandable.

But I'm going to make Plan # 6.2a with an inverted cone, like the ones vets use to keep a dog from scratching his ears and face. I've decided to build the cones in an environmentally friendly way too, by cutting up one of those ugly black pots you get plants in from the nursery.

Hah. Let's see them shinney that! (Report to follow for those readers sturdy enough to follow this drivel. With photos.)

My Ultimate, Rodent-Proof Bird Feeder

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I think I have finally done it. As you can see it's not especially pretty, but how can I not love it having taken me so long? It is not a particularly smart design either, but rather one resulting from trial and error. A lot of trial and even more error.

This is how it started.

Attempt number one was this feeder suspended from the wire it came with on a shepherd's hook (bent rebar) that I had affixed to a fence post about six feet off the ground. Silly me. HDL (my shorthand for Huey, Dewey, and Louie the mischievous nephews of Donald Duck [note that I'm naming them now, this is a sign of something]) just simply jumped straight up onto the feeder from the fence. I learned later the longest recorded jump is 12 horizontal feet recorded by a similarly obsessed English observer.

The deer also got into the act and pawed them to pieces.

After gluing everything back together effort #2 was slinging them from wire I had strung between two large trees in our yard. Besides nearly beheading myself as I walked head-down behind my lawnmower this idea only stopped the squirrels. The deer still had their way with them and the few birds that did eat on them made a serious mess on my lawn.

More glue and nails.

Design #3 was an engineered approach. I bought some white PVC pipe in three different diameters so the pieces would sleeve into themselves allowing me to telescope the pole upwards to eight feet, above deer-pawing range. Clever, I thought. how could a retarded rodent possibly shinney up such a slick pole?

How I could have felt so confident I don't know. I had overlooked a tiny flaw in the design which was immediately apparent to the little cuties . . . the through-bolts that keep the sections from collapsing into eachother were handy grips for their little claws. I visualize this as their version of rodent rock climbing.

Creation #4 was crude but well-intended. A platform nailed to the base of the feeder (see photo) so they can't reach beyond the overhanging plate to raise themselves up. And no, no, don't use wood. They'd be able to grip that surface. I instead recycled a sign I had bought from a defunct real estate office made out of Corex which is like cardboard but made out of plastic. Yes, that's right, waterproof, claw-resistant, and stiff (I mention that because design #3-1/2 used a flexible plastic sign thinking as I did that it would bend and they would slide off. But it broke where the screws affixed it after too much bending).

But not wide enough. I didn't see them actually do it which would have been a treat in itself but they somehow reached clear around the plate from the already-slippery pole to defeat me yet again. I must confess that the feeling of being outwitted by a 12 ounce rodent was beginning to bother me at this point. Sally said I was beginning to mutter to myself and walk into and out of the shop with no apparent purpose.

Number 5 (pictured at top) is the last try. A bigger Corex platform. Thus far it is working but we haven't had a good blow yet, a factor I ignored entirely now that I write this.

I did in fact google this topic near the end of the design attempts and one of the advice articles said to build squirrel feeders to keep them from raiding the bird cafes. This is the age-old "if you can't beat 'em joing 'em" mantra.

And why not? I've got enough left over material.


PostscriptI give up. These rodents are driving in from the 'burbs to play with these feeders. With their tree-top telegraph system they're saying stuff like "Hey guys, check this out! This dude thinks he's smarter than WE are! Let's go rough up his ego a little."

Here are two shots of them doing that.

ROMANZA TO PERFORM IN YREKA

By Kathleen Kennedy for Red Scarf Society for the Performing Arts

Romanza opens the 2009 Yreka concert season on January 29 in a Red Scarf Society for the Performing Arts event. Comprised of three classically trained young tenors from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada - Romanza bridges the gap between opera and pop with operatic favorites, much-loved ballads and popular folksongs in a performance that is accessible to music lovers of all kinds.

The three: Philip Grant, Todd Jang and Frederik Robert, infuse their performances with camaraderie, intimacy and humor while blending their incredible voices in an enchanting harmony of original arrangements for the contemporary audience.

Philip Grant’s musical career has taken him to Mexico, the United States, Italy, and across Canada. He has performed more than a dozen lead roles on the operatic stage and is known for his exciting rich tone and excellent musicianship.

Todd Jang’s passion for music encompasses not only opera and classical genres, but spans a broad spectrum of styles, including jazz, rock and hip-hop. He sings a Mozart aria with the same commitment and enthusiasm as he does an Elton John ballad.

Frederik Robert is versatile in opera, oratorio, recital work, musical theater, and pop. At only 26 years of age, he has already sung roles in many companies throughout Canada including: Calgary Opera, Prince George Symphony and Canada’s National Arts Symphony Orchestra.

Each, individually, has delighted audiences across North America and Europe and now together as Romanza, they have been winning people’s hearts everywhere they perform.

The RSSPA is pleased to offer this caliber of entertainment that is Romanza, on Thursday, January 29, 7:30pm at the YCT. Tickets, $20 and $4 for students, include the reception to meet the artists after the concert at the Community Theater They are available at: the Yreka Chamber of Commerce office, Surroundings, Nature’s Kitchen, Scott Valley Drug and in Mt. Shasta at Village Books or visit www.redscarfsociety.org.