A Blog on This and That

The working station of yours truly…

Here is a hauntingly, elegant quote…Ron Darling who played baseball with the often under appreciated, undervalued Keith Hernandez (whose number the Mets are finally getting around to retiring) said this of his old teammate:

“I didn’t know the game could be played that correctly.”

Think about that. Apply it to any situation or condition you can think of. That’s pure excellence. So hard to get there, so hard to stay there.

And in the past forty-eight hours, I have encountered on two occasions, in the name of ‘Customer Service’, the antithesis of anything approaching ‘excellence’…as I have grown over time to be more patient, I found these annoyances to be at best mildly vexing but still, they are a pain in the ass.

A few days ago, I purchased some tickets to a sporting event from an outfit called StubHub. I’ve used them before and always had a good experience. Yesterday, in trying to retrieve and download the (new, fun word alert!) ducats, I got run off the tracks. What happened? Language barrier, the damned language barrier! The young (I presume ‘young’…) lady was trying very hard to be helpful, to be accommodating but her English was so poor and halting and her voice was so soft, it made for a ruinous experience that ended in my giving up,  thanking her for her efforts and telling her goodbye. I will try again later today. But I will also politely demand a tried and true speaker of clear and cogent English. Accept no substitutes. (Don’t they audition these folks to see if they can cut the mustard…?)

And then today comes along just what I did not expect to see at six a.m. on my scrolling email feed. My bank sent me a message saying I was overdrawn. Huh?! I went downstairs, made a cup of coffee and dialed up my up to the minute real time account information on my laptop. It said I had plenty of bucks in my account. Now, I’m fretting a bit as this sort of thing is nettlesome and I do not want my credit rating  or my relationship with my bank disturbed. So at nine a.m. sharp, I walk into the bank branch, make my inquiry and the young lady tells me after looking at this and that that all is fine. I thanked her and then asked how and why did this happen. Her slack jaw reply:

“You can call Customer Service and ask them if you like.”

“Uh ma’am, can’t you do that for me since we are just sitting here and there are no other customers in the building and you have all the information in front of you including the banks coding information?”

Resignedly and with a sigh and a pause, “Well, ok…”

And she did and after some pleasant enough back and forth with the other end of the line, she told me it was their fault and that I shouldn’t worry. And thus knowing that the specifics of ‘the why and the how’ of my inquiry was at a dead end, I let it go and thanked her for her help (which was, in truth, basically non-existent) and came home to jot down my musings for the day. Soon, I’ll get one of those cheery emails from my bank asking me “How did we do?” which will entail a no more than three to five minute survey seeking to divine the scope of my feelings about the bank’s service and empathy (‘Did the person helping you understand how you felt about the situation?”). More bits of time to be wasted…No thank you…Now, where is that delete button?

There’s a good phrase for all this: ‘…like being nibbled to death by ducks…” 

Here are two much bigger things to be concerned about: Ukraine and Taiwan.

As most of you know, I am not a fan of our President. He seems persistently lost, often confused and befuddled and seems to lack backbone. He’s old and speaks in gibberish a lot of the time. His handlers obviously handle him.

(And too I am none too fond of his former opponent and current Nagster-in-chief; bellicosity, bluster and BS aint no way to run a railroad.) As for our Vice-President, she appears to be good only at talking in circles and giggling inappropriately.

Mr. Putin seems to be running rings around Mr. Biden and this is a very dangerous game. And the press and the networks, the handmaidens of Mr. Biden, are not informing the public with much of anything (save for the ‘enemy’, aka The Wall Street Journal). This is irresponsible. All they address is Covid, Covid, Covid and treacly ‘human interest’ stories and the weather. The idea that we have enormous foreign policy issues at hand seems, well, ‘foreign’ to them all. Almost inconvenient. What is Putin up to with 100,000 troops massed along the Ukrainian border? Hmmm? Use it or lose it? What are we doing? Rushing military aid to the Ukraine? Forming up and strengthening alliances of formidable resistance. No, not at all. We seem to be doing nothing at all except talking, talking about diplomacy, talking about vague sanctions, talking until we are blue in the face and to what good end? None that can be seen and the clock surely seems to be ticking. Does anyone believe that Putin will back down and just pull his troops back unless he is forced to do so and thus lose face?  What concessions of vile appeasement will we make? And does anyone believe that the Chinese and Mr. Xi aren’t paying close attention to the thus far very feckless west? It seems to me such limp wristed conduct makes taking a bite out of Taiwan all the more tempting. What is or what are our plans? (Of course, I recall the heavyweight boxer, Mike Tyson’s line: “Everybody’s always got a plan until you hit ‘em in the mouth…”)

Does all this this worry you? I respectfully submit it should. Teddy Roosevelt’s advice seems best here.

“Speak softly and carry a Big Stick.” We surely seem to be using our ‘inside voices’ but do we have the gumption to show the Big Stick and if necessary, use it? I wonder…

Now, a little self-analysis about something I am finding elusive. I’m working hard, with a self-imposed deadline of mid February to get the third book/manuscript in my Eddie Terrell Trilogy completed. I’ve noticed over the past few days that approaching my writing is agitating me, sort of stirring me up. Now, why is that? It’s not writer’s block. I’ve never suffered that aggravation. I enjoy writing and when I sit down to write, I write. And over the past few days, once I start to write, the agitation abates. Hmmmmm…I’m wondering-not landing on any particular limb-just wondering, could this be some kind of separation anxiety, that I’m approaching the end of what has turned out to be a three book chase that has spanned about three years…? I’m surely going to keep writing and I have ideas for my next novel. These feelings are interesting to me. I will just have to sort them out.

 On the hedonism front, I just returned last week from six days up in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia at the mighty, palatial and completely impressive and comfortable Greenbrier Resort. If she’s missing a bell or whistle, I was unable to identify it. Food, drink, casino, sports book, spa, sleigh rides, shooting, falconry and more. A+ across the board. Highly Recommend y’all check it out. Yes, it’s pretty expensive but you only go around once and you get what you pay for. In those terms, it’s well worth it.

Lots of recommended reads next time up. I’ve got my nose stuck in a bunch. In meantime, I’m off to shine shoes, fold laundry and straighten my desk. Were life to be without these mundane things, we’d lose a lot of our wonder so let’s find the balance. Y’all stay safe and keep reading and thinking!

I send my best,

Vernon