coffee.mill

Ray & Carol

                The email read “Ray and Carol Miller passed away February 22.”  That was about it, other than an apology for the mass mailing, and a link to a Lincoln news report on the deaths.  It was from Ray and Carol’s daughter Charly.  Charly, who is also a friend, and one-of- a-kind like Ray.

                 Ray directed the Men’s Glee Club at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and in 1969 and the early 70s, for a couple of hours a week, I escaped into rhythm and harmony with Ray and some 50 other guys.  Ray took his music very seriously and whipped us into an excellent, competitive Glee Club, never forgetting however, that we were a Glee Club, and as long as we were making good music, well then, we ought to be having fun.

                Every spring we would go on tour, putting on many concerts a day traveling to high schools around Nebraska, getting the kids fired up about vocal music.  We would run onto the risers from off stage, shout out a short intro, and then break into a rousing 4-part harmony version of the UNL school song.  Ray would then lift his baton and we would forge ahead with an eclectic mix of show tunes, popular music and the occasional classical piece.  As the tour wound on for days, and we began to tire, Ray always found ways to get us smiling and enthusiastic.  Late on one tour, after our fight song, before he lifted his baton, he reached into his scarlet blazer, pulled out a folded up piece of paper, and with his back to the audience, revealed to us just part of a Playboy centerfold.  We smiled.  Broadly.

                Each concert after that, he revealed just a little bit more.  But by the last concert there was no more left to show.  Again Ray reached into his jacket, and this time he unfolded a full-sized picture of…himself.  We started laughing so hard we could barely sing.

                We sang in music contests around the country and we sang at the halftime show at the Orange Bowl when our Cornhuskers defeated Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide. On the way home we sang in front of the Magic Kingdom in Disney World.  Where ever there was Ray, there was a good time. 

                Over the years I did some work on Ray and Carol’s house, a cozy A-frame he had built himself, laying up the fireplace stone by stone, a trade he learned from his father, if I remember correctly.  I rebuilt his deck when a drunk-driver left the road and slammed into it in the wee hours of the morning and I framed up a house for his son.  I would stop by Ray’s house from time to time over the years, as many from the Glee Club would, and spin stories.

                I stopped to see him and Carol before I left for the Peace Corps, and their health wasn’t good.  I heard he had recently had a stroke.

                I knew Ray and his wife Carol were inseparable, that they did everything together, but when I read the email that said that they had passed away, it stuck in my brain like a sandbur sticks to a pant cuff in passing.  So I clicked on the link to KLKNtv News and learned that the deaths were ruled a double suicide.  Ray and Carol were found dead in their garage.  He was 78.   

                According to the news story, many of Ray’s friends and acquaintances said Ray had often said he “wanted to go out on his own terms."    What with the miracle of modern medicine able to prolong life past all common sense, at great expense in the most miserable of circumstances, perhaps Ray and Carol made a good choice, while they still could, before they were stripped of their dignity and the right to choose. 

                I mostly remember Ray smiling.  That’s what I remember.  And I think he would be pleased to hear that.  Most times I think of suicide as cowardice; but on occasion I think of it as a rare form of courage.  This, I think, is one of those times. 

Of Cows and Super PACs

                Six below zero in Fremont, Nebraska Saturday morning last.

                It had warmed up to 10 before I headed north to Wayne in the ragtop Jeep Wrangler my niece was kind enough to lend me for my visit back to Nebraska from Florida.  It is possible I will be banned from winter trips to the Midwest, as up til now, the weather has been mild.  Unseasonably warm even.  The day I landed in Sioux Falls, a storm dumped 10 to 16 inches of snow from Denver to Omaha. Temperatures plummeted and stayed plummeted until I boarded the plane to leave on Monday.  Tuesday the forecast is for moderating weather in the 40s.  I do apologize.  

                But I got to thinking about the difference in temperature between Fremont, Nebraska and Jupiter, Florida, and the twenty-three and a half degree tilt of the earth on its vertical axis that causes that difference.  That tilt gives the temperate zones of the earth their seasons, and provides a steady stream of snow birds heading south in the fall, some like myself relocating permanently.

                It’s not much of a difference, that tilt.  But without it, the seasons wouldn’t change, and temperatures would remain in a relatively constant range traveling from the equator to the poles.  And that got me to thinking about the fragility of our life here on earth.  A little research shows that that tilt isn’t really a constant.  It oscillates from 22 degrees to 24.5 degrees on a 41,000-year-cycle. 

                I can write all this stuff about the earth’s tilt, and know that to a high degree of probability, you’ll believe me.  However, if as a contractor, I put a sign on a wall that says “Wet Paint”, you’ll probably have to touch it, just to make sure. 

                This brings me to politics.

                The Republicans aren’t yet done beating up on each other, but the attack ads on President Obama have already begun, thanks to the bilious, pestilent super PACs.  And the Democrats are beginning to fill the airwaves with their own version of the same.  And they all intone with absolute authority how their particular candidate knows and cares about global warming, international finance and relationships, hydraulic fracturing and oil exploration and energy in general, and the price of a cup of coffee in Wayne, Nebraska.

                The next time your jaw tightens as you discuss the relative merits of your candidate or your party versus another, and the grand promises and omniscience they profess, give some thought to Wet Paint.  Give it the touch test.

                I am from the Midwest.  Typically, Midwesterners aren’t prone to hyperbolic bloviating.  And I use the last two words intentionally, because as a Midwesterner, I typically wouldn’t.  It’s overstated and pretentious, but sounds good.  But if you listen to the sound of it, you hear “hyper”, which makes sense as a lot of unnecessary gaseous ventilation, and “bloviate” which sounds a bit like “bovine,” which we in the Midwest hear as “cow.”   

                The next time your jaw tightens as you discuss the relative merits of your candidate or your party versus another, and the grand promises and omniscience they profess, give some thought to Wet Paint.  Give it the touch test.  Or simply think of gaseous cows.  That would be a good working definition of Super PACs.  In my humble opinion.

Economy

                As a newspaper, the New York Times is among a select few publications at the very top of the journalistic heap.  Despite the virtual flood of print, TV and internet information sources, reading the Times is a reminder of what journalism used to be about.  That’s not to say that mistakes aren’t made, or that the editorial board doesn’t have an opinion. But at the Times an effort is made to limit opinion to the opinion page, which can’t be said about many “news” sources today.  In particular, along with the Wall Street Journal, it is a valued source of business information.

                In the February 2 edition, business section, the Times reported, “New-vehicle sales in the United States were unexpectedly strong in January, an early sign that the auto industry could have its best year since 2001, carmakers and analysts said Wednesday.”

                “The Chrysler Group beat forecasts with a 44 percent increase in monthly sales and Honda posted its first year-over-year gain since it began struggling with inventory shortages after last year’s earthquakes and tsunami in Japan…Toyota, Ford Motor and Nissan each reported modest increases, while Hyundai and Kia set January records.  Volkswagen reported a 39.5 percent gain, its best January since 1974.”

                Another article in the same paper stated that “Manufacturing activity in the United States grew in January at the fastest pace in seven months…Consumers are buying more cars and trucks, while businesses ordered more machinery and other equipment.  That has driven manufacturing, which expanded for the 30^th consecutive month.”

                “Both new orders and order backlogs rose to nine-month highs.  Increasing order backlogs suggest manufacturers are lacking the capacity to meet demand. That could mean more growth in production and employment in the near future, economists said.”

                An AP story in the Norfolk Daily News reported “A drop in the unemployment rate to its lowest level in three years propelled the Dow Jones industrial average Friday to its highest close since May 2008, before the financial meltdown later that year.  The Nasdaq composite index hit an 11-year high.”

                  As I drove into Lincoln, Nebraska yesterday I saw 6 tower cranes in the downtown area.  They looked to be on about 4 separate jobs.  In construction, a tower crane means a big job; they are not portable in the sense you can drive them from job to job.  They build themselves on the job anchored to a concrete base, as the job grows, so do they.  When you see a tower crane, you are looking at a multi-million dollar project.

                One of my friends in Lincoln owns a custom cabinet shop; he said last year he was finally able to pay off most of the debt he had accumulated in the economic slowdown, and his shop was now filled with cabinets they have built with orders to install.

                All these things seem to me to be good things, and perhaps even signs that things are improving.  But you certainly wouldn’t know it listening to the talking heads or listening to the debates in the primary campaigns.  Now, it’s possible that nothing the current resident of the White House has done has anything to do with these tidbits of good news.  But it’s also possible that some of the things he’s done are working.  It’s worth a discussion rather than a diatribe but it’s unlikely we’ll hear that discussion.

                Mr. Obama came into office with an economy heading downhill at a breakneck pace; I think most people agree with that.  It had taken quite a few years of irresponsible business and government policies and to get us to that point.  It wasn’t going to change overnight, and it wasn’t going to be painless.  And it isn’t over yet.   But I think there are signs of life. 

                And regardless of the politics, I think that’s a good thing.