Trump continued to lie? No! (Nov 11/20)

 

A brand new president of the U.S.A.???

                                    By Robert LaFrance 

NOTE: Trump lied. He lost by 7 million votes.

            I woke up Wednesday morning, Nov. 4, expecting to hear that the United States of America had turfed out Donald Trump and had replaced him with a rather bland (but relatively honest) chap named Joe Biden, but, for the first time in my life, I was wrong.

            Well, maybe not the first time, but there haven’t been many.

            It was several hours earlier that Donald Trump had declared himself the new president, though at least eight important states hadn’t been decided yet. “Sounds like Trump all right,” I said to myself, since no one else was paying any attention to me.

            Here’s a prediction: Over the next few years Trump, if it turns out he was re-elected, will do everything undemocratic and anti-democratic he can to make himself a dictator. Nobody better argue with him either, or they will find themselves digging ditches in Montana.

            I am writing these cheerless words on Saturday, Nov. 7^th, and the election still hasn’t been decided. At 3:00 am on Nov. 4, seven hours or fewer after the polls closed, Trump, since he was leading at that moment, declared himself the winner and order vote-counting to stop. I didn’t think at the time that it worked like that, but Trump did.

            It didn’t work of course. For some reason the Democrats were of the opinion that everyone who cast a vote should have that vote counted. A bit silly, but there you go, and now, today on Nov. 7, Joe Biden has the lead and looks to be the next president unless Trump’s army of lawyers finds a giant loophole somewhere.

            1:30 pm Saturday: A news bulletin came to me on Google that the US television networks had all declared Joe Biden the winner of the Presidential race. We only need to await Donald Trump’s gracious and gentlemanly concession speech. The possibility of that’s happening is about in the same range as my being hired as Brad Pitt’s stunt man. No, Trump will try every sleazy trick his lawyers can come up with.

******************

            Enough of that for now, let’s go to a different Hallowe’en.

            A few days before Hallowe’en took place, I went to the grocery store, the Dollar Store, the hardware store and (by all means) the liquor store to buy treats for all the little tykes who would be trick-or-treating on October 31. I didn’t go to Cannabis NB because I had run out of money.

            My wife and I put a little table out of the porch and on that table we put two big silver bowls. Inside the bowls, all Covid-scrubbed, were approximately 67 bags of chips and a variety of healthy snacks like chocolate bars and other sugar-laden treats. I think we also slipped in a couple of unhealthy ones, like small juice boxes. (I’m not sure what ‘small juice’ is). Then we put cheerful signs around the bowls. “Happy Hallowe’en” and “Help Yourself”.

            After all that, we sat down on the porch and waited for the deluge of social distancing kids who would be crowding around and snaffling up the goodies. And we waited, and waited. Finally, about 5:30 pm, a little girl from down the road, halfway between here and Bon Accord, came by with her grandmother, or maybe it was her mother, and took a small bag of chips and a small chocolate bar. We did have a sign that read “Help Yourself”, but this little girl was being very polite.

            Too polite as it turned out. After the girl left we had a grand total of zero. We even tried to persuade the dog Minnie to stop killing squirrels and have some Doritos (‘dirty toes’ my son calls them) but she looked at us as if they and we were made of melting candle wax. No sale there.

            So there we were, with a plethora of Hallowe’en treats and a dearth of customers. What could we do? Answer: We started eating chips, bars etc. and broke out the scotch. By midnight, as far as I know, Hallowe’en 2020 was a huge success.

                                                ******************

            A few comments on our world:

            The pronunciation of the planet Uranus has always baffled me, and most other people, except perhaps rocket scientists, and maybe even them too. Is it “your anus” or is it “urine-us”? I would like to hear from my many thousands of readers. If you are wondering why I think this is important, the answer is that I don’t have the faintest idea. I don’t think there’s a winner or a loser here.

            Not to belabour the U.S. election as an event, it probably needs said that the election of the next president is among the least important decisions to be made on November 3 and in the days that followed.

            “Election day results were a major rejection of the war on drugs” was one headline I saw on an online news channel. After quite a struggle in the early years, the advocates of drug legalization have finally been successful in several states, like 15-plus.

            Oregon decriminalized (not legalized) ALL drugs, including magic mushrooms  and in every state where a ballot measure asked Americans to reconsider the drug war, voters sided with reformers. In Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota, voters legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. In Mississippi and South Dakota voters legalized medical marijuana.

            Just think of the billions of dollars taxpayers in the U.S. and Canada have spent chasing grass growers while white-collar and political criminals sat back and laughed. Oh, it is to giggle.

                                                ******************

            One final comment in this column that will hit the streets, as it were, on Remembrance Day week: thanks to all the men and women who have died while wearing Canadian uniforms. If you watch TV or movies at all, you might be under the impression that the U.S. had won World War II single-handed, but Canada’s contribution (that began in September 1939 and not Dec. 7, 1941) was HUGE. Thank you.     

                                 -end-

Put on headlights in fog (Oct 28/20

 

Non-elevator music driving me around the bend

                                    By Robert LaFrance           

            It’s been several decades since somebody coined the phrase ‘elevator music’ for that senseless melody-less sound that appeared in (where else?) elevators. It was bland and was just about the quintessential definition of boring.

            These days I almost wish it would come back.

            This morning I was grocery shopping and was assaulted by overhead speakers that spewed out the worst mixture of rap (not to be confused with real music), calypso, punk rock and sewerage that I have heard since the last time I was in a store. Then the entertainment paused and the American country music began. At least it wasn’t rap.

            However…modern American country music is now “of a sameness” as somebody recently said on WWVA, the station where the Grand Old Opry used to appear (radio version) every Saturday evening on our old radio in Tilley.

            Now that was country music, not to be confused with that drawling drivel we hear today. It used to be that country music songwriters made their songs all about truck driving, horses and hitch-hiking to Nashville but now it’s all about love which I am sure Donald Trump has made illegal by this time.

            The point of the previous paragraphs is that those who run grocery stores, garages and other such enterprises should try a little harder to put on some decent music for customers. Failing that, there is the option of silence. It’s a little hard to concentrate on buying olive oil and cheddar when some southern hick is whining about his shattered heart and liver.

                                                ****************

            Speaking of Donald Trump, as I unfortunately did two paragraphs back, it is less than a week now before he may possibly be defeated by his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. What happens then?

            In that country with the weirdest political and electoral laws on earth, Donald Trump will still be president after November 3^rd even if he gets defeated 50 states to zero. He will have the full powers of the presidency until January 20 and just think of all the evil pranks he can get up to in that nearly three months.

            He can pardon every rapist, bank robber, sidewalk spitter-oner, political pal and general criminal in the U.S. and no one can do a thing about it. What a weird country! And I used to admire the U.S.A.

                                                *******************

            Back home here, I have been wondering which hornets to believe. “The old fellers” used to say that if hornets built their nests high in the trees or high in one of the local structures, then it was going to be a Winter of the Deep Snow such as happened in the Riley Brook area in 1932, but if the nests were low there would only a bit of snow.

            Around our estate, old Mother Nature is clearly bipolar this year. Just at the west edge of my orchard is one nest that must be close to eight metres off the ground in a Viking apple tree and a short distance away is a nest of the same kind of hornets and it is hidden in some bushes half a metre off the ground.

            (For those who are sticking with the Imperial system of measure, a metre is the equivalent of the Imperial measure that corresponds to 100 centimetres, or something like that.)

            Now that I have that explanation out of the way, I must continue to describe the locations of other hornets’ nests around our house. There is one nestled in behind a lilac bush, as high as my left knee, and there is another one nearly at the top of our closed-in porch.

            So what is going to happen to the snow depth this coming winter? If I listened to “the old fellers#1” we would be in for a mighty snow-filled winter, but on the other hand, if I were to listen to “The old fellers #2” there would be barely a skiff of snow all winter. It makes one cringe before looking out the window first thing in the morning.

            NOTE: Just as I was writing this column, the weather report came on the radio. It’s supposed to snow tonight – 5 to 10 centimetres. That is code for 15 to 25 centimetres. Or it may rain. Or be sunny.

                                                ******************

            I know I talk quite a bit about the weather and about the scandalous number of poor drivers on the roads, but here we go again:

            I wonder how many people realize that their car’s headlights come on automatically when they start their cars? These are called ‘running lights’ and they aren’t technically called headlights because they’re not as bright as the real headlights and quite often the drivers aren’t anywhere nearly as bright as they should be.

            You see, when those running lights come on, the car’s tail lights do not. Therefore when one is driving through fog cars they meet can see those running lights, but cars coming up behind them can’t see them until they are in their trunks.

            Last week I was driving to Bath in the fog, a thick fog. I slowed down considerably but even so I almost ran into a grey Nissan car with no tail lights showing. In other words the driver didn’t have her regular headlights on. A grey car in a thick fog. I put on my 4-way flashers so any drivers behind me would at least have a chance to see me.

            Long story short(er), I made it to Bath and back home in one piece, but with the resolution that I would tell people to put on their blasted headlights when driving in the fog! Quite a contradiction – put on your headlights so your tail lights will come on and save your life.

                                                         -end-

A danger flight in rural Quebec Oct 14/20

 

Moving to the USA where it’s safe

                                    By Robert LaFrance

            Somebody told me the other day that Internet companies in the U.S.A. sell their wares at a much lower price than companies in Canada and I believed her. She worked for Verizon so she should have known the truth (a hard commodity to find nowadays, especially in that country I just mentioned.)

            My bill last month was the equivalent of a monthly Rolls Royce payment. The company stung me for close to $150 for just normal service. I called them and the woman who answered (in a totally unintelligible Mumbai accent) listed a bunch of things they were charging me for.

            If I understood correctly, I must pay a portion of the prime minister’s golf fees – and I didn’t even know he played golf – and repairs to some hydro lines in Ernfold, Saskatchewan. I owed either $29.23 or $45.10 to Rogers Communications for the use of some WiFi equipment (although my service carrier is Bell Aliant) and for repairs to a tractor owned by the village of Aroostook.

            Then at the end she said that she had missed an item – something to do with Donald Trump’s golf fees – that came to $634.22. It sounded like that anyway, so now my total monthly Internet fee is about $680.

            Later that day my cousin Vinnie in Presque Isle, Maine called to say hello and compare Covid data. The subject of  Internet came up. I told him that I was paying $680 a month and he said: “That seems a trifle excessive. I pay $30 a month for the highest speed package.”

            So I guess we’ll be moving across the border where the Internet fees are reasonable and it’s safe and sensible.

                                                *****************

            It’s been a windy fall after that blistering hot summer. Some readers may have noticed. No sooner did the leaves turn very beautiful than I said to my dog: “Fang, get ready for heavy rains and strong winds in less than two weeks. It happens every fall, but at least while we’re waiting for the S-word and the W-word we can enjoy the leaves.”

            No sooner did the word ‘leaves’ come out of my mouth than the wind came up and up and up and the rain started pelting down and down. All those beautiful leaves were flung to the ground in a matter of hours – no minutes, no seconds. I looked out our southern kitchen window and the fall colours were there; I walked over to the fridge to get some cream for my coffee and looked out the eastern window to see that all the maple and apple tree leaves had fled the scene. It was February already.

            Oh well, there has to be some kind of reason for my being depressed. The next step is when the S-word starts falling in gentle 2-foot drifts. (I just noticed that if one takes away the hyphen of ‘S-word’ it spells SWORD. Can’t argue with that.)

                                                *******************

            Have we harvested everything out of our gardens yet? I sure have, except for potatoes, carrots, herbs, second lettuce crop, Daikon radish, and several other crops. I’ve been busy with other things, like eating, sleeping and watching TV. I’ve been so lazy that I hired a carpenter to shingle the small roof of my new equipment shed. I was kind of embarrassed about that, but then I spoke to the Perfessor’s sister Joleen. A healthy woman of about 55 who doesn’t work outside the home, she hired a woman to clean her house once a week. “It just got to be too much to think about,” Joleen told me. I was going to make fun of her until I remembered the equipment shed that is only slightly smaller than Joleen’s house.

            Every year at this time I send out greetings to the people now serving at Alert, Nunavut, both military and civilian, because they will not be seeing the sun again until early March.

            I worked for Environment Canada, the weather service, in the 1970s and reported on whether it was cold in Alert as February ground its way to a balmy spring. I worked there 54 weeks in a row, but I’m not so sure what I did during that last week, since it was a big surprise. I had expected to be gone the week before and, in my disappointment at not seeing my name on the Hercules C-130 passenger list, I walked to the Junior Ranks Mess (bar) and stayed there. The next Thursday morning I was somehow on the scheduled flight to Trenton, Ontario via Thule, Greenland. I think. After 54 weeks working 450 nautical miles from the North Pole, I was rather tired.

            Mentioning those Arctic Heroes at Alert, Nunavut reminded me of an airplane flight I took to a little weather station at Nitcheqon, which is located about 300 miles due north of Trois Rivieres. I had been vacationing in Tilley, NB, in the house where I was born, and went from there to a 5-week relief job in Nitcheqon. What I remembered most was the trip itself. I took the train to Quebec City where I hopped on a QuebecAir DC-3 to Baie Comeau, Mont Joli and then Trois Rivieres.

            After an overnight stay, I climbed on another DC-3 and couldn’t help but notice that there was a hole in the passenger door, a hole surely big enough to put my size 11 boots through. Oh well, I thought, it’s not a pressurized plane anyway and my seatbelt will hold me in.

            Another minor detail: just before be locked that alleged door, the co-pilot carried on an outboard motor and put it behind the seat of the only passenger – me. He didn’t tie it down or secure it in any way.

            Halfway to Nitcheqon it suddenly got dark and the plane started bouncing around. My fingernails were blue, and as a bona fide weatherman I knew that pilot had steered us into a cumulonimbus, with its tremendous up and downdrafts.

            That lasted five or six minutes until my fingernails turned flesh-coloured again. The co-pilot opened the door to the front and asked if I was all right. He explained that we had gotten caught in a thundercloud and an updraft had taken us to twelve thousand feet from our regular altitude of three thousand.

            We landed without further mishap about twenty minutes later and just before supper one of the met techs (weathermen) and I went fishing on Lake Nitcheqon. I caught a 3-pound trout that the chef poached for supper. It turned out to be a good summer.

        -end-

Women dance backwards Sept 30/20

 

Transferred to Timmins, Ontario

                                    By Robert LaFrance

            I was surprised – no, astonished – to learn that the Perfessor got a moose licence this year. He was the inspiration of the original expression “he wouldn’t hurt a fly”. It didn’t take long for me to learn that I needn’t have been surprised – or astonished.

            “That’s one moose that will live another year,” he told me last evening as we were driving to Plaster Rock for the beautiful scenery and people. I only get up that way about once a month these days but always enjoy it.

            Enough pandering and back to the Perfessor’s moose licence: “It makes no sense anyway,” he said as we drove by Linton Corner on our way to Goodine Corner. “All the information (as if a government would hand out information!) refers to a ‘moose licence’ but what are we licensing a moose to do? Get shot that’s what.

            “It cost me a lot of money to get my so-called moose licence but maybe somewhere around Riley Brook or Wapske or Victoria Corner or Lerwick a moose will still be walking around come October.”

            “Unless he walks in front of a logging truck,” I commented. To which he mumbled “barbarian”.

                                                *******************

            Speaking of hunting, I have been getting some compliments lately. Last spring my wife bought me a vivid Hunter’s Orange jacket, one that is so bright it hurts the eyes. I was in the grocery store when Meyer Lansky of Portage said to me: “No question, you are certainly bright in spite of what everyone says.”

            As to my everyday activities, I have been watching a lot of YouTube, even though much of the content is about Donald Trump, and am enjoying some of the old dance numbers from the 1930s and 1940s. I wasn’t even born until 1948!

            Fred Astaire is the one on the screen more than anyone (for good reason), and I am sure people think of Ginger Rogers as his best and favourite dance partner, but I have been surprised to learn that he said in at least three major interviews that his favourite was Rita Hayworth. I didn’t know until this past spring that she had been a dancer since age three, and not just an actress. She was Mexican, not American, in spite of the fact that her movie studios tried to say the opposite.

            (Note: One dance critic said that female dancers have to be much more skilful than male ones because they have to dance backward and in high heels.)

            I recommend that you check out some of the dance numbers that Miss Hayworth and Mr. Astaire perform. Search for “Shorty George” and “Sway With Me”. Fabulous.

                                                *******************

            Lazy as I am, I have been putting in some time converting the root cellar I built in the late 1980s to an equipment shed for garden tools and a safe place for mice, rats, porcupines, ground hogs and squirrels. It’s been going well, if you look at it from their point of view.

            I went out there early one recent morning (about 11:00 o’clock) and apparently roused them all from a sound sleep or their breakfast, because it was like Toronto’s Union Station as they rushed out in a mob and headed for the woods.

            The only thing I can figure out is that some of those rodents and small mammals must have long memories and were still remembering the 1990s when I kept apples, potatoes, cabbages, carrots and other foodstuffs in there. Surely there’s nothing edible in there now unless the gas companies have been putting actual corn in their ethanol.

          Besides the constant turmoil in the U.S.A. because of their distorted leadership – if it can be called that – there are street demonstrations in many countries, most of which I can neither pronounce or spell. I can spell Hong Kong though, and I can pronounce Azerbayzan. All the street marching and rioting – often instigated by the police – reminds me of some words by the great essayist E. B. White in a piece called Unity: “Marching is futile unless there is a destination”.

          This was written in the 1950s, during the Cold War when everywhere in the world people were hitting the streets with no particular goal in mind except getting rid of the present government and replacing it with a worse one. He referred to those places generally as being ‘At sixes and sevens’, meaning confused or in chaotic disarray.

          My third cousin Glenna Hilroy recently took her driver’s test and was successful. By that I mean SHE was successful and can now legally drive her 2100-pound Gremlin. Which means that it’s time for the rest of us to watch out because Glenna is probably the worst driver ever to (sort of) get behind the wheel of a car.

          When I say ‘sort of’ I mean she doesn’t technically get behind the wheel because she is four foot six tall, with ‘tall’ being a wildly inaccurate adjective. She has two choices – sit on her car’s seat so she reach the brake pedal, or sit on half a dozen cushions and be unable to reach the foot controls. It’s quite a sight when one meets her on the road, either way. When she sits on cushions she will be speeding and without her cushions she can’t be seen. A driverless car. Get away!

          I won’t say how I happened to do this, but last evening I was hard up for reading material and found a 2017 hiring manual for federal government civil servants. As one who spent a few years working for the federal government, I was surprised (but not astonished, see above) to find several of my suspicions being proven accurate.

            Chapter one, page 23, subsection 12: “As an office manager, if you see someone doing something good, make a regulation against it and apply severe discipline to the ‘worker’ involved. Drop his or her pay grade and send him to Timmins, Ontario, for at least six months. Then he’s off to Nain, Labrador, but only for a week in the summer (flies) because it’s a pretty spot.”

        -end-