Author: Tim Smith

I have to admit that I am disappointed in this global warming stuff.

Look, I know the difference between weather and climate. I know several long months of winter with frigid temperatures and lots of snow mean nothing, climatologically speaking. I know that just because we are now having a spring of cooler – nay, colder – than average temperatures means nothing, other than I am more than ready to don my uniform of choice: shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops.

But, c’mon. I’ve been willing to accept that our inability to actually do something meaningful to reduce the emissions causing rising temperatures means we have to at least prepare for the worst and make the best of things. So as the years of global warming – or the greenhouse effect, as we used to call it back in the day – roll by, I have dreams of palm trees lining my driveway here in the mountains. I have already staked out where my small grove of banana trees would replace the native rhododendrons. The mango tree would go here, the orange tree there … you get the picture.

But, no. While other regions get the heat, we get the other side of climate change extremes – the ass end of global warming, as I like to call it. So of course my peach tree blossoms felt the frigid fingers of a March cold snap, the apple trees just as they were blooming shivered from an April hard freeze, and the poor birds will have a difficult time later on stealing what’s left on the blueberry bushes.

Never mind; I can live without hand-picked fruit. But if you live in a place with long winters, you know how hard it is to watch precious spring days that should be warm be wasted by cool, wet weather. I haven’t even dragged the garden hoses out of the basement yet or put the screens on the windows, for crying out loud. And forget about putting flowers and plants on the patio and deck; it’s supposed to be in the 30s tonight.

So I don’t mean to be a sore loser or anything, but I say that if we aren’t going to reap any of the benefits of warmer weather, then the hell with it: We may as well go on and finally do something to reverse global warming. I’ve been willing to trade a few years of tropical weather in my cool mountain climate for ultimate global destruction, but no more.

And I’m willing to do my part. I hereby offer myself out for hire as an expert environmental engineer. I am willing to move, for a price, anywhere that needs to reverse the effects of global warming. Too hot for you? Not after I move next door. Not enough rain? Better grab an umbrella, ’cause here I come. Glaciers melting? A few months with me in a cabin nearby and they’ll freeze right back. Sea waters rising? Sit me on the beach and the tide is going out.

And if you don’t think that I could make a difference, that one person can’t do anything to help, then you haven’t been paying attention. Because it’s a heck of a lot more than what the leaders of the world have been doing about it.

April Fool’s Day is no joke.

Lost in the prank playing and joke telling and general foolishness of the first day of April is what should be its true meaning: The day we commemorate all the fools of the world. And there have been plenty.

Fools, historians tell us, can be found in every civilization – kind of a common thread running through human development. Yet their contributions often have gone unappreciated; sociologists speculate that this is because fools are one of the most persecuted and belittled minorities in history.

Fools’ lot has not been a happy one. Often ridiculed and generally held in low esteem by society, fools have struggled to carve out their own identities and claim some measure of respect. This has not been an easy task. The popular image of fools is of court jesters and drooling idiots, yet this stereotype fits fools poorly. In truth, they come in all shapes, sizes and degrees of sophistication.

Modern historians now tend to view fools from a revisionist perspective, more appreciative of their roles in the advance of civilization. Take some of the earliest known fools in ancient Greece and Rome; long thought to be little more than diversions at feasts or lion fodder at the local coliseum, fools are now seen as having played a much greater part in the development of those cultures.

Archeologists recently have unearthed evidence that fools were instrumental in producing some of the greatest ideas from some of those eras’ greatest philosophers and thinkers and writers. The theory is that the prevailing wisdom of society and government of the day were sufficiently foolish as to inspire and provoke more rational and logical analyses of the human condition.

Fools were rampant in the Middle Ages, or course, and were later blamed for almost all the ills of that period. But a more reasoned examination of that time of turmoil and upheaval reveals fools at the forefront of change. The Dark Ages, for instance, have long been blamed on pin-headed nitwits who equated knowledge with evil. We know now, though, that without the Dark Ages there would have been no subsequent Age of Enlightenment when knowledge bloomed. Without idiots running things, people would never have realized that perhaps they would all be better off if that dribbling idiot of a king had no head.

Far from being relegated to court jester status as popular myth would have it, Middle Age fools – or “phuylles” as they were called then – actually had a hand in almost all the big events: The Inquisition was thick with fools, the Black Plague was spread with the help of foolish doctors and other self-proclaimed “health experts,” and almost all the wars were not only started but headed up by fools.

Obviously, foolishness was not always recognized immediately for what it was, and sometimes prejudice against fools was retroactive. It was only years after the Inquisition, for example, that victims could laugh about how silly the whole religious persecution nonsense had been.

We can’t blame all religious persecution and suppression on fools, obviously. Plenty of non-fools clearly must shoulder some of the blame. This is why a veritable boatload of fools sailed to America on the Mayflower, escaping foolish persecution in the Old Country. 

Over the years, Americans helped elevate foolishness to new heights, yet it has only been in recent times that this persecuted minority has been able to make great strides in becoming part of mainstream society. Now, Americans are guaranteed their right to be fools. Laws are on the books to protect them; if they start a business, there are government bailouts available when they file for bankruptcy. Fool-bashing is frowned upon in modern society; it’s not considered politically correct to laugh at them, or to make fun of them, or to give them anything but equality, credit for their achievements no matter how dubious, and even the respect they may not deserve.

As we have seen in recent years, in America any fool can grow up to be anything. We certainly keep electing them to public office. My theory is that we secretly like having fools around just like the court jesters of old; they’re often entertaining and they make us feel superior, smarter, less gullible and more enlightened than perhaps we really are. 

Not everyone is tolerant of fools, however. My wife, for one, has never suffered fools gladly. She has no time for incompetence, stupidity, idiocy and irresponsibility. Hers is a rational world where everything is supposed to add up, the bottom line is balanced, rational thought rules, and things make sense. And perhaps, after all, that is a world we should all seek and strive for, rather than the one we have filled with nitwits, nincompoops, buffoons and chowderheads.

I’m just glad she still seems to have a soft spot for me when my inner fool stumbles forth. 

So it’s been about a year now since life started to return to normal, two years since life as we always knew it ended with that last nice meal in that nice restaurant before everything shut down. 

Looking back from the vantage point of 2022, it’s strange to see how so much has changed, both during the long months of isolation and the subsequent return to non-virus life. Ironically, the whole pandemic was liberating in many ways.

After people went back to work in offices, they refused to wear old-fashioned business attire, so now sweat pants and other comfortable clothing are typical office wear. A lot of offices, I hear, have “dress-up” Fridays, where men put on suits and ties and women don business suits and strap on heels. Some women, apparently, even go so far as to wear makeup.

Zoom meetings and other teleconferences are still really popular, though. (Ha! Ha! Just kidding!)

After the whole mask-wearing thing and the political divisions it somehow caused finally ended, people decided that personal freedom trumps personal responsibility. No one pays any attention to speed limits or traffic laws anymore; just because the light is red, that’s really just a suggestion that you should stop, right? Of course, the increase in traffic accidents is a small price to pay for freedom of the highways.

People also ignore the old shirts-and-shoes requirement in restaurants, which regular readers will know is okay with me since I am of the less-is-more school of thought when it comes to clothing, although some people are bothered when women feel the need to express their freedom by forgoing their shirts while dining.

Bras, needless to say, went out of style more than a year ago.

And speaking of dining out, many of us are struggling to come to grips with paying ridiculous prices for cocktails compared to the cheap drinks we had for that long year we were stuck at home. But then what price can you put on the fact that you’re not having to cook at home every night?

We all welcomed socialization back with, well, not exactly open arms, but with a bit more personal spacing. Most of us still tend to shun large crowds – I mean, a year of phobias agains folks coughing and getting too close and spewing their personal germs in your personal space is hard to let go of – but it’s also difficult to resist live music and live theater and just live performances period. 

Some people, of course, just never got over being homebodies. They argue that their big-screen TV and Netflix and free snacks are just as good as paying $25 for a movie and some popcorn and they don’t miss those germy seats and chattering people and endless previews. But they’re probably not real movie fans anyway.

Some of us chose to wear masks this past winter even though the pandemic was long gone by the end of summer because, well, we liked not getting diseases other people had, like colds and the flu. Sometimes if takes a half a million deaths to get us to pay more attention to basic precautions and cleanliness.

Hugging is a thing again, at least among family and close friends, because, well, who doesn’t need a hug on occasion? But the handshake is long gone and replaced with the elbow bump or, of course, the more fashionable hip check.

Looking back, it seems odd that so many people opted not to get vaccinated; most of us don’t seem to care about the secret mind-control microchips that it turns out actually were included in those vaccines since we don’t have that much free choice anyway. Personally, I thought it was only fair that doctors and hospitals were allowed to refuse treatment to people who opted not to get vaccinated. Those who are still alive are still stubbornly clinging to their ways, proclaiming their right to do whatever they want even if it means endangering others.

Alas, we still haven’t developed a vaccine for stupidity. 

I was reading an article recently that said researchers had found cursing to be good for you.

Well, no #&*%.

Clearly, letting out a few profane phrases when you, for instance, hit your thumb with a hammer is a natural response and provides an outlet to your frustration for being careless and stupid, even if it doesn’t make your thumb feel any better. It’s kind of like blowing off steam, releasing a pressure valve on your emotions so you can get back to being the level-headed, even-keeled picture of tastefulness and proper decorum that you want people to think you are.

No one, really, wants to be known as a foul-mouthed yahoo blurting out f-bombs around children or casually dropping lewd descriptions of family members around their boss or co-workers. But I’m also pretty sure we all curse, even if some of us only do it mentally.

I, myself, being the son of a sailor, am quite proficient in word play of the less savory type, although my father – who was an officer and therefore a gentleman – was actually quite restrained in his language when I was growing up. My mother, a gentle soul if there ever was one, rarely resorted to any type of profanity. I remember her going as far as a “hell’s bells,” but only in cases of extreme provocation, such as when one of my siblings misbehaved (I don’t recall ever giving her reason to get mad at me).

The aforementioned researchers claim that cursing is actually a sign of intelligence; rather than implying a limited vocabulary it shows a greater linguistic fluency. People who curse apparently are more creative, and using curse words is a sign of honesty and emotional engagement. Using profanity can reduce stress. And cursing increases pain tolerance and strength such as in workouts or weight lifting (or hammer mis-hitting). 

In other words, cursing makes you a better person. Even if you are someone who generally shuns such words or frowns upon hearing them in public, you can still think them to yourself, or say them out loud when you’re all alone. You’re doing it for a good cause, to make yourself a better person.

So let ‘er rip, damn it. Goodness knows we have a lot to cuss about these days.

I gotta admit, it’s been hard to find much fun in life lately.

It’s winter and cold and blustery and the dreary weather is relentless; it seems as though we only see the sun about one day a week. It’s tax season again so F is back to working too hard and too long. The phone rings constantly with people wanting my money or concerned about my car warranty. We’re dieting and trying to drink less and exercise more and generally being miserable while we slipslide and backslide our way upstream against the current, mixed metaphors be damned.

Our republic nearly fell, our politics are toxic, and astoundingly unbelievable lies don’t seem to matter anymore. The pandemic that is killing thousands is made worse by rampant stupidity. Grifters and con artists and thieves go unpunished. At times there seems to be no sign of intelligent life on our poor, polluted, overheated planet. People have forgotten basic civility and have traded graciousness for greed, kindness for crabbiness, tolerance for tyranny, rightness for rudeness, humility for hatred.

And yet … 

Yes, it’s all overwhelmingly depressing right now. But you can’t wallow in depression waiting for someone or something to make it better. It’s up to you to make your life better. Those tired old cliches have endured for a reason. Tomorrow is another day. The glass is half full, not half empty. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps (or your slippers, in my case). Get up off your butt and do something (I made that one up).

You start by changing your juju. Your mojo. Your karma. Whatever you want to call it, if it ain’t working right now it needs changing. If you want to know how to change it, just send me a few dollars and you, too, can find your … no, no, no. Just kidding!

My advice is to change your priorities. The question you have to ask yourself is this: Are you still having fun? If not, what’s the point? You need to find some fun. Live life.

Take a walk and enjoy nature (which if you live where I do involves lots of layers of clothing and those boots whose straps you were supposed to have pulled up already). If you’re feeling blue, listen to some blues music. Learn to meditate, or at least learn to slow down long enough to embrace your surroundings. Turn off the TV and read a book. Turn off your phone and talk to your partner. Plan a vacation, even though you can’t take one. Plan a future that is better than the past.

Given the crappy present that will soon be the pestilential past, that shouldn’t be all that hard. 

It’s been a year to remember, a year to forget,
All the plans that were made were suddenly upset.
A plague came upon us, with death and despair,
And there is nothing about it that seems very fair.

So much squabbling and bickering, it’s really sad to see;
Not to mention the fact that on the shelves there’s no TP.
For too many people it was just too much to ask
For them to please wear a simple damn mask.

Wildfires were raging, it was quite an inferno;
And sea levels keep rising, just so you know.
Hurricanes with Greek names; who would have thought?
No wonder they keep telling us it’s getting too hot.

Riots in the streets ‘cause color still matters;
How sad it is that society’s in tatters.
Ignorance and division are the order of the day,
But we’ve got to do more than just sit back and pray.

Politics of hate and lies and fake stuff,
I don’t know about you but I’ve had quite enough.
People out of jobs, lots of hungry mouths to feed,
‘Cause the Scrooges that could help got the votes that they need.

Madness reigns over us, or so it would seem,
The whole year is too much like a very bad dream.
We look for redemption, we look for relief,
But it’s not my fault, says the loser in chief.

Families stay apart, or at least by six feet,
Friends can’t get together, not even to eat.
Kids stay at home, with virtual classes they deal;
The big lesson they learn is that cooties are real.

We are better than this, we have to do more,
We all need to change and our hope to restore.
So spread some love, some joy and cheer,
Because soon to come is at last a new year.