HAPPY BRITHDAY TO ME PART 1

The years keep rolling on, though occasionally I feel like they have rolled over me. I recently celebrated my 39th birthday–for the twentieth time. Listen, if it's good enough for Jack Benny, it's good enough for me. I decided to celebrate a day early accompanied by some of the youth from my church. While my peers at church are all jolly-good people, I wanted to hang out for one day with a group where our conversations would not include discussion about which medications we're taking for arthritis, who our cardiologists are, and if we're planning on being buried or cremated when the time comes.

Because of time constraints, we had to grab a quick bite right after services before leaving for the near-by college town to see a play. I had popped frozen pizzas into the oven during coffee hour so they would bake while everyone was having birthday cake. One of the nice things about teenagers is they see nothing wrong with having dessert BEFORE a meal rather than after. I feel I am quite enlighten on this point, not at all a prisoner to silly traditions of good nutrition. What I had never considered was that a "bite to eat" would become just that, a bite.


I was engaged in some pastoral duties during the coffee hour (mostly wearing a wig and dark glasses as I did my impression of Elvis). The pizza finished baking, so I took it out to cool just a minute. When I returned, some of the adults had cut up the pizza (how helpful, I thought) and were taking slices of warm pizza home with them (hey, wait, that's for the kids!) The result left each of the youth with a single slice of pizza, next to nothing especially for the bottomless pits that are the fourteen-year-old males of the species. I must say that the youngsters were quite gracious and did not complain at being treated like Oliver Twist (please, sir, may I have some more?) I was seething.



We drove to the theater, I concealing fairly well the one time I got lost on the way. We arrived in good time to see "The Pursuit of Happiness." It is a quite humorous play, but a touch racier than I had expected. There was no problem, however, as the teens were able to explain the racier parts to me.



Our next stop was a restaurant for dinner. We were greeted at the door by the staff who told us that the restaurant was temporarily closed for technical reasons. I speculated problems with the electricity. The youth suggested rats in the kitchen. With visions in my mind of an old Monty Python routine (ratatouille, rat sandwiches, rat stew, rat pudding), we went to a close-by Out Back for a dinner. (I hope everyone ate something they liked.) We traveled back to our home town for ice cream where I tried to pretend I didn't know two of them who were sharing a single ice cream cone, one eating the ice cream and the other eating the cone and the fudge topping. (That was their idea, not mine.) And those two complained that another of our group ate cotton-candy flavored ice cream with crushed butter fingers mixed in. (Personally, I can't eat blue food except blueberries and my grandmothers marble cake. Don't ask.)



I believe it was about this time that the thespians among us began discussing learning accents, and I stated, quite rightly, that since I was from the Midwest, I did not have an accent. Everyone else did. I was booed. We returned to the church carrying on an annoying conversation in an assortment of Valley Girl and Surfer Dude dialects, interspersed with my imitation Minnesotan (Yah, sure, you betcha) and some Massachusetts twang (that was for real, not put on.)

I had a wonderful time. I hope my friends did.

Next time, birthday cards and gifts.


May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.


Wayne

WHAT'S IT TRYING TO SAY?

As I remember it, electrical devices used to just do a particular job and that was it. You turned a switch and the lamp came on. You put bread in the toaster, pushed down the lever, and either toast or charcoal popped up. Then they started putting things like pilot lights on appliances so you knew when they were on. That was the beginning of electrical devices trying to communicate with us. Now it is much more complicated.

Take my VCR for example. (A VCR is what us old-folks used before the DVD was invented. And DVD is what we used before Blue-ray.) My VCR has a red light to tell me when it is plugged in, but not turned on. When it is turned on , the light changes to green. Pretty nifty. It also has a bunch of other little lights that tell you things. Unfortunately it has a little red circle with what looks like an L in it that has been flashing on and off for months. It's trying to say something, but I don't comprehend. I don't know what it wants. I suppose I could get the instruction manual and look up what this means, but that seems like having to find a dictionary to translate someone else's language.

This electronic communication stuff started with the computer chips they put into things. Now the computers themselves are constantly communicating one thing or another. My computer beeps, bings, boops, squawks, and occasionally plays an entire symphony (all right not an entire symphony, just a movement or two) when it wants something. The strangest thing is that it laughs when it turns off. I'm not making this up. It says ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! It's more like a giggle actually. Sometimes my computer has whole messages for me. Every once in a while when it starts it says it can't find the somethingorother.dll file. I don't know what that is or what it does because everything works the same whether it can find it or not. Of course there are also the dreaded blue-screen messages. The screen goes black, then this blue screen pops up with writing about some sort of fatal error and then something about kernel gobbledygook-hasenpfeffer-18fvn38gfui. Then it quits working. Maybe it just wants a rest. So why doesn't it say so?

These computers aren't as clever as they think they are. Case in point. Our church organ has developed some sort of problem. Sometimes when it is turned on, it plays a random note, I mean a really random note. It doesn't match any note on the keyboard. Or sometimes it makes a wha-wha-wha sound. Or sometimes it goes "click" and then works fine. We called in the organ fix-it man to repair it. After half an hour taking parts out and putting them back in, the organ stopped it's shenanigans. The repair man isn't sure that the organ is fixed because he doesn't know what was wrong, jut that it stopped. The repair man explained that the organ as a CPU in it just like a computer. As a mater of fact, it's the same CPU that IBM used in desktop computers before it started using the ones in the PC, 8806 or something. Now if the organ has a computer in it, why can't it tell us what's wrong? My car has a computer gizmo in it that tells you all sorts of stuff when it goes wrong, so why can't the organ do it. In the old days of pipe organs, I could look at the parts and see what was wrong, but not these jumped up boxes of computer chips. So why aren't they more helpful? I think they are keeping secrets from us.

Now comes the spooky part–the mysterious microwave in the church kitchen. Someone donated the microwave to the church, but they didn't have the instruction book. I am not intimidated by these things (not usually), so I just pushed buttons until I figured out how it worked. I have shown numerous people what to do–press cycle 1, then time, then enter the minutes and seconds, then start–but every time someone want to use it, they have to call me over to work the buttons. Mostly I use the microwave to heat frozen dinners on the days when I have evening meetings, or I use it to reheat my cup of tea. I can make a cup of tea in the morning, and have to reheat it four or five times because I never get to drink more than a sip before the phone rings or someone comes into the office. A few times the same cup of tea has lasted two days. Anyway, today I was about to reheat a cup of jasmine tea, when I saw that the panel which displays the minutes and second had the word "yes" on it. It was strange lettering because it used the same LED's that the numbers use so it read something like this:





Yes what? What was it saying? Yes, I'm working? Yes, I'll warm your tea? Yes, I'll bombard you with electro-magnetic waves? As soon as I touched the cycle button, the yes disappeared. After I had reheated the tea, I experimented to find out how the yes had come to display itself. I discovered that if you press the button that says "memory," yes is displayed. If you then touch anything else, it disappears. So "yes " is somehow fixed in its memory, but I still don't know why. What is it remembering that it says yes to? Has it been having a fling with the electric coffee maker? Yes! Yes! Yes! Or is it communicating with some alien computer in a UFO? Yes, I will exterminate the humanoid life-forms. Things like this bother me.

I suppose I'll just have to put up with electronic devices communicating in their peculiar fashion, but I think we need to be careful. These things may start to take over our lives. When we become their labor saving devices, don't say I didn't warn you.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

USELESS UTILITY BILLS

I'm no different from the next guy. I don't like paying bills. But when you get a product or service, you have to pay for it. I'll go along with that–except with utilities. I get five utility bills every month, and I am paying for a lot of things I don't understand. Let's start with one of the bargain of all bargains, my long distance service. I pay $1.13 a month for the privilege of being able to pick up my phone and make a long distance call if I want to. This fee does not actually get me any calls, but it gives me the right to make calls. It sounds outrageous, but it is cheaper than if I let my local carrier provide me with the same service. They want $5.00 a month for the privilege. They would also like me to pay another six or seven dollars for the privilege of fixing my phone if it breaks. I told them to take a hike. I have a tidy sum saved up if I ever need something fixed. Actually I have had to call upon the repair service once. They fixed the problem, and after they had left I discovered they had cut the wires for one of the extensions. I called the repair service immediately, but rather than having the repair-person turn around and come back, they insisted I make an new appointment and wait again for someone to show up. The phone company also threatened that I would be responsible for the cost of the repair it they hadn't caused the problem. I told them I wasn't going to pay for it. In the end I wasn't billed for any repair, the first and only time I have ever won over a utility company. More about the phone in due course.

The next bill really infuriates me. It comes from some dingbat company whose only function seems to be to send out bills. They don't actually produce anything except bills. It all began when my apartment management company got greedy and decided to charge us for two services, pest extermination and trash removal. Actually removal means you remove the trash to the dumpster and they have it carted away. All right, what can you do? Now we pay for these services by adding the cost on to our monthly rent. However, each month we receive a postcard telling us how much we have to pay (it's always the same, $8.00) and then requiring us to pay an additional $1.50 for the privilege of being told how much to pay. So we pay $18 a year for something that is utterly of no benefit to us or, as far as I can see, to the owners of the apartment complex, unless they are getting a kick-back (which wouldn't surprise me).

Next is the gas company. We have gas water heaters and furnace/air-conditioners. I wish we had gas ranges, but we don't. I now use very little gas. A year ago the pilot light blew out on my furnace, and I never relighted it. It almost cut my bill in half. According to my bill, I used 5.2 therms of gas. I don't know what a therm is exactly but is arrived at by multiplying the CCFs by the BTUs. Now the gas company charges me $1.01033 per therm for the cost of the gas. They charge me $0.40290 for the cost of distributing the gas to me. That seems fair. $7.35 is quite reasonable for hot water. But then they charge $10 a month just for the privilege of being their customer. I pay this no matter how much gas I use. Near as I can figure out, this is their profit. No matter how much gas anyone buys or doesn't buy, they are make ten bucks a customer. Something isn't right here. Suppose stores and restaurants did this, charged you a fee whether or not you shopped or ate at their establishments. We'd be up in arms. But the utilities do it because they are monopolies and can do what they like. They are guaranteed a certain income no mater how awful the service. We're not done with the gas bill yet. There is still the franchise fee. The county or city or somebody charges the gas company for the privilege of selling us gas. Naturally, the company passes that cost on to me. Then the country and the state charge taxes on top of that. And so my $7.35 worth of gas costs me $19.45, Down with the capitalist oppressors of the working people. Make the utility a public property. Ha! Better think twice about that.

The City of Ocala runs its own electric utility. Should be a bargain with no shareholders to pay, right? WRONG! My actual electric includes an energy charge, energy management cost, and a bulk power cost–whatever that is. Of course there is a customer privilege charge of $9.35. Well, it's cheaper than the gas company, but only by 65 cents. And why should a public utility have to make a profit? And why do I pay $2.78 in assorted taxes? The government taxes the government. No wonder this country is in trouble. I should mention that the City Electric Utility also provides water, I think. See, they don't bill me for any water. They bill me for the sewer, base charge $22.32 plus $12.71 for 582.853 cubic feet of sewerage. Only they don't measure MY sewerage. They measure the amount produced by the whole complex and divide it by the number of units, so I pay the same as if I were a family of six or more. I'm going to start drinking a whole lot more water to make up for may share. Now since the City has got your name and address for electric and sewer, they can add on a few other fees, $14.30 for fire service and $4.00 for stormwater charges.

Now the phone bill. It's six pages long, and I don't have anything but basic service and no long distance. What else is there? A surcharge to provide 911 service, Federal tax, local tax, state tax, telecommunications relay surcharge, interstate access surcharge, Federal Universal Service Fund and (this is my favorite) Storm Cost Recovery Charge, 50 cents. This charge is to pay for the costs of repairing damage done during the hurricanes in 2005. Now just a dog-gone minute here. I didn't cause the hurricane, so why do I have to pay for the damage? Why don't they have insurance? (No wait, they'd probably add an insurance surcharge.) Well then, why don't the shareholders take a hit instead? I read that Embarq just increased it's dividend by 10%, and this is the second increase in a year. The only increase that I get is the amount of my bill.

It's about time somebody started paying me fees and surcharges. Let's see, a service outage fee of $1 an hour when the electric goes out, plus 25 cents for every clock I have to reset. And I want a $5.00 fuel surcharge from the gas company for every time I call them and they say, "You can't do that over the phone. You'll have to come into the office." And what about the phone? I put it in and pay for it for my convenience. I want the phone company to pay me a $10 wasting-my-time charge every time they call me to sell me some service I don't want. Finally, there's my special finger wear and tear charge every time I call a utility or government office and have to "press one" for anything. At a nickel a push, I should be able to retire a year early.

Thank the Lord there will be no utility bills in heaven. The grace of God is free.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

I HEAR MUSIC

I supposed I started listening to music on the little Golden Records. These were small, seven inch, yellow plastic 78 rpm records produced by Mitchell Miller, better know to my generation as the Mitch Miller of sing-a-long fame. "Let me hear a melody I want to sing along," and "Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody's mother. Be kind to your friends in the swamp, where the weather is always very, very domp. Now you may think that this is the end. Well it is." (Amazing that I can remember that stuff.)

My mother had a bunch of records, mostly big band and a little bit of classical, some piano music of Chopin played by Jose Iturbi. I never listened to the rock-and-roll that most of my peers listened to. I listened to classical. So did several of my friends. I prowled the Salvation Army Resale store to buy hundreds of old records at 10 cents apiece. I identified the classical pieces in the Flash Gordon films (Les Preludes and March Slav). I read books. And when I learned piano, I studied classical music.

And then came the time that I went to college and studied music professionally, piano, voice, theory, music history, conducting and so forth. Even though I didn't end up a musician, I don't regret the training. Now I am not sure if it is all the years I have been listening to music or the education in music I had or a combination of both, but I have discovered that I hear music differently than most people. I first realized this when I was playing the first part of J. S. Bach's Cantata "A Mighty Fortress." It's a very famous melody among the Lutheran crowd, but Bach treats it quite creatively. The melody is hidden as a canon between the trumpets at top oboes in the middle, and the organ and bass at the bottom. A canon is a melody that is repeated at an interval–something like "Row, row, row your boat." While the canon is going on the voices and upper strings are running decorated versions of the melody. Now I can hear the melody as plainly as if it had been performed as a solo. But I discovered than no one else had a clue what tune they were hearing.

I listened to a recording of the Kings College Choir singing a favorite hymn of mine, "The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended." A couple of verses sounded like the trebles were singing a descant. But when I played it again I realized the trebles were singing the tenor line an octave higher while the inner voices were singing what had been the treble line and octave lower. A few weeks ago the organist was playing "The Old Rugged Cross" and I immediately realized that the last line of the melody was the same as the last line of "Home on the Range." Or we sang another hymn and my ear told me there was something unusual about the melody. After thinking about it awhile, I said to myself, "There's only seven of the eight tones of the scale in this melody. The third tone is missing which creates an ambiguous modality." (Sorry for the technical lingo.)

I don't have a particularly good ear, but I do hear these sorts of things. They just happen. I believe the same thing happens to people who understand art or literature. I suppose something similar happens in mathematics and engineering and the sciences as well. Now my observation is that only the very simple discoveries can be communicated to people without specialized skills. For example, I could get people to hear the link between "Old Rugged Cross" and "Home on the Range," but I could never get them to hear the intricacies of Bach, at least not without a lot of work. Most people hear music in what I'd call a holistic fashion. They hear the total effect. Maybe they can pick out the elements of melody and rhythm in so far as they could hum or sing or keep time to the music. They might have some idea of instrumentation, if the music is simple enough.

What surprised me when teaching music to high school students was not only their lack of interest in the elements of music, but in some cases an absolute antipathy to analyzing even their own favorite forms of music. And this was before the onset of that rap noise that largely does away with anything except rhythm and vulgar language. Music in their minds was something to be experienced, but not understood in anyway, even if that understanding might deepen the experience. And of course anything they didn't like was rejected out of hand.

I have discovered that adults are no different in this regard. I was at a big-band concert once and met some acquaintances who had grown up with that music. One man remarked to. "That's a lot better than that Beetles crap." I tried to explain that much of the later Beetles later music was as complex and well-written as the Glen Miller arrangements we had just heard. He wasn't buying that. The only thing that counted was that he was familiar with some music and not with others, and only familiar music was likeable. That's often true with classical concerts as well. People want familiar classics. Musicians want to try new things, but the audience wants to hear what it knows.

Same thing happens at church. People complain bitterly about those difficult hymns, but they really mean they don't like hymns they haven't sung umpteen times before. I remember one time the congregation grumbling about singing "Behold, a Host." Yet that hymn is sung lustily at every funeral among those of Norwegian heritage.

Oh well, just some random thoughts on music. I'm going to quit and listen to the Pittsburgh Symphony concert on the radio.

May your soul hear the music of the spheres. May you dance with the angels. And may the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne