I saw a tie in
a shop window for sale for
three hundred dollars

Ultimately finance is no more interesting to some of us than lazy bowel syndrome, and certainly far less intriguing than the godlike intricacies of a toad or the sprightly roach in the pantry. It is far more sensible to send your kid to a cheapish community college than one of our vaunted Ivy League universities that will cost you fifty grand a year that could be better used for food and wine. Ultimately all that is learned at these so-called best institutions is to wear a necktie, which is a characteristic the financial evildoers have in common: they wear neckties. On a trip last year to the gated community of Manhattan I saw a tie in a shop window for sale for three hundred dollars. If you fail to figure out this satanic connection I can’t help you.

This was written in 2009 in an essay titled, Food, Finance, and Spirit, in the Toronto literary publication, Brick, written by the late Jim Harrison.

Many of Mr. Harrison’s essays like this were pulled together in a posthumously published in the book, A Really Big Lunch.

The front piece states: The pieces collected in this volume have originally appeared in Smoke Signals, the Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant newsletter, Brick, New Yorker, Martha Stewart Living, Playboy, Edible Baja Arizona, Big Sky Cooking by Meredith Brokaw and Ellen Wright, The Montana Writers’ Cookbook by the Montana Center for the Book and the Montana Committee for the Humanities, and Molto Italiano by Mario Batali.

As Mr. Harrison wrote, “... I saw a tie in a shop window for sale for three hundred dollars. If you fail to figure out this satanic connection I can’t help you.“

Just want to say if you can’t figure out the satanic connection here and about so much else in today’s world, I can’t help you either.

only humor and
humility allow you to
endure senior life

Only humor and humility allow you to endure life as a senior with its clear view of a mile-high, neon-lit exit sign. I offer suggestions in the spirit of one building a rickety bridge across a deep ditch full of venomous snakes. At dawn tomorrow drop your cell phone in the toilet during your morning pee. In 1944 people averaged forty phone calls a year and now they’re over five thousand. Your cell phone time can be spent growing vegetables and learning to cook. Keep your lights turned off. All these electric lights are heating up innocent nature. Look out the window on a night flight and so much is ablaze for no valid reason. The world is running out of potable water, or so we are told. When you pour a glass of water finish it even if you have to add whiskey to manage. Fire a large-caliber bullet into your television screen. Avoid newspapers and magazines and movies, all of which have been unworthy of our attention. I will allow fifteen minutes a day of public radio news so you won’t lose track of the human community. I want to say to give your excess money to the poor but other than being generous to my larger family and friends I can’t seem to manage this, so ingrained is my greed. Naturally we all fail. Just last night I watched a few minutes of a BBC program about how women as young as fifteen in England are having plastic surgery to make their vaginas more attractive. Seriously. I kept hoping that the cast of Monty Python would pop out of the woodwork but no such luck. What chance does a fiction writer have in such a world?

This passage was written in 2011 in an essay titled, Caregiver, in the Toronto literary publication, Brick, written by the late Jim Harrison.

Many of Mr. Harrison’s essays like this were pulled together in a posthumously published in the book, A Really Big Lunch.

The front piece states: The pieces collected in this volume have originally appeared in Smoke Signals, the Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant newsletter, Brick, New Yorker, Martha Stewart Living, Playboy, Edible Baja Arizona, Big Sky Cooking by Meredith Brokaw and Ellen Wright, The Montana Writers’ Cookbook by the Montana Center for the Book and the Montana Committee for the Humanities, and Molto Italiano by Mario Batali.

How did I get this old?

My wife is quick to recognize any form of ageism while I resist the idea that I am marginalized by the fact of the year I was born.

Yet yesterday at the beach, sitting by a young couple who had established their place on the beach with towels, blankets and hampers in the face of an incoming tide, I could not help but acknowledge that when we tried to engage them in conversation as they moved further back up the beach, that the last thing on the minds of these two people were:

1)There were ‘older’ people on the beach. Didn’t know that was allowed.

2) Older people on the beach in SWIM SUITS (ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!)

3) These older people were attempting to talk them as if there was anything they could say would any bearing on their world. Oh COME ON!

I don’t think the young man could have been more surprised had the sound of airport boarding announcements calling his name suddenly boomed across the beach.

He didn’t stop but slowed for a moment and acknowledged that he had heard our voices then mumbled something about tide … beach … wet … heh heh heh until he was gratefully out of our sightlines.

My wife and I had to look at each and laugh.

We imagined these young folks having dinner later and saying, ‘could you believe those old people on the beach. They were alive. They tried to talk to us! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

Okay we are older.

It isn’t catching.

Maybe we do have a clear view of a mile-high, neon-lit exit sign to life.

That doesn’t mean you do.

But I find it hard to say much.

I was the same way.

Those silly old folks are so silly.

Ah well youth is SO wasted on young people.

Boy howdy am I feeling old.

And I do like this list of suggestions from Mr. Harrison.

IE:

At dawn tomorrow drop your cell phone in the toilet during your morning pee. In 1944 people averaged forty phone calls a year and now they’re over five thousand. Your cell phone time can be spent growing vegetables and learning to cook.

Keep your lights turned off. All these electric lights are heating up innocent nature. Look out the window on a night flight and so much is ablaze for no valid reason.

The world is running out of potable water, or so we are told. When you pour a glass of water finish it even if you have to add whiskey to manage. Fire a large-caliber bullet into your television screen.

Avoid newspapers and magazines and movies, all of which have been unworthy of our attention. I will allow fifteen minutes a day of public radio news so you won’t lose track of the human community.

I want to say to give your excess money to the poor but other than being generous to my larger family and friends I can’t seem to manage this, so ingrained is my greed.

Sadly, I have to agree that while my spirit is willing, I am weak.

Naturally we all fail.

But it is fun to think, to imagine that I might do these things.

That exit sign is coming up.

some mistakes are made
bit funnier than others
not have taken much

Based on an interview with one Rachel Graham.

Ms. Graham said, “We’re not really interested in fighting, we’re just pointing out the obvious that they should have looked it up themselves. It wouldn’t have taken much.”

“Mistakes are made,” she added. “Some are just a bit funnier than others.”

According to what I read this morning, Mark and Rachel Graham received a cease-and-desist letter from Condé Nast, the magazine publisher, asking them to change their pub’s name.

Their pub is in the town of Vogue, a hamlet in the parish of St Day, Cornwall, England.

Their pub is named, The Star Inn at Vogue.

Vogue the magazine sent them a cease and desist letter and threatened legal action if they would not change the name of the pub.

I found the Graham’s reaction to not react a bit refreshing in this day and age.

Again, Ms. Graham said, “We’re not really interested in fighting, we’re just pointing out the obvious that they should have looked it up themselves. It wouldn’t have taken much.”

Mistakes are made.

Some mistakes are funnier than others.

I think there even might have been people in Washington DC that agreed with this.

Sorry to say, though, that Abraham Lincoln hasn’t been around since 1865.

He may have been the last person to be able to not take themselves seriously inside the beltway.

Jim Harrison writes something along the line that if you look at the city of Washington and the buildings, how could some NOT BECOME POMPOUS once they got there.

He favored turning the Capitol building into a museum and putting Congress in a pole barn in Anacostia and then see how fast Congress took care of business.

I agree with this but want to make sure it is a pole barn without air conditioning.

I am also reminded of a time when the company I worked for decided to crack down on non-authorized online use of company content.

The company I worked for owned a lot of TV stations and other websites were embedding video and such without asking for permission or crediting the company.

The web team was told to go out and find these places and turn them over to corporate legal.

I was in Atlanta at the time and the very first place I found that was using WXIA TV video without permission was the Johnnie Cochran law firm.

I filled out the required paper work and sent it off to corporate legal.

That was the last I heard of the case and the project as a whole.

ANYWAY, Boy, HOWDY!

Mistakes are made.

Some mistakes are funnier than others.

It made me almost weep for a era seemingly long gone.

Do I have to move to the parish of St Day, Cornwall, England?