A Peacemaker Chicken

In our flock of eight beautiful chickens, all named, and all loved for their unique personalities, we have a mille fleur, a truly beautiful chicken whose mottled colors, diminutive size, and human friendly nature made her a favorite with us right away. We have named her “mini me” for her size. She loves to be talked to and will stay in your presence as if eager to hold up her end of the conversation. She loves to be picked up and have her neck and comb stroked, and she will sit on your lap and read a book with you if you just ask her.

But Mini also has another side to her nature. Though the smallest chicken in the flock by far, she is also the most aggressive with the other birds. She will peck them, pull their feathers, and chase them around the yard and do this repeatedly to another chicken she has picked out for this treatment. It can get so bad that the other chickens will pile up in one corner of the coop, making one large protective mass of chicken to protect themselves from Mini.

This behavior is particularly notable when Mini is “broody” as her breed tends to be. During her broody times, Mini will sit in a nesting box on any eggs, her own or those of other chickens that may have accumulated there. She will not leave the nesting box or the coop, making it difficult for other chickens who may want to use that nesting box. The whole time she makes her “broody” noises that warn the others away.

There is one chicken that Mini never pecks. She never pulls her feathers or chases her around the yard. This is Greybeard, one of the largest of the hens and certainly the calmest. Greybeard comes over to speak with me when I enter the chicken coop. She keeps up a steady stream of calming noises that make me glad to share a chicken coop with her. Greybeard is not a flirt, but she does offer from time to time, by her position and her demeanor, that if I want to rub her back, then that’s quite all right with her. It is very easy to be around Greybeard.

Greybeard’s unique solution to Mini’s broody ways is to stay close to her in such a unique way that it was startling when I first saw it. The nesting boxes are large enough to accommodate one egg laying chicken comfortably but with little room to spare. Greybeard not only approaches Mini when she is broody in a nesting box, she actually enters the box with her and sits with her, crowding her big chicken body in there almost on top of Mini. Mini puts up no fuss, does not object in any way, stops making broody noises, and remains calm. It is Tao-tally amazing.

I am happy to report that Mini eventually leaves off her broody periods, allowing the chicken coop to return to normal. Meanwhile we are so fortunate to have Greybeard the Buddha Bird among us.

The Collapse of Everything

Went to a planetarium show on black holes recently in which we learned that super-large and massive stars collapse and become stellar black holes. At the end of the show, there was a light-show representing the possibility of going through a stellar black hole at just the correct angle and  emerging from it in another universe,  another place and another when.

At the center of our galaxy is a super massive black hole. It was never stated at the show what might have collapsed to form this super massive black hole, only that it is there. It appears there is such a black hole at the center of our galaxy, and every galaxy.

I am left with a few questions:

What has collapsed to produce these super massive black holes? What is it about galaxy formation and on going galactic processes that requires them?

A Day In Venice

    One day during our trip to Venice, Italy, we visited the Frari, a grand church indeed. Among its treasures are paintings by Titian, “The Assumption of the Virgin," and the “Pesaro Altar Piece”.  In his guide book,  Rick Steves points out that the “Pesaro Altar Piece”  features portraits of the family members of Titian’s patrons. The family members are portrayed as being present at the assumption of Mary.  Rick Steves says that including families of patrons in religious works was common practice of painters at the time. One of Rick's tongue in cheek observations is that the men in the family all seem to have 5 o’clock shadows, easily seen in the portraits.

    Speaking of 5 o’clock shadows, when I played oboe in the Philadelphia all city high school band, my Italian band director always had a 5 o’clock shadow,  even at 10 am Saturday morning when the rehearsal began. During one rehearsal he became so incensed at our playing that he jumped off his stool and crashed onto the floor with a thud that shook the entire school building. This was the result of the floor being struck by the foot-to-hip cast that kept his broken leg and foot immobilized at the time.  That cast hit the floor like the hammer of Thor!  Not only did our band director survive this maneuver with his broken leg, but he then proceeded to throw his baton into the  clarinet section,  an act of amazing balance and precision, given his severely broken leg and foot. All this at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning.

Sleeping Disorders

With sleeping disorders growing to epidemic proportions in our society, I feel that it is my responsibility as an oboist to offer up a unique solution to this problem, born of the countless hours I have put in to keep up my oboe playing. To that end I offer the following proposal as a boon to all insomniacs of every stripe and with every personality disorder.

My proposal is that we immediately establish “The Reed Channel”. The channel will be aired from midnight to 6 am. It will feature close-up shots of hands making oboe reeds. That is all that can be seen on “The Reed Channel”. The motto will be, “All Reeds All the Time”.

Music Insurance

Dear Ms Pianist,

We have received your claim for the malpractice session dated October 15th of this year. We are sorry for the trouble you are having with the Beethoven Sonata.

As you accurately stated in your letter, our payout to you has resulted in  our raising your premiums by 20% this year. We understand that as a musician you cannot raise your rates for performance or for teaching by 20% in a single year and still remain in business, but don’t you really think that that is your problem, not ours?

We have heard your argument before that raising premiums to pay for claims means that our company takes no risk, and that we get to keep all the money we have collected from you over the years. I assure you we do not keep it. We give it to our CEO’s and other executives.

We reject the argument you made that the premium money we collect  is like the “protection” money paid by small businesses to gangsters in the old gangster movies. Don’t you think that saying that premiums are like “protection” money  collected so that the gangsters will not hurt the business owners is carrying an analogy too far? However, we like a good analogy as well as the next guy.

You Balled Me on the Flies

It was one of those beautiful hot summer days when the light is so bright that every detail stands out in both the mind and the eye as if painted by a master draftsman. The car that pulled into the dealership was so long that it couldn't be moved from its usual parking spot when it wasn't being driven. Local pilots who used it as a landmark might get lost. It was a huge vehicle from the late 1970’s. 

There were the usual occupants of the car, a family in this case. But I also noticed there was a fly in the car visible from the showroom window. That was a fairly ordinary presence on these very hot summer days. The family got out of the car and came into the showroom to negotiate for a new vehicle. We worked out most of the details of the sale quickly, and everything was ready to go except for the value of the trade-in.

I was trained to deal with the hopes and expectations of the car buying public. There was the hope that the trade-in possessed some great power, the power to lift people out of poverty like the coach in the Cinderella story. Often, unfortunately, the trade had already turned back from an elegant coach into a damaged pumpkin. Or maybe there was the expectation that the trade-in would be a down payment on a new car, and not just a new car, but a new and more beautiful way of navigating through life. It was a tricky business. The car was somehow an extension of the person. Hopes, egos, and self-worth were on the line. I learned that one must tread carefully and gently when dealing with the trade-in.

There always seemed to be a sticking point in every car buying transaction, a “fly in the ointment," so to speak. In this case, it became shockingly obvious that there was more than just one fly in the customer’s car. A quick estimate from a safe distance put the number of trapped and circling flies at about twelve. And we’re not just talking about flies here, we’re talking about FLIES! These flies from hell were the size of juvenile pterodactyls!

    I did like my sales manager. When he was still a salesman, he explained to me some of his selling techniques and philosophy. He purposely dressed in very drab colors and thrift store clothing. He stooped and rolled his shoulders forward. He didn’t smile until a potential buyer smiled. He spoke slowly using simple language. He showed no emotion. For his fashion, he mixed dull plaids with duller solids, and he wore ties the color of dirt. All this to make people feel welcome and comfortable. I understood what he was trying to do. I also knew it was important not to react to things that seemed out of the ordinary when dealing with the public, like the presence of a nest of enormous flies whose dimensions rivaled those of the car they travelled in.

I did my best to take the presence of the flies in stride. I never mentioned them to the customer, but the fact was my sales manager eventually had to evaluate this enormous fly trap, and that meant he had to drive it. In the midst of my intense personal reactions to the idea of getting into the car with the flies, I felt it my duty to prepare him for the ordeal. I pointedly told him there were about a dozen flies in the car, and that they were large. He took this news in his usual bland and unfazed manor.

I watched in a state of apprehension as he approached the trade-in. Very, very slowly he walked around the car, not even looking at it, but opening all four doors  as he went. Brilliant! But it wasn’t working. No flies left the car. We waited. He waited outside in the heat beside the car, the usual bland expression on his face. I waited inside the showroom. Nothing changed. We waited.

While we are waiting for the flies to leave the car, I better give some background for this 40 year old incident from my car selling days, a career that came to and end in the 1980's. Commission selling is highly competitive. There are so many other dealerships and salespeople selling the same exact products. Some salespeople used questionable tactics. One of these was the "low-ball," a proposed selling price lower that what something could actually be sold for. To my mind, this technique prevented sales by generating ill will and bad tempers. The term "low ball" was often used as a verb in the industry. To "ball" someone was to give a number that was lower than reality. A salesperson who "balled" someone expected the customer to come back again to see if the car could actually be sold at that price. You can imagine what would happen.

But now back to the flies. Having waited for some time, my sales manager got into the car and drove away with all the flies as his companions. When he returned, he went directly to the sales office down the hall, speaking to no one. I pulled myself together enough to find my feet and followed him. In the sales office I discovered a changed man. He was red-faced, sweating, his bland expression gone. He was peering at the  write-up sheet for the sale as if he was looking for redemption there on its page. He looked up at me when I walked in.  “You balled me on the flies,” he said. I was shocked! He thought I low-balled him on the number and size of the flies. Was he going to be sick, have a stroke, drop dead on the spot? He got redder, rose from his chair behind the desk, stuck his head in a nearby closet, and made a loud retching noise. He then returned to his desk, resumed his “drab” routine, and looked as if nothing ever happened. This broke the tension and I doubled over laughing until it hurt. Fortunately, he did the same. The other sales manager came running into the office, saw us in that state, lost it himself, and fled from the office.

We closed the sale.  A closed commission sale is always a kind of rebirth for the sales person. The trade-in was sold to a used car shop. They did all their own mechanical work. They had their own tools, their own fly swatter, hopefully a pneumatic one. 

The sales manager fully recovered and returned to his usual drab colors and his aw-shucks shuffle. The customer drove off in a new car, their ego intact. Their amazing ability to live with giant flying insects went unrecognized until now. Their life was renewed with new transportation, and they left behind about a dozen gigantic flies, or was it more?

I wouldn't want to "ball you on the flies."

The Curious Business of the Pants

It was not my intention to go into the Pants Business, but this is how it happened in my dream.

I was out of work and walking down a street in Berkeley, CA., Telegraph Avenue. This is a section of Berkeley very near the University and thick with small shops of all kinds. I was holding a towel tightly around my waist because I was missing my trousers.

I looked first in one shop, then in another, looking at all the carrying bags for computers, pens and pencils, and other objects. I then went on to look at shoes. It was just at that moment that I ran into my old friend from the car business, Bill Albertson. Bill was one of my dearest friends from the days when we sold together on showroom floors. He was a loving, religious sort of person, a good friend, father, and husband. We had travelled together to Hawaii with our wives, having won a contest. Bill died of cancer very young.

Blalbertson, as we called him for short, looked great in a 3 piece suit. I asked him what he was doing these days, and he led me into a store front which turned out to be a warehouse inside. Bill said he had gone into the Pants Business, and asked me to join him. And, this is how we got the pants.

From a rack in the largely empty warehouse Bill took a gun, a very large Revolutionary War musket. We walked out into the street. Bill pointed the rifle skyward, and took aim. He then began to chant in a sing-song voice, and I knew that this chant must be done just exactly right. When he had completed the chant 3 times, Bill fired the rifle.

There fluttered down from about the third floor level a single pair of white chino trousers which eventually landed in the street. We retrieved the trousers. They were just what I needed. Then we made our way back to the warehouse, our aim fittingly accomplished.