Non-Binary Charles.

Non-binaryatarianism. In an earnest attempt to update my social image and to demonstrate how politically correct and most trendy that I am; I have decided for myself and others to become non-binary. Non-binary meaning my binary self has been reduced to a zero gender. It is most important for me to follow societal movements. So for now on I shall be known as person Char. Truncating my given first name. Likewise my spouse shall here to fore be known as just person Sheb. Using the name I had given it since spouse wished not to be identified as a real person. So it shall continue to be identified as a non-person and non-binary. Are you following me?

And keeping with that line of thought our parakeet at this juncture Sweetie Pie will be named as just bird Pie. Our feline Sneakers will go forward as just cat Sneak.

And to round out the non-binary trending our Honda CRV will just be called vehicle H. So I hope you will respect our decision to become non-binary.

Very Truly Yours, People Sheb and Char.

It helps to know where you are.

Sometimes a person responds to a statement he or she knows of nothing. Yes, it might be best to just shut-up. Say nothing as if you are deaf. Plead ignorance. Just an uhha and nothing else. A quick nod of the head is often sufficient.

I boarded a flight leaving Boston that was headed to Dallas. The flight attendant took my boarding pass and showed me to my seat. A seat on the aisle and sitting next to who appeared to be a professional looking woman and probably about thirty-fivish. She was settled in her place and reading a book. I placed my carry-on in the overhead and sat down. After a moment of settling in myself I asked her what she was reading. She told me it was a book on astronomy. Then she goes on and says she teaches astronomy and headed to Arizona where there is a world class observatory in the hills somewhere between Tucson and Phoenix.

Now here is where things went completely wrong due to total abject and blatant ignorance. Instead of letting this go I ask her where she teaches astronomy. So she told me with complete confidence, “I teach astronomy at Wellesley.”

Then I say and shouldn’t have, “oh is that a boy’s prep-school here in Boston?”

Immediately she returned to reading her book. End of conversation. Have a nice flight Chuck.

Need I say what Wellesley is? I later discovered Wellesley is a highly regarded and prestigious women’s college in the Boston area. Well, just shut my mouth!

So what is Cohousing anyway?

Wife and I live in a Cohousing community. It is not a hippie commune. We do not grow marijuana. Women do not wear granny dresses and go barefoot. No, none of that.

It is an intentional community for seniors. Its intention is to know and help your neighbors. WE set on a seven acre campus that is wooded and with a nice creek running through it. Each cottage is owned by its occupants and is bought and sold as any real estate. The Cohousing community has a common house with commercial kitchen, dining room, living room, TV/media room, exercise room, office, work shop, and two guests’ rooms. Each home is in a fourplex and comes in different sizes. One bedroom and one bath, two bedrooms and one bath, two bed room one and a half bath, and a two bedroom and two full baths. All have its own kitchen with dishwasher, stove top and oven washer and dryer, plenty of closets and pantry, and you can choose either covered car port or a garage with door opener.

Each fourplex of homes faces another fourplex and is divided by a center walk way. All have various sizes of front door patios and back door patios. The intentional part of the Cohousing community is since in each Pod housing units are facing each other this configuration encourages getting to know your neighbors. And it works.

There are many Cohousing communities in most states and not all are designed the same. Some go up by several stories and others are spread out like ours. Most Cohousing complexes are on about two to four acres and are open to the outside. So going out the front door one is bound to meet and talk to a neighbor.

There is a common meal at least once a week. We have a coffee time each Monday morning, a happy hour late afternoon once a week, and a bring your own supper once a week. For the purpose of sharing ideas and complaints we have a monthly meeting of all neighbors and each decision is based on consensus.

I’ve never known this many people in one place. I like it. We support and help each other. WE do our own landscaping, gardening, and maintenance. Sorry, there is no Pickleball court.

A radio I grew up with.

Actually I grew up sometimes standing next to our big console radio. From about age eight to early teen our family had a Sears console radio and it was a flip-top dark mahogany thing about the size of a Maytag automatic washer but without hot and cold running water. It sat in our little living room next to the hall door and for a long while the center of our entertainment. So down in the flip-top compartment was the three speed record player. The control panel was in front of the record player compartment with four dial knobs. One knob was the on-off volume. The next was a radio/player selector. The next was a tone knob. The last operated the tuning dial. On either side of the knobs were fabric grills with smallish speakers. In the middle between the speakers was the AM dial. Had no FM.

Interesting enough, down below where most people would place records and albums was a full set of World Encyclopedias instead. So my mom did give-in to the door to door Encyclopedia salesman after all. At lease for a long while the only record we possessed was a little yellow Walt Disney record with Pinocchio singing “There are no strings on me.”
But anyway, being a skinny Okie kid and what I liked about our Sears console the heat that radiated out from the back panel warmish glow of the crystalline vacuum tubes. That radiant heat source kept me warm on coltish L A winter mornings. Mornings that got down to about 50-degrees. Burr! However, our only house real heating source was from a single gas heater in the hollow of our fake fireplace in the living room. I was not certified to stick a lit match in the gas heater. A bigger person had to do that. In the mean time the radio radiant heat would do. The last time I saw this big wooden radio it was out in my dad’s garage collecting dust and rotting away. Today it would be a most sought after antique.

But anyway, most school day evenings I would be sitting on the living room floor in front of our Sears console radio with legs crossed like a meditating Yogi with an opened encyclopedia in my lap. All while looking at pictures of old steam engine trains and an illustration of the Empire State Building with the Queen Mary posed vertical as a comparison of height and length. Most interesting. Concurrently I would be listening to either the Lone Ranger or Dragnet on the radio. Dum-dee-dum-dum. Other nights I would be listening to either The Great Gildersleeve or Sky King. Plus listening to ‘You Bet Your Life” with host Groucho Marx. “Say the secret word and win fifty-bucks.” Or fearfully listening to Inner Sanctum Mystery Theater with its slowly opening creaking door. Most scary. Some nights there would be the Jack Benny show and the Bing Crosby show. Both recorded on a large long playing red acetate wax disk and recorded before a live studio audience. Then there was the most loved Fibber McGee and Molly sponsored by Johnson Wax and also performed before a live studio audience. One Man’s Family, Henry Aldridge, George Burns and Gracie Allen sponsored by Maxwell Coffee, and My Favorite Husband with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. And the list of radio programs back then were almost endless. All tied up in a big red bow called “The Golden Age of Radio.” This discussion will continue at a later date. Please come back.

Greeting card from the Curmudgeon.

Dear followers, readers, passersby, and people who like a bit of silliness.

Thank you for visiting my half baked blog. I wish I knew what I was doing. But I do enjoy what I do. I try to cover most areas of interest even though I am mostly out of touch. I love reading books, reading an assortment of newspapers, and some of the major weeklies and monthlies. I have a reasonable interest in baking breads and cooking up quiche, frittatas, and anything tasty for breakfast. And for those of you who don’t know, I am blind but seem to get by with a little help from my friends. Been this way since mid-life. I have four grandkids, two loving daughters, two resourceful sons-in-law, and a wonderful wife. Thank you God.

Hope you all have a happy season of peace joy and love. Stay well and take your vaccine.

Your mostly ridiculous friend, Chuck

The Tree.

If you had driven down South Simmons Avenue in East Los Angeles back in 1950 at Christmas time and passed a little white adobe house at 1318 and stopped and looked in the window you would have seen what looks like a Charlie Brown-like Christmas Tree. Frail and sparse. No more that a half dozen colored lights with a garland of popcorn and a few strands of tinsel. Just a four-foot tree sitting on our coffee table covered at the base with an old white sheet to give it that standing in snow look.

However over the years my parents bought bigger trees. Some of which was real and some not. We bought a white plastic tree that looked just like a plastic tree and set it up for three or four following Christmases. Then we bought an aluminum tree that looked as if the ends and tips exploded in to an aluminum foil mushroom. Not sure what we were accomplishing there. Had it for about another two or three Christmases. Then we bought a green plastic tree looking very much like a real Douglas fir. Easy to set up and store.

Then much later after Sheba and I were married we drove up into the Sierras east of Sacramento and found a tree farm up US-50, parked our car, took out a regular carpenter saw, and set afoot looking for the perfect tree. People were scattered all over this tree farm also looking for a nice tree. Standing out in a clearing was a well shaped tree no one seemed to be looking at. I walked all around it and thought “this looks perfect.” Then I asked the tree farm guy how much for this tree. He told me “seven bucks but you need to cut the base at an angle.” So I gave him his money and took home a perfect seven foot tree. It almost touched the ceiling.

Finally to quote my granddaughter, back when she was about four-years old we asked her what Christmas Trees are for. She quickly said, “To be not touch.” So there. Merry Christmas.

I was clueless what my mom had done.

Not much thinking on my part about what my mom had done to do the laundry for us kids and her and my dad as well. And I mean going back to day one. My first memories of laundry days at our little adobe home in East L A had my mom sweating over a wringer washer. A washer with just an agitator tub with a roller wringer up top. A very manual process.

First she had to collect the mountain of dirty clothes, sort them, and run a hose from the adjacent faucet into the washer tub. Adjusting how much hot water to mix in or not for each wash. Hotter for grubby clothes like jeans, socks, dirty underwear, and my dad’s work clothes. Less hot with more cold water for nicer color items like my sisters nice dresses and our church clothes. Once it is all washed it has to go through the wringer. Squeezing out the water leaving washed clothes damp and placed in a large galvanized tub. A heavy tub of damp closed carried outside by my mom and then pinned up on the clothes line in the backyard for drying. After the clothes were dry she was only half way done. Whew!

Then she or maybe my sisters would go out and take down the dried clothes and bring back into the house for more sorting, ironing, and folding. Certainly a task that took almost all day. All the while my mom listening to our Sears console radio tuned to any number of soap operas. My True Story, Winslow Jones, Young Widder Brown, Stella Dallas back stage wife, and usually starting off in the mornings with Don McNeal and the Breakfast Club broadcast live fromChicago.

Then there were distractions like an occasional Hobo coming to the front door asking for something to eat. My mom would stop what she was doing and scramble up an egg, put it between two slices of white bread, and hand it out the front door to the homeless guy and send him on his way. Then sometimes when my mom was in the middle of laundry here comes a couple of men in business suits demonstrating and selling vacuum cleaners. Or encyclopedias. And if it weren’t that it was the Fuller Brush man or the Jewell Tea salesmen. Then when she thought it safe to go back to the laundry, here comes a Jehovah Witness couple. My mom loved to argue with the Witnesses.

Then by the end of the day the laundry might be done. Then after school comes four hungry kids to feed. Just enough diddling, walking, and laundering to wear out an Okie mom. Whew! However a few years later my mom bought a brand new Maytag ‘Automatic’ washer. But still had to hang the clothes out on the clothe line for drying. Whew! This is not to mention what she had to do when she and my dad were first married. Living in a house in Oklahoma without running water, electricity, or gas. She had to fill that same galvanized tub with water, put it over a wood burning fire, and use homemade lye soap and a scrub board to clean their clothes. Whew-whew-whew!!!

Butchy the Chicken Whisperer chap 12.

Now how a bespectacled kid could be named Butchy? The name Butchy or just Butch is often reserved for pub nosed freckled faced red hair bullies. Just like the one portrayed on the Little Rascals from early L A TV. Remember. I was a glasses wearing sandy hair Okie boy and as my older sister described me looking like a pint size bookkeeper. But anyway my so-called nick name came from me and my dad’s barber scissors. One day I sneaked the scissors out of my dad’s barber kit and started to whack off all my hair that I could reach. I had short arms and a fat head so I could only cut off the front half of my hair. Half of a buzz cut. Looking more like Bozo the clown than a singing cowboy. But it was my Uncle Ruben who first called me Butch and from that point on it seemed to stick. So with that and having a backyard full of chickens becoming a Chicken Whisperer was a natural progression. With glasses and chopped off hair with specs knew I could never be a singing cowboy. So here I am. Whispering to chickens. I should have been Colonel Sanders instead. However East Los Angeles Fried Chicken just doesn’t sound right. And after handling Rhode Island Reds all day; “Finger Licking Good” sounds barfy awful as well.

In the mean time early L A TV was moving beyond mostly test patterns. Watching our little Sears 12-inch black and white television was a challenge. It was like looking at a black and white photograph through wax paper. Some of you might remember. It was in the very early days of L A TV when no significant programming came on the air until early afternoon. So from the time I got up each morning there were only test patterns. Mostly an Indian Chief Feather head dress. Why that, I do not know. Sunday morning was the worst. The worst until a clever guy took advantage of the down time. A man named Cal Worthington and his car dealer in Huntington Park started filling that empty space with old western movies and a car commercial every five minutes or so. The he brought in country bands to entertain the visitors to his dealership early Sunday mornings. And let me remind you he got this early day TV time for almost nothing. The old Cal brought in other entertainment and props. He first had an old junkyard dog named Spot. So he kept mentioning on the air to come see Spot while selling Dodge cars. Then Spot morphed into a kangaroo and later an elephant. Cajoling customers to come see Spot while in the background was a mule or a lama. So he had a bag full of gimmicks. Cal Worthington was most savvy when marketing his car dealership. Again he advertised on mostly free time on Sunday morning TV. What I like about old Cal and his folksy ways is he was from Oklahoma. All of this right here in Southern California. Come see Cal and his dog Spot. What a guy!

“Now back to Tom Mix and his trick riding horse.” Fade to black.

Holy cow! More books to read.

If you are into dog rescue…

If you are into Christmas…

If you are into murder mystery…

Here is a book series for you. They are called the Andy Carpenter Mysteries by David Rosenfelt. The Andy Carpenter character is a successful trial lawyer with bags of cash in his bank account. His first love is his dog rescue organization located in Patterson, New Jersey. His wife Lori is a former cop and now gun toting private investigator and mom. Her first love is anything Christmas. And Christmas starts way before the boundaries of the season and after. The two of them have a somewhat snarky in your face and a bit tongue in cheek relationship. Some of the dialogue between the two is snippy Jersey humor but it most obvious they love each other. Which is to say Lori is the protector and Andy is the cowardly but savvy attorney. The author of these books David Rosenfelt certainly knows proper court procedures and absolutely knows the law as written into the various books Rosenfelt has penned. The reader gets a comprehensive and well thought out murder mystery in each book. But what I suggest you do is to download the audio books which are voiced by Grover Gardener. A reader with a ‘Wise guy’ Jersey brogue and an excellent voice actor. Each book has some kind of dog connection in the title. Such as ‘The Twelve Dogs of Christmas’ or ‘Best in Snow.’ But anyway, the reader gets a pretty good murder mystery punctuated with a bit of Jersey dry humor. To me the Andy Carpenter mysteries are escape from the John Grisham or James Grippando legal thrillers.

None the less, here a few of David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter mysteries:

Title: Best in Snow Andy Carpenter Mystery by David Rosenfelt fiction 2021

Title: Deck the Hounds an Andy Carpenter mystery by David Rosenfelt fiction 2019

Title: Dog eat dog an Andy Carpenter mystery by David Rosenfelt fiction 2021

Title: Silent Bite an Andy Carpenter mystery by David Rosenfelt fiction 2020

And there are about a dozen more. I love Rosenfelt’s sence of humor. Read or listen to the books. If you find the print book at the library they are about 250 pages or more each. Not a long read but long enough to insert between the big name block buster books. Some violence and occasional raw language. Read’em. You’ll like’em.

Stocking Stuffers.

Dear Christmas stocking stuffing Elves.

What to or not to put in my Christmas stocking. Stocking stuffers should not be harrys.com razor blades or Colgate White toothpaste. I want only eatables. Not double-A batteries nor iPhone charging cables or ear buds. No portable chargers; wind-up or chargeable. And for sure no Target gift cards. However, I would take a gift card from Panera or Old School Bagel.

But I would really like three or four mandarin oranges or California Cuties., a Japanese pear in its foam netting, two small red delicious apples with the plastic tabs removed, a small box of See’s suckers, a full size Almond Joy, a full size Hershey dark chocolate bar, A six pack of Tic-Tacs, and a small canister of cubed peppermint gum. Or in lieu of all that I would take currency. A twenty or a fifty dollar bill would be nice. Thank you very much.