Sunday January 22, 2012

I worked with a lot of characters in my twenty-four years at the Chicago Grain Exchange. No shortage of wheeler dealers there. If you asked some of these guys to give you a market, they’d make you one. Infrequently traded futures months? No problem! Uncommonly traded commodity spreads? No problem! Where will you do Oct. / March? They’d reply without hesitation, without a breath. Buy it 1.90, sell you at 2.10. Although some guys would suck in a huge breath, think and exhale with their cheeks puffed out, thinking, thinking. . . “Buy it a buck seventy, sell you twos.”

I wonder what some of these guys would say if I told them I couldn’t wait for the geese and duck season to start. That’s right, overnight at work, on the graveyard shift, I harkened back to the late winter / early spring of last year around the end of April where this female duck had taken squatter’s rights on the boat. (“Buy 40 degree temps, sell you 20s at 12 and a 1/4.”) I was thinking because it was so unseasonably warm this year that perhaps I’d see the miracle of nature again this year and I realized I was being impatient. March / April is pretty far away as of today’s date.

After all, we just had our second snowfall of the season in all actuality and winter is definitely not finished yet. But from my vantage point where I sit all night I can see the very place the female duck from last year laid her eggs and hatched a few, too. I know it’s a bit early to be thinking about it but I’ve got to wonder if I’ll be as tied up again as I was in the miracle of life as I was last year. (“April! Buy geese sell ducks at a quarter!”) The 2011 female duck. First living on the boat, waddling around, hiding from the green-headed male ducks (or drakes, perhaps) who were sowing their springtime wild oats – if memory serves me she had a clump of feathers missing from her head, the poor dear. (“Buy feathers, sell you a little knitted duck hat your mom crochets for a dollar! What’s the over under on how many ducklings hatch?”)

I took pictures, wrote and even told a whole mess of people about that spot I could see from where I sat last night, the spot the female moved to when she began laying her eggs. I feel bad about that, as if, each person making that walk from the pavillion to the boat would stop and check on her and draw about as much attention to her nest as I did. She was stalwart, steadfast in her instinct to stay atop that small group of eggs just as long as she could on a daily basis with the exception of finding food for herself I imagine, but she stayed; the pointing, the cmeres and come take a looks, the ohhs and ahhs notwithstanding: she did what mother ducks do. I just hope all the attention didn’t spook her.

I don’t know what caused the lack of baby ducks for this particular mama, I just know she was mauled and hiding for quite a while on the boat. After an eyewitness experience I had in just how drastic these drakes could be, I put two and two together and realized the missing clumps were from the males pinning the females down from the back with their ducks bills so that they could do the springtime duck mambo on the backs of these females. Better than You Tube or Facebook videos and better than Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel because I saw it with my own two eyes. (“Buy cable television, sell you the internet at 69! Sell it at 8”) Best education I ever received watching all this unfold from late March early April to June-ish of last year. The pain, the pathos! Better than All My Children! Just tremendous.

After having ultimately and sadly seen only 2 or 3 ducklings hatch from the dozen or so duck eggs, I saw, not long after that I saw another mama duckling swimming merrily upon the Fox River with somewhere between 7 to 9 ducklings following her in a group. How sorry I felt for the one who’s life I had a peek into during her mating, her pregnancy and her subsequent delivery. Once the last snows of the season begin to dwindle I wonder if I’ll see any of those female babies from last year using the boat as a safe haven, trying to evade the advances of the males who’ve matured also and watch them perhaps, sit upon their eggs. . .?

We shall see what we shall see. . . .

(“Buy the March duck eggs, sell you May ducklings @ the orders . . .”)

(Not that I’m a market player nor can I make you a market for anything you want, but definitely, without a doubt, I am, a character!)

Happy Playoff Sunday everyone!

MJC

Word Count: 824
This is your 883rd post.

 

Monday January 16, 2012

There’s these aromas that scream specific repetitive occurences from my youth. Sunday afternoon lunches or dinners either at home or at one of my cousin’s places. Mom, Aunt Margaret and Aunt Susan. They are the culprits.And of course Dad, Uncle Joe and Susan’s husband, John. I don’t know why I started thinking about these things, perhaps it has something to do with one of the photographs I have in one of my Facebook folders that depicts such a lunch or dinner from 1968.

So many times. So many of these last hurrahs of the weekend before the new work week began filled my youth. The last drops of red table wine (Chianti) in a wine glass, cigarette smoke, freshly pressed and ironed white shirts with a hint of each of the previous aromas or odors, Aqua Net, Old Spice, some girly perfume or cologne, one sip of beer left in a beer can, perhaps some trace of brandy or scotch / whiskey left in a shot glass and of course, the food. Sunday afternoon lunches or dinners consisted of such things as soup (chicken or beef) as a starter, cucumber salad, parsley potatoes (or rice), breaded pork cutlet, Hungarian chicken Paprikash or beef or pork Porkolt (stew), rib roast, or sometimes stuffed cabbage with ham and Hungarian sausage or stuffed peppers. Yum, yum and yum, is all I can say.

Sunday afternoon lunches after church or later in the evening, sometimes occurring on Saturday night, too, during weekends. Children accompanying our parents to the relative’s homes to visit; too old for play dates and too young for real dates, so the families got together. Board games, Hot Wheels, Barbies (for the girls), watching Bonanza, Lawrence Welk or some other television show, eating drinking, ice cream or popsicles for later. When we went to my Aunt Margaret’s and Uncle Joe’s, donuts from Mr. Donut on Clark street. Sometimes there was Hungarian music playing, sometimes a Perry Como album. These were the sounds, aromas, odors, foods and activities I, as an adult, look back upon and reminisce about fondly today.

For the parents, activities were limited. Reminiscing about their youth in the old country, singing and then crying – if they were feeling particularly sentimental, sometimes dancing and of course, playing cards. Not American cards. European cards. Schnapzer. That was the name of the game or Zsirt bele. These were their games of choice. The slamming of the cards on the table revealing winning or losing hands, the arguing “You should have lead with Zold or Mak!” (Green or acorns.) I had the red 7!” The celebrations when the girls won (“Yata teena teena nay”). Such good fun they had. Such drama! We, as children, running out to stand next to the card table as tall – standing next to our parents – as they were seated. “What happened?,” we’d ask. The forbidden Hungarian words they’d use to curse sometimes. Us, again, snickering a room away, “Oh, that was a bad Hungarian word!”

Bygone days of yesteryear where Mom would either make the call or receive the call. “Mitt csinaltok delutan vagy ma este? (What are you doing this afternoon or tonight?) Semmit. Jol van. Jojjetek att vagy mi att jovunk. (Nothing? Good! Come over or we’ll drop by)” Oh, the excitement! We’re getting in the car to drive to the cousins or, they’re coming over soon! Sunday afternoons drawing out the weekend a wee bit more pushing the work week a little further back filled with aromas, sights, sounds, tastes (FOOD!) and tremendous joy!

Did you have this in your family? Do you have these gatherings now? Still? To this day? If not, do you miss them, because I sure do?! Were they fun? Especially when I look back at that one particular photograph. . .

MJC
01-16-12
Monday, 7am

Have a great week, all!

This is your 882nd post.

 

Wednesday January 4, 2012

I never thought in a million years I’d be writing the following words – but I love my new smart phone. (I may have put it as a Facebook status, oh 97 times, however.) It’s not the iPhone or of the Android persuasion, nor is it of the Blackberry ilk. It’s different than the others. It’s the present-day, smart phone underdog, the Windows 7.5 Mango phone and I love it!

Okay, love is a strong word – in all fairness – but this invention is truly mind-numbing compared to what technology offered by way of phones in 1998 when I purchased my first two-year package. But I suppose I loved that clunky old Nokia I had back then, too.

There was something extremely satisfying about wirelessly making a remote telephone call outside the 30 or 60 foot radius of a telephone base station - sitting on a telephone stand in the front hallway – in the comfort of my apartment  – something even more satisfying about sending email and web browsing now, today, 14 years later on a state-of-the-art handy dandy smart phone miles and miles away from home.

Mobile phone technology is incredible nowadays; even cooler than the big, clunky platform shoe, brick, bag phones of the 1980s and 1990s. Nowadays, when holding a smart phone in your hand you are holding more technology than the first laptops had bundled in them and that’s saying a lot (because, there was more technology inside the first IBM laptop than all the technology it took to complete the first moon landing from start to finish, according to Mike DiMichelle of http://www.savemybutt.com)!

In a mere forty-three years, we now hold in our hands more technology than it took to land a man on the freaking moon! Doesn’t that blow your mind? I’m in awe of it all and yet, who is the first person to shake his phone around when it doesn’t connect immediately? I am! As comedian Louis CK said, “Give it a second, it’s going to space! Can you give it a second, it’s going to space!”

That’s precisely how spoiled I’ve become and we all have become since these technological marvels have taken us by the short hairs and not let go. (iPhone premiered originally on my birthday, July 11th, 2007). It leaves me breathless most days just thinking about it. Youngsters under thirty, need it, rely upon it, can’t live without it and find it all very passe, very matter-of-fact. It is and pretty much always has been a part of their lives.

The fact that I hold a miniature computer in my hands every time I hold my smart phone completely blows me away! I can talk to the thing (Bing Voice) and have it find for me people, places and things. I can take a picture of something (Bing, again) and have it find the thing for me, tell me about it and give me the option to buy it right then and there – on the phone via various ‘apps’. It tells me weather, sports scores, traffic, news; anything I want whenever I want. It’s interactive television on crack, I tell you, right in the very palm of your hand!!!

All wide-eyed, Pollyanna wonderment aside, however, I do love this thing and have found since I bought it in late July / early August of last year – that I, now, having had it for 6 months or so, can’t live without the blasted thing. How bad does that sound? Because surely there are people my age and older simply happy to have the ease and convenience of making a mobile telephone call and nothing else – no other bells or whistles on their phones – they’re completely good with that. I, on the other hand need more, want more, require more and I’m not sure why. Maybe I am spoiled now that I have one. Whether that makes me a geek or not – I don’t know. But what it definitely makes me is happy. Happy to be in the know, about as up to date as I can be technology-wise and not left completely in the dust of yesteryear’s technology. It’s keeping me, at 49 years old, young! And that, if nothing else, is a really great feeling. It’s not the ‘end all’ and ‘be all’ to life. But for right now, I’ll take it.

MJC

Wed. 01/04/12

——————————————————–

Random Thoughts for the New Year in No Particular Order

It would have been nice to have a clear shot of the meteor showers somehow, somewhere in the 3am to 5am sky.

Were the Mayans right? Is 2012 going to be the end of the world?

Sixty degree temperatures in Miami is not the same as sixty degree temperatures in Chicago.

Has the Huffington Post taken over the world or what?

I am not sure anymore is there is such a thing as a good or even a great buffet.

Paul Simon was right 25 years ago when he sang: this is the age of miracle and wonder.

And he was right last year, again, when he sang: so beautiful, so what!

The chefs on the Food Network show, Chopped, are never given baked beans, bacon and onions as their ingredients. If they did, I’d kick their proverbial keysters!

Although they have been around for years, I still cannot get used to the knitted winter caps with the ear flaps and chin ties because they make grown people look like little babies.

You may lack a lot of things in your refrigerator and pantry but if you can say you have peanut butter, jelly and a loaf of white bread, then things are, overall, pretty darned good!

The holidays may come and go but ignorance lasts the whole year through.

Tallywacker is a funny word.

When driving south and east back into Chicago after work ends – the last few mornings – between eight and nine a.m. the sun sits about three quarters of the way risen in the upper right-hand sky of my windshield. I love the sun on my face but it is making it nearly impossible to drive.

Finally, I hope 2012 is a great year for me and for everybody!

Happy New Year, everyone!

MJC

This is your 881st post.

 

Saturday December 31, 2011

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 27 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

—————————————————–

Happy New Year all!
All the best for 2012!

MJC

This is your 880th post.

 

Friday December 23, 2011

Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Imagine all those self help books on the NY Times best seller list from the last 30 years boiled down to the contents of this blog and you pretty much have all you need to personally inhabit the skin you’ve been given in the time you’ve been alotted on this planet.

You have three primary tasks in this life, three concepts to get behind and support, three connective threads that will follow you until you pass on to whatever afterlife is to come: to learn as much about yourself and the world around you as humanly possible, cultivate your garden and do no harm to others.

Conversely, we as humans do the opposite. Now might be a good as time as any to elucidate the opposite of two of the three things, and a defintion of the third that I’ve listed above so that you know in this season and It’s Reason precisely what it is most of us DO, do..

The opposite of learning as much about yourself and the world around you is just that. Living in denial, judging others, more readily seeing differences rather than similarities between you and those you come into contact with, ignoring the signposts both literal and figurative that allow you to navigate through the terrain of your life: psychological, emotional, intellectual, communicative, intuitive, etc. Anything you may ignore or deny is the opposite of learning as much about yourself and the world in which you live.

The opposite of cultivating your garden is, again, just that. The lack of personal, professional and spiritual enrichment you not only can draw to your self but you that you perhaps, give off, or emit to others. Not learning that new hobby, not researching that new concept, recipe, idea, mode of communicating or behaving because it’s not feaseable within the framework of life you’ve constructed for yourself to maintain, not offering a kind word, not coming out of yourself to face new people or new experiences, etc. Anything that closes you off from anything is the opposite of cultivating your garden.

Finally, the defintion of doing harm to others is very simply put anything intended or unintended done with any level of ignorance or absolute malice injurious, whether accidental or on purpose to hurt or harm another. The opposite, then, is any good that can be done for another or towards another.

I can itemize the above two opposites for you specifically, but the third one’s quite the biggie and something I have blogged about many many times before. How do you know whether something you’ve done or said is injurious? A good indicator of this is the golden rule, as a sub-category or subheading of this third item.. If it would hurt you, it would hurt others.

Therefore now that I’ve given you the tools you need to go out into this world and live life the best way you can: as a self-actualized, thinking, feeling individual of good conscious, please find the time to print this out, study it and take it with you into 2012.

After all, there is a reason for this season and if you’re wondering what it is, it is indeed to be as close to human perfection, we – as feeble human beings can be: Christ-like, innocent and a joy to our Father and those around us. Everything else? Another blog for another time. Pretty big shoes to fill. But there’s no pressure, so take it easy, okay. . . .? I will make this simple for you. . . I don’t think I accomplish all that either. But we ALL can try!

Blessings, peace and love to you and yours in this season and in Its Reason.

MJC

This is your 879th post.

 

Thursday December 22, 2011

Two days removed from Christmas is as good a time as any to think about the year that’s passed. In that spirit, I have a partial list of things from 2011. (. . .yawn. . .) If you have anything to add to this list, please respond post haste and I. . .well, I probably won’t add them because it was pretty exhausting remembering back 365 days to make this list. Remembering things used to be a lot easier once upon a time, you know?

In no particular order of importance:

Steve Jobs
Adele
the word, “trending”
Kim Jong Il
Osama bin Laden
Japan
cantaloupe
NASA ends the space shuttle program
Herman Cain
Kim Kardashian’s wedding
Chaz Bono
MF Global
Matthew Weiner
Rod Blagojevich
Gabrielle Giffords
The Basketball Season
Quadaffi
Egypt
Occupy Wall Street
War Ends
Bieber
Tebow
over 2 feet of snow February 2nd in Chicago

On a personal note, 2011 ends with my beautiful niece getting married to her fiance, mom having a hospital stay (she gave us quite a scare but she is on the mend, thanks God), loving the Windows Phone I purchased in July and having published a vanity book of my best blogs from 2010. I may do this for 2011 early sometime next year but this post probably cannot be considered the best of 2011 because there’s too much work involved in reading this post. There’s too much to remember.

Of course you could just go, “Ahhh. . .” after each of the items listed above and pretend you remember. . .

Happy Holidays,
Season’s Greetings,
Merry Christmas,
Happy Chanukah,
Happy New Year!

MJC

This is your 878th post.

 

Monday December 5, 2011

For as much as I’ve mentioned Mad Men in this blog in the last two years, I’m not so sure I’m all that anxious to see the series return to AMC in early 2012. Oh, I’ll be watching, I suppose – as will so many others. I’m just not sure I’ve come to terms with it’s portrayal of modern American life, both personal and professional. Yes, I’ve realized all along that the 60s are 50 years ago – the period in which the series takes place, but now that I’ve gotten to know the series characters, I think I can see where it’s mostly going now. And that scares me.

Topics to be tackled, assumably, in this new season will consist of the ongoing lives of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce employees and their professional rivals and their families which is what it has pretty much been for the first four seasons. Matthew Weiner will have his hands full in season five, however. These are completely painted characters now. In a creative way, Weiner’s breathed life into each and every one of these characters living in that period of time. It’s episodic television, after all, and there is a flow and continuity in how this specific drama will reveal more of these character’s lives. A night-time soap opera of pretty spectacular dramatic proportions.

Having lived almost fifty years thus far on this planet makes a lot of the pivotal period elements of this television program hit more closely to home for me, than say a weekly, night-time drama about the Lincoln / Douglas Debates or the Louisiana Purchase. I lived through The Cold War, The Beatles, the moon landing, Woodstock, etc., but was too young to completely understand how these incidents shaped the decade that turned traditional family values and traditional societal norms on their respective ears.

That having been said, makes me perhaps, a tad wary. Will I watch Roger Sterling die of a heart attack? Will Don Draper cheat on his newlywed bride with his ex-wife? Will Joan Harris bring her baby to full term and will her husband die in Viet Nam? What tricks does Matthew Weiner have up his sleeve, how will the further historical events of the 1960s play out in these character’s lives, and how creative, artful and true to life will Weiner paint his picture this season?

Some episodes were just too intense, some nights, as I recall – too real. (One could say the same about the characters in the other AMC series, The Walking Dead.) I never thought I’d write these words – especially after having found the program in its third season and after having enjoyed its authenticity for a season or two.While watching, it always feels like some pretty heavy shoe might drop at any minute. Maybe I’m better off watching the lives of advertising people in the 1960s who live and work with employees of another fictional advertising firm: McMahon, Tate, namely, Bewitched. At least it’s a comedy. I’m not sure I can watch another office party goer’s foot being accidentally severed by a tractor / riding lawn mower during a Christmas Party, you know?

But I’ll probably watch, anyways when Mad Men returns in March of 2012.

Happy Monday, folks!

MJC

This is your 877th published post and has 537 words.